As I study the safety publications like Professional Safety and EHS Today, there is a lot of effort in discussing new ways to achieve better safety performance, develop better ways to do hazards investigations, evaluate accidents, and being in compliance with OSHA standards.
When I have attended American Society for Safety Professionals and American Institute of Chemical Engineers meetings and conferences, there are lots of papers focused on improving various aspects of safety for the people at work and being in compliance with OSHA standards. There are thousands of really good safety professionals doing this work.
There is also a lot of effort in developing a better understanding of OSHA Standards and rules. There is good advice on how to work effectively with OSHA. None of us want to get OSHA citations after an audit.
I remember how nervous I was when we had our occasional OSHA audits. Most of the time we had successful audits (we had complied with the Standards), but now and then we’d get a citation which then brought down a lot of criticism from upper management. Being in compliance is really important from a career and publicity perspective, so we worked really hard to meet the OSHA Standards.
Surviving an OSHA investigation without any citations is one measure of success for safety professionals. I know that it takes a lot of work to have a successful audit.
Moving Beyond Compliance is Important
Another way to see how well we are doing is to look at the people getting injured or killed at work. This is not a numbers game; we are working with real people.
This is important to our companies since these tragedies can cost a lot of money for health care or have to deal with lawsuits. It can also cause bad publicity, prompt an OSHA investigation, and suffer fines, and destroy families.
Fortunately, most of the millions of businesses in the USA don’t have these problems, which gives them a feeling of success. They are in compliance. This can lull them into thinking they are doing a great safety job; then something happens and everything hits the fan.
Unfortunately, a lot of businesses do have fatalities (5,200 a year) and injuries (about 2,500,000 a year). We can’t predict which businesses will have a tragedy so many may think that it will not happen to us, and feel compliance is good enough. But compliance is not good enough, in my view. A death or serious injury are devastating to those involved and the families and loved ones never got over the loss, EVER!
A Path Forward
When I was managing operations where we could have a fatality or serious injury, I found that partnering with the people was extremely important.
We created an environment where we could all talk together about work, share our ideas and insights freely, and learn together – all of us at all levels, contributed and shared our knowledge. contributed and learned. The collective knowledge of our organization grew and strengthened as we co-created our future. We treated each other with respect and care, maintained high standards, and addressed problems together.
As we learned together, more and more people began to contribute. We did not just work on safety – we worked on all aspects of our work.
I spent about half of my time walking among the people in the plant, getting to know the people, and building our relationships and trust. I modeled how we needed to work together so people could see that I was genuinely interested and committed to improving all we did.
I had a safety mantra:
“I do not have the right to make my living at a place where it is okay for you to get hurt.
I can’t do this all by myself, so I need your help.
We also have to make a living, so we must work together to figure out how to do all this.”
Our total performance made significant progress, people were more satisfied, we had more fun, and my job got a lot easier as we focused on our growing successes.
I would be pleased to talk with you if you would like to do this. We could do this with a Zoom or phone call. Call me (716-622-6467) to set up a meeting.
Our knowledge, experience and education enable us to understand what is going on around us and helps us to determine if it is safe…if we are “clued in.” This is not a complicated idea, yet we see so many people who seem to be totally oblivious about what is going on around them.
In times like this, when the business and production activities are ramping up, there is a real danger that safety problems will show up. Any time the level of activity changes, up or down, is a time of danger.
It will not be easy as people are returning to the workplace. Leaders and managers must get out of their offices and purposefully engage with the people. They need to talk about the COVID-19 problem, share what is happening, and talk about the problems with which they are dealing. They need to do this with openness, honesty, respect, and caring. This is not just a one-off contact; leaders and managers need to engage in these conversations every day!
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.
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.
