It’s just so easy for us to fall into routine – it’s human nature.  Sometimes routine can be great.  For example, if you have a daily exercise regimen, that’s healthier than not having one at all.  However, many of the routines we fall into do not do us good.  Moreover, they harm us.

In the workplace, especially when things are going well, we can settle into doing things the same way without worrying about whether we should be evaluating the process for effectiveness.  This is the most dangerous cultural shift within an organization – complacency.

We are all guilty of it.  We all subconsciously seek out the path of least resistance – the most comfortable choice.  The key is to train yourself personally and train the culture of your organization to recognize when this is happening.  The longer you allow yourself to aimlessly accept the state of a function or process as “good as is” or “good enough”, the more you are training yourself to remain complacent.  As time passes, it becomes simpler to continue status quo and all the more difficult to cultivate self-facing constructive criticism.  What’s most frightening about placing yourself in a monotonous hole like this is that this is where the potential for incidents fester and thrive.  There’s nothing a hazard loves more than complacency and the likelihood of a risk being realized is most definitely heightened.

The only method to avoid this humdrum environment is to establish the mantra throughout your organization that “we never arrive”.  There is no plateau you can achieve in anything where it is acceptable to say, “we can relax now – we’ve made it”.  You have to stay nimble and keep moving.  Anthropomorphize your workplace hazards – envision them chasing you.  They never stop trying to catch up.  However, if you keep implementing improvements, they’ll always be left in your dust.

This discussion applies to nothing better in the workplace environment than paper-based processes.  I mean, c’mon – we’re living in the 21st century and people want you to use paper and pen?  They might as well ask that you conduct your inspection or assessment processes in hieroglyphics.  Paper use is a physical representation of organizational complacency.  With all of the technology now available and reasonably priced, there isn’t an excuse to continue wasting natural resources for the purpose of sustaining an unnecessarily drawn out and cumbersome process.  Whatever you are doing in paper, it could be done much easier, more efficient and cost-effective if digitized.

Why not give it a whirl?  Our SayleSafety App is available for download from your respective app store and you get the first month free.  What do you have to lose but stacks and stacks of cluttered paper?  Don’t procrastinate – improve now and expand the gap between your people and workplace hazards.