Kevin Burns Blog

Safety leaders focus in the present and on what they are doing in the moment. With Labor Day on its way this weekend, many will be hitting the golf links. The subject of safety leadership is normally a serious one. But, I thought that we could venture a little off-road and have a look at safety leadership from a different perspective. Each of the points should be fairly evident and provide you with a new way to connect something fun with something serious. Let's play the front-nine. Here are nine reasons that safety leadership is like golf:

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 every job, regardless of position or title, there are people who are effective at the job. And there are people who may be qualified for the job, but not terribly effective. Being qualified for the job doesn’t automatically guarantee that you’re going to be effective at it. You may have seniority, or your certification, or a love of safety. These don't guarantee that you'll be effective at the job. The job of a safety person isn’t to be a hero or to save people’s lives. The biggest part of the job really is communication. Safety people and supervisors are supposed to influence, coach and mentor employees to make good decisions. To become much more effective and make a bigger difference, understand that your people don’t need your protection. They need your guidance....

When employees say that they’re in it for the paycheck, the other safety motivators are missing. A few years ago, a group of paper mill workers gathered in a community hall for a safety meeting. I was facilitating a safety leadership workshop that day. The conversation turned to motivation for safety. I asked the attendees to shout out reasons why the employees were motivated to work safely. First answer offered? Money talks. It seems that the employees were given a quarterly bonus for exceptional safety performance. Now, I disagree with cash incentives as motivation for increased safety performance. So I followed up asking that if the bonuses stopped, would they purposely engage in unsafe work? No one was willing to step forward and be anything but safe. We established that it wasn’t the money that motivated them to be safe. They agreed that money played only a small role in helping them to focus on safety. Motivating Safety Beyond The Paycheck So, what about the people who claim to be only in it for the money? The ones who say they only come to work for the paycheck? How do you get them motivated about safety?

Welcome to The Safety Leader Podcast. We are live on Libsyn and iTunes! Click the play button above to listen.

To resonate, a safety message needs to address perceptions, misconceptions and align with attitudes. Safety communications and marketing are important. A cohesive communications or safety marketing strategy helps to connect many of the dots in safety for your people. It gives them reminders and helps safety stay top-of-mind. Telling your people something once in a safety meeting and hoping that it changes behaviour doesn't work. It won’t. You need to include a communications and safety marketing strategy. Then repeat.

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. In iTunes Podcasts, simply click "File" and then "Subscribe To Podcast." Enter "http://kevburns.libsyn.com/rss" in the open window.) It's About Respect As a safety leader, you have a strong commitment to safety. Scolding your bosses on social media for a lack of commitment to safety accomplishes nothing. It displays a lack of respect for your co-workers. Safety folks are convinced that safety can’t improve without senior management’s support and commitment. They believe that the safety department isn’t able to bring the safety numbers down until senior management gets on board and increases their commitment to safety. That’s not true. A perceived lack of commitment to safety from senior management doesn’t make your job impossible. It’s just going to be a little harder but not impossible. Senior management is responsible for ensuring the health of the forest. Front-line supervisors and safety personnel are responsible for ensuring the health of each tree. And if the trees are healthy, the forest is healthy. Your job at the front line is to ensure the health of each tree.

Welcome to The Safety Leader Podcast. We are now live on Libsyn and coming soon to iTunes! Click the play button above to listen. (Meanwhile, you can still subscribe to The Safety Leader Podcast in iTunes. In iTunes Podcasts, simply click "File" and then "Subscribe To Podcast." Enter "http://kevburns.libsyn.com/rss" in the open window.) How did the Safety Leader Podcast come about? In talking with quite a few of my clients and connections on social media, I came to realize that many of my Blog readers worked on the road, in remote locations sometimes, from their mobile offices a lot and didn't have ten minutes to sit down and watch a video or read a few blog posts in succession. But you drive to work and you drive home from work. And sometimes you drive for work. It's those miles that can be made useful, where you can improve your skills as a supervisor or safety person to get better at helping others to be better at safety. As a safety communications and management consultant, I’ve seen that when frontline supervisors buy into safety as one of their personal values, they better understand their role in keeping the workplace safe. The Safety Leader Podcast introduces the next level in safety. Workplace safety lies in the relationship between the frontline employee, the employee’s immediate supervisor, and the bond among the entire crew. Supervisors are uniquely positioned to bring workplace safety past compliance and across the threshold to where safety is personal. When trust and respect are the tools of frontline supervisors, their ability to personally influence frontline employees is deeply improved.

People take the advice and guidance of the people they respect. As a person with a strong commitment to safety, you may have an opinion about senior management’s commitment to safety. A safety person scolding their bosses on social media for a lack of commitment to safety accomplishes nothing. But it does display a lack of respect for co-workers, even if they are your bosses. Many safety people believe safety cannot improve without senior management’s support and commitment. Unfortunately, that’s simply not true. The Forest And The Trees I've been working with a few forestry companies lately so pardon my forest analogy. Senior management is responsible for ensuring the health of the forest. Front-line supervisors and safety personnel are responsible for ensuring the health of each tree. The jobs are very different. At the front-line, if each tree is healthy, the forest is healthy.

Motivation plays a role in engagement and, subsequently, safety. As a front-line safety person or supervisor, you have tremendous impact on employee motivation. The words you use, your facial expressions, and your demeanor all speak without words on how much you value the people you work with. People can feel when they are not valued. People can read between the lines of what their bosses think about them. And when you work for someone like that, it’s tough to find your own motivation to do your best. After all, if you don’t feel valued, why bother? Championship sports teams value their team mates. They play as one. They value each other. They recognize each other’s strengths. They depend on their team mates and their coaches. They are in-sync. And when that happens, motivation to give their very best performance is high. When an employee lacks motivation, there is a corresponding reduction in engagement. That affects productivity. Without motivation to give their best, an employee will be more apt to take shortcuts. Shortcuts impact safety. Keep employees focused, engaged and motivated to do their very best. It can build a team of high-performers willing to value themselves and each other. The best way to protect their value is by ensuring each others’ safety. Motivation plays a clear role in engagement and, subsequently, safety. Here are four ways you can improve the motivation of your team:

To move people toward safety, you have to get the communications part right first. Safety performance is only as good as the quality of the communication. Communication matters. How you communicate can matter even more. It has been studied that 50-80% of a supervisor’s time is spent communicating. Since it is the biggest job supervisors and safety people do, you need to be good at it. In safety, you will find warnings, communications and marketing. What’s the difference? Warnings warn. Communications inform. Marketing moves. For this article, we are going to focus on the communications part, especially how you communicate. Here are four strategies that can immediately improve the level of your safety communications: