Kevin Burns Blog

If you want to change the safety culture, you have to change the way you do things around here.

There has been a lot of talk on the subject of safety culture recently. But for those that have a hard time defining what safety culture really is, let’s turn to Wikipedia’s definition. “Safety culture is the attitude, beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to safety in the workplace. Safety culture is a part of organizational culture, and has been described by the phrase "the way we do things around here."

The battle for safety is not about safety at all.

Engagement, or a lack of it, is the biggest problem in the workplace today. The Gallup surveys tell us that 71% of employees are NOT fully engaged. Safety suffers when engagement is missing. How could it not be? If people aren’t engaged in their work, then they aren’t going to be engaged in safely doing their work.

Why has this not become a massive battle by companies to re-connect their people with their work? Because the command-and-control model of management pushes rules-enforcement instead of relationship-building. In my new book, PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety, I write that more rules, more procedures and more processes heaped on to people who aren't engaged, aren’t connected and aren’t paying attention just isn’t going to work. If you want people to pay attention to safety, you first have to get them to pay attention. That means engage first.

A 71% level of disengagement is a serious drop in focused-attention productivity. This should be the battle you’re fighting in your efforts to improve safety performance. Lost productivity and disengaged safety performance 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 the corporate executives to find solutions intended to curb this very real problem that is plaguing our workplaces and costing us money. But there isn't.

Engagement isn’t being talked about in safety circles. They’re still talking about more processes and procedures to fix an obvious engagement problem. But because it’s called an "employee" engagement problem, safety doesn’t know how to fix that.

Here are three ways you can begin to improve engagement levels with employees:

PeopleWork lays out a new safety model. It changes the discussion from rule-based enforcement to performance-based culture focused on mentoring, coaching, and inspiring teams.

When frontline supervisors buy into safety as a personal value, they better understand their role in keeping the workplace safe. In fact, if crews themselves can become safety leaders, the need for safety inspectors almost disappears altogether.

So, I wrote PeopleWork - The Human Touch in Workplace Safety to introduce the next level in safety. In the book, I lay out The M4 Method for taking workplace safety to the next level. The M4 Method combines four elements: Management, Meetings, Marketing and Motivation. All parts depend on the other parts to take safety from a compliance-based focus to one that is more people-based. The people-based approach helps employees to buy-in to safety.

Here are a few snippets from the book now on sale worldwide on Amazon....

People don’t buy-in to safety because they get a prize.

Once upon a time I was photocopier salesperson. Our sales manager would run regular sales contests. The most cold-calls would win a cash prize. The most sales in a month would win a hotel stay and dinner. The top salesman annually would win a big cash bonus. The winners were usually those who were top of the heap anyway.

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.

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.