What Makes Someone 'Safety-First' Minded?
Most readers of this post would agree that terminals have multiple "Safety-First" sticker on the wall, employee handbook has the phrase on each page, and all vendor have it underlined in the contract
But, what actually makes someone "safety-first" oriented? I can assure you it is not the lanyard or PPE. It is leadership that drives behaviour and discipline.
Why do safety cultures still vary wildly between terminals running the same equipment, the same procedures, the same training?
Because "safety-first" isn't a slogan. It's a set of behaviours — and they show up in small moments
In a seminar I attended a couple of weeks ago, by a war veteran turned corporate speaker, related a case of two units from the same regiment – one was sharp as swords, while the other was far less so and a very high incident, casualty and high altitude attacks.
The difference was in the Commanding Officer and his attitude, just as it would be the Leadership and C-Suite at a terminal.
I've spent 49 years on ships and in proximity to container terminals, and in both, the "safety-first" people I've worked with share a few quiet habits:
- They stop work without dwelling on the consequences
- They report what they almost did, not just what they did. That’s the near miss
- They speak up when something is wrong – even a senior
- They double-check and check again the things that hook to safety
- They don't trust familiarity. With people, process or equipment. They check and check again
- They never ever take the quickest or fastest route. Always the right way. Always
None of these fit easily into a KPI or be enforced through a checklist. They are behavioural and instilled as a discipline.All of them can be encouraged — or quietly killed — by the leadership and culture around the person.
And the honest truth? Most terminals say they want safety-first behaviour but in contradiction, they reward speed, high productivity, throughput, and silence on the floor.
These are not assumptions for this post – these are factual narrations to my team and I from many terminals operatives.
If I stop to investigate a noise or vibration, I lose production, and this gets me a firing or a black mark.
If I report a near-miss I get in trouble with the guilty team.
If I don’t do what the shift boss says, even if wrong or unsafe, I get in trouble.
That's not a safety-first culture. That's a safety-second culture wearing the right t-shirt.
At Qavach.AI and ATSI have moved to “Computer Vision” to automate reporting and make safety-first behaviour visible, reports take seconds, patterns surface in minutes, not days.
And what is a great by-product is that the people doing the right thing finally get seen for it.
What's the quiet "safety-first" behaviour your terminal undervalues most?
