We are expanding the scope and focus of our Richard N. Knowles and Associates Inc. business to helping organizations reduce the risk of workplace violence.
This begins with the leaders deciding to create a culture where it is okay and encouraged that people genuinely talk together, listen, help each other, look out for each other and learn together. This is a culture that helps people to be the best they can be and for the organization to get a lot more profitable. It all begins with all of us treating each other with respect.
Respect: Treating everyone with respect helps to keep tension low. Courteous, respectful treatment of co-workers, customers, and clients is fundamental to preventing workplace violence. What is your organization’s approach to respect in the workplace?
Does this sound like what we have talked about in our safety work? It involves the same approach, which we call Partner-Centered Leadership. At both the organizational safety level and the full cultural level, we are doing essentially the same work. It is all about people and choosing to work together, communicate together, interact together, in healthy, respectful ways.
By emphasizing that we begin with respect for each other, we are setting the standard that it is not okay to engage in disrespectful behavior, to harass one another, to bully anyone whether by a co-worker or a supervisor or manager, to gang up on anyone and/or use other ways to try to impose one’s power on someone in a hurtful, repetitive way. Those incivilities can only be destructive to culture – they make the difference between a hostile work environment and a healthy one.
Each person in a leadership position needs to go into their organization modeling this behavior and talking with the people about this – why it is important and insist that the standards be upheld. They need to support the line organization in doing this so none of the supervisors are hung out to dry.
The behaviors driving poor safety performance are a part of the workplace violence picture. People who are being pushed to work so quickly that, for example, they do not conduct a “Take-Two” safety check before the work starts or skip tool box meetings or are pushed without anyone listening to their thoughts before starting the work, are often the people who get into trouble and get hurt. Their attention is focused on getting the job done as quickly as they can without worrying about their or their co-workers’ safety. They tend to skip critical PSM safety checks which can lead to big disasters.
This is the sort of culture that Eric Hollnagel is talking about in his Safety II work, which is intended to move the organization beyond the traditional top-down safety management. (I’ve written about Safety II in previous articles – it is all good!)
In a hostile/toxic culture where it is okay to bully someone, things can build over time to where someone feels so bad and helpless that he/she does something violent…a home-grown, active shooter, for example. In 2016, workplace murders accounted for about 500 fatalities and 380 suicides. The second biggest cause of fatalities for women in the workplace stems from workplace violence.
We at Richard N. Knowles and Associates, Inc. have joined forces with Robin C. Nagele who brings vast experience in security and law enforcement. If you go to our new web site, NageleKnowlesAndAssociates.com, you can learn more about each of us and our work. We bring a holistic approach to this important work that leads to better cultures, improved safety and security and stronger earnings.
Guide to Reducing the Risk of Workplace Violence – The Absolute Essentials (by Nagele, Knowles and Associates)
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There have been five fatalities since the project began. All five of the fatalities have been “struck-by” incidents. The most recent occurred about October 1st, when a beam slipped off a piece of equipment and struck a worker on the head. One person was hit by a dump truck. Another died when he was hit by a piece of steel equipment. The fourth person died when a rebar cage fell on him, and the fifth person was killed when he was hit in the head by a pipe.
Our businesses, our schools and hospitals, our governments, and not-for-profits, at all levels, are fractured and coming apart. Change is coming faster and faster. So many people seem to be trying to cope by pulling into their shells and trying to push the turmoil all away. The trust levels among all the various groups is very low. So many loud voices are pushing their version of the “truth” that it is almost impossible to tell who is being honest and should be listened to. How do we find the truth?
In thinking about your own place of work, what do you suppose it would be like if people did some of the things mentioned earlier in this newsletter? Do you think that you could begin talking with others about building a more respectful environment? What do you think it would be like if you could openly talk together about the important issues like improving the safety of your job? What would it be like if the managers and supervisors talked frequently about with everyone about how the business was doing the challenges from the competition? What would it be like if you knew that someone was looking out for your back? What would it be like if you felt you were in an environment of trust? What would it be like if people really asked important questions and talked about them? What would it be like if people in upper management asked you for your honest opinion and really listened? That’s called breaking the iceberg and engaging in authentic conversations!
For example, the workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform received good recognition for outstanding occupational safety performance (the slips, trips and falls sorts of incidents) just a day or two before the explosion on April 20, 2010, that killed 11 people and injured 17 others. The pressures from top management to get into production led to failures of their process safety management (PSM) systems and processes. Communications were limited because management did not want to hear of more problems; they were driving the production schedule. The fine occupational safety performance masked the PSM deficiencies which are more subtle and invisible to upper managers, unless they are keenly aware of the needs for excellent PSM.
Now we have another example with the mess at Boeing and the 737 Max crashes. Top management was feeling the pressures for market share from Airbus and putting terrific pressures on cost reduction and faster production.
One director of a large organization of various businesses was completely unaware of the problem among their members. This is amazing since the statistics show that problems like bullying and sexual harassment are occurring in way over 50% of the organizations in our country. Apparently none of the businesses in this organization feel it is important to think about and discuss.
There seems to be an interesting disconnect here. OSHA does focus on falls, but what about roadway deaths and homicides? These are serious workplace problems as well. What about the whole problem of workplace violence that begins with the lack of respect (bullying, harassment), and that can lead to serious business problems like poor productivity, high absenteeism, fighting, injuries, murder, and suicide?
This is quite attainable with authentic, courageous leaders who take a stand that this is the sort of place they want to lead. The knowledge and technology are available and broadly known by lots of people so I want to share my own experiences.
This all began with my determination to work on improving respect, civility and safety. As I built credibility and trust with everyone, people began to make improvements in many other areas. Everything got better.
In 2017, Gallup, Inc. published their “State of the Global Workplace,” looking at the levels of productivity around the world. They were concerned about the decline in productivity and wanted to develop a better picture of the situation. High productivity is a key to having a good quality of life, and this relates to how involved people are in their work. They found that worldwide, only about 15% of the people are highly involved. This varies from country to country with the highest levels of involvement in the USA and Canada at 31%. Those businesses in the top quartile of employee involvement in their global study are 21% more profitable and 17% more productive. They also have 70% fewer safety incidents, 40% fewer quality incidents, 41% lower absenteeism, and 59% lower turnover. The positive impact of employees being highly involved is huge.
Most people in management positions focus on systems and processes like running a payroll or production line. They want reliability, predictability, control, and stability, which are important for much of the business. But when they apply this approach to people, things go downhill. This approach results in 71% of the people globally being unengaged and 19% being actively disengaged. Morale, safety and engagement are a mess. Managers engage in managership, and this will not solve the problem of building higher levels of engagement.
The way in which we think about and work with all the people is a key shift that is needed.Leading thinkers like Eric Hollnagel, Tom McDaniel, Beth Lay, Carl Stent, and Ron Gantt are searching for better, more effective ways of engaging with everyone to build on the good things people are doing.
I feel we are not moving fast enough to get to higher levels of performance. Way too many people are getting hurt and killed. Safety is a part of all we are doing and the whole system needs to be making improvements.
I was given the opportunity to talk about my work on Partner-Centered Leadership and shared information about the Process Enneagram, which is such a powerful tool to help people to come together to solve their complex problems. Partner-Centered Leadership is focused on sharing information, building trust and interdependence, helping everyone see the importance of their work for the success of the whole enterprise and moving into a better future. Everyone at the workshop was seeking ways to actually move into Safety II and make it happen so there was a lot of interest in this work.
