By William H. Kincaid, PE, CSP
By making safety nothing special – a routine part of
the corporate culture – your company could become an outstanding safety
performer.
Safety management traditionally means safety programs, committees, rules and
inspections. Companies that have average safety systems like this can find their
results are average, or worse. There are few – if any – other operating
parameters where average is considered to be good enough. Companies that want to
excel in safety go further by integrating safety into daily activities, with
lots of management and employee responsibility and mutual participation.
My loss control consulting
clients can be divided into two groups: those that treat safety like something
special, and those that don’t. I’ll explain the “safety is something special”
system first. In my way of thinking, safety is treated like something special in
companies where it has its own special system that is nothing like the systems
by which every other operating goal is accomplished. It’s something special, off
by itself and managed with a unique system. It’s not a routine
expectation.
Something Special
This is how the “something special” safety system operates: Senior management
takes no active, visible role. There are no fair metrics for managerial or
supervisory safety performance. The company’s OSHA DART rate is compared against
BLS’ industry statistics, and everyone is satisfied when the company’s numbers
are the same as the national average. Maybe managers are held accountable in
some way for accidents, which is a measure heavily influenced by luck, not
necessarily effort. There’s no comprehensive way to measure what people are
doing for safety on a daily basis.
Often, the safety director and others have some stated authority, like the
right to “stop a job when it looks too dangerous,” but still have trouble
getting many people to routinely follow procedures. An employee who does not
follow safety procedures will get written up if caught by the safety director,
but the nearby supervisor who could have prevented the violation gets off
scot-free. If a safety-related issue comes up or an accident needs to be
investigated, everyone points to the safety director or safety committee. It’s a
form of organizational buck-passing. In this scenario, very few people have a
sense of true responsibility for safety. Rather, they wait to be told what to
do, and then, sometimes, don’t do it.
There’s very little outside of safety that’s handled this way in any
successful company. I’m not blaming senior management for allowing this to be
the typical model for a safety program.
Employers might think they’re doing exactly what they need to do by funding
and staffing a safety department. A client recently told me his senior
management “just isn’t committed to safety. They’re all about sales.” Yet these
same senior managers annually spend about a half a million bucks on
safety-related salaries, benefits, equipment and other expenses. Is it that they
aren’t committed, or is it that they are doing what they think is the best they
can do?
Having heard some CEOs lamenting their companies’ poor safety performance, I
have to assume that could be the case. The CEOs are troubled and mystified by
the mediocre results they see, especially when their companies are excellent in
every other way. They are stymied because they think safety really should be
something special at their companies, having such vast resources devoted to it.
That creates an opportunity for me to tell them something they’ve probably never
heard: Companies that don’t treat safety like it’s special are the ones that
succeed.
Nothing Special
Companies where safety is nothing special, just a routine part of the
culture, are relatively uncommon. These are the places where safety is handled
exactly like production and quality are. Responsibilities for specific
activities are assigned at all levels, and metrics have been created to measure
performance. Poor performance is studied and properly addressed. Supervisors
have a list of useful tasks they perform on a frequent basis. Middle managers
have a sure, simple way to verify that supervisors have been keeping up with
these tasks.
The accountability system is aimed at motivating correct behaviors, not
enforcement of draconian rules. And management has the guts to actually hold
people accountable for their responsibilities. If a good production performer is
habitually poor in safety, he’s not seen as a good performer for long.
At these companies, each employee has a role and a voice in safety, and is
well-aware that safety is important to their immediate supervisor. That
awareness comes not from slogans, signs or incentive programs, but from
supervisory involvement; frequent emphasis on safety; a positive, coaching
approach to behavioral situations; and an overall view of safety that includes
both proactive and reactive measures.
Senior Management Commitment
To start a system like this, the starting point is to have a “heart to heart”
talk with senior management. You and I know that if you even need to have a talk
like this, it may be the end of the line for your new proposed system. But it’s
critical that senior management understand that they have to take a role,
although a small one, in making safety happen beyond just signing the checks.
We shouldn’t assume that senior management doesn’t care. They probably think
they’re doing everything they need to do for safety. They’re smart enough to
know that the insurance premiums come out of the profit. They need to learn that
their main job is to visibly stand behind safety, not just quietly fret over it
and sign the checks. If we want safety to be a part of the company’s shared
values, attitudes, competencies and behavior patterns (what we sum up as the
“culture”), it’s going to take more than a determined safety person or committee
to make it happen.
People need to know that the big boss truly cares about something other than
how many gizmos get built and shipped. If the senior management cares, they have
to show it for people to know it. What’s important cascades down from the
visible activities, attitudes, values and statements of the senior managers.
Another way of saying it is that when something is truly important, everyone
should treat it like it’s important, especially senior management. It is an
ironclad fact that people generally will do what they consider to be important
to their immediate supervisor, and not much more.
A client company had a run of construction fatalities and decided that
killing people on the job wouldn’t cut it anymore. They’ve implemented some
highly visible senior management safety activities to get the point across. The
CEO, CFO or COO routinely step into safety orientations and talk with new
employees about safety as a company value. Each class hears a tape of the CEO’s
radio interview talking about nothing but how safety is vital to him and to the
company’s performance. The tape includes his heartfelt statement that he never
again wants to visit one of his employee’s wives and “tell her that her husband
won’t be coming home.”
At this company, training time for new people has been expanded from a few
hours to several weeks, and the process has been made much more effective and
organized. Company meetings always start with talk of safety performance. People
who’ve done a good job are recognized. The lost-time accident penalty in the
safety bonus plan has been eliminated, because it rewarded luck over hard work,
and luck isn’t measurable performance.
To show they mean business, company management implemented some
“not-an-option” safety rules for some extremely critical life-and-death
behavioral items. During site visits, “not-an-option” compliance is the first
thing the senior managers check. Anyone who breaks a “not-an-option” rule will
not only be looking for a new job, but their supervisor and the rest of the crew
also will be looking with them. And that’s not talk ... since implementing the
“not-an-option” rules, entire crews have been fired for breaking them.
You can bet that a summary firing is attention-getting, especially when
skilled labor is in shortage and the crews were top performers in every other
way. Yes, it’s punitive to fire people, and not necessarily motivating, but the
company couldn’t handle such serious items any other way without losing its
safety credibility.
Supervisory Accountability
In a system where safety is nothing special, supervisors have routine,
visible duties. One of these duties is making sure everything is the way it
ought to be in their areas. Most supervisors will say, “I’m keeping an eye on
safety all day long,” but if there is a guard removed from an energized machine,
or an employee not wearing required PPE, this assertion is questionable. Even if
they’re doing a great job observing employees’ safety behaviors, if the
employees don’t know that their actions are being observed, they will assume
that the supervisor doesn’t care about it.
Production-related matters are obviously being closely watched and
documented. This means a similar level of attention, and a similar observation
and accountability system, need to be devoted to safety to keep it on the
employees’ radar screens.
When working with clients, I start by having the supervisors work with their
teams to develop their own checklists of safety-critical items (behaviors and
conditions). The aim is to come up with as short a list as possible without
leaving off anything that can lead to a serious accident.
After these are approved by the company’s safety department and managers,
each supervisor begins regular, documented inspections using this list. An
hourly person accompanies the supervisor on every walk-through and signs off on
the checklist. The checklists are sent to the department management, and a
record is made of how well they were completed and the presence of an employee’s
signature on the checklist is confirmed. Any issues are addressed, and the
checklists then are shredded to eliminate a non-productive paper trail.
The safety-critical items checklists are incorporated into documented,
department-specific safety orientations that replace the old, casual system of
showing the new people around. The tighter orientations are an example of “when
something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right every time.”
Supervisors conduct much of the safety-related sections of the orientation
and complete a checklist. They also can do a documented follow-up. If there is
large-scale safety training, the supervisor is given a role in presenting it.
This sends a much better, more visible message than the safety director sitting
employees in front of a TV and popping in a generic safety tape.
Supervisors are expected to include safety in team meetings; spend a little
time working through job safety analyses with their teams; be the “point person”
responsible for accident investigations; do a safety briefing when it’s time for
an employee to do a non-routine task; and personally conduct behavioral safety
observations.
If the company is using “peer observation” behavior-based safety (BBS),
having supervisors reinforce the importance of critical safety behaviors is a
must. Any visible lack of support for the BBS process will chop the legs right
off its chances of making a difference, at least over the long term. BBS can’t
make someone care about something that their supervisor couldn’t care less
about. An actively involved supervisor will champion the BBS process.
If supervisors are over-tasked, some of their recordkeeping and clerical
tasks can be delegated to lead people and senior hourly employees. That frees up
a little time for supervisors to perform accountable safety tasks. When
supervisors do all these good things, employees quickly get the impression that
safety matters on the shop floor – not just in the safety director’s office –
and they’re right.
Safety as Morale Booster
The effect of involving all levels of management in a more visible safety
process is to show employees that safety matters, and that they really matter to
the company. When does attention to any operating parameter ever do that, other
than safety? A big push for fewer quality rejects just says, “Hey, let’s make
more money for the company, which won’t necessarily be reflected in the size of
your paycheck.” Same thing for efficiency and productivity. But caring about
safety tells people, “We care about you.”This is a factor in building a better
workplace climate, commonly thought of as morale.
Numerous industrial psychology studies conducted decades ago showed that an
improved workplace climate substantially increased job performance. I’ve seen my
own clients achieve 30 percent reductions in cost per accident claim, and 35
percent increases in employee retention. Both of these improvements directly
help improve net profits.
In my practice, I’ve observed that improving morale even unintentionally –
for example, by implementing a new safety program with lots of supervisory
visibility and employee involvement – cuts turnover and improves productivity.
We should make good workplace climate, (aka morale), a point of competitiveness
and an operational goal. It pays for itself.
In making safety a routine responsibility for everyone, we can make our
companies into excellent safety performers. Day-to-day, hour-to-hour inclusion
of safety into everything that happens in the facility will bring the lowest
possible accident rates and improve other important parameters such as workplace
climate. That’s how we benefit by making safety into “nothing special.”
Contributing Editor William H. Kincaid, PE, CSP, is vice president and
senior loss control consultant for Lockton Companies LLC.
Recent Comments