Building a Solid Foundation to Make Everyday Risk Less Scary

A few months into my time at CCMWA, a workers' comp claim came across my desk with a line in it I've never forgotten: "There's a hole out there. Everybody knows about it." Two questions followed me around for weeks after that. If everyone knew about it, why wasn't anyone saying anything — and why wasn't it fixed? And if our safety culture ran on silence and luck, how was I supposed to ever change that and actually live up to "safety first"?

I'd bet your organization has a version of that hole too. And it's probably been there longer than you have.

"Nothing bad has happened in a while" is a trick

No injuries doesn't mean you're safe — it might just mean you're lucky. No reports doesn't mean no problems; it often means no trust. "We've always done it this way" is not a safety record, it's an absence of evidence. Treat it as a foundation instead: reports are an early warning system, near misses are free lessons, and practice is what brings calm under real pressure.

Why public-sector risk feels scary

Our people do genuinely dangerous work — police walking up to the unknown, fire and EMS dealing with heat and roadways, electrical and utility crews around energized lines and confined spaces, water and wastewater teams around chemicals and trenches, public works around traffic and heavy machinery, and a front desk that's the first face an angry citizen sees.

And we do it with fewer tools than most industries: any incident can become a headline or a records request, budgets were set a year before today's problem showed up, equipment and facilities are "fine for twenty years" until they aren't, and lean staffing means vacancies, overtime, and fatigue are the norm, not the exception. In a lot of public-sector organizations, safety and risk still lives with one person — and it goes home when that person does.

The four footings

A safer, "ready enough" organization stands on four things:

• Voice — make it safe to speak up. Report injuries (even small ones), near misses, unsafe conditions, and the simple "this feels off." Then respond to every report: thank them, fix it, ask why, close the loop. When reports go up, that's usually a sign of more trust, not more danger — celebrate it. And match the response to the behavior: console and fix the system for human error, coach and ask why for an at-risk shortcut that became normal, discipline fairly and consistently for conscious disregard of real risk (David Marx's Just Culture model). Watch out for "zero injury" incentive programs — they can quietly punish the exact reporting you need.
• Habits — small, boring, and daily beats big and occasional. A five-minute tailgate talk to open a shift. "What could hurt us today?" Fix it or flag it within 24 hours. Walk-arounds with a frontline employee. None of it requires a budget amendment.
• Rehearsal — make your mistakes in the conference room so you don't make them in the crisis. Under pressure, people don't rise to the occasion; they fall back on their training. Run a 45-minute tabletop: pick one realistic scenario, get the right people in the room, add two or three curveballs, talk it through out loud, do a hot wash on what worked and what confused people, and leave with one fix, one owner, one date. Monthly by department, quarterly organization-wide. (Scenarios worth stealing: an angry citizen at the front counter, a chemical leak at a plant, a tornado warning at shift change, ransomware locking billing, a crew truck crash on a main road, a main break in a heat wave.) Practice also helps you hear the whispers before they become the headline — repeat near misses in the same spot, climbing overtime, work orders that keep aging, the same complaint over and over, "oh, we always work around that."
• Ownership — one person, many hands. Supervisors, a safety committee, department champions, leadership, HR, and every employee all carry a piece of it. You can't be everywhere — build a system that still works when you're not in the room.

Before next Monday

Find your hole: ask three frontline employees what the hole is that everybody knows about. Book one tabletop — 45 minutes, one scenario, one fix. Say thank you to the next person who reports something, publicly if they're comfortable with it. Find the hole. Fill it before somebody steps in it. Prepared, not perfect.