Kevin Burns Blog

Safety leadership is about putting leadership skills into the hands of the people who are responsible for safety.

What’s that got to do with me? That is one of the first questions you ask yourself before you commit to doing something, or volunteering for something. You want to see the direct benefit back to you. Even in charitable giving you get a win. That’s why you do it.

Employees respond better to those things in their work where they can see the benefit of their own full participation. Show the employee his or her win and you will get their engagement. Safety is included in that.

Cut through the clutter

Everyone is busy. There are more than enough people asking for your attention and making demands on you each day. You have to be picky about the things that you give your attention to. You do not have an unlimited amount of energy or time. That’s why books and videos and articles and videos on safety get your attention. You have responsibilities in safety. You want resources that help you perform better at safety. Easy peasy. You pick the resources that speak directly to what you’re trying to do. There’s a win for you.

Safety leaders know that the safety performance is more than a reflection of the leader. It is a team effort of commitment to a common goal.

It’s called safety management for a reason. It is made up of two parts: safety and management. The best safety processes and procedures can still fail in the absence of good management. You may know processes and procedures like the back of your hand. But now, you must get more familiar in driving better team safety performance.

Be positive about your safety program and the way it helps to protect and value your good people.

Promote. A scary word for safety people and supervisors. For the ones who don’t understand what it means, it feels disingenuous. But to promote something is to advance a cause or a program; to support it or to actively encourage. So when you tell your people to be safe, you are promoting safety. When you erect posters as safety reminders, you are promoting safety. When you hold a safety meeting, you are promoting safety. When you recognize good behaviors, you are promoting safety. And in order to build a solid safety culture, we cannot do it without promoting safety.

Good employees who have special skills and talent take pride in their work and they protect that pride by engaging in safety.

Without getting into long descriptions, good workplace safety culture is the result of attitudes and personal and corporate values aligning. If apathy in the workplace exists, little care will be given to safety. When the quality of the work is “good enough,” apathy in safety exists. If employees think it's a lousy place to work, then safety will take a back seat. Poor safety attitudes will impede becoming a top performer. That reflects in both safety and financial performance. A broken safety culture will have an impact on overall corporate performance.

You cannot change the safety culture without addressing the underlying attitudes and values. Attitudes, values and culture drive everything.

A 2013 study states that “when organizations have engaged workers, they are 18 percent more productive than their competitors, 12 percent more profitable, have 22 percent higher-than-average shareholder returns, and have employees who are 57 percent more effective and 87 percent less likely to leave.”

Every employee has responsibilities in safety. The biggest of which is to ensure that you protect yourself.

There is a lot of talk of safety leadership, complacency, accountability and responsibility on the job these days. At the same time, there is less discussion about compliance measures, rules, regulation, etc. And although there is still much work to be done in safety, we’re starting to change the conversation. Workplaces that are becoming more people-focused is good news.

Effectiveness in safety is about how little effort it takes to inspire people to do the right things.

As a safety person, manager or front-line supervisor, you already know that your work can be thankless. But you still have a responsibility (see last week’s post) to drive down the best practices and advice onto those employees at the front-line. That’s where the greatest number of your people are. That’s where the greatest amount of activity is. That’s where the greatest risk of incident exists. What you know about safety needs to get to the front-line.

Safety is a shared responsibility with each individual being accountable for their actions.

On a recent LinkedIn post about accountability, I was asked the following:

Hi Kevin, I'm constantly engaged in discussions around accountability and responsibility with all levels of hierarchy within the business as almost no one understands the difference. What's your experience?

Awesome question. I too, used to think they were two interchangeable words. In fact, the dictionaries interchange them at least once on each word. So, it's not surprising that your clients and colleagues struggle with it. But to me, they are not interchangeable at all. In fact, each word has very specific differentiators.

This post will help you to arm your colleagues, employees and clients with a new and unique way to understand accountability and responsibility, to use them more effectively, and to be able to align themselves with each word personally and within the scope of the safety program.

Be forewarned, these definitions may not be the classic dictionary version of the words.