The Gift of Discretionary Energy

April 2, 2015 By 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: , , ,

For a Safe Workplace Look at What You See

March 13, 2015 By 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 businessAt 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: , , ,

Safe and Sound

February 6, 2015 By 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 workplaceEach 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: , , ,

The Lurking Elephants…Can You See Them Now?

December 19, 2014 By Leave a Comment

Did you hear the story about the Safety Elephant who roamed all over the place stomping people down, messing things up, and completely blocking the ability of the people from having the important safety conversations?

creating safe workplaceYes, the elephant that got in the way of having the conversations that matter? You did? Oh, you have one of those too?

Safety First Elephants are big and smelly. Everyone knows they are there because they stink up the place, making it smell rotten. Elephants are also sneaky, often disguised, or even invisible. Sometimes they show up as the bully who tries to push everyone around and control the group. Sometimes it is a boss who just doesn’t seem to care. Sometimes it is “obliviousness” to what is really happening. Sometimes it is simply an undiscussable that has been allowed to fester. Anyone who tries to speak up about an important issue is silenced, put down, demeaned or ridiculed. The elephant just loves this. The elephants are in control! They are having a happy time!

You know that the elephant has a name…yet, you speak of it in whispers. (For the purpose of this Safety Flash, let’s call this elephant, Hiney – the H is for Hidden!) While Hiney is invisible or disguised, Hiney loves for you to talk about him/her in private, with a person you can trust. You might talk about Hiney in the restroom or by the water cooler. You make Hiney really quite visible in these conversations. But when you stay quiet in the situations that really matter – when you could constructively make an issue explicit, but you don’t – then Hiney remains very safe. So back in the workplace, Hiney keeps sneaking around, messing the place all up and stomping all over. Hiney is really very unfriendly – just loving it when someone gets hurt because you couldn’t talk about the real safety problem. Sometimes there are whole herds of Hiney’s!

Hiney is really very afraid of being made visible. If you just look Hiney (aka, the undiscussable) right in the eye and name the big, stinking elephant, everything changes! The big, cowardly, stinky, brutal Hiney seems to just melt away. You can talk about Hiney and work to fix the safety problem. There are courageous, safe ways to name and address the hidden elephants! Hiney can’t stand the light of the truth! Transparency hinders elephant herds. Fewer injuries and incidents will happen when you learn how to lift them up and address them. Call us…We’ll show you how!

Check out Can You See them Now? (Elephants in our Midst) – Discover the hidden elephants that are lurking in your organization or Work team…Then Vanquish Them! Available on Amazon.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , ,

America’s Safest Companies Conference

December 11, 2014 By Leave a Comment

I found several papers from “America’s Safest Companies Conference” last year quite interesting.

One by Terry L. Mathis discussed his new book (co-Authored by Shawn M. Galloway) called “Steps to Safety Culture Excellence.” This book describes, very nicely, 43 steps that can lead to safety excellence using the more traditional approach coming out of the Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm where we see cause/effect relationships, linear processes and big results needing big efforts. A lot of their ideas are quite good.

workplace safety processesAnother 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.

The new book by Sydney Dekker, “Drifting into Failure,” discusses the importance of seeing the world from the complex systems perspective. This is the perspective from which I have worked for so many years. In using this approach when I was the Plant Manager at the DuPont Belle, West Virginia Plant, we cut the total recordable injury rate from about 5.8 to below 0.3 in just three years and sustained this for 17 years. When I was leading the transformational work in New Zealand Steel, in the work described by Stephen Zafron and David Logan in their book “The Three Laws of Performance,” we worked from the complexity perspective. The total recordable injury rate at New Zealand Steel dropped by about 50% in just a year and a half.

The lesson here is quite clear. If you want to try to reach safety excellence using the Newtonian/Cartesian approach and taking 10 years to do it, then that is your choice. Doing this over 10 years requires a lot of hard, dedicated work to sustain the effort.

On the other hand, if you want to achieve excellence in safety in just two-three years, then you need to work from the complexity perspective. Not only is the process quicker, you have many fewer injuries along the way. It takes courage, persistence and commitment to make this happen.

It is clear that the approach from the complexity perspective is superior, achieving excellence more quickly with fewer injuries along the way. Leading the journey to safety excellence from the complexity perspective is what we call Self-Organizing Leadership and we use the Complexity Leadership Process to do this.

Several web sites have useful information relating to this way of leading and working:

Safety Excellence for Business

Center for Self-Organizing Leadership

RNKnowles Associates

Let’s not lose sight of our objective: We want everyone to leave the workplace at the end of their workday or shift without getting hurt—no injuries! Safety is an everyday, every minute dynamic, starting now!

Call me at 716-622-6467 to learn more about this robust, proven approach to achieve safety excellence.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , ,

The Drag of Disengaged People

November 21, 2014 By Leave a Comment

In a recent email post, someone mentioned that the cost to businesses of disengaged employees is about $350 billion per year.

In another post, it was estimated that about 20% of the employees are actively disengaged; they aren’t just standing around but rather doing things like horseplay, game-playing-sabotage, and even bullying to drag the performance of the organization down. This is not only a huge loss to the business, but also a huge personal loss to these people who are so negative.

These people cause big problems by blocking the channels of communications that are so critical.

how to improve workplace safetyPeople 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.

In many organizations, new employees are given a safety orientation and then go to work. The organization depends on the more senior people providing some guidance to these new people. Where there is active disengagement, this follow-up guidance is often not done so the new people try their best, but are often hurt. During the summer months this is especially serious because summer and other temporary employees are hired. These people need a lot of help, but where there is active disengagement, little help is offered and drift from business focus occurs.

When the flow of communications is blocked, the organization can easily drift into disaster. Critical information gets lost. The managers who need the feedback about how the operations are running do not get the information they need. Flying blind is not good!

In your own organizations, if you see disengaged people, begin to talk with them, share important information and ask for their help. This may be hard at first, but over time, most of these people will become more engaged. One reason that people become disengaged is because they feel ignored and under-valued.

By talking together, listening for ideas, exploring for improvements from everyone, a lot of disengaged people will begin to get involved. This is not just a one-time activity. Talking, listening, exploring together are ongoing parts of the work that pay big dividends. As leaders in your organization, you can open things up for the better.

 

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Self-Organizing Leadership Tagged With: , , ,
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