Why Safety Rules Are Not Most Important

Cops enforce the rules. Coaches work on technique and inspire a burning desire to win.

safety are not most important kevin burns safety speaker

Which of these three was your last safety meeting about: the rules, technique or a desire to win?

The easiest of the three are the rules. Quoting from the OH&S Code takes no effort. Rules have little to do with how well someone practices safety. Rules do not determine one’s attitude toward safety nor their aptitude for doing safety well. It’s not the rules that make a winner. It’s how they play the game - technique and a desire to win - aptitude and attitude.

So, are you a cop or a coach? Cops enforce the rules. Coaches work on technique and inspire a burning desire to win. Safety needs more coaches. Start thinking like a sports coach developing your players’ aptitude for the game and the right attitude.

Rules

Every game has rules. They are necessary for structure and to fairly lay out how the game will be played. But rarely do rules determine a winner. Referees enforce rules but don’t determine the outcome (despite what sore losers might say). When players play by the rules, the referees have little to do.

Granted, yes, there is a need for rules. But how often do you see sports teams meet to go over the rules? It doesn’t happen unless there is a rule change at the beginning of the year and then they discuss it … once!

The expectation is that professionals know the rules of the game before they set foot on the playing field. Football players know that a face-mask grab is illegal. Does that make them dial down their play? No. It simply forces them to play at a high level of intensity within the rules. They simply adjust where they will grab and tackle an opposing player.

If you want to build a winning team, you won’t do it from just enforcing the rules.

Technique

Technique is the way you carry out tasks - your aptitude. In the same way that a baseball player works hours on making clean contact with the ball, a golfer spends a lifetime perfecting his swing, a sprinter works to shave 1/100th of a second by adjusting his stride, a hockey player perfects that one-timer slap-shot or how a running back protects the football, technique is more important than the rules. Simply put, if you lack aptitude (good technique) you won’t play.

Those with good technique use it always - at work and at home. You don’t see pro golfers swinging perfectly for major tournaments but then toss all of that technique away on a pleasure round - hacking and chopping at the ball. Employees who PPE-up at work and then go home and cut the lawn in flip-flop sandals are not professionals committed to good technique.

You don’t see high-performance athletes taking unnecessary risks or doing something stupid that could end their careers.

Desire To Win

Desire is what separates two equally skilled players. You’ve heard the stories of highly-skilled teams of superstars going up against a rag-tag bunch of nobodies with big hearts and an even bigger desire to win. The outcome seems to favor the underdog because they want it more (attitude).

Skill and technique won’t result in championship without a desire to win. Players must buy-in to the coaching, the system and the belief that it can be done. Once they buy-in, they don’t obsess on the rules. They obsess on giving their best performance every single game.

Where is the win in safety? It’s in a Zero at the end of a day. When every single member of the team gets to go home at the end of a work day, call it a win. Just like any sports team, a team with a desire to win looks out for each other, works the system and gives their best.

Why Technique And Desire Beats Rules

If you’ve put rules ahead of developing technique and a desire to win, then you will have to enforce the rules always. Employees will have to be reminded constantly and policed incessantly and they will hate it and you for being a cop. But assemble a team of workers, coach them with excellent technique and inspire that desire to go home safely each night and they will voluntarily operate within the confines of the rules. That’s what professionals do. They find a way to win inside of the rule book.

When employees view safety in a different way, they see safety in a different way. If you want your crew to buy-in to safety, start with having them look at safety in a different way. I can help you with that.

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Topics: safety leadership, safety meeting, safety buy-in