Tag: Safety-Culture-Is-Quality-Culture

Amazon’s lack of safety culture

Time after time, internal documents and interviews with company insiders show, Amazon officials have ignored or overlooked signs that the company was overloading its fast-growing delivery network while eschewing the expansive sort of training and oversight provided by a legacy carrier like UPS.

“Inside Documents Show How Amazon Chose Speed Over Safety in Building Its Delivery Network” by James Bandler, Patricia Callahan and Doris Burke, ProPublica, Ken Bensinger and Caroline O’Donovan, BuzzFeed News
 Dec. 23, 3 p.m. EST

Great reporting on the purposeful decisions that led to an unsafe culture. I recommend everyone reading this.

“Those interviews, as well as internal documents, reveal how executives at a company that prides itself on starting every meeting with a safety tip repeatedly quashed or delayed safety initiatives out of concern that they could jeopardize its mission of satisfying customers with ever-faster delivery.”

It all starts with leaders walking-the-walk and paying more than lip service to principles. “delighting the customer” is a great goal, but there are other stakeholders, and employee safety is a higher principle.

This article really reinforces my opinion that while there may be useful tools we can learn from FAANG companies, by-and-large their cultures do not appear ones truly dedicated to safety, quality and excellence.

It bears repeating. If we made pharmaceuticals the same way Amazon or Facebook operated, we’d all be dead. Every-time I read about Alphabet getting involved in healthcare I become petrified. One only has to look at the safety record of Tesla (both in the factory and the safety of it’s automobile) to start feeling worried on what happens when you take the bad culture from Silicon Valley and apply it to other endeavors..

New Report Exposes MBTA’s “Questionable” Approach to Safety

A “debilitated” safety department and too-thin maintenance crews are just two of the revelations surfaced by a new report on the MBTA’s safety culture.

Read on www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2019/12/09/mbta-safety-report/

Let’s cut right to the heart of the report’s recommendations:

“The panel makes six policy recommendations that are intended “to move the organization to a place where safety is a priority and is culturally integrated into every aspect of their mission.” They include establishing better safety performance indicators, identifying the areas where maintenance is being deferred, implementing stronger data collection, and strengthening the MBTA’s leadership team with “more seasoned” transit professionals.“

Where does that seem familiar?