Safety Leadership Council Meets At Point Reyes

Members of the NPS Safety Leadership Council (SLC) met for two days at Point Reyes National Seashore late last month to review the progress of various council workgroups and to define additional actions that SLC members can take to further the creation of a strong safety culture within the service.

The vision of the SLC is “that safety in the NPS will be a field-led and peer maintained practice that is essential to the accomplishment of our mission.”

“It will be multi-dimensional in implementation, not top down. The SLC will engage in timely communication that allows shared knowledge across all professions in the NPS. The SLC will be leading, not lagging, in response to problems. Others will seek our advice and see us as national leaders for organizational safety and quality management.”

The council received progress reports from workgroups addressing a variety of challenges, including:

• the development of  NPSafe as a web-based portal for all safety resources that employees and managers are motivated to use;
• a report from the employee health and wellness workgroup that featured a focused discussion on the potential rollout of an all-employee fitness program; and
• an update on the implementation of operational leadership throughout the service.

Park staff from the 2009 NPS safety award winning parks – Glacier Bay NP, Mount Rainer NP, and Richmond Battlefield NBP – participated telephonically in the meeting by delivering PowerPoint presentations of the safety best practices developed at their park units.   

The SLC meeting concluded with a discussion summarizing the strategic actions necessary to foster enhancement of the NPS safety culture. Regional Director Mike Snyder made this summary observation about achieving a safety culture shift in the NPS:

"We need to always be thinking that, whatever the task, do we have safety in mind?  Safety should be the atmosphere we live in.  Considering safety should be as natural and as primary as taking a breath.  It should NOT be one of the things we consider; it should be our primary consideration.

“Culture is defined as a set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterize a particular group or organization.  A safety culture is a culture in which those attitudes, values, goals and practices are pervaded by a respect for the importance of safety and its power to improve your organization on every level.  A safe organization is better for employee morale; it is better for the bottom line; it is better for productivity. 

“Operating safely does not mean that you don’t take risks; it means that you have taken those risks into consideration and worked to minimize them.  It means that a respect for the well being of yourself, your employees and visitors pervades your decisions and allows you to accomplish your goals more effectively.”
The NPS SLC has charted a path forward so that all employees demonstrate that safety is essential to carrying out the NPS mission and plans to meet again in September 2009.