In my courses on “the best strategy to implement and maintain a Safety Management System”, I share with my students this brief history that I found on the Internet and then compare with the hazards:
“Among the tribes of northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the most common greeting equivalent to our ‘hello’ is the expression: sawu bona which literally means ‘I see you’; tribe members respond to the greeting by saying: sikkhona, which means “I am here.”
The order of the dialogue is important: as long as you have not seen me I do not exist, it is as if when you saw me you gave me existence.
Therefore this story applies identically to HAZARDS … “As long as you haven’t seen me, I don’t exist.”
HAZARDS reports are one of the most important sources to manage risks, we must motivate our collaborators to report them, a mature SMS will be noticed when the number of accurate and timely reports increases.
