Kevin Burns Blog

At management level meetings, safety isn’t about rules. It’s about how safety advances the organization. Companies are including safety more often in general meeting discussions. It’s commendable. Safety people have wished for a long time for safety to be a top agenda item in management and general staff meetings. Now it’s starting to happen in more and more organizations. But is there a plan on behalf of the Safety department to maximize the effectiveness of this new position? Is safety prepared for their moment in the sun?

Welcome to The Safety Leader Podcast. We are live on Libsyn and iTunes! Click the play button above to listen. Subscribe to The Safety Leader Podcast in iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-safety-leader-podcast/id1147852584 “What matters most is that everyone goes home safe each day.” Is making sure people go home safe really what matters most? Because if that’s what matters most, then it’s the least you can do. It's the bare minimum of things you are allowed to do by law when it comes to safety. You are not allowed to do less. You can be fined or jailed if you do less. Employees have a basic expectation that their workplace and their employers will do what is necessary to protect them from harm. So when you tell your people that what matters most is that they go home safely, they know that. That’s their expectation. So really, is sending people home safely the most important thing you do each day? Or could you be doing a lot more?

Telling people to avoid a particular action or behavior does not automatically result in the right actions and behaviors. Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't do what he did. Beware of the danger. Employed use of gruesome photos of severed and mutilated body parts. Safety messages are regularly reinforced negatively. Negative reinforcement does not automatically create positive safety behaviors. A recent series of statistics offered some insight of how people react and behave to the words and suggestions of others. Let's take a look at how you allow yourself to be influenced by others when choosing to buy a product. Do you read the reviews on a product before you buy? Do you research what others have had to say about a product or service? Have you ever asked a friend or family member to recommend a tradesperson, a plumber, an electrician, a handyman, a carpet cleaning company, etc.? Have they ever told you which ones to steer clear of? A study by Dimensional Research took a look at how we react and use online reviews. The findings have implications about how we react to communications. In the study, 90% of people were swayed by positive reviews about a product. They were swayed enough to purchase the product themselves. On the other hand, 86% of on-line shoppers were swayed by negative reviews of a product. They were swayed enough to not purchase the product. You might think that this is a near dead-heat. But it's not. You have to consider what the reviews actually swayed people to do, or not do. The positive reviews swayed people to take action and buy. The negative reviews swayed people to take no action and not buy. Negative reviews did nothing to cause people to act. The negative reviews caused people to stop acting.

Your people deserve your best communication effort. Their safety depends on it. The need to be effective in safety communications is perhaps the most important skill any supervisor or safety person can have. It has been proven that managers (including safety managers) and supervisors spend 50-80% of their day in actual communication. 50-80%! Communication is seriously important. If you have to repeat yourself, you're not being effective. And when your effectiveness is lacking, your people aren't buying-in to what you're saying. They're tolerating safety the rules. What you say and how you say it matters. You need to maximize your communication skills. Here are four personal strategies that you need to embrace to begin implementing effectiveness in safety communications:

Safety improves when engagement improves. Engagement improves when supervisors and safety people make it a point to value the people that they work with. An untrained or under-skilled supervisor or safety person tends to get the basics done. Nothing more. Get production. Stay within the safety rules. Everybody goes home safe (fingers crossed). Job done. Except, the job is not done. In fact, it could be argued that job is systematically being undone. If you’re focused on just getting it done, you may be missing the biggest part of the safety picture.

Welcome to The Safety Leader Podcast. We are live on Libsyn and iTunes! Click the play button above to listen. Subscribe to The Safety Leader Podcast in iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-safety-leader-podcast/id1147852584 In a perfect world, safety processes and procedures are definable and repeatable. But when you throw in the human element, process and procedure don’t always work. People are the most difficult variable to control. The choice is either to police your people into compliance or to build a culture of safety that wins their hearts and minds. As a motivational tool, hitting frontline workers over the head with a rulebook doesn’t work. In fact, it takes much less effort to let them know they’re appreciated. The problem is that an inexperienced supervisor who doesn’t know how to motivate and develop individuals on the job, ultimately has a harder time getting the job done. If there is no strategy to continuously improve employees, there’s little chance of improving the organization as a whole, and that includes safety. In fact, there are seven particular things that inexperienced and poorly trained supervisors and safety people do wrong. Let’s take a look at each of these mistakes.

It’s not the framework that determines safety success. It’s what happens inside the framework. Each year, sports leagues adjust and tweak their respective rules in an effort to make the game more entertaining for the fans. They also adjust rules to better protect their players and make the game safer. But rule changes don’t always prevent penalties or injuries. Even with new rules, sometimes tougher rules, individual players still choose to step outside of the rules. As much as there needs to be a framework to play the game within, it’s not the rules that improve the play. It's what the players do, the actions they take within the rules that improves the play. It's also what makes the game more exciting for the fans and safer for their fellow players. Safety performance is only as good as the people who are engaged in safety. Safety rules and process are a framework for how we are supposed to work in safety. But it still comes down to what each individual employee chooses to do within the rules and process of safety that determines the safety program’s success.

If you want to be passionate about safety, first be passionate about people. Successful workplace safety culture lies in the relationship between the frontline employee, the employee’s immediate supervisor, and the bond among the entire crew. No senior level initiatives, safety department compliance measures, or culture improvement ideas can have positive results if the frontline supervisor hasn’t established real working relationships. The supervisor needs to be a tipping point between safety compliance and safety success.

If you want to impact safety performance and buy-in, you are going to have to make a heartfelt connection. Finding a way to get front-line employees to buy-in to safety is tough. Communications can be a bit uncomfortable too, especially during the awkward one-on-one, heartfelt moments.

Welcome to The Safety Leader Podcast. We are live on Libsyn and iTunes! Click the play button above to listen. Subscribe to The Safety Leader Podcast in iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-safety-leader-podcast/id1147852584 If a safety issue doesn’t affect you directly, you may see the importance of addressing it but you may not feel the same motivation to address it quickly. Because the problem doesn’t affect you personally. If you’re not working directly at the front-line, you may not be motivated by the same things or in the same way that a front-line worker or supervisor is when it comes to safety. Every moment spent in an office, and not in the field or on the shop floor, is a moment that you’re not experiencing what your front-line crews and supervisors are experiencing. When you talk about performance numbers at safety meetings, they don’t have the same meaning. They don’t resonate with your people the way they do with you. If you want to connect with people at a level where they feel your commitment to safety, walk a mile in their shoes, or walk a mile beside their shoes. Walk where they walk. See what they see. Experience what they experience....