workplace support | Safety Excellence For Business

A New Season for Relationships in the Workplace

March 11, 2024 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

We are coming into a new season of nature with emerging flowers, nesting birds, new gardens, and sunny, warmer days.

It is a time of anticipation of all the new things emerging from the winter hibernation. There is excitement and anticipation in the air. There is hope for new things. Spring is all about change and renewal.

There is also hope for new relationships with our families, friends, and co-workers. The bright, warm sun warms us all.

Suppose we have a new season at work where we develop stronger, more supportive relationships among us. Just imagine the positive impact this would have. There would probably be a lot fewer people getting hurt and a lot less toxicity if our workplaces were filled with caring and support.

New Relationships

In our February blog post, I introduced the idea of a Cycle of Change, which I show here.

How much stronger would this Cycle of Change be if we could work together in an environment of caring and support? What would the morale look like? Would we be looking out for each other and helping where we could? Would we have more open conversations about what is going on and how we could improve things? Would there be a lot less bullying, dysfunction, and workplace violence? Would there be less fear and anxiety? Would the level of understanding among all organizational levels be a lot better? Would conflict between the people on the floor and the supervisors be less? Would we be growing a more sustainable, stronger culture? Would safety and environmental performance be better? Would productivity, quality, cost effectiveness, competitiveness be better?

It is interesting to think that all these would improve by just working on supporting and caring for each other. How we chose to work together has a big impact.

There are a lot of “would” words written above. And this one is used pointedly…Would that we all could understand and embrace this fundamental of life: “We change through the work we do together.” Leaders, especially need to connect these dots!

Making Our Choice

Who decides that supporting and caring are important relationships to work on? Who will make you work this way? Are the ideas of support and caring important to you?

If they are important, can you act on them and spread this way of working, one person at a time? Can you help, and support each other as you spread this way of working?

Each of us can make a positive impact if we want to. What do you want? What do you decide?

Call me at 716-622-6467 and I’ll walk you through how quickly and easily you can adopt this framework to your business, your team, your group.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: bullying in the workplace, improve how to work together, learn to work together, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, stronger workplace relationships, teamwork, teamwork in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace support, workplace violence

We Change Through the Work Itself: It is not complicated!

February 10, 2024 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

There’s a need for the crucial conversations to help the people in the organization to raise their awareness and identify ways to improve how they do their work together.

We often fall into routines, and skip thinking and talking about ways to improve things. Sometimes safety consultants are brought in to talk about the need to change the mindset of the workers and improve their safety culture.

I have a real problem with this approach.

The word “worker” sends a message that these people are somehow below us and maybe not so smart as we are. This is a terrible message. These people who are doing the work are really not much different than the rest of us. They have families, are paying their mortgages, paying their credit card debts, buying cars, etc. Most of the time they do their work safely and well. Why do we so often, at work, treat them as somehow inferior? In my experience, trying to fix and change someone’s mindset is a hard sell, meeting with resistance and often resentment.

Many of these “change” consultants offer various ways to change the culture, hoping that the people’s mindsets will also change. Most of these changes come across like New Years Resolutions. They sound good, but after a month or two, we drift back to our old habits and nothing really changes.

Change is a process and not a thing.

In my experience change comes about as we work together on something we need to improve, find better ways to do the work to make the improvement, agree on how we will do the work and then do the work. Change comes about through the experience of doing the work itself, together, and learning from that experience. The process looks something like this picture.

change comes about through work experience

This way of working requires open, honest conversations where everyone feels safe enough to share and contribute. As we learn together, amazing improvements begin to emerge. Visualize this as a learning helix. Each step lifts us from level to level.

The people who are close to the work have the best knowledge of what needs to be done. They do not have it all, so they need to talk with people outside the group like safety professionals, engineers, and others to be sure their ideas are the best they can be.

It will be interesting for you to talk together about these ideas. It would be fun to see how it works for you and your organization. Make a modest start and see what happens.

work issues can be solved together

As leaders in workplaces, we need to do better. Give me a call at 716-622-6467 or contact me via email and let’s talk about how you can do this – working with a real problem and genuinely involving the people – sharing their best to make it happen together.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: improve how to work together, learn to work together, partnering in the workplace, safety culture, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, teamwork, teamwork in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace support

Safety Works When People Work and Learn Together

January 10, 2024 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

The year 2023 was a busy and active year with all the increased business activities, increased construction, and lots of safety conferences.

I congratulate those of you who made progress in improving your company’s safety performance and had more people going home in one piece. It is a wonderful thing to know that you made a positive difference in someone’s life.

The safety challenges were difficult and relentless. The preliminary reports indicate that overall, the number of people getting killed or injured went up in most areas around the world, including the United States. There is so much to deal with like drugs, violence, the push for people to produce more and more with limited resources, more reporting, and the uncertain political and economic climate that is so distracting.

What sorts of changes can we all make in the way we are doing our safety work?

Just doing what we are doing, but harder and faster is not getting the improvements we need. Putting more safety people into the work may make a small difference, but not the step change we need to make.

My Learnings

One of the things I found that really made a big difference when I was working as a plant manager was going out among the people listening, talking together, getting to know them, and the challenges they had in doing their work. These are the people actually doing the physical work of manufacturing.

As a manager, sitting in my office, I had almost no idea about their daily challenges they faced in doing their jobs. I was also worried that they were getting various messages from me, the other managers, and supervisors that put them into a bind. They were struggling with messages like work safely but get the pounds out. They were unclear about priorities and goals. I think they were all trying to do their jobs as well as they could, but it was like working in a fog.

As we talked together, the messages got a lot more clear. I got a much better understanding of their challenges and difficulties. I could not do their jobs; I just did not know how to do their work. So, I started to ask them for their ideas about how I could help them in doing their work.

It was slow at first, but as trust began to build, a lot of good ideas emerged. Many problems they could solve themselves, so I encouraged them to talk together and figure out a good solution. If it was safe and workable, then let’s try it a see how it worked.

A Deep Learning Developed

I did not know how to do the Level 1 work where the actual manufacturing tasks took place, and they did not know how to do the Level 2 work that I was doing. We lacked the experience, information, and knowledge that we each had. All I could do was to ask the people how I could help make the systems better so their work went better, and the people could ask me about the things that I was saying to make the messages and goals more consistent and clearer.

The frontline people got a lot better at doing their Level 1 work and I got a lot better at doing the Level 2 work. As we worked together improving our Level 1 and 2 work, we also talked a lot about the importance of treating each other with respect, really listening and learning together. We learned to help each other better, talk together better, and learn better. These shared values were our Level 3 work and applied to all of us. We discovered that the values in Level 3 applied to all we did so that our work at Levels 1 and 2 went a whole lot better.

Over time, in working together like this for about 4 years, our injury rates went down around 97%, emissions to the air, water and ground went down about 95%, and earnings went up around 300%. All aspects of our work improved. We all did it together.

For the New Year

I ask you to think about how you can begin to do safety differently and make the breakthroughs you want to make.

Workplace Safety is a Local Issue

Improvements in the safety performance (fewer deaths, injuries and incidents) is a local issue. These improvements have to be made by the people working in the particular jobs and activities. Ideas and edicts can come down from on high, but they do not make the place safer. If they could, we would already have injury-free workplaces.

The people, working together, as I described, make the difference. The work has to apply to the specific work and tasks by the people who are involved at Levels 1, 2 and 3.

When people at the facility level decide to work this way together,
amazing things happen.

Let’s have an amazing year!

My offer to you: Give me a call (716-622-6467) so we can talk together about working at Levels 1, 2 and 3. Let’s see what happens.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: improve safety performance, learn to work together, partnering in the workplace, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, safety training, teamwork, teamwork in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace support

The Focus on Safety Situations is Not Working Well

November 10, 2023 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Each day I read in various news reports and items about different safety situations and people getting hurt or killed.

It is rare that there is no report of a fatality somewhere.

These are real people getting killed doing their work. Most of these incidents are not new. Things like a boiler explosion, a grain silo explosion, a train wreck, someone caught between things, someone falling, a crane tipping over, a fire in a refinery, a boat accident, and I could go on and on. It is very sad to think of all the families, their losses and suffering.

The technology is there to avoid most of these situations. There are often safety people somewhere around the incident. Presumably there are supervisors around. Most of these incidents are not occurring with people who are working alone. Who is paying attention?

Tool-box sessions at the start of the day help some organizations.

Training is advocated by a lot of people. Some safety professionals look closely at the causes of these incidents. Sometimes the employer is cited by OSHA or fined. Some states pass new laws to try to force better compliance. All this is focused at things and situations, and not having the positive impact we all want.

Partnering with the People

All this safety stuff, the good and the bad, occurs through people. Most people want to be engaged and involved in their own safety…if anyone will listen. Many people are angry and cynical about safety because no one listens and just imposes the rules. Meaningful conversation is missing.

safety is about teamwork

One of the top reasons the OSHA cites organizations is the lack of proper hazards communications.

Hazard Communicating is a core element of any OSHA safety training compliance program, yet it has often been trivialized. You would think that supervisors and safety people would utilize the HazCom opportunity to converse with employees on a regular basis – not wait for an annual review.

Hazards are in the workplace; people need to understand the hazards and Management needs to create the conditions for meaningful, respectful conversations to occur. The conversation avenue for partnering is right there – among our people, not only about hazardous chemicals, but about all safety concerns…all people concerns. Why is there this level of disrespect for the people doing the work? Who cares? This is not difficult work. It takes commitment and time, but aren’t these both worth doing to save a life?

As I engage with people about their work, they are usually quite willing to talk about it, and often have good ideas about how to improve the situation. I have found that in talking together to explore what is the best way to do something, the people get quite interested and pay a lot more attention to what they are doing. Talking with the people, listening, and learning together results in a lot fewer injuries and incidents.

Our safety efforts across the various industries needs to shift to working with the people. We need to help people do things right. We do not need new safety philosophies; we need to be with the people, talking together, listening, learning, growing, and releasing our skills and insights to really make a difference to improving workplace safety.

All of you can walk among the people in your organizations, talking together, listening, learning, and doing together. Try it for 20 minutes a day, every day, for a few months and see what happens. What do you suppose you will begin to see and hear?

Changes Before Us

Change is a time when the possibility for getting hurt increases. By the time you read this, we will have shifted back to standard time. Daylight hour will change. Conditions around commuting will change with different hours and day light.

Some people will be extra tired until they adjust to the different hours. Work conditions may change. Our weather will be getting colder, often wetter, and slippery. Our windshields will need scraping, so we need to start a little earlier.

All this change, the bigger and the smaller ones, will cause us to be more alert and focused. Please pay attention to yourself, others and come home safely each day.

Below is a link to a short recap video on Hazards Communication. As you watch this, count how many opportunities you are provided with daily to:

1) Talk up general and/or chemical safety
2) Converse respectfully with an employee about the work
3) Respect and honor the individual and the task being done

Communicating is a huge key to Partnering in the Workplace. HazCom communications lend an excellent start for meaningful conversations across the board.

Hazard Communication Training for General Industry
from SafetyVideos.com

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Safety Partnership Tagged With: hazards communications, OSHA, partnering in the workplace, reducing risks in the workplace, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, safety situations in the workplace, safety training, teamwork, teamwork in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace support