creating a safety culture | Safety Excellence For Business

Building Respect and Trust

December 12, 2022 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Why do so many managers and safety professionals keep treating the people in organizations as objects to be controlled so they will work safely?

They seem to assume that the employees can’t or won’t think for themselves and have to be made to work safely. These managers and safety professionals are not bad people, but they are stuck in their basic assumptions about people. So many seem to think that they have the answers and the power to make people do as they are told.

Thinking of the people as “employees” is part of the problem. Thinking of people as “employees” brings different thoughts to mind. The word “employee” is a legal word that defines my relationship with my employer with respect to things like hours of work, pay rates, benefits, etc. It also carries some tough top-down implications. If the boss gives an order, it better be done. The boss and the employee are not seen as equals in terms of respect, hopes, aspirations, good ideas and creative energy.

This has been the approach for generations and yet, there are still over 6,000 people a year getting killed at work and thousands are suffering serious injuries. Just using the same approach, with variations, over and over, and expecting to see real improvements is a problem!

There needs to be a fundamental shift to assumptions like these.

My Safety Focus: Building Respect and Trust.

My basic assumptions are:

We work with people who have brains and can think; their hopes and dreams are similar to my own.
People do want to work safely and not get hurt.
People want to be treated with respect.
The people doing the work have important knowledge and ideas to contribute.
People want to be listened to.
I do not know what they know, so we need to share information together so we can do our best.
Safety is connected to everything we do; it is part of the whole system.
It takes everyone pulling together to achieve excellence.
I do not have a right to make my living at a place where it is okay for people to get hurt.

I did not work on safety as such. My focus was on the people and building trust and a better, safer future. The more I worked this way with the people, the better our performance became. Within 4 years, our Total Injury Rate had dropped by about 97% to a rate of about 0.3. (The rate was only a way to keep score.) The people liked working this way and sustained their performance for 19 years. I wrote about this in my recently published paper in Professional Safety [Knowles, R.N. (2022, Nov.). Leading vs. Managing: A tale of two organizational processes. Professional Safety, 67(11), 42-46].

The importance of building trust and working with people has been known for a long time. Douglas McGregor wrote The Human Side of Enterprise in 1960 about Theory X and Y. Recently the work of others like Rosa Carrillo in her book, The Relationship Factor in Safety Leadership, 2020, and even in this current issue of Professional Safety [ Sarkus, D.J. (2022, Nov.). Building community through servant leadership. Professional Safety, 67(11), 24-29.] are emphasizing the importance of respect and trust.

This shift in thinking and working with the people results in a lot fewer people getting hurt or killed at work. Yet why do so many safety people seem to be all wrapped up in chasing injuries and incidents? Some just counting the numbers. Others developing more advanced ways to get employees to work more safely, or to develop better ways to analyze incident situations. Many are just pushing production with little or no regard for safety. Some safety consultants have learned to give great motivational talks that are fun to hear, but have almost no impact in the workplace. The BLS statics on workplace injuries and deaths are not showing much improvement.

The global safety improvement industry was estimated to be over $20,000,000. The trade shows have lots of very fancy safety equipment and the consultants are selling their approaches. Is there a vested interest it doing things like we have always do it and getting the same results?

Many managers think that you can not have excellence in safety and earnings at the same time. That is not what I found at the plant I led where we cut the injury rate by 97% and increased the earnings by 300%.

Conclusion

If the whole safety effort was shifted to treating people with respect, listening and learning together and doing what makes sense, there would be a huge improvement in total safety and a lot fewer people getting injured and killed.

Is the effort to build trust, learn to treat people with respect, to listen more carefully, to build on each other’s good ideas too high a price for saving many, many lives?

What will it take to make the shift?

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Safety Partnership Tagged With: building respect and trust in the workplace, creating a safety culture, D.J. Sarkus, Douglas McGregor, leading versus managing, Rosa Carrillo, safety improvement, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, safety management, safety performance, safety practitioners, safety professionals, safety systems, work safely, working safely in the workplace, workplace safety

A Safety Systems View for Organizations

November 10, 2022 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Everything happens through the people and all three phases of safety are interconnected.

Note: Many Safety Practitioners go about their safety work task-to-task without considering the broader “systems” in which they work, nor the people that are impacted by their decisions. This newsletter is intended to help lift up safety thinking and actions to a higher level. A systems approach can have a big impact on improving the total safety performance.

In October, I introduced a new figure showing a whole systems view of safety, where occupational safety, occupational health and process safety management are connected and work together through all the people in the organization.

I have thought a lot about this figure and want to share a new figure with you.

the whole safety system

We all live in a world with dynamic systems moving all around us all the time. When we can see the systems around us, we can be much more effective in understanding how things are interacting and deciding what we need to do. We can become much more resilient and sustainable. This is certainly my own experience when working with organizations. In many ways the safety system behaves like a living system where everything is connected and working together.

The traditional approach I see being taken in most safety work is one where the organization is treated as if it were a machine. The belief is that if we take it apart and fix the parts, that it will work better when we put it all back together. The “master mechanic” comes in, fixes the parts, (the employees) and tells it what to do. Improvement is modest at best, and resilience and sustainability are low.

Taking the “living” safety system apart to fix it, kills it.

In thinking about the living safety system, all the people in the organization are involved and partnering to build a better safety future through continuous conversations in a psychologically safe space, at all levels, about how to improve together, think about new ideas, learn, and do things for improvement. All the people in the organization are the center of it all.

Each component of safety is placed around the people. Each safety component has their own particular technology which needs to be done very well. In doing each part as if they are separate does not result in achieving safety excellence. It is in embracing the whole safety system where everyone wins. Together we co-create a culture that is both resilient and sustainable.

You’ll notice that I have introduced a new term I call “Environmental Safety,” which looks at process safety management in a different way. Environmental Safety relates to impacts on people and the air, water and land from wastes, spills, fires, explosions, leaks, sloppy operations, etc. It includes a lot that is already in process safety management PSM When the PSM is done well, the environmental safety is excellent. When the PSM is neglected disasters like the Deep Water Horizon kill people and create huge messes.

The safety system does not exist in isolation. There are a lot of other systems surrounding it that connect directly or indirectly that can be influenced by how well the safety system performs. A highly effective safety system can have a powerful, positive impact on the larger systems in which is functions. A poorly functioning safety system can negatively impact a lot in the larger systems around it, which can then raise concerns, drive regulations, anger the people, the families, the communities and weaken the business in countless ways.

dig deeper to reach a little higher when it comes to business safety

Conclusion

When we use a systems view and see what is going on around us, we are much more able to make effective decisions. Everything moves through the people. In sharing all information, treating people with respect and trust, and giving people the credit for their learning and accomplishments, we create the conditions where energy and creativity are released. We can effectively move in response to changes and become much more sustainable. The people and the business are winners.

Note: I refer to the people in the organization as “people” rather than “employees.” The word “employee” is a legal term that defines the relationship of the person to the organization with things like hours of work and rates of pay. It also carries strong, negative implications about the boss/subordinate relationship. However, referring to people as “people” implies that we are all in this together coming from different perspectives, bringing different gifts, knowledge and skills which are all needed for shared success.

We all work together with respect and build trust.

Please call me at 716-622-6467 or email me at RNKnowles@aol.com if you would like to talk about these ideas. See also RNKnowlesAssociates.com and SafetyExcellenceForBusiness.com.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: creating a safety culture, environmental safety, occupational health, occupational safety, safety in the workplace, safety management, safety performance, safety practitioners, safety systems, work safely, workplace safety

Respect, Trust, Partnering and Safety…Excellence Emerges…and it Matters!

October 10, 2022 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Safety and Environmental Performance

When I was the Plant Manager of the DuPont Belle, West Virginia chemical plant, I developed a practice of walking around the Plant 4-5 hours a day, every day for almost 8 years, for the safety of the employees. The plant was a mile long and a third of a mile wide, with about 1,300 people working there.

I needed to engage with everyone to get to know them, their work, and to see what I could do to help them. I did not make decisions as I walked around, since that would weaken the line supervision. I would talk about our mission of being the best we could be with our responsibilities for safety, the environment, the people, the quality of our products and work, our customers, our customer service, our costs, and our community. I would share the news of the day, talking openly about things I knew about the plant, our businesses, and the community.

I would also ask if they had any news to share. I would ask for help in how I could improve my own job. There was a lot of give and take; some days were great and some were very hard. My mantra was, “I don’t have a right to make my living at a place where it was okay for you to get hurt. We also need to make a living so let’s figure this out together.”

In our conversations, we talked a lot about occupational safety and occupational health. Many good ideas emerged. I would encourage the people to follow-up on their good ideas and support them. We would also talk about process safety management and the importance of keeping the chemicals in the pipes, improving yields, and reducing waste.

I encouraged them to go after leaks and to talk with the engineers about how they could run the processes better. I encouraged the engineers to teach the supervisors and operators about the theory and processes they were running. I encouraged them to learn as much as they could. I would ask about the safety and environmental maintenance work orders and if they were being taken care of promptly. When people asked me questions I couldn’t answer, I told them I did not know the answer, and promised to get back to them with the answer, which I always did.

We had a Central Safety Committee of about 50 people, which met monthly. People from across the organization participated and led the various committees. We integrated all our discussions, so everyone was thinking about their roles in improving occupational safety, health, and process safety. The 4-person safety group, operators, mechanics, supervisors, and engineers were all involved.

While each of the three parts of safety have their own technology, they all overlap in the people doing the work. We saw all aspects of safety and environmental performance as an integrated whole where everyone could make contributions. As the safety and environmental improvements built, this way of working, sharing information, building respect and trust, and helping people to see the importance of their contributions and to find meaning, spread all across the plant.

Treating the People with Respect and Building Trust

In addition to improving our safety and business performance, we emphasized the importance of treating people with respect and telling the truth. I modeled this as I walked around and visited with the people. I apologized for the mistakes I made. I encouraged them to talk together this way as well. I also worked hard to eliminate any bullying or harassment behavior because it is bad for the people and blocks the open flow of information, greatly hindering any improvement efforts. As it became safer for people to speak up and share their ideas and thinking, our total performance significantly improved. Everything happened through the people giving their energy, creativity, and resourcefulness.

The Integrated Whole

Everyone does some of each of these three phases of safety in their jobs. While each of these has different technologies and requirements, they are all in play all the time. For example, an operator moving a container of chemicals needs to be wearing the correct PPE, lifting correctly and being sure that nothing gets spilled. Or a clerical person needs to be seated properly to take care of their back, handling office equipment like scissors carefully, and putting their trash into the proper containers. Or a truck driver needs to use three-point contact when entering and exiting his truck to prevent a fall, have proper cushioning in the truck to support their back and adhere to speeds that are appropriate for the highway conditions.

All dimensions of safety are taking place all the time, as each person does their work. Each person needs to integrate these as appropriate for their particular assignments and tasks. When these are an integrated whole, their jobs are much easier as they think about them together.

Having them as an integrated whole also goes a long way to preventing disasters like the Deep-Water Horizon where the people on the drilling platform received a safety prize for great occupational safety, and then the platform blew up a day or so later because the process safety was falling apart.

The work of the Belle Plant people clearly shows that if we approach safety as an integrated whole, the total performance of the people improves.

Summary

Trust was built, people opened up, shared their ideas, learned, made decisions about improving their work, and brought occupational safety, health, and process safety management together into an integrate whole. The mood of the entire organization became very positive as things came together. In just four years the people had cut our injury rate by 97% to a Total Recordable Injury Rate of 0.3, reduced our emissions to the air, water, and land by 95%, improved productivity by 45% and increased earnings 300%.

This integrated way of working can happen for your business too. Give me a call at 716-622-6467 for more details. Let’s get started! Please check out our website: Safety Excellence for Business.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: accountability in the workplace, creating a safety culture, embracing safety in the workplace, engaging employees in workplace safety, environmental improvements, environmental safety, improving productivity in the workplace, improving safety performance in the workplace, occupational health, occupational safety, safety performance, workplace safety

Our Progress is Too Slow for Safety!

February 12, 2019 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Our safety progress here in the USA, in having fewer people getting hurt and killed at work, is way too slow.

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).

Huge efforts by OSHA, The OSHA Voluntary Protection Program, ASSP, the Campbell Institute, the National Safety Council, NFPA, all their safety professionals and others seem to be stuck. A lot of significant effort like the ISO 45001 work is taking place. Big conferences are being held to share information, new ideas and all sorts of PPE, and other safety equipment. The ASSP conducts many safety professional certification programs in addition to all the various training programs and workshops. There is a lot of good information on the Internet to help as well. There is a lot going on! The amount of knowledge and expertise on safety is huge.

Why?

But why aren’t the improvements showing up in fewer people getting killed? Safety is about everyone going home to their families and loved ones healthy and injury-free.

I have a hunch!

Having worked as both a plant manager of big chemical plants for 13 years and consulting around the world for 23 years in all sorts of organizations, I have realized that so much of what we do in safety is managing the systems and processes and trying to keep things stable, focusing on reliability, predictability, stability, and control. This is good for the step-by-step, linear processes like running payroll, a production line, conducting a basic safety training session, or caring for the equipment and facilities and doing excellent PSM. Most supervisors and managers get promoted because they are doing a good management job. Every supervisory and management position has elements of managership that are very important and must be well done. But when we drive this sort of thinking relentlessly onto the people treating them like machines, things do not go well. This is where we are stuck in our safety work!

We need courageous leaders!

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.

Leaders see their organizations as if they are living systems; people are living systems so let’s treat them that way! Leaders go into their organizations on a daily basis modeling respect and openness, listening to and talking with the people about safety, the business and other important subjects. Leaders take a stand and ask the people to help them live up to it.

My safety stand was, “I do not have a right to make my living at a place where it is okay for you to get hurt. We also have to make profits so let’s get going and do both.” My stand on disrespect, harassment and bullying was that this was totally out of place. We need to treat each other with respect. I asked the all the people to hold me accountable to live up to these stands and they did.

When talking with the people, ask questions like these about their job:

How is your job going?
Do you know a better way to do it?
What are your two biggest safety hazards today and how are you going to manage these? (Employees need autonomy to be able to think things through!)
Do you have all the information you need?
Do you have the right tools and PPE for this work?
How can I help you?

In leading this way, I used tools for complex adaptive systems to help me develop clarity and co-create, with the people, the principles and standards of behavior like be respectful, listen, help each other, ask for help if needed, look after each other, apologize for mistakes, and tell the truth. We held ourselves and each other accountable to live up to these principles and standards.

Leading this way will help to shift us from Eric Hollnagel’s vision of Safety I to Safety II. In managing, we get stuck in Safety I and in leading, we break out and achieve Safety II.

Every supervisory and managerial position has a leadership component in their work. Supervisors have a larger managership component and higher level managers have a large leadership component. However, everyone with responsibility for people needs to balance and use both sets of skills.

When I was the Plant Manager of the DuPont Belle, WV plant, I led this way and the results the people achieved were amazing. Injury rates dropped by 98%, we went 16.5 million exposure hours between lost workday cases (8 Â½ years), emissions dropped by 88%, productivity rose by 45%, and earnings rose by 300%.

Leaders take a stand! Put your Stake in the Ground!

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.

Safety happens when people take the responsibility to take all they know into themselves and do it! In leading this way energy and creativity are released, resistance to change almost disappears, and everyone can become the best they can be. A lot fewer people will get injured and killed and the business will make a lot more money. This is what is at stake…a Stake that requires Leadership.

All it takes is the courage and WILL to lead.

Richard N. Knowles and Associates are happy to talk with you about this so please give us a call at 7167-622-6467.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business Tagged With: business safety, creating a safety culture, employee fatalities, have a clear safety vision and message, improving safety in organizations, OSHA, safety improvements in business, safety leadership

Why were we at this VPPPA Conference?

September 17, 2015 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

At our exhibit booth, Claire and I shared our Partner-Centered Leadership approach. We handed out brochures and other literature that can help organization’s achieve safety excellence and move towards their OSHA Star designation. We were there to share important information, including the need to be able to lift up and address one’s safety elephants that are preventing organizations from being the best they can be.

We talked with a lot of people and learned of their safety journeys:

Those who had attained their Star status were looking for ways to sustain their performance, but there was a deep concern that complacency was undermining their safety achievements. Sustaining their work was a goal.
Those who were working towards their OSHA Star status were often struggling with communications problems between and among the workers, the union, and even the supervisors and managers. Getting everyone on the same page, and committed to the endeavor seems insurmountable (to some).

The Keys to Success and Sustaining Safety Performance

The keys for addressing both of these concerns in building sustainability into their programs and in achieving the OSHA Star status is for the people at all levels and parts of the organization to talk together to get clear and aligned on just what they really want to do. How sincere and authentic is the desire to have safety excellence for the long-term? (This means Communication with a Capital C—requiring Co-creation, Clarity and Coherence.) In addition, together they must take the time to co-create a set of ground rules about how they agree to work together in order to achieve their safety goals and then hold each other accountable to live up to them. (That’s Partnership and Commitment!) The process to achieve this is available to you and your organizations now.

There is no question that excellence in safety performance is good for both the people and the business. Creating and sustaining a workplace where everyone can go home injury-free, where everyone is treated respectfully, and everyone shares core safety values is what we should be doing.

In creating a workplace like this, the people are also generating benefit for the business. Eliminating OSHA Recordable Injuries and avoiding the average cost of $50,000 for each one provides real value for the business. Maintaining the production without the interruption of having had an injury and all the distraction that this causes is a also major contribution to the business. Building a reputation of being a safe, reliable supplier of quality produces another big value to the business.

Once everyone is clear and aligned that they really do want to achieve and sustain excellence, then talking together every day about doing this is critical. Toolbox meetings at shift start need to alert everyone on the challenges of working safely and a review of the day’s tasks, the looking out for the unexpected, taking two minutes before a job to be sure the right people and equipment are there, and emphasizing the importance of helping each other to stay alert and focused are also very important for these meetings.

As managers and supervisors walk around, they need to be talking respectfully with the people, listening and showing that they are really concerned for their safety. In doing this, we all learn together as better relationships develop and new ideas emerge. Talking with the people as true partners in the safety and business effort is key to moving to excellence. With everyone working together, on the same page, you are creating Partner-Centered Safety.

What are the overdue safety conversations you need to have?
And with whom?

What is it really all about?

This is all about having everyone go home in one piece and having a profitable business. Excellence in both the safety performance and business results are attainable.

When I was the plant manager at a big chemical plant, we got the total injury rates down to about 0.3, sustained this for 16 years, and had our earnings go up 300%. We have the roadmap that never fails—if you’re ready to travel that journey with us!

We can have it all if we want to do these things.

When the safety gets right, everything else gets right!

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: business safety, creating a safety culture, injury-free workplaces

The Gift of Discretionary Energy

April 2, 2015 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

We can reach safety excellence only if we all pull together, giving our best. This takes extra energy over and beyond the energy we need to put into our job to keep from getting fired.

safety leadership tips 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.

This is energy that we can give or withhold. This is energy that people will freely give if they are feeling valued and want to help everyone go home in one piece.

We can help people to feel really valued when we take interest in them, help them and ask them to help each other for the good of the whole organization. Being open and honest is a big part of this. Being consistent in working with them this way shows we are serious about them and want them to be a part of the team. Being clear, consistent and fair in holding everyone up to meeting the safety standards, not tolerating bully’s, and telling the truth are keys to this as well.

This is the way that most of us want to be treated so let’s do it for everyone!

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: business safety, creating a safety culture, employee safety, injury-free workplaces

Three Big Mistakes that Can Lead to Workplace Disaster

March 26, 2015 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

In previous blogs I have written about the three biggest mistakes that many managers often make that can lead to disaster.

These are putting production first, allowing the technology to drift and blocking communications. A disaster occurred recently in a chemical plant in La Porte, TX when 3 men and 1 woman were killed with a 23,000-pound release of methyl mercaptan. Methyl mercaptan has an An Acute Exposure Guideline (AEGL-3; EPA) of 120 ppm for a 10-minute exposure. Methyl mercaptan is seen more as an irritant and badly-smelling material, but this release in a confined area completely overwhelmed the people by displacing the oxygen in the closed, operating building.

dupont plant accident texas In reading the various, publicly-available reports, it looks as if all three of these big mistakes were probably made. The push for production was dominant, piping changes had been made without documentation, the safety procedures were modified or ignored, operating problems were not properly addressed and tolerated, previous practices allowed the draining of small quantities of material right into the room, and the communications were such that people probably could not or would not tell their management, who probably were not listening anyway, all the problems.

It would be easy to blame the 4 operating people for their errors, but this mess runs far more deeply in this culture. Three of the people were experienced operators and one was much less experienced. With the press for production, training was probably inadequate. While site management was probably responsible for the three big mistakes, they too were under a lot of pressure from the business division, product management people, in headquarters far away from the site, who were driving earnings at all costs.

But it does not stop here. The mistakes run even more deeply than these more immediate problems. The safety culture of the entire corporation appears to have slipped drastically over the last 4-5 years. Was everyone taking their eye off the ball for the sake of faster production and higher earnings and allowing standards to slip everywhere? Even though there had been a culture of many layers of protection in the safety systems and very high standards of performance and accountability, these seem to have weakened and some disappeared.

This entire disaster episode clearly shows the importance of the interconnectedness of all the parts of the whole system. Simple cause/effect relationships do not come close to telling the entire story. Getting on top of this deeply flawed culture and at all the organizational levels will take hard, honest, open work by safety professionals, operators, mechanics, supervisors, HR professionals, site management, business division product management and corporate management. They all need to come together to hold the conversations, each accepting their part in the disaster, learning together and co-creating their journey to a safety future of excellence.

Based on previous experience, tough regulators, OSHA fines, bad press, and law suites, all of which will come, will not lead to safety excellence. The people in this system, coming together in Partner-Centered Safety™ can and will make the needed difference.

I hope that they can and will rise to the occasion!

Postscript: Important!

While some people may be concerned that Partner-Centered Safety will cost too much, I have found just the opposite to be true. Earnings are improved in two ways.

First, the losses from injuries ($50,000/OSHA Record able Injury) and incidents are greatly reduced.

Second, the shift in culture that occurs when people are working this way results in a lot of waste being removed and improvements made. For example, when we learned to work together in Partner-Centered Safety when I was the Plant Manager at the DuPont Belle, WV Plant, injury rates dropped by over 96%, productivity rose 45%, emissions dropped 85%, and earnings rose 300%. We can all be winners in Partner-Centered Safety.

Call me at 716-622-6467, or contact us here to learn more about this approach.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: creating a safety culture, dupont plan accident texas, injury-free workplaces, prevent workplace accidents

For a Safe Workplace Look at What You See

March 13, 2015 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

We are constantly looking for indications relating to the strength and health of the safety climate in our facilities.

In January I talked about leading indicators I have found useful for occupational safety, health and process safety management. Another quick way to assess the safety climate relates to looking for the use of improper, makeshift tools. These can often be seen as we move through our facilities.

how to spot safety issues in business At a recent safety conference I learned about a way to quickly assess whether a manufacturing site was cutting corners and trying to get by on less than the best. The person speaking, Ewan Alexander of BHP Billiton, said that he looked for improvised tools being used.

An example is a wrench with a piece of pipe shoved over the handle to make the handle longer and thus be able to turn a bolt that should be turned by a larger wrench properly designed for the job. Pounding the handle of a wrench to loosen a bolt is another example of improper tool use.

Improperly Using PPE, like using a small respirator when full-face protection is required, is an example of cutting corners. Using dirty, partly opaque face-shields is another example. Using the wrong choice of gloves is another indication of cutting corners and poor decision-making.

The presence or absence of these problems is something we can observe if we pay attention.

When we are awake and making observations, we can quickly see how we are doing and take actions to improve things.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: creating a safety culture, employee safety, injury-free workplaces, prevent workplace accidents

Safe and Sound

February 6, 2015 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

We have all heard that parental admonition: “Please text me/call me when you get there…I need to know you are safe and sound!”

safe workplace 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.

This phrase, safe and sound, encapsulates the “why” of Safety—so that we are not harmed—rather, we are whole, complete, and okay.

May you, and all the people in your work world, start and end each day in 2015 safe and sound.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: business safety, creating a safety culture, employee safety, safe workplace

Partner-Centered Safety

January 23, 2015 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

The best approach to sustainable safety excellence is through Partner-Centered Safety.

This is a proven, robust way for dedicated people to work together to get the excellent safety results they want to achieve. All dimensions of occupational safety and health as well as process safety management are positively impacted when people work this way.

create a safety culture There are three main aspects to Partner-Centered Safety.

Developing mutual respect for and valuing each other as real people is critical. My safety mantra was “I don’t have a right to make my living in a place where it is okay for you to get hurt. Now let’s figure out how to work safely and make a profitable business.” With this message, I was trying to convey my deep respect and value for them as individuals. The people really appreciated this way of being together.
Talking, listening and thinking together, looking for the best solutions and possibilities opened up new ways to do our work, building credibility, trust and interdependence. All of us brought our various experiences, skills and insights into the discussions as equals with a passion for excellence in safety and production. The decisions were made with the best thinking and technology we had rather than by arbitrary, do it my way, orders.
Our culture shifted so that there was order, some stability and some control along with an openness to freely talking and thinking together to find the best solutions. The ambiguity of order and freedom worked very well as long as we were in constant conversation. For example, we learned to live in the need to have excellent safety and production at the same time.

As we worked this way good ideas bubbled up, new thinking developed, safety improved to Total Injury Rates at 0.3 or better and people discovered that they could sustain this for years (over 17 years in one case). At the same time earnings, productivity and environmental performance improved significantly.

In Partner-Centered Safety we work with the people and do not do stuff to the people, which is the traditional approach to safety.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Self-Organizing Leadership Tagged With: business safety, creating a safety culture, partnering for safety, reduce workplace injuries