Workplace Stress

June 10, 2022 By Leave a Comment

There is a lot of stress all around us – in our personal and workplace lives.

The war in the Ukraine, inflation, gas prices, groceries, apartment rents, and the mass shootings are a few examples. This stress affects us all in one way or another. It feels as if everything is under some sort of threat. Do we have to make churches, schools, grocery stores, playgrounds, offices, factories and even homes hard targets to try to protect ourselves? Stressors are many – negativity is high.

In previous posts I have talked about the need for situational awareness. This is so important for all of us. It is a first line of defense. We also need to take basic precautions around our homes being sure that we have taken reasonable precautions like having bright, outside lighting, keeping doors locked, picking up packages from our front porches, etc. When we go out to mix in big groups like bars and night clubs, or events, or any gathering, we need to ask ourselves if this is the right thing for us at that time.

stress in the workplace

When we are at work, we need to be cognizant of everyone that is feeling stress and preoccupied. Things we say or do may be taken in the wrong way. People may have short tempers. Some will be hurrying and careless. We each need to avoid contributing more stress to the situations.

All this stress and preoccupation makes us vulnerable to our own mistakes and errors. I tend to make poorer judgements when I am stressed like another driver and I did recently – we had a fender bender. Fortunately, there were no injuries other than egos being beat up. Preoccupation like this at work can lead to injuries and incidents as well. Perhaps the biggest threat we face is our own impatience and anxiousness.

For me, I need to slow down a little and ask myself what I am doing to be able to do the next task correctly. Do I need to take a deep breath to clear my mind before I do the next thing? Am I centered before starting the next conversation? Am I paying enough attention to what is going on around me so I do not cause problems and get someone hurt? Am I trying to select the correct words for the next conversation so I do not cause unnecessary troubles? Is one of my friends or coworkers feeling stress and do they need some extra kindness from me?

The number of road rage incidents is going up as well as the severity of the violence in these incidents. I need to be more aware of my own behavior. Small things I do may cause someone else to get angry. I need to keep my phone put away. I do not want to be caught up in one of these road rage incidents, so I need to be sure that my speed is appropriate, and I am not driving aggressively. I need to be sure to leave plenty of space between me and other cars and not to crowd people as I give way to my stress and start hurrying.

These are tough times for all of us. Stress levels impact all areas of our lives. We need to be kind to ourselves and others to help relieve the stresses a little.

Signs of Hope

Many of you reading my posts know how highly I value using really good processes for participation in our workplaces, sharing of information, building trust, and helping people to find meaning in their work. (Having meaning in one’s work helps to lessen work stress!) Over the last 50 years of my work in the field of Leadership, I have gradually seen progress in this participative and meaningful way of working. While there are plenty of bad examples of leadership, I am seeing improvements taking place. More people are talking about working this way. Some recent articles in Professional Safety, the journal of the American Society for Safety Professionals, have begun to talk about this. Other business journals are also talking more and more about this.

There is a growing awareness that our traditional top-down management approach is not up to the rapidly changing and more complex world. I have even seen some recent papers indicating that some of the professionals in government are more aware of the need to recognize and use ideas like Ross Ashby’s Requisite Variety, Complexity and Reflexivity so we can lead, learn, and think more clearly and effectively about how work is being done. It is heartening to me to see this participative progress!

I urge all of you to work on expanding your own leadership thinking so that you can also be more effective in your own work, and as you lead others. It has been extremely important for me in my own journey over the last few generations. I urge you (also) to learn about and practice situational awareness – for your safety and for others. If you have questions, please contact me at 716-622-6467 or send me an email.

Remember, it takes Leadership to improve Safety.
It takes being “aware” to notice what’s happening in your surroundings.
It takes de-stressing measures to bring calm to the moment.

stress in the workplace

 

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Doing Safety Right in the Workforce!

February 10, 2022 By Leave a Comment

So much of our safety efforts are aimed at trying to get the people to do safety right.

Photo Credit: OSHA.gov/Safety

There are lots of good ideas, new techniques, slogans, better equipment, PPE and so on. When I go to an American Society for Safety Professionals Conference, I am awed by the beautiful displays of new and better equipment and supplies. A lot of safety people are trying to improve safety in the workplace. It is hard work, and progress in reducing injuries and incidents is slow.

My Earlier Years

Over my 20+ years in managerial positions, working to improve the performance of organizations, I have found that the way I worked in my early years of pushing, pushing, scolding, blaming, looking for root cause, etc. was not very successful. I did not listen well and did a lot of arguing. I took an approach of trying to take things apart, thinking that if I understood the parts I could fix things. I felt that I had to know everything and fix the problems and the people. But the same problems kept popping up and no one seemed to learn or care. Trying to catch people doing something wrong, sets us up for a lot of arguments and struggles. Many organizations where I worked were not happy places. (And I learned that it didn’t have to be that way – old school management certainly had its flaws!)

Growing Up

However, when I began to realize that almost all people are smart in their own ways, things began to change. As I learned to purposefully go into the workplace, sit down with the working people, and listen to what they had to say, I found that most people are doing things quite well. They wanted to help to make things better. Most people do not want to get hurt or cause a problem. Rather than treating them as if they just did not care, I realized that they had a lot to offer and wanted to contribute. I just had to ask them, listen, and create the conditions where they could be their best. (They had so much information and innovations to offer!)

At first, I found the people frustrated and unhappy that no one had ever listened to them. When I first began to walk among them, there was a lot of fear and little trust. What was I really doing? Was I really trying to engage with them and learn? Was I just trying to find something wrong in a sneaky way? As I kept trying, kept listening and learning to talk with the people, and not at them, things began to shift. Each conversation was a little step, so I had many conversations. When I was the Plant Manager at the DuPont Belle, WV Plant, I did this for 4-5 hours a day for over 7 years. (Yes, I kept long work hours!)

In talking with the people, building trust, and helping them to see that they were an important part of our total success, our performance improved. In the first 4 years, our injury rate dropped by 97%, emissions dropped by 95%, productivity rose by 45% and earnings rose by 300%. We kept getting better. I did not do this by myself, the people, all of us together did this. I found that in all these conversations that the collective intelligence of the whole organization went up and kept going up as we all talked and learned together. We all became partners in building a successful business.

respect and honor others in the workplace

My Consulting Experiences in Safety

Over the last 28 years of consulting with organizations around the world, to help them improve their performance, I have used and taught this approach. I have developed a focused tool for our conversations that helps to make this work focused, effective and fast. It helps the people to see what they are doing, breaks down barriers, builds trust, enables them to solve complex problems, and make decisions close to their work. In these conversations the collective intelligence of the groups always goes up. All dimensions of their performance improve, often quite quickly. They sustain this work for years by continuing these conversations among themselves. I call this tool the Cycle of Intelligence. It is simple to use, requires no new capital investment and helps the people, all of them from the top down, to sustain and improve progress in their continuous conversations.

Invitation:

If you want to learn more about the Cycle of Intelligence and how this process works, please give me a call at 716-622-6467 or contact me at richard@rnknowlesassociates.com. We can set up a Zoom call if necessary. (Yes, we do “Train the Trainer” sessions.)

Perhaps you have a story you want to share. It is so important to establish your credibility as a manager or supervisor who is committed to improving safety and to respect your people – because worker participation, involvement and enthusiasm is a treasure. Hope to hear from you!

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Peeling the Onion: Exposing the Various Layers of Safety in the Workforce

January 10, 2022 By Leave a Comment

Let’s peel back the onion on some recently published Safety Stats.

The number of people killed at work dropped in 2020 – Good News!

The Year 2021 was full of changes and challenges. Much of the news was pretty negative. But, one piece of good news was that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the number of fatal occupational injuries in 2020 dropped from 5,333 in 2019 to 4,764 in 2020. This is the first drop in fatalities since 2014. This is good, but no one knows why this happened. There are many possible things that could have had an impact. We must peel back the onion and look deeper.

exposing the layers of safety stats

Here are some stats:

  • Did the COVID epidemic have an influence? Probably.
  • Were there fewer businesses operating? Yes.
  • Were fewer people actually at work? Yes.
  • The pressures of excessive overtime were up as businesses began to expand again but could not get enough people to fill all the positions. Did this have an impact? Maybe.
  • Were the numbers unclear because there were more part-time workers? Probably.
  • Was management actually doing a better job in the safety arena? I hope so!
  • Even though there was a lot more stress among the people with all the COVID worries, the number of murders dropped by 14.5%. Women made up 16.3% of workplace homicides. Maybe people were handling the stress better than usual. I hope so!
  • Exposure to harmful substances went up, including overdose of drugs. Was this from increased workplace pressures. Maybe.
  • Fatal injuries among law enforcement people went up 18.6% to 115 people. Thank you for your courage!

This is a complex problem with which all of us in safety are working to improve. The number of fatal injuries in 2020 was lower than it has been (and that is a good thing!), but the reasons are multifaceted. Please keep up the safety work you are doing and we’ll see if the 2021 numbers improve again.

What Do Workers Want?

American workers want better stability, safety, and leadership.

Randstad, USA, a large professional and commercial staffing organization, recently conducted a survey of their clients, finding that the COVID situation had an enormous impact in raising the workers’ concerns for safety. Workers want their leaders to clearly take the lead, making and acting on decisions to improve their safety and the stability of the workplace environment. Workers want clear standards on vaccinations and working conditions like spacing and overtime considerations. This is a big challenge since guidance from the Government, OSHA, the CDC and the courts is in such flux, and the shortage of skilled workers complicates this even further. This is a huge source of stress on everyone. It is critical that there is open, honest conversations among all the people so the best, most logical decisions can be made. This is really the work of leaders and the people want them to step up and lead.

Getting back to the onion metaphor…the Leader needs to be rooted (strength of conviction, knowledgeable) and have a strong inner core…yet be flexible, able to listen, communicate and most importantly, to be able to step up and lead.

Call to Action: As you peel back the onion around the safety performance of your workplace during this past year, what will you find? Contact me (716-622-6467) and I’ll share with you the “Layers of Safety” I use when speaking to Leaders on becoming the most effective they can be in leading Safety in the Workplace.

removing layers of safety stats

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Leadership: Moving Through the Mire … to a Better place

December 10, 2021 By Leave a Comment

We are living through a period of extraordinary uncertainty. Our safety and our Leadership is in flux.

Two renowned scholars and two McKinsey experts recently illuminated the leadership imperatives of our time:

  • bringing people together,
  • energizing forward progress, and
  • reimagining normalcy.

This is exactly what we embrace with our Partnering through Collaboration Leadership Approach (at RNKnowles & Associates).

Stress in the Workplace

The COVID mess has driven us onto new and different ground. The virus, the vast amounts of conflicting information, the on-again off-again edicts, the shortage of workers, and the supply-chain problems are forcing everyone to rethink what and how we conduct our businesses. On top of this, we still must maintain our standards of safety, quality, and total performance. With such high levels of complexity, no one knows how to do all of this.

For the businesses having to impose and enforce all the edicts, we wind up pitting ourselves against each other. For example, suppose someone must be let go because the edict required vaccination and the person refused it for good health reasons, and then the edict is blocked in court the next day. What do we do? We can bring the person back to work, but then other, new changes are imposed. What then? How do we handle the pay issues? It goes on and on. These stressors are intense in our workplaces today.

Finding a Workable Way through this Mire

With everything changing around us, we must find a way to take control, and make sense of what we do. Perhaps we need to shift our way of working from a top-down, hierarchical approach to one of opening up and partnering with the people. Talking together and working out our problems, as partners, is extremely important.

Our top-down approach is faced with lots of questions. Who knows the “right” answers? What are the rules today? How do we operate our businesses for the good of everyone? Are we supposed to force people to get COVID vaccinations when some people have already had COVID and are immune or have some health issues that make having a vaccination dangerous? Is Management trying to force things and the people are resisting because they do not want to get pushed around? Is Management just an extension of the Government?

No one person knows the answers. Yet, when we partner, we can do a lot better. You do know your own workplaces and the people who work there. Collectively, you know what is best for you, and what will keep you from splitting up into various factions. You know the playing field you are on. Talk together so everyone has a good picture of what you are trying to do. Talking and sharing is important because everyone has a different picture. In sharing, a clearer picture can be developed by all.

partner through collaboration in leadership

Partnering through Collaboration (Leadership Approach) is your Guide

As you talk about developing a clearer picture of your new playing field, let the conversation move on to trying to figure out how to manage yourselves on this field the best you can. Your goal is to help each other get through all this confusion so everyone can work safely, people can keep their jobs, and your business do the best it can. Develop some co-created agreements about how you are going to manage and deal with problems so things can be the best they can be. Listen to everyone and explore the best ways to work together in these difficult times. In having this conversation, you are establishing the ground rules for working together as partners. Be open to the constant need to pay attention to what is happening around you so you can be resilient and flexible as things change.

Having developed a clear picture of your playing field and co-creating how you’ll play in these confusing times, to go and do what needs to be done. Do the work, adjusting together as you go. Help each other, share information, treat everyone with respect. Avoid blame and fighting which will tear you apart.

No one know just the right answers, so you will have to develop your own as best you can. If you just default to today’s edicts, you’ll have to change them tomorrow when some new edict is issued. Take control of your destiny as best you can.

the road to successThe goal is to get through all this safely, keep your people and business thriving and active, building stronger relationships for partnering and working together. This is a tough challenge, but who knows your workplace and the people better than you. You can work things out together.

Remember these 3 tenets of Partnering through Collaboration (Leadership approach):

  • Understand the big picture – What’s your frame of reference?
  • Continually Build Relationships with all people
  • Share Information…openly, widely, often, in various ways

We at Richard N. Knowles and Associates help the people in organizations to develop partnering with our Partnering Through Collaboration approach. It is a specific Leadership process that we can teach you to utilize as you move through your stressors. We have a long, successful track record in this work. You can move forward quickly. To learn more about this, please give us a call at 716-622-6467 and see our web site at www.RNKnowlesAssociates.com. The calls are free.

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Working Together Makes All the Difference

November 10, 2021 By Leave a Comment

When we are asked to come into an organization to help them improve their safety performance, we do not work on safety in the traditional sense.

We work with them to identify an important, complex problem they want to solve. It needs to be a problem that everyone thinks they know about and wants to solve. While the stated problem is something like, “How do we improve our total safety performance?,” their problems are usually much deeper than this surface level. We help the people to find the deeper problem that is driving a lot of their poor safety performance.

working safely together requires teamwork

We then gather a group of people together from across the organization, from the top management to people on the floor, and have a focused conversation about their problems. Our workshops usually last 1-2 days, depending on the size of the organization. As the people open up, a lot of important information emerges. Their answers are arranged around a circle (circles indicate wholeness), and they discover who and what they are as a group and how to work together in resolving this concern for the long-term.

This figure illustrates the process:

collaboration model shows who and what we are together

As they look at their question from these nine perspectives, the collective intelligence of the whole group rises. People often tell us that they did not know that they knew so much.

As they talk together, they discover that their main problem is in how they chose to work together which they describe when they talk about their Principles and Standards. Initially, a lot of dysfunctional behavior surfaces. They see that stuff like bullying, harassment, and lying are really causing their poor performance across the organization. It’s not just in poor safety performance. These poor behaviors contaminate all their work.

Paul Glover of the Forbes Coaches Council reported recently in LinkedIn that 48% of American workers are looking for other work because of dysfunctional behaviors like these, 70% see no reason to speak up about problems because they fear their bosses and co-workers, and only 33% are working at optimal levels. There is little psychological safety for raising and resolving problems together. Many organizations are in denial about problems like these. These dysfunctional behaviors adversely impact all aspects of the organization’s performance, and lots of people want to get out of there. Leadership, unfortunately, is in denial – often because egos are involved, or they don’t know how to turn things around. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way!

Note: This model works, when you decide it is time to make that big difference for your organization, to be intentional about the safety of your people! This model becomes your extraordinary leadership magnet for improved safety performance – because it contains all the critical elements – and because it is collaborative, alignment and effectiveness comes quickly.

Most people want to work in organizations where everyone is working together for the good of the whole. Leaders are seeking better ways for embracing safety. People want to be proud of their place of work and feel good about it. So, in our workshops we help the people to tap into this way of working and everything gets better, quickly. For example, we have seen the safety performance change for the better the very next day. When people decide that they want to change, they do it.

Call me at 716-622-6467 soon and share with me the safety concerns that are happening in your organization. It’s a free consultation. Leaders are looking for answers…I’ll demonstrate for you how quickly your safety issues can be rectified, and your people can be more engaged in the betterment, as well.

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Stress in the Workplace

October 11, 2021 By Leave a Comment

The complexities and conflicting messages related to Covid, the shortages of skilled people to fill jobs, along with the related excessive overtime and the emerging supply-chain mess are driving stress through the roof.

remove stress from the workplace

This stress is hitting all sorts of businesses and organizations.

According to a recent AP story, a major hospital in Missouri has seen a big jump in violence related incidents. In 2019, they had 94 violence related crimes, including 43 assaults and 17 injuries. In 2020, they had 152 violence related crimes, including 123 assaults and 78 injuries. The American Hospital Association reports a big increase in violence related problems, but since most are not reported to the police, so the numbers are unclear.

Many businesses are struggling to get people to fill their open positions as business activity grows. But since the openings remain, the employees are forced into excessive over-time. Some organizations are running at close to 20% overtime, which is wearing the people out. In one organization we know, many people have been required to work seven-day schedules for weeks, which is not the right way to treat people. This causes excessive fatigue and is very hard on the families.

Now we have an emerging supply chain crisis. There are over 60 ships awaiting to dock and unload in Los Angeles because there are not enough truck drivers to move the freight out to customers. This is impacting businesses of all sizes.

In one automobile agency, I heard a salesperson telling a customer that she would have to wait for her car until at least January 2022. I was talking with a small business owner whose business is etching decorative glassware. He said he was suffering in his business because he can’t get glass ware for his customers.

All this increasing stress is leading to more injuries and incidents. All of us in each of our businesses and organizations need to be very cognizant of this and try to keep stress levels to a minimum. We need to help each other and care for each other. We are all in this together so let’s make the best of this and go the extra mile in being patient and helpful.

A different approach to solving our problems is needed.

In the scientific and technical world in which most safety people have grown up, the dominant approach to problem solving has be a reductionist one. We were taught to look carefully at a problem, dissect it, understand the parts, and fix what is needed. We were taught to depend on fundamentals like Newton’s Laws, for example. Using the reductionist approach to solve safety problems may be reaching its limit, based on the fact that, the number of fatalities is gradually increasing and the rate of drop in all injuries I very slow.

The speed of change and the complexity of the problems has increased so much that we need a different approach to solving problems. This different approach has been developing over the last 50 or so years. This is called systems thinking.

In this approach, we are taught to look at the whole and the parts together and try to understand their inter-relationships and interactions. All the problems are connected so we can only understand the system using a different thinking approach. In systems thinking we look at relationships, patterns, and processes, asking question about how things are related, about the recurring patterns of behavior you see and what are the processes of interaction happening over and over. This is a big shift from looking at things, to looking at how people are interacting.

It can feel like we are giving up our quantitative approach to something that is more qualitative. It felt like this to me at first, but as I shifted my focus away from things to the way people interact, our safety and business performance improved. As I shifted my focus and way of thinking, I found that everything changed. As I worked with people using this systems’ thinking approach our safety and total business performance quickly improved.

The Leadership Dance by Richard N. KnowlesSystems thinking is something you need to learn in order to develop a higher level of your own performance.

If you read my book, The Leadership Dance: Pathways to Extraordinary Organizational Performance, available from Amazon, you can read about my own journey into learning about systems thinking, as well as offering some useful complexity tools.

This is a powerful, effective way of working, which I highly recommend.

 

less stress for organizational success

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Situational Awareness…for Safety…for Security…for Life!

July 10, 2021 By Leave a Comment

Situational awareness is being aware of what is happening around you in terms of where you are, where you are supposed to be, and whether anyone or anything around you is a threat to your health, safety, and well-being.

for your safety and security be aware of your surroundingsOur knowledge, experience and education enable us to understand what is going on around us and helps us to determine if it is safe…if we are “clued in.” This is not a complicated idea, yet we see so many people who seem to be totally oblivious about what is going on around them.

  • Have you seen people walking down the street with their cell phones right in front of their faces?
  • Have you seen someone grab a chair to stand on to get something off a high shelf?
  • Have you seen someone driving their car with the phone in their hand and not paying attention to their driving?
  • Have you seen news stories where people just seem to walk into really dangerous crowds with little care?
  • Have you seen a person climb into a manhole in the middle of the street without proper respiratory protection?
  • Have you seen people climb poorly secured ladders that can easily slip?
  • Have you seen people at work who are not using the right PPE or not using handrails?
  • Do we see ourselves doing things like this with little awareness of the potential situation we are getting into?

We see things like these almost every day. The people doing these things are not stupid – rather, they are exhibiting a clear sense of lacking awareness in the moment. (Their proceed-with-caution flag is missing!)

Situational awareness applies and is a big part of our safety…to understand what is “not normal”…as in cracks happening in a foundation, or pipes carrying chemicals showing signs of a leak, or Personal Protective Equipment beginning to show wear. It may apply to your health – paying attention to your intuitive knowing, for clues and signals that something has changed or does not seem right.

Recently in the news, most of the people seemed to have ignored warnings and were situationally unaware before the collapse of the condo in the Miami Beach, Florida disaster.

We put so much at risk to just save a minute or two. Why is it we do not pay attention to what is around us and take a moment to protect ourselves? Are we paying attention or are we just charging along hoping things will be okay? Is saving 5-10 seconds in a job worth the risk to you and your safety?

A specific area of focus for us at NageleKnowlesAndAssociates.com is Situational Awareness related to violence in the workplace. We need to be vigilant in the event someone from outside the organization comes in to do harm. We also need to be vigilant for potential violence springing up from someone who is on the inside like an employee, vendor, or customer. (Home-growing an active shooter happens – especially when people treatment principles are lacking.) Paying attention to how our friends and co-workers are behaving and talking is important.

If you see something or hear something,
you have to SAY something.

If you see sudden changes in behavior of a person or hear them talking about doing violence, that needs to be brought to the attention of your supervisor or the HR people. And anyone with a domestic violence restraining or protection order needs to be certain that their company is aware of it, in order for security to be fully prepared! Domestic violence spillover into the workplace is a major danger for violence in the workplace.

We help people to learn how to observe, to put their attention on what is “not normal” and to be prepared to make quick decisions as the situation unfolds…whatever that situation may be.

We teach the Color Codes of Situational Awareness as a way for them to think about their situation in the moment.

White: Being oblivious to what’s happening in your surroundings.
Yellow: Fully aware, but still relaxed.
Orange: Very Alert…something has triggered your focused attention.
Red: Decision time…Act.
(Black): The consequence of inaction, or inability to act; paralysis.

Where are you in this picture?

These color codes would be a good discussion at home with your family as well.

recognize the color codes for situational awareness

Situational awareness is essential for being prepared to work safely and to protect yourself from an active shooter situation. Recent events show us how tremendously important this “knowing” is for all of us…at our workplace, and in our life-space too.

We at Nagele and Knowles help a wide range of organizations address unwanted safety issues, address security and cultural vulnerabilities, and reduce the risk for workplace violence. You don’t have to do that all yourself…We have done that for you!

Give us a call at 716-622-6467. We are here for you!

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Why are so many people being killed at work?

March 10, 2021 By Leave a Comment

Not to be ignored…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report for 2019, the most recent summary report, shows that in 2019, 5,333 people were killed doing their jobs.

it's time to evaluate business safetyIn 2017, 5,147 died and in 2018, 5,250 died. For the last 5-6 years the trend has slowly gotten worse. (Note: The BLS reports do not show much, if any, progress in reducing the number of people being killed and injured over the last 5 years or so.)

In 2019, about 2,814,000 people were hurt, which is about the same level as in 2017 and 2018.

Thousands of people are working to improve safety in the workplace, yet these numbers show that improvement in performance is almost non-existent. The various safety journals have lots of good information about ways to improve things. There are lots of consultants doing a lot of work with various organizations to improve safety. And there are many professional safety organizations, including OSHA, ASSP and the National Safety Council, that provide increased training and awareness. Still, people are being killed and hurt at work.

Why isn’t there progress?

All these statistics are lagging indicators. So, what drives this poor performance? What are the leading indicators showing us?

I think that the key leading indicator relates to the way the organizations are managed and led. The traditional, top-down, command and control approach, in a whole lot of organizations, is at least 100 years old and is based on Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management, which goes something like:

The people at the top of the organization are smarter and brighter than those doing the work so the top people know better and tell the workers what to do and the workers do it – a.k.a. the mechanical model (of the past).

There are lots of examples that show that this approach does not work very well. For example, in a recent article I saw, the safety regulators in Australia 35 years ago introduced the Sex Discrimination Act, but in 2018 the Australian Human Rights Commission survey showed that 1 in 3 workers were harassed in the last 5 years – despite the endeavor. So much for top-down proclamations. Please don’t dismiss this example as just a problem in Australia or that sexual harassment is not a safety problem because you’ll be wrong on both points.

We declare safety endeavors over our workplaces with phrases like “The Goal is Zero” and slogans like, “Safety First.” Similarly, “Zero Tolerance” for harassing and bullying behaviors. And these are important because we need visual signage and reminders for raising our awareness. Yet we know that words and declarations alone won’t work as effective motivators for better safety performance or better treatment of people, nor does the old mechanical model/command and control approach work for the long-term.

We have to bring all the people together.

In every place in which we have worked we bring the people together to talk about the problem, open up the free flow of information, treat each other with respect, listen to each other because everyone has an important perspective, learn, seek better ways, and make the changes we need to make. When people are participating in creating the changes they do not resist the changes but rather apply their energy and creativity to solving the problems.

When I did this as a Plant Manager of a large chemical plant, working with the people, the injury rates dropped by 97% in just 3 years. When I worked in a large sugar mill with all the people the injury rate dropped from about 10 to ZERO in just 3 weeks. (This was shown in their annual data). When I worked with people in a truck manufacturing plant this way, the injury rate dropped from about 6 to ZERO in just a few days. (This was also shown in their annual data.)

There was no new investment in computer programs or equipment. Long involved training courses were not needed.

Most people want to become part of the solution!

It is time to wake up!

Let’s put the 100-year old, Frederick Taylor model in the museum and step up to working with all the people. Become engaged with your people in Safety. It takes a lot less time and saves a lot of money!

We know how to make this happen and would like the opportunity to talk with any of you. Please call at 716-622-6467. You can find background information at RNKnowles Associates.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Dilemmas

December 10, 2020 By Leave a Comment

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa
and Happy New Year to all!

We will all have to apply ourselves to make these Holidays fun and happy. This is a Season where personal responsibility will be vitally important and we all need to use the best judgement we can even with all the confusing information.

take personal responsibility for safety

The Dilemmas

With the COVID-19 pandemic, the wild politics and the busy holiday season, there are so many distractions and pressures that it is hard to stay focused. At work, at home, wherever, there is a lot going on and much of it is way out of the normal patterns for this Season. There will be fewer shopping trips to the local stores, lots of trips to UPS to mail packages, fewer visits with family and friends, etc. Routines will change.

Do we wear masks to try to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus as some tell us to do? Do we decide that this is unnecessary and perhaps expose someone to the virus? The guidance we are getting is confusing.

It will be lonely for some people with all the restrictions on visiting and celebrating together. There is the real fear that a grandparent or other susceptible person could get infected by being accidently exposed to a family member with the virus. In the cold weather we are all spending more time inside and closer to others.

Our care givers need our support and prayers. So do the store clerks, the cleaning people, our co-workers, cooks and servers, the Doctors and nurses, etc.; so many have to work where others are around so we all have to try to keep our distances (social distancing) and try not to spread the virus.

safety decisions are importantWe each need to take the personal responsibility to try to avoid spreading the virus. With all the pressures, this is not easy. It is best if we each take personal responsibility to social distance and try to avoid spreading the virus. Government edicts really do not cover the details of what we each need to do very well. It is really up to us.

With the COVID-19 vaccines just now getting approved a whole new debate is opening up that we all have a stake in. This is another big distraction. Who should get it first? What should the priorities be? Is it safe? Already there are strong opinions beginning to clash. If we are not mindful, our selfish sides will cause a lot of strife and concern.

Taking Personal Responsibility

So it seems to me that each of us has to take personal responsibility to make the best decisions, unselfish decisions, to make things work as well as they can. We need to keep asking ourselves if we really need to go out. Can we plan our trips so that we keep our exposures as low as we can? We need to be mindful about going into places where it can be crowded. We need to think about our work places and do our best to try to avoid spreading the virus.

None of us have all the information we need, so we have to think carefully about of situations we face and make the best decisions we can, for each other and for ourselves. We need to be especially careful when we make an impetuous decision out of frustration. We need to look out for each other when the frustrations are high.

High Frustrations Can Lead to Violent Behavior

We do not have a right to take out our frustrations on other people whether it is at work, at home, in a store or anywhere. I have read that during this pandemic that the incidence of family and co-worker abuse has gone way up. We need to look out for ourselves and each other so these situations can be avoided. Sometimes we just need to go for a walk to get this out of our systems. Sometimes we need more space. Please pay attention to each other, at home and at work, and when you see something going wrong try to help to defuse things. We are not alone. We can help each other. There are ways to de-stress!

Please have the very best Holiday Season you can have.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , ,

This is Your Wake Up Call!!!

November 10, 2020 By Leave a Comment

Has your organization become forgetful or is it sleepwalking?

A delightful new book by Stephen Capizzano (2020), The Forgetful Organization, has some ideas that really make sense for those of us working to help organizations improve their safety performance and move towards Safety II.

has your organization become forgetful or is it sleepwalking?In this story, a wicked witch puts the princess and the whole kingdom to sleep for 100 years. They all have to wait for the arrival of the prince to kiss the princess and awaken everyone. As children, we all knew this story, but in this new book, Stephen Capizzano shifts the story to thinking about what happens in our organizations.

Are we in our organizations, walking around as if we are asleep? This idea of us walking around as if we are asleep is not new. The ancient Greeks talked about the caves of sleep and drinking from the rivers of forgetfulness. Are we sleepwalking deep in our habits and unaware of things going on around us?

Are we asleep in our old habits that we like and feel comfortable in? Do we like pushing the blame for problems off onto someone else? Do we like doing the minimum required for compliance? Isn’t just enough good enough? Do we really enjoy our dull safety meetings because it is a time for day dreaming about something else? Do we enjoy pushing back when something new comes into the picture like a new training program or improved safety procedure? Do we really love the “same old way?”

As we are sleep walking, 5,250 people died at work in 2018 (Bureau of Labor Statistics). The number of fatalities since 2008 has ranged between 4,800 and 5,250 people a year. Is that a habit we have become used to? The second highest cause of death for women at work is murder (453 in 2018). Is this another habit?

I used to be in the sleep-walking mode until we had a fire at a plant where I was the Plant Manager and I woke up. Maybe that was my handsome prince. Actually everyone woke up. We became a high-performance organization getting the fire out, the repairs made and starting up. Then our old habits reasserted themselves and most of us went back to sleep. But this jolt for me to wake up was so powerful I did not go back to sleep. I went on a quest to find out how we can all breakout of our old habits, stay awake and do extraordinary things together.

In this quest, I discovered many new things and created Partner-Centered Leadership, which I have discussed many times in these newsletters. One key element I found was that people want to be winners. Another finding was that we already know how to work at high levels of performance. We just have to wake up and help each other to shed our old habits. It is not a matter of scolding each other to do better. It is really just reminding each other that we already know how, so let’s do it. When we wake up, we use the natural processes of working together at a high level of performance. We do not need to go to special classes or workshops; we already know how to work this way as the fire crisis showed.

We already know how to:

  • treat each other with respect
  • help each other
  • listen together
  • tell the truth
  • share information
  • say we are sorry when we mess up
  • think and develop better ways to do things
  • work safely
  • remind each other to be our best

The key features for leaders to remember in Partner-Centered Leadership are:

  • valuing people, change and the future
  • seeing organizations as if they are living systems
  • recognizing organizations as complex, adapting, self-organizing networks of people
  • focusing on the open flow of information, building respect and trust
  • helping people to find meaning in the work itself

set a goal of where you want to beWhen we were able to shed our old habits at our Plant in West Virginia, injury rates dropped by 97%, emissions to air, ground and water as reported to the EPA dropped 95%, productivity rose by 45% and earnings rose by 300%. As I walked the plant for 5 hours each day we were reminding ourselves to shed the old habits and create a much brighter future.

We can all make the choice to wake up and create a safer, brighter future. Let’s remind each other and ourselves that we can wake up. We can each become the handsome prince that Stephen Capizzano talks about in his fine book.

Some interesting safety data

The Bureau of Labor Statics summary for 2018 shows that in 2018 there were 2,834,500 Recordable injuries. At an average cost of about $50,000, this amounts to a waste of over $1.1 trillion as well as a lot of suffering and sadness.

COVID-19

Returning to work during this pandemic seems to be the right thing to be doing, as long as we do our best regarding social distancing, wearing a suitable face mask, washing our hands, and keeping our hands away from our face. We also have to give our older people special care to protect them since they have such serious effects if they get the virus. Everyone needs to look out for each other and take the steps to do the best they can to work safely and keep everyone healthy. This is not down-playing the seriousness of the disease, but rather looking at a balanced approach where people also need to work and the businesses survive.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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