Closer Look: Safety, People, Culture, Change, Business Excellence, Agility, Impact…It all Fits Together!

February 10, 2020 By Leave a Comment

Avoiding the losses and waste means that our businesses are more competitive and healthy. How much do you suppose an OSHA lost time injury costs the business?

  • The pain and suffering is miserable.
  • There is the direct cost of the doctors, hospitals, medications, etc.
  • We lose time
    • having to investigate the injury and incident.,
    • writing reports,
    • having an OSHA investigation,
    • perhaps the cost of challenging OSHA’s findings,
    • legal costs for the company attorneys,
    • preparing for a potential law suit,
    • the cost of lost production time,
    • the cost of bringing someone and train them to replace the injured person,
    • the cost of lost sales,
    • the cost of bad publicity,
    • the cost of lower morale among the people,
    • and so on.

When the safety gets right, everything else gets right as well. In this more positive culture, not only does the waste of injuries and incidents go away, people shift the way that they chose to work together resulting in other improvements like:

  • fewer arguments,
  • fewer grievances,
  • better meetings,
  • fewer meetings,
  • more suggestions for improving our systems and processes,
  • people taking the lead in helping to fix something that is not right,
  • new ideas for better customer service emerge,
  • lean manufacturing works better,
  • the quality of products and services get better,
  • absenteeism drops, and
  • people can work together to build a better future.

Cultural improvement: bullying, harassment and dysfunction decrease.

When the safety performance and culture get better, the organization thrives.

These are things that each organization can work on right now. In Partner-Centered Leadership, Richard N. Knowles & Associates can help organizations to achieve all these things. This does not require investment.

  • Get clear on your thinking and purpose.
  • Go into your organization talking with and listening to the people.
  • Help them to build on their ideas.
  • Let them know how important they are to the success of the business.
  • Do this with respect and honesty.

Change is happening all the time!

organizational culture is shaped by leadershipChanges are coming fast and furious. Everything seems to be changing all around us. This can cause unsettling feelings and a loss of control. However, in the middle of all this change, one area that can be steady for us is our relationships with each other.

If we have a good agreement about how we are going to work together including things like respect, listening, helping, learning together, these can provide us the stability we need.

These are like the pole in a subway car. With everything around us bouncing and moving, holding the pole provides the stability we need.

We can treat each other with respect,no matter what is happening in the world around us; this is within our control.

Please look out for and help each other. Let’s keep our agreements. Now is the time for being our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers, which is really important. It is up to each of us!

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Faster is Often Slower

October 15, 2019 By Leave a Comment

In Orlando, Florida, there is a $2.3 billion, 21-mile, I-4 highway improvement project that has been underway since 2015. It is such a traffic headache that we try to avoid it as much as we can when we are driving across Florida.

safety is important in construction areasThere have been five fatalities since the project began. All five of the fatalities have been “struck-by” incidents. The most recent occurred about October 1st, when a beam slipped off a piece of equipment and struck a worker on the head. One person was hit by a dump truck. Another died when he was hit by a piece of steel equipment. The fourth person died when a rebar cage fell on him, and the fifth person was killed when he was hit in the head by a pipe.

All construction was suspended to review the safety plans and to get everyone refocused on working safely. OSHA and safety experts have been involved in the analyses, “Until the root causes are determined, girder erection and installation are suspended.”

Suspending the work to get everyone focused, bringing in safety experts, and seeking root causes are a start, but they will not, in themselves, stop the fatal accidents. There is so much more going on that there are no root causes. The pressures to get the projects going again are intense.

There’s A Deeper Pattern…

Every fatality was a “struck-by” incident, which indicates that things are moving when the incidents happened. On projects like this one, there is huge pressure to keep on schedule and get the work done. The pressure to move too fast is great. Yet, as these incidents show, going faster results in things going more slowly, and people getting killed. Hurrying is a big problem!

Each person needs to be looking out for the others, talking together about how to do the job without anyone getting hurt, sharing ideas about how to do the work more effectively and safely. Supervisors and managers need to be talking with the people about getting the jobs done effectively and safely. Everyone needs to be kept informed on the status of the work and the details for each day’s work.

Toolbox meetings are a critical element in this. Everyone needs to be able to shut down a job if they see that there are safety issues that need to be addressed. Coming together to form safety teams to help build the focus on specific tasks would be useful. Building an environment where everyone is treated with respect and is open to having people speak up, be able to ask questions and look for better ways is important.

But working this way will be a challenge for them. They have many separate contractors, many people of different skill levels, and a worksite spread over 21 miles.

When I have talked with people in other situations about working this way, I often get funny looks. They tell me that they do not have time to work this way. They have to get the job done!

My belief is that they really do have to take the time to work this way because, in my experience, working this way is the fastest, safest and least costly way to get the work done. Just think about all the time that is lost and distractions that occur in investigations, dealing with OSHA, job shutdowns, fighting the unions, dealing with the lawyers, the media and the families that have suffered a loss of a loved one.

Working fast, ignoring the people, taking short-cuts and cutting corners all lead to higher costs, project delays and more people getting hurt. Call me 716-622-6467 and let’s talk deeper-pattern safety!

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

Focus Where It Makes a Difference

July 10, 2019 By Leave a Comment

OSHA recently published the list of the top 8 safety violations in 2018:

  • Fall Protection
  • Hazard Communication
  • Scaffolding, General Requirements
  • Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout)
  • Ladders
  • Fall Protection Training Requirements
  • Machinery and Machine Guarding
  • Eye and Face Protection

The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists the areas causing the most deaths in 2017:

  • Total Deaths: 5,147
  • Roadway: 1,299
  • Falls: 877
  • Homicides: 458

focus where it makes a difference in businessThere seems to be an interesting disconnect here. OSHA does focus on falls, but what about roadway deaths and homicides? These are serious workplace problems as well. What about the whole problem of workplace violence that begins with the lack of respect (bullying, harassment), and that can lead to serious business problems like poor productivity, high absenteeism, fighting, injuries, murder, and suicide?

Safety professionals and managers are spread quite thinly and need to prioritize their safety work. Certainly, the conditions of each workplace have their priorities, yet, these questions need to be considered:

  • What is our real experience? Our vulnerabilities?
  • Where can I have the greatest, positive impact?
  • Where do I best put my efforts?
  • What does OSHA want?
  • What does management want?
  • What do the people in our organizations want?

At Richard N. Knowles and Associates, we have found that the best place to focus is to build respect in our workplaces. While this may sound like an odd place to start, we have found that it positively impacts the performance of the entire organization. Safety gets a lot better. Productivity gets a lot better. All dimensions of our work get a lot better.

I know because this is what I did as a Plant Manager. Building a respectful workplace resulted in much better performance in all dimensions of our businesses because fewer people got distracted with bullying, more information was shared about the work and how we were doing, improvements in all aspects of what we were doing got made, new opportunities for better business performance showed up, the gap between work-as-imagined and work-as-done got smaller and total performance improved; this applied to all our work.

Each and every one of us can decide to treat each other with respect. We can share information about what is going on, listen and learn together. When this happens, everything gets better. We can agree about things. We can disagree about things. When we treat each other with respect, we can have honest, adult discussions about how to do things the best way we can. New ideas emerge, different ways to see things are learned, we think together to make our work the best it can be.

Safety gets better because the gap between work-as-imagined and work-as-done closes. We, together, come up with the best possible solutions to our challenges. All phases of our work get better.

When I was the Plant Manager in a large West Virginia chemical plant, working together with everyone with respect enabled us to cut injury rates by over 97%, cut emissions to the air, water and land by about 96% and earnings rose about 300%. All the things we looked at showed improvement.

Focusing on helping the workplace to become more respectful is a powerful place to work and the payoff is terrific. All you have to do is to decide to treat each other with respect, talk about the important challenges in all dimensions of our work, listen and learn together, then do what you have agreed to do with honesty and diligence.

A Step Forward

Every manager needs to go into their workplaces every day, talking with the people about the business and how it is doing, listening and learning together. They need to take a stand insisting on a respectful workplace and enforce it. Trust will build, people will open up and share what is happening and everyone can learn. The safety gets a lot better along with all the other aspects of the business.

Every manager that I have met has the capability to do this. It just takes the will to care enough. Call me…glad to share how this can happen in your workplace, too (716-622-6467).

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

Our Progress is Too Slow for Safety!

February 12, 2019 By Leave a Comment

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

Our Progress is Too Slow with SafetyA 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 ½ 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: , , , , , , ,

Hurry, Hurry, Hurry…

October 10, 2017 By Leave a Comment

slow down at work to stay safeAs I travel around and watch things happening, I see so many people in a big hurry. We are coming to the end of the good weather so people are hurrying to get outside jobs finished up. Roofers are really busy and not taking the time to properly use and secure their fall protection. I read of a recent 29-story fall in New York City when a guy on a big construction site fell through an unsecured hole in the floor.

Most of the people doing these jobs have a good idea about the hazards they face, yet they seem to ignore the possibility of getting hurt. Many of these people have families and loved ones who will suffer if they are hurt or killed. Why do you suppose they ignore this? Do they think “it” won’t happen to me?

What will it take to get these people to pay attention and be more mindful in their work?

  • Do we need more rules? OSHA already has plenty of them.
  • Do we need more fines? There already are provisions for fines, yet they do not seem to be having much impact.
  • Do we need more supervisors overseeing the work and making the people work more safely? Good supervisors are in short supply and those who are out there have lots to do and are also rushing.
  • Do we need more dramatic pictures and videos of people working unsafely as a reminder? There are lots of these floating around YouTube and other internet sites. Maybe those out on the jobs are not seeing these reminders…maybe (to their detriment) they have blinders on regarding the hazards of the work.
  • Trying to make people work more safely is okay, but we seem to be stuck with this approach. There have been about 4,600 fatalities a year for the last 4-5 years so things that we are doing are not having much impact.

Doing things to the people to get them to work more safely is not working well enough.

One way to do this is to open up the discussions about safety (and talk with each other) to make the workplace psychologically safe enough for people to stand up and ask the important questions and have the important debates about how to work more safely. Lots of organizations say that people have the right to stop a job if it is not safe; do they really?

There is so much pressure in many workplaces to get the job done as quickly as they can that people are reluctant to speak up. (Mixed signals). Some people are afraid of losing their jobs if they speak up. This is not okay!

Most of the pressure to hurry up and get the jobs done is based on the belief that this is the way to maximize their profits. How much does it cost to stop a job for 10-15 minutes to get the safety right? Injuries cost a lot of money in terms of the medical bills, lost time being away from the job, getting someone else in to do the work, OSHA inspections, reports, fines, bad publicity, investigations, and audits. The average cost for an OSHA Recordable Injury is over $50,000.

Stopping the job to get the safety right saves a lot of money, pain and suffering.

Slow Down and Work More Effectively

haste makes waste and you need to be safe at workA good, proven approach is to have brief start up meetings to review the hazards of the day’s work, making sure we have the right PPE and other equipment in place and used, asking each other about what might go wrong and working to avoid this. We need to look over the schedules and be sure we have the equipment we need and the right people for the work.

Each person can make a good contribution to this start-up meeting by talking together, listening, and asking questions. Each person can take responsibility for themselves and their workmates so that everyone has a safe, productive day and can go home in good physical and mental shape.

The fastest way to get the job done is to do it right the first time!!

NOTE: A Good Leader knows this! Savvy supervisors care about the job getting done, while at the same time, that the people doing the job remain safe while doing the work. Holding start meetings to ask people…What are the things you really need to consider for this job? What unexpected things could happen? And how will you prepare for those? Do you have everything you need? Tools, PPE, etc.? What can you teach another (today) about the importance of this work being done safely? How will you look out for coworker/s (today)…during the completion of these jobs? A Good, Respected Leader/Supervisor knows and cares about the people reporting to him/her, shows commitment to safety in all ways, and continually develops expectations of excellence within a learning environment–which the supervisor is keen to establish.

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