I think that we, safety professionals, are on the verge of breaking through to our next major shift in building safer, more effective businesses. We can do both of these things at the same time.
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.
This is not about looking at things through rose-colored glasses but rather a hard-headed, practical, proven shift in how we all work together. Most people want to be treated with respect and be listened to. Most of the people I’ve met want to do a good job and be proud of their work – even the grumpy ones. They want to have the opportunity to have their ideas heard and considered. They want to have the opportunity to explore better ways to do their work. The people working close to the actual physical work know their jobs and often have good ideas about how to do the work to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and safety of their jobs. It is highly frustrating for them when managers do not listen to them or care about what they are thinking and know. This frustration usually leads to all sorts of counter-productive behaviors that are both unsafe and costly.
What has been you own experience when treated this way? This is not just a problem for the front-line people. This sort of behavior happens at all levels of the organization and is hugely expensive. Frustrated people do not share constructive information together, decisions are avoided, learning is blocked, and opportunities for improvement are lost.
I think that safety professionals are in an ideal place to help their organizations break through to higher levels of performance. We are often called upon to work across many different parts of the organization to provide safety insights, investigations and consulting. We often have access to many people at different levels in our organizations. This gives us a lot of opportunities to engage respectfully with the people and open up the important conversations.
We can model the behavior of asking questions for understanding, of listening deeply, helping to understanding the situations and exploring ideas together. As we engage with the people with respect and consideration, trust builds. As trust builds, people are more willing to open up and discuss their ideas and concerns. Each positive conversation builds on the ones before it. In this process a space for open, honest conversations develops.
The breakthrough comes as more and more people are building on their successes, sharing ideas and insights, testing their thoughts with each other, and seeing what is possible. People find meaning in this way of working; they feel better about themselves and their jobs. More and more focus and clarity develop about how to do their work more safely and better. In addition to the good work you are doing with the safety systems and procedures, with your compliance and training efforts, you are bringing the people into the business. New ideas keep emerging and more good decisions are being made.
Engaging with the people this way takes courage, care, concern, and commitment. This is an ongoing way of working. Getting out of our offices and into the workplaces takes time and effort. When I learned to work this way, I discovered that my job got a lot easier. The gap between work-as-imagined and work-as-done almost disappeared. I found I was working on real challenges and getting out ahead of problems. All of us can engage with people this way. It is a matter of will; just do it!
A review of the Bureau of Labor Statics summary of fatal occupational injuries for 2011-2017 shows a 1% drop in fatalities from 2016 to 2017 to a total of 5,147 people having lost their lives at work. This is about 9% higher than the 4,693 people killed in 2011. The top three 2017 fatalities categories are roadway accidents totaling 1,299 (up 15% since 2011); slips, trips and falls totaling 887 (up 23% since 2011); and murders and suicides totaling 733 (up by only 2% since 2011).
We need courageous leaders who focus on the people, change and the future. Leaders value sharing information, building trust and interdependence, and helping people to see how their job is important for the success of the whole venture.
Go into your organizations listening to and talking with the people. Share your vision. Build trust and interdependence. Create safe spaces for people to talk with each other, to share and create the future. Everything will change. That is what I experienced at the Belle Plant.
It is a new year. Businesses have compiled their 2018 safety statistics. They are looking at economics and at people. Who was hurt during this past year? What have we put in place so that those injuries won’t happen again? What are we talking about together for betterment? How did our systems contribute to our successes or to the injurie/s? What was the presence and the strength of Leadership support like around those people who were injured? Where are we most vulnerable safety-wise? How can we lead more effectively? How can we have an even safer workplace in this new year, 2019? How can we help employees to become more aware, more safety vigilant? And thus more able to return to their families at the end of the shift whole – with arms, legs, toes, fingers, eyes, ears – all intact. (Leaders, are you asking these questions?)
In our November Safety Newsletter, I wrote about Partner-Centered Leadership. This is the most effective way to improve safety performance. This way of leading also results in improvements in most other aspects of the business as trust and interdependence are built and the environment is safe for the open flow of information. A key aspect of this is working with the people.
The patterns at work are also changing as the business activities and demands are changing. There are not enough good, trained people to fill all the openings so the pressure on everyone is going up. Everything at work happens through people so it is critical that we keep everyone engaged in helping to achieve our successes. We need to open up the trust and build interdependence among everyone to keep the information flowing freely. It is clear how important genuine engagement is within our workplaces.
They are totally unconscious that they are an important part of networks at work and at home. Many are the bread winners and if they get hurt or killed, they will cause their loved ones terrible hurt and trouble. The indifference of so many people in supervisory or management positions to this sort of behavior is terrible.
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.
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.
