Our safety industry is huge and makes a lot of good contributions across millions of businesses to help to make workplaces safer.
There is no question that thousands of safety people are trying their best for a safer workplace.
It seems to me that with all this effort we should see fewer injuries and deaths, but over the last 10 years the number of people being killed and injured has not gone down and is stuck at about 5,200 fatalities and 2,500,000 injuries year (based on BLS statistics). Everyone agrees that this is NOT okay – yet even with focused effort there has been no breakthrough. Why?
The safety industry is currently working with organizations as if they are machines with linear work processes that can be taken apart and have the parts optimized. There have been thousands of change processes trying to do this, but successes have been limited. This approach is okay for simple situations, but our challenge is with complex systems where many people and parts are interacting all the time. In this situation, trying to fix a part like safety does not work because the whole system pushes back and spoils it.
When I was a plant manager, I found that in two different plants that shifting from seeing and working with the organizations as if they were a machine to seeing and working with them as if they were a living system made a huge difference. In learning to lead this way, the entire organization changes for the better.
This approach is based on the belief that most people want to do better and that they are intelligent and can make good decisions about their work. We created the conditions where it was safe to think and talk together, share information, and encourage them to make decisions close to their work. The whole system changed for the better, not just the safety (the injury rates dropped by over 90 %).
When I moved into my 30-year career of helping organizations to improve, I have seen similar progress. Not only did the performance improve, it happened quickly.
Making the Safety Shift…
Each organization can begin to make the shift and do this. The site managers and leaders need to be on board. The safety people can be a major help in this shift since they work across the organizations having access to many people at different levels. They can tell the success stories and encourage people to begin to work together in new ways.
This begins with treating people with respect, listening to them, and learning together. The people working close to the work have a lot of valuable information to share and build upon. Managers shift their focus from trying to control the work to trying to support the shift in culture.
Right now, for example, safety people can begin to work this way by having focused conversations with the people about how to handle heat stress in their workplaces. What ideas do they have to improve their working conditions? What can they do to make things better? You can encourage and support them to do the needed work.
There is Help Available for a Safer Workplace…
I have developed a way of working with the people in organizations which I call Partner-Centered Leadership. My book, “The Leadership Dance,” available from Amazon, is a place to start. I also have some YouTube videos that will help.
You may also like to read this article, Faces of EHS: Richard Knowles on Being People-Focused.
If you concur that it is NOT okay for workplaces to be killing 5,200 people every year and injuring 2,500,000 people too, and want to make sure your workplace isn’t among the statistics, please connect with me at RNKnowles@aol.com or call me at 716-622-6467. I’ll share with you how your organization can achieve business and safety excellence at the same time.
