Kevin Burns Blog

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.

Improve the individuals and the organization as a whole gets better. Improve personal skills and the collective safety culture improves. Safety meetings, should solve problems and make the organization better. They are not meant to bore, to disengage or to frustrate. But they do. Meetings don’t have to entertain. But there is nothing wrong with entertaining employees and making work fun, even safety. Fun meetings engage employees and increase uptake.

Do you want your people fearing for their safety? Or would you rather have them feeling confident and supported in their safe choices? The notice read: “An inspirational keynote speech preferably from someone who's had an accident. A leave-behind message to always be mindful and follow procedures. A flat fee of $(cheap). No phone calls please.”

Highly engaged employees aligned with the safety program make the company money, reduce turnover and lower incident rates. Safety is fast becoming the best tool to recruit, hire and retain good people. Simply put, when yours is the best and safest place to work, you will attract and retain the best employees. But if your employees identify with even a few points on the list below, you will have some work to do in finding good people and, more importantly, hanging on to the good ones you have.

It is impossible to create accountability in safety without getting every employee to make it a part of their job. Safety managers and front-line supervisors want employees to be more active and vocal about safety. They want employees to be more engaged in the decisions that the employees make and the results they get. They want more active participation in reporting, in actively talking about safety and a much higher involvement in being vocal at safety meetings.

Small, incremental improvements to the safety program are not as noticeable and do not expose employees to undue stress. Every job has its ups and downs. Employees can feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of responsibility and workload. Then add in paperwork, Job Hazard Assessments, new OH&S guidelines, new reporting as part of the corporate re-focus on safety and you have a workforce that can feel stressed. Responsibility can be demanding. But taking a coffee break of fifteen minutes per day to self-improve can reduce stress and feelings of being overwhelmed.

Have you thought about the value and benefit that a well-run safety meeting can bring to your organization? There is no other department in your organization that brings together every single staff member as often as a safety meeting does. No one should be exempt from attending safety meetings. Safety applies to everyone. Even the receptionist should be involved in safety meetings. The purpose of a safety meeting may have started as a legal requirement but have you thought about the value and the huge benefit that a well-run safety meeting can bring to your organization? Let’s start with three benefits that your safety meetings create ... but only if you do them right:

Every safety-whiner points the finger at the company to be responsible. Personal accountability goes missing when it’s whine-time on the safety job. So, are you responsible for your own safety? It would seem elementary. But the safety whiners, the one’s who think that the whole idea of safety is just big pain in the ass, don’t get that. They expect that the company will supply them with their eye protection, hearing protection, gloves and will pony up cash for other parts of the required and mandated safety equipment. And just like a rental car, they treat the company-purchased safety protection in the same way.

Personal leaders in safety are those who lead themselves in their own lives and make decisions that are best for themselves and those around them. When consulting with companies to help them improve their safety meetings, I routinely meet with safety managers, supervisors and foremen in a round-table discussions. In these round-tables, I get a better understanding of staff participation levels, identify what is working well and what is not and establish safety culture baselines.

Here are three things you can do right now to improve participation in safety meetings and make them lively. You’ve sat at the back of the room at safety meetings, arms crossed, watching the clock on the wall, going over in your head the things you still had to do that day and waiting for the meeting to be over. You’ve even secretly hoped that no one had any questions so you could simply get out of the meeting and back to work.