The Safe Acts Audit…A Key to Safety in Businesses

October 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

In many of my safety blogs, I have emphasized the importance of conversations so we can all learn and grow together.

The conversations brought us all together and helped us to achieve excellent business and safety results. As we became increasingly successful in our work, we introduced a new safety audit we called The Safe Acts Audit. It is very useful and powerful; we used it extensively.

the safe acts audit - leading indicator of the safety climate

Each week, the safety team of 2-3 people would walk out into the plant among the people, looking at how they were working. We wanted to observe people doing things right.

The auditors would just walk among the people and watch. They did not stop to talk; they just cruised around the plant at random times for about an hour, 2-3 times each week. They would observe 40-60 people each time, and if (by chance) they saw anyone working unsafely,* they would deduct a point or two from the beginning Safe Acts Index number of 100%.

(*Certainly, if the observed behavior of working unsafely was blatant, the person’s supervisor was immediately notified to prevent a potential injury; however, the intent of the audit was purely to observe and record what was being done correctly. It’s a whole different type of audit when you’re looking for the good things, not the negative.)

Most of the time the Index would indicate that 95-98% of the observations were of people working safely. It gave us a very easy way to sense what was happening. We also found that it was an excellent leading indicator. The Safe Acts Audit is not to be confused with a Gemba Walk. Remember, this Safe Acts Audit was simply to observe people, and to record the number of observations of people working safely – that’s the bottom line.

After a year or so, most of us did Safe Acts Audits every time we went into the plant. These were mostly impromptu, and the official Index number was the one generated by the safety people. There is some subjectivity in doing this audit so we thought that the official number should be generated by the same people to reduce the variability of the Index.

Using the Safe Acts Index

Over time, we realized that the Safe Acts Index was a sensitive, leading indicator of the safety climate.

If the Index fell in any audit by 5-10%, there would likely be a recordable injury within the next 3 days. We had to immediately raise everyone’s awareness of the potential, and the need to work more carefully. We did this in several ways.

One way was to put a traffic stop light at the pedestrian gates; a green light indicated that we were doing okay; a yellow light indicated a drop in the Safe Acts Index; and a red light meant we had had a recordable injury somewhere on the plant. With the yellow light all of us would talk more about the safety and hold better toolbox meetings each day, simply to raise awareness.

Another way to raise awareness was to have all eight of us on the leadership team greet everyone coming into work on each shift for a day, reminding them of the need to be more aware, sharing that our Safe Act Audit numbers were indicating we need to all increase our awareness of doing our jobs safely, and that we do not want to see anyone be injured.

Another way was to publish a safety caution in the emails and newsletters we used. We also put cautions onto the login screens of their computers.

safety audit significance

Conclusion

All this communication effort was done with respect and caring. We wanted people to know that we cared and that we all had to work together so we could all go home safely to our families.

Doing the Safe Acts Audit was easy and a highly effective part of our total safety effort, contributing to helping us reduce our injury rate by about 97% in four years. It was a positive audit – seeking to raise people’s awareness to do our work safely and to watch out for each other.

There were 1,100 people working at the plant, so using our safety index as a way to look at our performance was reliable. By working together to improve our total performance, including safety, we did not suffer the problem of under reporting, but we kept a keen eye on that potential, so it did not develop.

If you’d like to know about how important this Safe Acts Audit process is or how you could adopt it for your organization, please give me a call at 716-622-6467.

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

Building Relationships…One Conversation at a Time

September 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

In my view, reducing injuries and incidents is strongly related to our relationship with our people in the organization.

We build these relationships by talking together, treating each other with respect, listening and learning together, deciding what we need to do together, and doing it with integrity.

In doing these things, here is a simple list of subjects we can talk about and build upon to build relationships. You may have other things to talk about.

  • Who are we as individuals and together?
    • Do you know the people with whom you are working?
    • Do you talk about the work together?
  • Do you talk about what you are trying to do?
    • Do you talk about how to do the work better and more safely?
    • Do you talk about the customers you are serving?
    • Do you talk about your team and how they are doing? Does everyone know we need to be a team and that bullying and/or sexual harassment are out of bounds?
    • Does everyone know that all forms of workplace violence are not okay?
  • Does everyone know why you are doing this particular work before you?
    • Do you know the quality and safety standards?
    • Do the people feel that it is okay to talk honestly about these things?
    • Do people feel confident that they can stop work if they see a safety or quality problem, without any negative repercussions?
  • Does everyone know the production schedules and when things need to be done?
    • Does everyone know about the flexibility in the schedules?
    • Do the people put the right emphasis on fixing a safety problem? Some fixes can wait for a break in the schedule, but some need to be fixed now!
    • In your conversations, do you talk about the subtle things like creep and drift from the required procedures?
  • Does everyone know where to go to get help to get things done properly, without cutting corners or taking short-cuts?
    • Do people know where all the PPE is located and how to use it properly?
    • Does everyone view the safety people as guides and experts?
    • Do the line supervisors participate in these discussions regularly, so they are up to date on things?
    • Do you talk about safety being a line responsibility; the supervisor is in charge and the safety person is an advisor and expert?
    • Do you talk about the bottom line – that everyone gets to go home at the end of their shift with their eyes, ears, legs, arms, and all body parts intact?
  • Does everyone really know how to do their job and look out for the others on their team?
    • Do you talk together about the proper qualifications for the work?
    • Do you talk about keeping the training and development work up to date?
    • Do you talk about surprises in doing the work that can help or cause problems?

safety professionals building relationships

Change Happens One Conversation At a Time

These kinds of conversations are important and need to be done every day, to build relationships. Some variation of these conversations is fine. If we think that we can do these once a month and mark our check list, then we miss the point and will have little positive impact. This is about integrating caring conversations of consequence into our daily interactions.

Daily conversations about one or the other of these questions will have a big impact over time. We’re talking about meaningful, constructive change for better safety, quality, and productivity. Each of these small conversations are like grains of sand falling in an hourglass.

The potential energy slowly builds and then one day, positive change will happen. Most of the changes will be small, some will be bigger, and some will make a huge difference. We can’t predict when or where the changes will happen, but they will happen.

We have to be persistent in our conversations, look for weak signs of change, and celebrate success. Ultimately, these conversations build solid, safety-minded strength into our team’s and relationships.

This is the stuff that I did as plant manager, and the results were amazing. Over a 4-year period, all of us together cut our injury rates by 97%, emissions dropped by 95% and earnings rose by 300%. I can’t claim credit for these improvements; everyone contributed because they wanted to make things better.

authenticity and integrity can build relationships and workplace safety

Safety Is About Having People Go Home To Their Families IN One Piece

Did you ever complete the investigation of a tragic, fatal accident by going to the funeral of the person who lost their life in your facilities? Have you talked with the family and apologized for that terrible event? Have you felt the depth of the tragedy? It never goes away for them. You do not want to have to do this.

Go talk with the people. Listen, learn, and act together.

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

Decades of Non-Improvement in Key Safety Stats Reveal Concerns

August 25, 2025 By Leave a Comment

Let’s try to climb out of this hole for the safety of our employees!

As you know, I have been talking for a long time about the need to reduce the number of people being killed at work and safety statistics have shown why there’s concern.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that about 5,200 people have died at work for each of the last 10 years. With all the people working diligently in the safety business, I expect that most people would think that these numbers should be getting lower and lower, but they are not going down.

Many ideas, models, and theories have been suggested, but we are not seeing a decline in the number of people getting killed. I wonder if there may be a deep, subtle force at work. The way we look at the people in the organization and think about them could be a key.

climbing out of the hole with safety statistics

Descriptions Are Critical

The most common label we apply to the people in organizations is “Employee.” This is a name for the contract between them and their employer. Most of us use this term to refer to anyone reporting to us in our organizations.

This may be troublesome in subtle ways because it carries a lot of baggage.

As their supervisor, one could feel you have the power to tell them what to do, to scold them, discipline them, make all sorts of demands on them, blame them for mistakes, not listen to them, even bully them. Many (uncaring and unenlightened) supervisors treat them as less than us, not as smart as us, etc. Employees can be seen as things which we can just move around (like puzzle pieces) as we please – all while being quite nice, but they can see right through this.

Most people do not like to be treated this way. All these employee-focused behaviors prevent trust from building. It blocks learning and performance from improving. We can push safety improvements very hard, but most of the time only get to compliance, which is where most organizations are stuck. Compliance does not get the organization to excellence.

Everything Changed

When I learned to think of the people as “people,” everything changed.

There were still differences in roles and responsibilities, but we are all people with similar hopes and desires as I have. They had good intelligence, knew a lot that I did not know, and wanted to make a positive difference. We all wanted to work safely, have the business succeed, and feel better about ourselves.

People do want to go home from their work shift with all their body parts intact. We were partners in this work. We treated each other with respect, told the truth, shared almost all information except personal stuff, helped each person to see the importance of their work, gave and received feedback. Bullying and harassment virtually disappeared. It was safe for us to talk together and share our ideas and thinking, to find better and safer ways to accomplish our tasks.

Partner-Centered Leadership Makes the Big Difference in Safety!

We discussed the work together to find better, safer ways to do it. People learned to make decisions to solve their own problems. More decisions were made close to the actual work. We coached each other. People self-organized within the boundaries we set together. The collective intelligence of the whole organization rose and got a lot better. Great ideas emerged from all around. Energy and excitement grew. Everything changed as we learned and grew together.

highly participative leadership process produces much better results that the top-down management process

My role as plant manager became much easier as more and more people pitched in and contributed. With so many making contributions, our total performance improved with the number of injuries dropping by 97%, emissions to the air, water and earth dropping by 95% and earnings rising by 300%. We used these metrics to keep track of things, but we led the improvements by partnering.

As we (as people) learned to partner this way, all the ways we worked together changed having a positive impact on all we did. This would not have worked if we had tried to stove pipe it and just do it for safety. Everything is connected and interacts so working on the whole systems is critical.

This effort to create a better way to safely and more economically do our work was not easy.

At first, standards had to be reestablished, which was difficult. People needed to know that we were determined to improve and quit hurting people. There was a serious problem with bullies who were blocking improvements. In the first two years I had to terminate about 30 people (there were 1,300 people at the Plant) for flagrant safety and bullying problems. Things got a lot better after this first difficult period. Most people want to have a safe environment and not have to deal with bullies.

We also promoted the most qualified people as openings developed to lead different parts of our efforts. We needed the best quality of thinking and working together in order to be really successful. We wanted to be good, not just look good! We became one of the best performing plants in the DuPont Company, in just 4 years.

climbing out of the hole for safety

Conclusion

We call this way of working “Partner-Centered Leadership.” It applies to all we do. Just a simple shift in how we think about things leads to big changes in everything.

I urge all of you to think about the people as people, build relationships of respect, trust and open communications.

I would be pleased to talk with any of you about this if you would like to do that. Please call me a 716-622-6467. I live in the Eastern Time Zone; calling between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm would be best.

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

Partnering Workplace Safety and Artificial Intelligence

July 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Offering

There are great hopes that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will make workplace safety easier and better.

I think that this can be a trap – potentially inhibiting us from actually reducing the number of people being killed and injured at work each year (~5,200 fatalities and ~2,400,000 serious injuries a year for the last 10 years; Bureau of Labor Statistics). Please understand: It is prudent to have some wariness so that we remain focused on what it will take to make sure our people go home at the end of their shift in the same way they arrived, with their arms, legs, eyes, ears, all intact.

There are thousands of good safety people working to improve things in real-time and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next great hope for improvement in broader know-how: computer generations, algorithms, which may be very important – depending on how we apply the new “learning”. AI is indeed one of the technology megatrends that are shaping the future of work. That includes the future of workplace safety. The area of ergonomics, computer-interactive safety training, and predictabilities come to mind, as prime for AI applicability – indeed, they are already in place.

But make no mistake: There’s a balancing dance to do…of AI innovation and the human aspect of our workplace. Although AI offers powerful tools and notable progress, it is necessary not to lose sight of the human element in day-to-day workplace safety. AI should complement and enhance human capabilities.

As you know AI scans a huge amount of information and will feedback interesting summaries. All we have to do is to frame a question and ask AI to give us an answer. It is really fast and often the answer is plausible. There are a lot of AI models already functioning, so you need to choose the correct one to answer your question.

Just about everything on the internet is scanned, which is really impressive. This information can be quite useful, provided you really think about it and see how it connects with your experience and knowledge. Does it make sense? Is it really answering your question? How does it fit your situation?

artificial intelligence and workplace safety

Workplace Safety

Every workplace is unique. Real workplace safety is a local experience. The safety approach we need is highly specific to each and every workplace. Each person working there needs to think about their situation, look at it and talk about it with their co-workers to figure out the best and safest way to do the job. None of this specific workplace’s situation and information is on the internet so an AI search cannot really apply to their specific situation. The people doing the work need to take the responsibility together to use their specific resources (other people, PPE, develop a better procedure, etc.).

Expecting AI to tell you what to do is like having the plant manager or CEO who is sitting in her/his office and thinking that they really know your job and then giving you specific instructions on how to do the work.

Artificial Intelligence is a faster version of the “work-as-imagined and work-as-done” situation, which a lot has been written and covered in thousands of workshops and lectures. We close the AI/ real workplace gap in the same way as we have learned to close it in other situations.

artificial intelligence and workplace safety

AI Use

AI is a powerful, challenging tool that must be used wisely and its output used cautiously. Dr. Michael Lissack has written about using AI in his new book, Augmented Science, which is available from Amazon. He thoroughly investigates a number of aspects of AI and has many questions and insights to consider.

AI is not something to just jump into without some serious training:

  • What is your organization’s policy about how to use it?
  • Are people trained to navigate the AI programs?
  • If someone blindly follows an AI recommendation and it does not work, who is responsible?
  • What are the biases in the AI program which can impact its output?

Your organization needs to do some deep thinking about how to build the proper relationship with AI so that it can be used to help us work better. But remember: AI does not have your specific situation in the database so it cannot give you answers to your specific needs. For more information, the May 2024 issue of Safety+Health magazine provides a valuable overview for all safety people and supervisors.

Everything works through people. Treat each other with respect, listen and learn together and use AI wisely and carefully. Call me, 716-622-6467, and let’s chat!

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

Consulting or Facilitating…Which Works Best?

June 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

Do you know the difference between consulting or facilitating?

If you google consulting or facilitating, here’s what you’ll find…

  • A consultant is a person who provides expert advice within a particular field, i.e., safety, quality, leadership, security, HR, etc. A facilitator, on the other hand, has a depth and breadth of expertise in process (that can be applied to most problem-solving situations). The organization has a good understanding of the subject matter, yet they need help processing the information and thinking it through to make the best decision for the organization. That’s a facilitator.

Consulting

Consultants are people who have studied a particular subject and developed a training method to sell it so they can make a living. Many people do this quite successfully. This is a pretty competitive business. Some big companies have developed out of successful consulting practices. Their goal is to apply their specific knowledge and fill the need that an organization, team or company may have.

In my experience when a safety consultant was hired to come into our plant, they were quite polished and presented their program very well. The people in my group would sit quietly listening to the offering and trying to make sense as it applied to our work. Often there would be good ideas and techniques presented. The consultants were clearly geared to fix us and make us work more safely.

But they had some big challenges. They did not know us as people, nor the real situations that we faced in our work. They did not care or have enough time to get to know anyone. They would spend a day or two and be off to their next client. Because of this their credibility was shaky. Trust levels were not very good.

As we listened to their presentations, we would begin to pick them apart in our minds. They were the experts so we could just sit back and listen (superficially). When they left, we would talk about how their ideas fit with us, or not. After a couple of days, we were doing things just as we had always done them with someone getting hurt now and then. If things did not work out, we would blame it on the consultant. It is fair, however, to note that there were often valuable nuggets of information that we gleaned and utilized.

The consultants had a very narrow focus on their particular task. They would try to get us to change the way we worked to be safer. I have found that ,over the years, trying to change and improve safety in an organization that struggles with bullies, tolerates lying and coverups, and other dysfunctional behaviors does not work. The dysfunctional behaviors crush the new ways of doing things and the new changes are not sustainable.

which is best - consulting or facilitating

Facilitating

Facilitators are people who help us to solve our own problems. They are highly trained on the safety rules and procedures, but they do not give us a lecture.

The best facilitators were people from our own organization who knew us and helped us to talk together about how to work more safely and solve our own problems. However, we hired good facilitators to join us, too. We would sit together, walk around together, talk about the work, and develop the best way to get it done effectively and safely.

They would ask us questions and help us to think things through. They knew the right questions to ask. They were not there to dictate how to do something as if we had no brains. They were there as partners in the whole effort to work more effectively. We were self-organizing and solving our own problems.

When the facilitators were with us, we began to see things differently, to think differently, help each other, listen, and learn together. We took responsibility for ourselves, each other and the work; we cared. And we learned to keep improving by using after-action reviews.

Our facilitators were available all the time in case we had some questions or needed help. The facilitators were often people in supervision who partnered with us. Sometimes a front-line person like an operator or mechanic or secretary became skilled facilitators. They were skilled because they knew the best process (or framework or model) to effectively facilitate the group and its problem/concern.

We shared information about the work, the necessary tools and procedures, the hazards, the precautions we needed to take to be both compliant with the rules and able to do the work quickly and well. We made sure that people felt mentally and physically fit to do the work. Then when the job was done, we’d talk about how it went and how we could do it better next time.

As we worked this way, all the other aspects of our work culture became more positive and supportive. When the whole organizational culture becomes more positive and supportive, everything, including safety gets better.

To really improve the organization and the safety,
we need skilled facilitators!

What do you need for your organization? Consulting or facilitating?

Note: I would be remiss if I did not share that the Process Enneagram©, which I created 25 years ago, has turned out to be an extraordinary process tool for use in effecting positive organizational change. See my book, The Leadership Dance: Pathways to Extraordinary Organizational Effectiveness, on Amazon. Call me, I’ll be happy to help you learn to use this tool.

Filed Under: Safety Leadership, Safety Leadership Process, The Process Enneagram© Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Leading Safety in the Midst of Change is Important for Business

May 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

The amount of change and the rate of change in the middle of DOGE is huge.

Different accounts and stories about what is happening swirl around like a storm. Organizations like NIOSH and OSHA are having to make adjustments for safety. Depending on the report, the stories of partial or even total elimination abound. Those of us outside the inner circles really do not know the details of what is happening, so we can get quite worked up about it all.

Some of the work being done in NIOSH may be vital in trying to improve workplace safety, but some of it may not be very important. From the outside, it is hard to tell. Hopefully any cuts in budget will focus on the less important work. NIOSH has been around for 50 years, and I’m told they’ve done much in the research end of safety and health.

As many of you know I have been asking why our fatality and injury rates are stuck at around 5,200 and 2.400,000 cases, respectively, for about the last 10 years. I do not know how the work of NIOSH directly impacts the workplace and in what ways their work has made the most difference. Based on the number of fatalities and injuries, you can make a case that NIOSH had very little impact so budget cutting may be the correct approach.

OSHA works closer to the actual workplace, thus having a more positive impact. But, again, the fatality and injury rates are not coming down so they may need to find out why that is.

I am more concerned about any OSHA budget cuts because OSHA is already spread very thin. OSHA has been around since 1970…can anyone say that our workplaces would be as safe as they are or that people would follow the safety rules that are in place without OSHA being the enforcer?

safety and security are the goals at the end of the day

We Can Do a Lot Ourselves for Safety

Even though all the changes and cuts are happening, we can do a lot in our own workplaces at the local, company level to make a difference.

Workplace safety is a local issue, which we at the local level can impact regardless of all the other changes going on. What is the mindset we each can hold as to whether we will go home from the workplace today and every day with all our fingers, toes, legs, arms, eyes, and ears intact? What about how well we look out for our co-workers being able to also return home from work with body and mind wholeness?

We can work directly with our people to help improve the total safety performance.

We can help our organizations get a whole lot better in all aspects of our work, not just in safety. We need to help all the people in the whole workplace to work more purposefully together. We need to treat each other with respect. Listen to each other. Help each other to share information more abundantly. Listen carefully to each other so we can learn together. We need to help people find meaning in their work and have more satisfaction with themselves.

safety and security in the business still can be profitable

When we work together doing these kinds of things, the whole workplace becomes much more open and healthier.

People do not have to fear that they will get punished in some way when they speak up and make suggestions. These kinds of behaviors positively impact all we do. In an environment like this, we can all learn and grow together.

I think that the only way we can create sustainable improvements in safety is to create a climate where everything in the organization is improving. And where people work to keep each other safe.

When I was the Plant Manager at a big plant that was having terrible performance problems, we on the Leadership Team decided to become the best producer and supplier of chemicals to our customers through improving all aspects of our work.

We focused on safety. environmental performance, people development, quality, customer service, costs, and our relationship with our community. Our total culture improved dramatically over the next 4 years, our injury rate dropped by 97%, emissions dropped by 95%, productivity rose by 45%, and earnings rose by 300%.

In the Midst of Great Change, We Can Do a Lot To Get Better!

We can take charge and sail our ships successfully in this great storm!

Call me at 716-622-6467 and let’s discuss how!

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

How Vulnerable is Your Workplace to Violence?

April 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

The March 24, 2025 ASIS Newsletter by Scott Briscoe reports Characteristics of Fatal Workplace Violence Incidents.

You can click here to view this report on workplace violence incidents.

Most people will not experience a tragedy or workplace violence like this, but when this happens, everything changes immediately. Are you prepared to even think about this? Do you ever run a co-worker’s suicide scenario through your mind and wonder how you would handle it? The larger your work force is, the more likely you will have a suicide incident. Many people have firearms. What is the policy about firearms in your organization?

I have had several acquaintances at work (I was a chemist in a laboratory) who used lab chemicals like sodium cyanide to kill themselves at work. They were struggling with a lot of pressure at work and felt they were not being treated fairly. Their dreams were not being fulfilled and no one cared about them.

Do you have people in your organization struggling like this? Have you looked around to see if people are cared about and treated fairly? I had not looked around and was unaware of their struggles. Maybe I could have made a difference.

workplace violence

Have you ever thought about having someone come into your workplace and kill someone? These things do not happen very often, but now and then someone gets killed and we do not know where that will happen.

About 43% of the incidents in this report are caused by people who do not have a relationship with the organization, which means we must always have a high level of situational awareness since we do not know where or when the attack will occur.

About 29% of the fatalities are by someone who has been terminated. This raises a bunch of questions about how your organization works with those who are terminated. This is a traumatic event for the person. Does your organization just dump the person onto the street with no help for them as they go forward with their lives? This is very scary for the person, and they may lash out at someone in the organization and kill them.

Some Things to Think About…

  • Does your organization provide some assistance for the person to help them to make this tough transition in their lives?
  • Is there any severance pay?
  • Do they really understand why they were terminated?
  • How do they talk with their loved ones?
  • Where do they go for medical coverage assistance?
  • Do they have any special needs situations at home that will be difficult to handle?
  • Where is the local unemployment assistance office located?
  • Will your HR people help them fill out the necessary forms?
  • Will you help them get a job at a place that is more suitable for them?
  • Do you refer them to a hiring agency?
  • Does your organization help with family counseling organizations to which you can refer them?

In some termination situations, the threat of violence can be quite immediate. Has your organization ever talked with the local police about this possibility and how to handle it? After several terminations of people from my plant, I would get around-the-clock protection from an off-duty police officer for a few days. These are stressful situations, and we need to be properly prepared. Each situation is different so the specific things you will do will be different from one place to another.

workplace security

Some Guidelines for Workplace Violence

In these difficult situations, treat people with respect and care. Listen to them and try to understand their perspective and thinking, if you can. Put yourself into their shoes and think about what is happening to them. Talk with them about the transition and the problems they may face. Offer guidance about getting healthcare coverage, seeking new employment, and maybe new job training.

Hopefully, none of you will face these situations, but in case you do, some up-front thinking and conversations in your organization would be very helpful.

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

The Costs of Workplace Violence…Bigger Than You May Think

March 11, 2025 By Leave a Comment

An important dimension of workplace safety is eliminating workplace violence.

Examples of this workplace violence are lack of respect, bullying, sexual harassment, fights, and even murders. These are all on a continuum of behaviors which get more and more serious across the progression.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, for 2022 (the most recent summary), there were 5,283 fatalities at work and 740 of these were homicides. The number of women who were murdered was 140, which is the second highest cause of death for women in the workplace. Murder was the 5th highest cause of death for men.

These are sad situations for the families and the business coworkers. These murders cost the businesses a lot of money and bad publicity. But bullying and sexual harassment cost the people and the businesses a whole lot more because they are so widespread.

A recent Gallop poll found that over 50% of all our businesses struggle with bullying and sexual harassment problems. Unfortunately, most businesses ignore these problems hoping they will go away. They won’t go away and they are eating up a lot of profits.

These behaviors cause a lot of suffering among the people and they eat up a lot of time in a number of ways.

workplace violence

A Deeper Look

Let’s consider an organization with 100 people, with an average salary of $25 per hour. The organization has decided to do some training, or it is required by the state in which they do business to do mandatory training. So they bring in a consultant and have a one hour training session for everyone. This may cost $3,000 for consultant fees and lost wages of the people sitting in the session. These sessions do not solve many problems, but management gets their “ticket” punched.

Based on the Gallop study, about 50 of these people in this organization are engaged in bullying and/or sexual harassment. Each time someone gets pushed around, they may lose a half an hour of work because they are upset. If there are 200 incidents a year, there is another $62,000 in lost wages; there are probably a lot more than just 200 incidents. Suppose 20 of these bullying events are serious enough that management and human resources gets involved. We have another $5,000-$10,000 a year in lost wages.

Sometimes someone eventually gets terminated so now human resources, legal, and management are involved. Then we need to replace that person so we could lose up to $15,000 for this event. All this stuff adds up and for this 100-person organization. the lost costs could be around $100,000 a year.

But there is even a potentially bigger loss that can happen.

When there is bullying and harassment behaviors in the organization, people won’t talk together unless they have to. When the organization is free of these dysfunctional behaviors, people talk together and learn. New ideas often emerge which can be big possibilities for new earnings. I have seen this happen with people generating big savings through improved procedures which none of us had even realized possible before the conversations. These sorts of improvements could easily exceed the losses from the bad behaviors.

For example, when I was the DuPont Belle, West Virginia Plant Manager, we had one operation that made a variety of products. These were all synthesized in the same equipment. We would run a campaign of one product, take the equipment apart, clean everything out, and put it back together. Then we would synthesize the next product, followed by another clean out; and so on, and so on.

The job of taking things apart, cleaning everything, and reassembling them was taking about 7 weeks. After we had rooted out the bullies and had formed teams, the people were talking openly together about how to improve things. One day I discovered that their team had been talking together about how to make improvements and had shortened the time between campaigns from 7 weeks to just 5-6 days. This enabled us to significantly expand our production capability, and it was free. A traditional approach would be to build new equipment, which would have cost several hundred thousand dollars.

workplace violence comes in all forms

Wrapping Up

Developing respect and driving out bullying, sexual harassment, and other dysfunctional behaviors like lying and cover ups, are not just nice things to be doing. There is a big impact on improving the morale and openness in the organization, which is very good. And there is also a big impact on the potential lower costs and higher earnings for the organization as new ideas emerge from their conversations.

When these dysfunctional behaviors are driven out, everything gets so much better for both the people and the business.

Call me (716-622-6467) or email me. Let’s chat about how your organization can make a marked difference for reducing workplace violence across the spectrum.

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

If the Organization is Dysfunctional…Safety Can’t get Fixed

February 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

To really improve safety in an organization, the people (all the employees) need to come together and fix the whole system.

This is much more than just a safety issue in an organization. It is a “together” issue.

My Experiences:

Top-Down Organizations

I have been working in various aspects of safety for over 60 years. Almost all the organizations with which I have worked have been top-down managed. This approach has been used by armies, churches, governments, and businesses for centuries. Those in control, at the top, issue the orders and rules, the managers in the middle of the organization are expected to follow and impose these onto the people at the bottom of the organization.

This probably made sense when most of the population was poorly educated and illiterate. But now, here in the USA and other developed countries, this is not the case. Most of the people are fairly intelligent and manage their personal lives quite well. They raise families, buy homes and cars, have complex hobbies, etc. They know how to do a lot of things pretty well.

When these people work in top-down organizations where they are not treated with respect, told what to do, and are pushed around like the interchangeable parts of a machine, they are not usually very happy or productive. Dysfunctional behaviors and troubles like bullying, resistance to change, cutting corners, poor morale and performance, anger, and frustration cause huge losses, like terrible productivity and people quitting.

When safety improvement efforts like bringing in a consultant to fix the safety culture, or to improve safety practices like behavior-based safety, or improve participation are conducted, they often meet a lot of resistance and do not sustain themselves. Most people do not like to be pushed around and treated as if they do not have a brain.

In this environment, it is very difficult to make good safety improvements and very, very hard to sustain the programs. People keep getting hurt and killed.

safety can't get fixed if the organization is dysfunctional

Partner-Centered Leadership

In working in and leading organizations, I have found that people want to be treated with respect, listened to, share ideas, and learn together. These apply to people in all the various parts of the organization, not just safety.

Our Partner-Centered Leadership Workshops include a broad cross-section of people from around the organization and from different levels so that the whole of the organizational system is together for the work. We help people to see their organization as if it is a living system.

As the workshop process develops, the people can see the whole, the parts and the interaction of the parts, which opens-up all sorts of new, creative ideas. Everything is connected to everything else.

As they learn to work together in new ways, they co-create the changes they want to make and a new culture begins to emerge out of the conversations. The whole organization changes and improves, including their safety performance. The improvements are sustained through their ongoing conversations in the days and months after the workshop.

real leadership is effective leaders in an organization

Results

In the big plant where I was the manager, the people improved their safety culture and cut the injury rate by 97% and increased earnings by 300%. We have seen similar changes in companies where we have conducted these workshops.

Conclusion

In highly functional organizations, safety, along with everything else, gets a lot better.

A lot of leaders are looking for the silver bullet to be able to lead in all situations, and to especially make needed safety improvements and to effect extraordinary change. There is a way: it is a framework we teach (Process Enneagram), which works because it is highly principle-based and partner-centered. And, because it is a tool for dealing with complex situations and multiple variables.

Call me (716-622-6467) – our team can help you learn and apply this effective leadership tool.

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

Being in the System and Partner-Centered Leadership

January 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

When I was assigned as the Plant Manager of this large (1,300 people) chemical plant, I had a formidable challenge, which is why I developed Partner-Centered Leadership approach.

This was about the poorest performing of DuPont’s 150 plants world-wide.

Note: “In the system” means to be wholly integrated with, rather than apart from.

I had been Plant Manager of the DuPont Plant in Niagara Falls, NY, so this change was a challenge for me and for the Belle Plant people. I did not know the people or the culture of West Virginia and I was told by my VP to improve all aspects of the plant’s performance or face a potential shutdown with the loss of 1,300 jobs.

I was an outsider – no one trusted me, and they were strongly opposed to change. It was ugly at first, with several death threats and other stuff.

being in the system and wholly integrated with the system

I knew that the traditional top-down management approach would not work; it had failed with others for years. I knew that I had to personally engage with all the people, build trust, and share with them why we had to change in a way where the people would want to listen. I had to change from my top-down approach and have the courage to go into the plant every day and personally talk with everyone – sharing information, cheerleading, learning about them, their work, their lives, and instilling a caring about our collective future.

I heard a lot of anger, gripes and frustration so I had to listen and learn.

I walked the plant every day for about 5 hours a day. Gradually, the tensions began to go down. Many of the conversations I had were simple one-on-one interactions. I also held two business meetings each week in different shops, control rooms, and offices; the minutes of these were published within 30 hours so that communications increased.

I found that most of the people were quite intelligent, knew their work, and were frustrated by the top-down management they had experienced – where they were treated as if they did not have a brain and had to be told what to do. They had been treated condescendingly. I treated them not as employees but as “people”, which made a huge shift – genuine people – all on the same team.

After about a year, things were beginning to change. Our mission was to be the best we could be in safety performance, environmental performance, quality, costs, customer service, and interactions with our neighboring community. We were treating each other with respect, listening to each other, asking questions, learning and solving problems faster than we ever imagined.

After four years, the changes were quite significant. Our injury rate had dropped by 97%, emissions to the environment (as reported to the EPA) were down 95%, productivity was up 45%, and earnings were up 300%. I talked with the people about all these things, but they came up with making the needed improvements.

It was wonderful to see people grow, learn, solve problems, and make a big difference. My job was to set the conditions so that they could thrive. We continued to improve all during my 8 years of being with the people and in the system.

My leadership process was sharing information abundantly, treating people with respect, listening and learning, and helping people see the importance of their contributions to the success of the whole plant. They sustained their 0.3 total injury rate performance for 15 years after I had left the plant.

Partner-Centered Leadership – The Process

It was in these intense experiences at the Belle Plant that I developed the Partner-Centered Leadership approach, as well as the Process Enneagram tool that was so effective in helping us to lead well.

Partner-Centered Leadership is a dynamical way to lead organizations. It is built on the fact that there is deep knowledge among the people, which is a huge resource to the organization, and most people want to contribute. Using the Partner-Centered Leadership approach, this resource can be opened up – providing new ideas, better ways of working, new business possibilities, personal growth of individuals, high morale, and the business getting much stronger.

For this to be successful, managers and supervisors must have the courage to lead by example, be more open, creating, leading and sustaining a culture of openness, honesty and truly caring about each other. Leaders need to understand that strong, purposeful relationships among the people must be cultivated and nurtured. They must treat each other with respect, listen, talk together and continuously learn.

Everyone needs to be open to feedback and improvement. Everyone could talk with anyone. Leaders co-create, with the people, a shared mission, develop their agreed upon standards of behavior which apply to everyone, and share information abundantly about all aspects of the business and how we are all doing as they work together. As the leaders lead by example, there will be more and more people joining in to help. Success is contagious.

The leaders need to help everyone see the system in which they are working so they are able to see the parts, the interaction of the parts, and how they can work most effectively together. Just focusing on one problem after another is like playing “Whack-A-More” and the problems never go away. When we can see the system, talk about it together, discover key interactions, we are much more likely to solve the underlying problems and achieve real improvement. As we all learn together, more and more people self-organize around, form ad hoc teams and solve problems themselves.

Partner-Centered Leadership – the Process Enneagram Tool

The Process Enneagram is a highly effective tool the leader can use with everyone to help to see the system and develop better ways of working together. In using it ,we can see our problems from 9 simple perspectives: see the parts, the whole and the interaction of the parts, and how they interact.

Here is a picture of the Process Enneagram tool. I have made the theory and use of the Process Enneagram open source on my YouTube site.

Partner-Centered Leadership - the Process Enneagram Tool

Give me a call at 716-622-6467 and let’s chat about how you can learn and apply this process in your work.

 

Filed Under: Safety Leadership Process, The Process Enneagram© Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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