Caring for Each Other: How to Hold Those Meaningful Conversations!

Richard-ASSE-Conference2016In my June 29th presentation at the American Society of Safety Engineers 2016 Professional Development Conference, I discussed the fact that one of the best ways for the safety professional attending the talk to help to improve the safety performance in their workplaces was to show the people that they cared about them and to enable them to make decisions about their specific work. I want to elaborate on these ideas in this newsletter. This is not just for the safety professional. This is for every team leader, supervisor, and workgroup leader. Going into your workplaces and opening up the conversations is a journey; each time you do this it gets easier and more effective. (Caring, Understanding and Openness!)

Meaningful caring to me means that we treat each other with respect as adults.

  • As managers and supervisors we get out of our offices and go into the workplace.
  • Help people to see that it is okay to talk together and be open with each other.
  • We sit down together in their work place and have a cup of coffee together. We are not in a hurry just trying to make some specified number of contacts.
  • We share the truth together as best we can knowing that today’s truth may be different than the truth for tomorrow because the world keeps changing, and reminding them that you’ll be back tomorrow if things have changed.
  • We ask about how we each are doing. How is the day going? What good things are happening? What have we learned today or over the last few days? We listen to what we each are saying.
  • We try to build on each other’s good ideas.
  • We talk about how the business is doing? We talk about the contributions we are making to the success of the business.
  • We discuss problems together sharing our viewpoints and seeking possible solutions. If people ask you questions which you can’t answer, tell them you do not know and will get back to them…then do it. We pay attention to the dynamics and do not over stay our visit.

As we get to know each other better we begin to explore what is really going on around here.

  • Are we really doing what we say we want to be doing?
  • How can our communications get clearer and better?
  • What is the rumor mill saying? Talk together about the rumors and clear them up.
  • Do you see better ways to go after the problems around here than we are doing? What are we missing?
  • Are there hidden elephants we need to be addressing?
  • When we have made a mistake, we own up to it and say we are sorry. We ask for their help.
  • Are there better ways that you see to get your job done well?
  • What information do you need to get your work done more effectively? Let’s talk some more about your good ideas and see if you can make some improvements.
  • What is going on over and over that is really bugging you?

As you get to know the people even better, there will be opportunities to inquire about how the family is doing. You can ask…how the kids are doing in their sports and schoolwork, ask if there are things that you can be doing to help them, ask how everyone’s health is, etc. You need to use good judgment as you get into these personal conversations and not push things too far into their privacy, by accident.

These are the kinds of conversations that most of us would like to have with our own managers. How many times have you wanted to talk together with them to share an idea or problem and have not had a chance to do it? How often do you get to talk with your boss’s boss? What is important and good for you in talking with your boss is about the same as for you talking with the people in your organization about the things that are important to them.

We are all partners in making our workplaces to become healthier, physically and mentally, and helping the people in them to be the best they can be. This is a key element of Partner-Centered Safety!

Why were we at this VPPPA Conference?

At our exhibit booth, Claire and I shared our Partner-Centered Leadership approach. We handed out brochures and other literature that can help organization’s achieve safety excellence and move towards their OSHA Star designation. We were there to share important information, including the need to be able to lift up and address one’s safety elephants that are preventing organizations from being the best they can be.

We talked with a lot of people and learned of their safety journeys:

  • Those who had attained their Star status were looking for ways to sustain their performance, but there was a deep concern that complacency was undermining their safety achievements. Sustaining their work was a goal.
  • Those who were working towards their OSHA Star status were often struggling with communications problems between and among the workers, the union, and even the supervisors and managers. Getting everyone on the same page, and committed to the endeavor seems insurmountable (to some).

The Keys to Success and Sustaining Safety Performance

The keys for addressing both of these concerns in building sustainability into their programs and in achieving the OSHA Star status is for the people at all levels and parts of the organization to talk together to get clear and aligned on just what they really want to do. How sincere and authentic is the desire to have safety excellence for the long-term? (This means Communication with a Capital C—requiring Co-creation, Clarity and Coherence.) In addition, together they must take the time to co-create a set of ground rules about how they agree to work together in order to achieve their safety goals and then hold each other accountable to live up to them. (That’s Partnership and Commitment!) The process to achieve this is available to you and your organizations now.

There is no question that excellence in safety performance is good for both the people and the business. Creating and sustaining a workplace where everyone can go home injury-free, where everyone is treated respectfully, and everyone shares core safety values is what we should be doing.

In creating a workplace like this, the people are also generating benefit for the business. Eliminating OSHA Recordable Injuries and avoiding the average cost of $50,000 for each one provides real value for the business. Maintaining the production without the interruption of having had an injury and all the distraction that this causes is a also major contribution to the business. Building a reputation of being a safe, reliable supplier of quality produces another big value to the business.

Once everyone is clear and aligned that they really do want to achieve and sustain excellence, then talking together every day about doing this is critical. Toolbox meetings at shift start need to alert everyone on the challenges of working safely and a review of the day’s tasks, the looking out for the unexpected, taking two minutes before a job to be sure the right people and equipment are there, and emphasizing the importance of helping each other to stay alert and focused are also very important for these meetings.

As managers and supervisors walk around, they need to be talking respectfully with the people, listening and showing that they are really concerned for their safety. In doing this, we all learn together as better relationships develop and new ideas emerge. Talking with the people as true partners in the safety and business effort is key to moving to excellence. With everyone working together, on the same page, you are creating Partner-Centered Safety.

What are the overdue safety conversations you need to have?
And with whom?

What is it really all about?

This is all about having everyone go home in one piece and having a profitable business. Excellence in both the safety performance and business results are attainable.

When I was the plant manager at a big chemical plant, we got the total injury rates down to about 0.3, sustained this for 16 years, and had our earnings go up 300%. We have the roadmap that never fails—if you’re ready to travel that journey with us!

We can have it all if we want to do these things.

When the safety gets right, everything else gets right!

Leading Safety…Working with People because People are the Key!

Safety 2015,” the Annual ASSE Professional Development Conference and Exposition, was held in Dallas, Texas, in early June. It was a terrific conference and gathering of about 4,000 safety professionals. There was a lot of networking, excellent keynote talks, a vast array of all kinds of safety equipment, and lots of papers in concurrent sessions. About 100 people came to hear me talk about achieving sustainable and excellent levels of performance. Total Recordable Injury Rate was <0.4 for 16 years when we approached the organization as a complex adaptive system (CAS).

There was a lot of interest in this based on the attention of the audience, the quality of the questions and the excellent feedback I received at the end. This was the only paper addressing the complex adaptive systems approach to achieving safety excellence at this conference. Based on my experience, this is a much easier and more effective way to lead safety. The Safety Leadership Process©, the correct tool for use in CAS, requires the leaders to get clear and focused in their safety thinking and message, then go into their organizations listening, talking, abundantly sharing information with the people about how to get better and then helping the people to implement their improvement ideas.

While the conference and exposition presented lots of good papers and displayed a huge array of safety equipment, I got the feeling that a lot of people think that they are disempowered for making safety improvements. Many lament, if only management would listen to the safety professionals, or if we added more focused safety people, or if we could purchase more of the fancy new equipment like that on display, that maybe then our safety would get better. Is this not more of the same way we have been managing safety for years?

I think that more technical papers, more traditional training activities, and new safety equipment will only get the organization to the level of safety compliance – it does not get organizations to the level of safety excellence. I have tried this technical-based approach over the last 50 years without achieving safety excellence. And why? Because people are the key!

But, when I shifted to using the Safety Leadership Process©, described above, the shift in attitude, the willingness to improve performance, and the energy and excitement of the people, enabled the organization to reach and sustain the higher level safety excellence.

Those in leadership positions and at the top of the organization have the responsibility to engage with the people – setting the conditions where excellence can be achieved. This only requires a commitment to get clear on the safety message, go into the work places and engage with the people exploring new and better ways to having every one go home without having been injured at work. With courage, care, concern, and commitment, we can all reach and sustain the level of safety excellence!

Visualizing the Future to Avoid Fatalities

Visualize the Future to Avoid FatalitiesIn my reading, studying and talking with many people, I have found that over half of the fatal accidents are often unanticipated and missed using our traditional approaches to accident prevention. The Heinrich Accident Triangle is very useful as we look at unsafe acts at the base of the triangle. Lots of slips, trips and falls are avoided as we do this.

But, many potential, fatal accidents don’t show up in this work. Only very few of the unsafe acts at the base of the triangle ever lead to a fatality. Why does a man fall from a cell phone tower when he has his fall protection harness on properly? Why does a man rush down the ramp to quickly fix something at the end of his shift where big paper rolls are stored prior to loading, when he knows the dangers of getting caught between the rolls and getting killed? Why does a man jump onto a large baking oven conveyor belt in a hurry to enter the oven before it is cool enough to do some maintenance and gets killed? These sorts of impulsive, tragic actions aren’t picked up in our normal safety audits.

Yet many of the reports of fatal accidents indicate that the conditions and impulsive behavior surrounding these accidents were obvious in hindsight. As people think about the fatality, they often see that, while the obvious conditions and impulsive tendencies were there, they were not in people’s everyday conscious thinking.

Often, the causal details are a mystery like in the situation with some of the fatal falls from cell towers and the workers have their fall protection gear all on but somehow they didn’t have it hooked up for a fatal moment. Or the man caught between the big rolls of paper or the guy who got cooked.

One possible approach to eliminating these sorts of fatalities is built on the belief that the people closest to the actual work are in the best position to see the obvious if they open their minds. Suppose that, once a month, the various work groups take 30 minutes to think about their work with the focus on identifying the conditions and work practices possibly leading to unlikely events and potential fatalities. Think about what work the people actually have to do to get their job done. They would open their minds to unlikely possibilities and see if there is something coming out of this that would alert them to a potential fatality. Including a few people from another work group with fresh sets of eyes would be helpful.

Here are some questions to consider:

  • Are there high pressures to get the work done quickly?
  • Do people just jump in impulsively?
  • Do the people talk about both safety and production and the need to do both well?
  • Is there information that needs to be shared that would help to prevent a potential fatality?
  • In your safety culture, is it okay to stop the job to fix a safety issue?
  • Are procedures gradually being changed that might weaken the protection?
  • Do people really trust and help each other?
  • Can you reach out to an impulsive person and hold him/her back?
  • Those closest to the work know their work and their work-mates better than anyone else and can explore the unlikely possibilities. Supervisors and managers should also be included and support this effort.

Once they have discovered a potential fatality situation, they could put together a team to focus on it and develop ways to eliminate or modify the conditions, behaviors and procedures that could lead to a potential fatality.

This important work should be shared with all the other people in the organization so that everyone can learn and improve. Keeping track of these disaster prevention sessions could become a leading indicator of the safety culture.

The Gift of Discretionary Energy

We can reach safety excellence only if we all pull together, giving our best. This takes extra energy over and beyond the energy we need to put into our job to keep from getting fired.

safety leadership tips Talking together is one of the most important things we can do to help to improve the safety in our workplaces. Letting people know that you care about them and respect them. But too many times I have seen supervisors and managers talking down to their employees ordering them to do this or that.

This is energy that we can give or withhold. This is energy that people will freely give if they are feeling valued and want to help everyone go home in one piece.

We can help people to feel really valued when we take interest in them, help them and ask them to help each other for the good of the whole organization. Being open and honest is a big part of this. Being consistent in working with them this way shows we are serious about them and want them to be a part of the team. Being clear, consistent and fair in holding everyone up to meeting the safety standards, not tolerating bully’s, and telling the truth are keys to this as well.

This is the way that most of us want to be treated so let’s do it for everyone!

Three Big Mistakes that Can Lead to Workplace Disaster

In previous blogs I have written about the three biggest mistakes that many managers often make that can lead to disaster.

These are putting production first, allowing the technology to drift and blocking communications. A disaster occurred recently in a chemical plant in La Porte, TX when 3 men and 1 woman were killed with a 23,000-pound release of methyl mercaptan. Methyl mercaptan has an An Acute Exposure Guideline (AEGL-3; EPA) of 120 ppm for a 10-minute exposure. Methyl mercaptan is seen more as an irritant and badly-smelling material, but this release in a confined area completely overwhelmed the people by displacing the oxygen in the closed, operating building.

dupont plant accident texasIn reading the various, publicly-available reports, it looks as if all three of these big mistakes were probably made. The push for production was dominant, piping changes had been made without documentation, the safety procedures were modified or ignored, operating problems were not properly addressed and tolerated, previous practices allowed the draining of small quantities of material right into the room, and the communications were such that people probably could not or would not tell their management, who probably were not listening anyway, all the problems.

It would be easy to blame the 4 operating people for their errors, but this mess runs far more deeply in this culture. Three of the people were experienced operators and one was much less experienced. With the press for production, training was probably inadequate. While site management was probably responsible for the three big mistakes, they too were under a lot of pressure from the business division, product management people, in headquarters far away from the site, who were driving earnings at all costs.

But it does not stop here. The mistakes run even more deeply than these more immediate problems. The safety culture of the entire corporation appears to have slipped drastically over the last 4-5 years. Was everyone taking their eye off the ball for the sake of faster production and higher earnings and allowing standards to slip everywhere? Even though there had been a culture of many layers of protection in the safety systems and very high standards of performance and accountability, these seem to have weakened and some disappeared.

This entire disaster episode clearly shows the importance of the interconnectedness of all the parts of the whole system. Simple cause/effect relationships do not come close to telling the entire story. Getting on top of this deeply flawed culture and at all the organizational levels will take hard, honest, open work by safety professionals, operators, mechanics, supervisors, HR professionals, site management, business division product management and corporate management. They all need to come together to hold the conversations, each accepting their part in the disaster, learning together and co-creating their journey to a safety future of excellence.

Based on previous experience, tough regulators, OSHA fines, bad press, and law suites, all of which will come, will not lead to safety excellence. The people in this system, coming together in Partner-Centered Safety™ can and will make the needed difference.

I hope that they can and will rise to the occasion!

Postscript: Important!

While some people may be concerned that Partner-Centered Safety will cost too much, I have found just the opposite to be true. Earnings are improved in two ways.

First, the losses from injuries ($50,000/OSHA Record able Injury) and incidents are greatly reduced.

Second, the shift in culture that occurs when people are working this way results in a lot of waste being removed and improvements made. For example, when we learned to work together in Partner-Centered Safety when I was the Plant Manager at the DuPont Belle, WV Plant, injury rates dropped by over 96%, productivity rose 45%, emissions dropped 85%, and earnings rose 300%. We can all be winners in Partner-Centered Safety.

Call me at 716-622-6467, or contact us here to learn more about this approach.

For a Safe Workplace Look at What You See

We are constantly looking for indications relating to the strength and health of the safety climate in our facilities.

In January I talked about leading indicators I have found useful for occupational safety, health and process safety management. Another quick way to assess the safety climate relates to looking for the use of improper, makeshift tools. These can often be seen as we move through our facilities.

how to spot safety issues in businessAt a recent safety conference I learned about a way to quickly assess whether a manufacturing site was cutting corners and trying to get by on less than the best. The person speaking, Ewan Alexander of BHP Billiton, said that he looked for improvised tools being used.

An example is a wrench with a piece of pipe shoved over the handle to make the handle longer and thus be able to turn a bolt that should be turned by a larger wrench properly designed for the job. Pounding the handle of a wrench to loosen a bolt is another example of improper tool use.

Improperly Using PPE, like using a small respirator when full-face protection is required, is an example of cutting corners. Using dirty, partly opaque face-shields is another example. Using the wrong choice of gloves is another indication of cutting corners and poor decision-making.

The presence or absence of these problems is something we can observe if we pay attention.

When we are awake and making observations, we can quickly see how we are doing and take actions to improve things.

Safety Excellence: Paying Attention to the Details is Key

A very effective leading indicator relating to occupational safety is to see and keep track of how people are working, and paying attention to details. These are called Safe Acts Audits. We look at a significant number of people doing their day-to-day jobs and keep track of what we see over time.

The way people choose to do a job is very strongly influenced by what is happening in the working environment, the culture—which strongly impacts their thinking. All that is rushing around in their minds (work, family, home, sports, politics) at the point of making a decision and acting on it is really important. Feeling pressured, rushed, bullied, undervalued, disrespected, not listened to, being pushed around by their supervisor, etc. are systems problems that create cloudy thinking resulting in someone getting hurt.

When these poor behaviors, done by individuals, persist over time it is clear that they are tolerated by management; I refer to them as systems problems. We can try to address these each time they arise, but if they keep coming up and the system does not change, they are systems problems.

When we observe people working safely (this is most of the people) we praise their safety efforts, and when we see someone working unsafely we need to pay attention and work together to correct the systems problems that are negatively impacting them. The openness we advocate where it is okay to talk about these things, to challenge decisions, to ask for help, to stop a job if they feel it is unsafe, is called Partner-Centered Safety.

If the ratio of the number of people we observe working safely (most of the people) compared to those working unsafely (very few people) drops, that is we see relatively more people working unsafely, we know that something has changed and must be addressed immediately.

We call this ratio the Safe Acts Index. When the Safe Acts Audits are done 2-3 times a week we can stay close to the current climate and react quickly to a drop in the Index by raising awareness, increasing the number of safety conversations, by helping everyone to become aware of a change and to use extra alertness looking out for and helping each other. In our experience, when the Index drops an injury occurs within the next 2-3 days unless the level of awareness and concern is promptly raised.

safety leadership excellenceSafety excellence is achieved and sustained one day at a time, day after day.

In Partner-Centered Safety we can do this together. Give us a call — let’s talk about how you and your team can reap the safety benefits of this unique-and-clearly-successful, focused way to eliminate injuries and incidents in your workplace.


 

Next month, we’ll discuss the leading indicators for occupational health and process safety management.

The Lurking Elephants…Can You See Them Now?

Did you hear the story about the Safety Elephant who roamed all over the place stomping people down, messing things up, and completely blocking the ability of the people from having the important safety conversations?

creating safe workplaceYes, the elephant that got in the way of having the conversations that matter? You did? Oh, you have one of those too?

Safety First Elephants are big and smelly. Everyone knows they are there because they stink up the place, making it smell rotten. Elephants are also sneaky, often disguised, or even invisible. Sometimes they show up as the bully who tries to push everyone around and control the group. Sometimes it is a boss who just doesn’t seem to care. Sometimes it is “obliviousness” to what is really happening. Sometimes it is simply an undiscussable that has been allowed to fester. Anyone who tries to speak up about an important issue is silenced, put down, demeaned or ridiculed. The elephant just loves this. The elephants are in control! They are having a happy time!

You know that the elephant has a name…yet, you speak of it in whispers. (For the purpose of this Safety Flash, let’s call this elephant, Hiney – the H is for Hidden!) While Hiney is invisible or disguised, Hiney loves for you to talk about him/her in private, with a person you can trust. You might talk about Hiney in the restroom or by the water cooler. You make Hiney really quite visible in these conversations. But when you stay quiet in the situations that really matter – when you could constructively make an issue explicit, but you don’t – then Hiney remains very safe. So back in the workplace, Hiney keeps sneaking around, messing the place all up and stomping all over. Hiney is really very unfriendly – just loving it when someone gets hurt because you couldn’t talk about the real safety problem. Sometimes there are whole herds of Hiney’s!

Hiney is really very afraid of being made visible. If you just look Hiney (aka, the undiscussable) right in the eye and name the big, stinking elephant, everything changes! The big, cowardly, stinky, brutal Hiney seems to just melt away. You can talk about Hiney and work to fix the safety problem. There are courageous, safe ways to name and address the hidden elephants! Hiney can’t stand the light of the truth! Transparency hinders elephant herds. Fewer injuries and incidents will happen when you learn how to lift them up and address them. Call us…We’ll show you how!

Check out Can You See them Now? (Elephants in our Midst) – Discover the hidden elephants that are lurking in your organization or Work team…Then Vanquish Them! Available on Amazon.

America’s Safest Companies Conference

I found several papers from “America’s Safest Companies Conference” last year quite interesting.

One by Terry L. Mathis discussed his new book (co-Authored by Shawn M. Galloway) called “Steps to Safety Culture Excellence.” This book describes, very nicely, 43 steps that can lead to safety excellence using the more traditional approach coming out of the Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm where we see cause/effect relationships, linear processes and big results needing big efforts. A lot of their ideas are quite good.

workplace safety processesAnother paper from an award-winning company showed their outstanding progress in lowering their total recordable injury rate from around 10 to 0.5 through a steady progress of improvements over 10 years. Their work was out of the Newtonian/Cartesian perspective, quite similar to what Mathis and Galloway teach.

The new book by Sydney Dekker, “Drifting into Failure,” discusses the importance of seeing the world from the complex systems perspective. This is the perspective from which I have worked for so many years. In using this approach when I was the Plant Manager at the DuPont Belle, West Virginia Plant, we cut the total recordable injury rate from about 5.8 to below 0.3 in just three years and sustained this for 17 years. When I was leading the transformational work in New Zealand Steel, in the work described by Stephen Zafron and David Logan in their book “The Three Laws of Performance,” we worked from the complexity perspective. The total recordable injury rate at New Zealand Steel dropped by about 50% in just a year and a half.

The lesson here is quite clear. If you want to try to reach safety excellence using the Newtonian/Cartesian approach and taking 10 years to do it, then that is your choice. Doing this over 10 years requires a lot of hard, dedicated work to sustain the effort.

On the other hand, if you want to achieve excellence in safety in just two-three years, then you need to work from the complexity perspective. Not only is the process quicker, you have many fewer injuries along the way. It takes courage, persistence and commitment to make this happen.

It is clear that the approach from the complexity perspective is superior, achieving excellence more quickly with fewer injuries along the way. Leading the journey to safety excellence from the complexity perspective is what we call Self-Organizing Leadership and we use the Complexity Leadership Process to do this.

Several web sites have useful information relating to this way of leading and working:

Safety Excellence for Business

Center for Self-Organizing Leadership

RNKnowles Associates

Let’s not lose sight of our objective: We want everyone to leave the workplace at the end of their workday or shift without getting hurt—no injuries! Safety is an everyday, every minute dynamic, starting now!

Call me at 716-622-6467 to learn more about this robust, proven approach to achieve safety excellence.

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