Kevin Burns Blog

Organizations that align themselves with negative messaging struggle to improve their safety results. Of course negative reinforcement doesn’t work. But then safety people do just that. You reinforce your safety message negatively without even realizing it. Negative reinforcement does not automatically create safety. In the last 20 years of studying human behavior, motivation, engagement and safety, I’ve discovered that organizations that align themselves with negative messaging struggle to improve their safety results. A recent series of off-topic statistics got my attention.

Companies claim to value safety over all else but unknowingly engage in activities that undermine that desire. Good companies want to protect their people from harm in the workplace. Of that there is little doubt. A problem exists, however, when deed does not align with word. Over 70% of North American workers are not fully engaged in their job. Without being fully engaged in the job, there is little likelihood that an employee will be fully engaged in safely doing the job. Companies claim to value safety over all else. But they unknowingly engage in activities that undermine that desire. Companies want to become world-class performers in safety but measure themselves against industry averages. Companies say they make safety the top priority but then don't invest in peripheral training. Many don't have support materials to own the hearts and minds of their employees. Eventually employees clue-in and say, "don't tell me how much you care - show me." The safety world is moving away from simple compliance models. Integration of omnipresent safety (permeating throughout the organization) is the next level. Here's where the real work needs to be done. Let's start with the 3 things that organizations must do better before safety performance can improve.

Those who complain about using marketing to advance their safety programs just don't understand its value. The safety purists hate the idea of marketing safety. But then, they object to anything that doesn`t involve process, procedure, the law, or enforcement. They oppose the idea that safety needs to be marketed or sold. They complain that marketing of safety is crass and fluff. Those who complain about using marketing to advance their safety programs just don't understand its value. Better to condemn than to admit you don’t understand right? Marketing, although a science, is not that difficult to comprehend. Brand Choice What is it that makes a family choose one brand of laundry soap over another? What is it that makes a person choose one brand of truck over another? Android or iPhone? Apple or Microsoft? Starbucks or Tim Hortons? OK, that last reference is decidedly Canadian. The same question could be asked of employees. What makes one employee buy-in to safety and another to simply tolerate safety rules?

You don’t instill a positive safety culture by settling for performance within the average. The best organizations give world-class safety performance. They don't do it with a mediocre effort, mediocre standards or mediocre safety people. They do it by surpassing industry average targets, a focused engagement and with safety people on top of their games. They search out and employ supervisors and managers who set a higher standard for themselves. They seek out those who want to inspire their own crews to be better, to reach farther, to achieve at a higher level. You don’t build championship teams by shooting right for the middle of industry averages. You don’t instill a positive safety culture by settling for performance within the average. If you want to lead, you have to do not just what others are not doing, but by doing what they’re not even prepared to do. World-class safety is driven by having higher standards than the average. Higher standards drive a greater effort to set themselves apart. Greater effort is driven by high-performing safety people. World-class safety is not achieved by a mediocre effort, standards or people who don’t seek to be exceptional. Without exceptional people, you're shooting right for mediocrity. You will not, and I repeat, NOT get there by luck.

Do not underestimate the power of a well-crafted safety campaign for supporting your safety initiatives. Federal elections are in full-swing in Canada, USA, Argentina and Hong Kong. But then, there are elections always going on somewhere. But it’s the national elections that dominate the TV and radio airwaves. All of the political parties fight for attention of voters in the hopes of swaying their ballot “X.” The political parties constantly assess their messages’ effectiveness. If the message isn’t resonating with the voter, they change it up in the hopes that the new message does. They engage polls and surveys. They take random sample sizes and ask questions. And they buy advertising. Advertising is a one-way street: outward. It talks at us not with us. There is no conversation. There is no engagement. However, to improve safety communication is not about buying advertising. To build engagement, especially in safety, requires more than just banners and signs, or a few words at the monthly safety meeting.

Safety managers, engagement just became your department! Engagement is the biggest problem in the workplace today. The surveys tell us that 70% of employees are NOT fully engaged. And it's not just Gen Y - they only account for 34% of the workforce forcing you to explain the other 36% to make it add up to 70. Stop kidding yourself. The problem is not just young workers. You would think ... You would think that a 70% level of disengagement, a serious drop in focused-attention productivity, would be cause for grave concern for companies. After all, lost productivity creates a huge financial mess forcing companies to continue to pay more and get less. You'd think that there would be a hue-and-cry from Corporate North America to find solutions intended to curb this very real problem that is plaguing our workplaces and costing us money. But there isn't. It's apparently still not painful enough. If it were painful enough, companies would be doing something about it. But they're still not getting it and here's why: because it an "employee" engagement problem (terribly named as though it's all the employees' fault).

The position of safety person is no more important than any other employee position. No one job is more important or carries more weight than another. When you’re trying to get employee buy-in to the safety program, you are trying to advance an ideal. You are, in essence, selling a point-of-view and the safety program. Selling an idea takes tact and strategy. This is where safety people can make a big mistake. They assume that safety will sell itself. They also assume that employees will respect the safety person’s position. Neither can be assumed. In twenty years of consulting with safety people, senior managers, and front-line staff, I have encountered two big reasons why employees don’t respect safety, the safety program or the safety person. These are by no means absolutes. However, the first is that employees can feel manipulated by safety, the safety people or the safety program. The second is that they feel that the safety person can demand undue respect.

The move toward personal leadership-focused safety culture requires that supervisors have management skills. Front-line supervisors are not only responsible for safety performance but almost all of the production activities. In addition, supervisors are responsible for assigning tasks, ensuring quality production and providing technical expertise. They have to do that while finding ways to help employees find their internal motivation and desire to do the job well. Employees also expect their supervisors to offer positive performance feedback. That's a key requirement to keeping employees engaged and motivated. Any shortfall in employee training falls onto the supervisor to fix. Poor employee skills training means the supervisor must fix that - on the fly. And the front-line supervisor is expected to fix safety procedure issues on the fly as well. Plus, the supervisor is expected to take employee concerns up to the appropriate middle manager. The execution of training (or lack of it) falls upon the shoulders of the front-line supervisors. Most times, these folks are thrust into their jobs without any preparation.

When you commit to the safety of employees, you commit to the empowerment of employees. You commit to unlocking their personal leadership capacity. Compliance safety leveled the playing field and ensured some basic minimum standards for workers to remain safe on the job. It meant getting employees to follow protocols even if they didn't mesh with the employee's own personal values. Compliance safety did what it was supposed to do. It was good while it lasted. But the days of a corporate culture built around compliance-based safety are numbered. Today, there are a lot of discussions on safety; most of it on the process-side. Never before in history have we had better processes and procedures in safety. Never before in history have there been more certified safety professionals. So why isn’t the industry at Zero? Because safety is not a process problem. It is a people problem. The processes work - but only when people use them.

Employees who don't care about their job, don’t care about safely doing the job. There is a lot of talk of leadership on the job these days; specifically, safety leadership. Why? Employee leadership raises personal standards and contribution especially in safety. Leadership is an attitude. People who own the attitude of personal leadership do better, conscientious work. Old-style, top-down management is fast becoming ineffective and giving way to teams, mentoring and coaching. Involvement is key to shifting the safety paradigm. Managers telling employees what to do is outdated. Companies are coaching employees to voluntarily step up their personal safety leadership capacity. Companies are attempting to improve employee safety buy-in. As a result, there is much discussion on responsibility and accountability. Personal leadership capacity in safety is the next level of safety engagement. Disengagement levels hover around 70%. Companies are attempting to fight back to help their people engage.