The American Society of Safety Professionals 2018 Professional Development Conference, June 4-6, in San Antonio, Texas, was attended by well over 4,500 people who came together to learn, share and network. There were many papers and large session presentations.
The rapid growth of active shooter incidents was one of the main areas of concern. The FBI and other experts gave talks about this, with their main focus on the active shooter incident itself. Most active shooter situations are conducted by men. Most of these occur in places of business. There is no typical profile for these people who come from all walks of life.
All the presenters emphasized the need for having a strong plan of action so that the organization is ready if this terrible situation occurs. Most organizations have good plans in the event of a fire and practice fire drills. Something similar to this is needed in the event of an active shooter incident.
Claire and I made a presentation on Partner-Centered Leadership: Reducing Workplace Violence and Eliminating Waste. We looked at workplace violence from a whole systems perspective, beginning with the lack of respect which leads to harassment, bullying, workplace injuries, violent behavior, and deaths from murder and suicide. Our workplaces that tolerate the lack of respect and these other behaviors are incubators for violent behaviors and, at the minimum, for hostile workplaces.
We at Nagele, Knowles and Associates, want to engage with organizations to look at the whole range of behaviors and develop together, an effective plan that is suitable for their particular situation. This is a complex, messy problem requiring us to help the people to solve this complex problem. We use a focused dialogic process that brings everyone together to build the best plans possible.
The elimination of workplace violence saves the organization a lot of money by reducing arguments, grievances, absenteeism, and high turnover. It also opens up new potential by opening up the free flow of information among the people. Ideas can be exchanged and developed, new and safer procedures created, and more problems can be solved. People create better, healthier relationships other than looking out for each other’s wellbeing. New potential for the business often emerges from the open conversations. All these things lead to the potential for higher profits.
When an organization uses a whole systems approach to the elimination of workplace violence, the people win because it is a good place to work, and the organization wins because they stop wasting money and open up new possibilities for better earnings.
If you are interested in receiving our blueprint booklet for reducing the risk of workplace violence (from the inside or the outside), please contact us at NageleKnowlesAndAssociates.com. We’ll be happy to send you a copy.
What People are Saying…
On May 18, 2018, we (Nagele, Knowles and Associates) held a workshop in Tampa. It was billed, “What You Need to Know about Reducing the Risk of Workplace Violence.” Feedback was excellent. What we found is that people do have some burning questions, and came away with new learning from this session.
Here are some reflections:
- I did not realize how much the “culture side of the organization” is involved in preventing workplace violence. The continuum of incivilities to bullying to harassment to vengeful acts to even murder is an eye-opener. Especially because supervision must know how to intervene.
- I realize now, how employee engagement fits. I’m anxious to learn more about having in place an integrated, constructive dialog process for our in-tact work groups to use to stop bullying and harassment while having a positive engagement approach.
- More and more I see how important it is for the every-day interactions we have to be keen on lifting up the concerns around employees that may be showing warning clues…so we pay attention…and do what we need to do, quickly.
- I think every workplace needs to have some Active-shooter training (at the minimum).
- Why are so many supervisors “weak in their leadership?” Why do they ignore bad behaviors? (Yes, we do know the answer to that!)
The more people who are involved in thinking about, looking at and helping each other, the more likely that the organization’s safety performance will be outstanding. A key to having the people come together as partners in helping each other begins with respect. I think that most of us want to be treated respectfully and feel valued by each other; I know that I do. We all have jobs to do and our work quality and productivity need to be as good as we can do. We each need to be held to high standards and keep learning and growing in our knowledge and understanding. We can achieve this while treating each other respectfully, honestly sharing our knowledge and insights, asking for help when we need it, and giving a helping hand.
We help to knock down the walls that have grown up between people and groups so that the arguments and fighting stop and they learn to value and help each other. We help to drill holes in the silos of production, HR, maintenance, and finance so that people can talk to each other to get the information they need to do their jobs. We help to remove the barriers that are restricting the up and down flow of critical information, improving its accuracy, so the organization can function more easily. We help to remove the barriers between the people writing rules and procedures (the work-as-imagined) and those doing the front-line work (the work-as-done). We help people to see that most of the injuries and incidents are the result of patterns and processes that need improvement and shift away from a culture of blame and criticism.
Changes are coming fast and furious. President Trump is moving ahead on deregulations and removing barriers to improve our businesses, so we’ll probably see a lot of changes show up in our workplaces. Some will be positive and others will not. It is our responsibility to work together and make all these changes as good as possible.
Almost every day I see people post on LinkedIn, engaging in awful safety practices. Some are so ridiculous that they could be funny – except that people are getting hurt. Some workers seem quite content to endanger their lives and co-workers seem to be so unaware of the risks around them – that it is unbelievable!
A recent Gallup study conducted over several years, covering about 150 countries, revealed that only about 15% of the people were actively involved in their work and that another 15% were actively opposing their managers and supervisors. The other 70% must be just doing as little as possible and not helping or looking out for each other. We are better in the USA, but not by much.
One of the most effective things that I did in stressful and changing times like these was to follow these three rules:
There are three important things that everyone needs to do to help to keep the safety performance and productivity high:
In your tool box meetings or shift start meetings, consider expanding your thinking to imagine how someone could get killed in work planned for the day. This is beyond what most groups do, but is an excellent way to prevent an unlikely tragedy. Talk together about how a fatality could happen. Even the most unlikely scenario will happen one day. Talk about what is in place that will prevent the fatality if the event should happen. Then ask yourselves if these preventative measures are good enough to really protect you. If not, then consider what you need to do so that you will be protected from being killed if the unlikely event should happen.
A wicked question is one where it is so complex that there is no final answer. We work to the best solution we can, which works for some period of time, then we have to revisit it again as conditions change. (The wicked question keeps repeating, sometimes reminding us of a bad penny – that keeps showing up at inopportune times!)
We need to approach this from the whole systems perspective since everything is connected to everything else. Experience shows that if we try to just fix one part of the system or another, we will wind up making other parts worse.
Recognize Einstein’s Words of Wisdom: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.“
OSHA recently reported that there were about 5,190 workplace fatalities in 2017. This is almost a 7% increase over 2016. I expect that this partly reflects the higher levels of business activity and more people who are working. Still, every single number reflects a personal tragedy – the death of a worker.
In 2001, Jim C. Collins wrote the best-selling management book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t. It described how companies transition from being good companies to great companies and how most companies fail to make that transition. The author found that focused leadership, clear expectations and alignment, and staying true to their field of major competence was key. There were other factors about greatness that showed up too – like Leaders being humble, and high employee engagement – employees being in tune with the company’s purpose, mission, endeavors, goals – not just the business side of things, but on the people side of the enterprise. Line organizations integrated information; people were involved, included and respected – because getting the right people in the right places was deemed as essential too. Entire organizations were communicating, collaborative, and cooperating.
