Here are the three steps to take employee focus off of money and put it back onto safety To a union audience at a workshop, I asked the question, “Why do you work safely?” The answers varied from, "it’s the right thing to do" to "money talks."
Safety is in the midst of a change in perception: from a compliance program to a lifestyle choice. 2015 is the year that you are going to see an emergence of attitude being a major factor when it comes to workplace safety. That doesn’t mean that the process safety will take a back seat. Besides improving the safety process, safety attitudes will create buy-in to the safety program.
Selling safety meets resistance. It’s not about shoving safety down their throats. It’s about helping them see that safety improves their lives. Use the word "sell" and safety managers get their backs up. The belief is that safety shouldn’t have to be sold. The word “selling” gets in the way of the true purpose of safety.
6 minimum standards that are preventing you from establishing a strong safety culture. No one wants to see anyone injured. To build a safety culture requires more than just viewing safety as an injury-prevention program. It’s more than following rules and meeting minimum standards. To build a safety culture requires employees to be respectful of each other, to display courtesy and care about each other. Safety is a teamwork philosophy.
Every single person in the organization has a hand in a strong safety culture. It doesn’t work any other way. Strong safety cultures are built on character and values like courtesy, respect, sharing, teamwork and personal leadership. They are not built on certifications, hierarchies, self-congratulations, position or tenure.
To improve the culture of safety, take a long, hard look at how you frame communications about safety. Safety Culture will improve when the communications about safety within the organization improve. Besides increasing the quantity of communication, consider the quality.
You have all of the control over your safety program and how many of your good people buy-in to the program. There are some things you can control and some you can not. What you can control is your participation in the safety program. No one can turn down or increase your participation in safety.
You'd want your co-workers to make the right decisions if you were the boss of them. Well, you are the boss of you. So how about you act like you're in charge? Stop using the word leadership to describe management. We have all worked for managers who had zero leadership skills. You don’t call them your leader. You call them your boss. Leadership and management have little to do with each other.
Here are three compelling arguments for choosing safety. Call it the “Diesel Strategy” because it is powerful and goes a long distance. The safety department complains that it’s difficult to get workers to buy-in to safety. Employees resist buying-in to a program of checks, forms and paperwork.
The best safety meetings have both conviction and experience. The safety meeting is far too important to hand off to an inexperienced person and hope that it goes OK. Can employees lead the safety meeting? It is an idea that hopes to lead to increased engagement. The thinking is that if a new voice speaks, people will listen. If a staffer leads the meeting, then others will engage better. It might be true. But there is a stronger case for not putting the responsibility onto employees.
