🛡️ 𝐒𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐲: Fasten Your Seatbelts
The global economy is in a zone of prolonged turbulence. The mounting crisis is forcing businesses to seek new foundations: old management models no longer work, and new ones have yet to take shape.
Industrial companies have shifted into a mode of strict resource conservation (CAPEX and OPEX). They are "freezing" investment projects, cutting costs, and reducing staff, including "expensive" (as they perceive them) managers and even top executives.
In the HSE field, we are witnessing a sharp rollback from the high-profile "safety culture" programs of yesterday to a conventional "paper-based" legal compliance.
Where is this leading?
🔸 Declining Discipline. Layoffs of managers and staff cause demotivation and organizational imbalance. This leads to an increase in unsafe acts and personnel errors.
🔸 Depreciation of Fixed Assets. Shortages of spare parts, declining quality of maintenance and repairs, and "run-to-failure" operations accelerate aging and reduce equipment safety.
🔸 The Illusion of Safety. The forced adoption of quick, yet temporary, solutions only masks problems and cannot replace systemic reliability.
🔸 Management Degradation. Abandoning previously declared HSE priorities and values leads to the destruction of organizational culture at all levels of management.
Why, even now, in the harsh conditions of a crisis, do effective management and industrial safety fail to rank among corporate priorities? 🤔
The answer likely lies in the specifics of the established business model:
📌 "Cheap Labor" Economy: The costs of organizing safe production were seen as less "profitable" than paying out compensations and fines.
📌 Short Planning Horizons: A "profit here and now" strategy hindered upgrades and modernization with a 10 – 15 year payback period.
📌 Commodity-Based Model: High profitability from exports reduced interest in systemic safety improvements.
📌 "Follow the Money": Companies listed on international exchanges strove to demonstrate advanced HSE standards to gain access to preferential lending and other perks. Today, these incentives have clearly weakened.
What should be done?
✅ Today, companies need a long-term anti-crisis strategy. Its goal is not the mechanical cutting of budgets, but the preservation of operational control, the protection of qualified personnel, and the safeguarding of production potential. 🎯
✅ Implementing such a strategy requires leader-managers capable of "holding" production and its safety together while managing change.
✅ Such professionals are considered relatively "expensive," yet even in a crisis, they must be attracted and retained. This is a strategic investment in the survival and strengthening of the business. 💰
In times of crisis, safety becomes one of the most vital guarantees for business survival.
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💬 QUESTION FOR COLLEAGUES:
Is business capable of recognizing the current situation and starting to act differently? Share your opinion in the comments. 👇
Comments 9
Alexander, many times I have almost literally heard a similar explanation from senior executives and colleagues. Your comment allowed me to rethink it.
Trying to survive "here and now", sacrificing even that without which it is impossible to survive "tomorrow" — is a typical trap of crisis management. As a result, instead of thoughtful optimization and strengthening work on key priorities, only the illusion of adaptation is created.
A crisis tears off masks and exposes the essence. If safety was previously considered in the company only as an "expense item", then it remains such now. The idea of my post is that companies urgently need to change the paradigm: safety — is a way of preserving people, assets and the business itself in crisis and non-crisis times.
I think you are right: basic principles should always work. Unfortunately, far from all managers remember this.
The practical value of the article lies in helping to make sense of today's very difficult situation, when the entire economic model (way of doing business) is changing radically. This is a kind of "red flag" for management, which, in pursuit of a quick effect, mechanically cuts "costs" without thinking either about the consequences for people or about the sustainability and reputation of their own business.
Alexander, thank you for your comment. The value of people is an absolute guideline, however, unfortunately, reality looks different.
The "base" you are talking about was created in all known companies quite a long time ago. Therefore, there can be no question of choosing priorities between the "base" and the "proactive" in principle.
Today, for the purpose of "cost optimization," there is a banal abandonment of the most important system-forming programs of industrial safety. NOTE: it is important not to confuse such programs with imitation "bubbles", which, of course, one must get rid of.
My colleagues and I already observed something similar in the 1990s–2000s. Negative consequences are inevitable both for the business itself and for people — its main asset. What is actually more important for the business, is up to you to decide.