“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!
In 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.
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.
Each of us, as we travel to and from our work spaces want to be “safe and sound”—we want to return at the end of the day or at the end of our work-shift to our loved ones—safe and sound. 
There are three main aspects to Partner-Centered Safety.
Yes, the elephant that got in the way of having the conversations that matter? You did? Oh, you have one of those too?
Another 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.
People are often reluctant to speak up in these negative environments. Ideas for improvement never surface. New employees are negatively influenced and led astray. Supervisors have a very rough time getting the people to do their work properly. Grievance rates are high and much time is wasted needlessly because these are not addressed at an early stage.
For most managers putting production first can be quite subtle with messages like:
Partner-Centered Safety is a robust, proven way to bring people together to achieve sustainable levels of safety excellence being based on deeply held beliefs and values.
