Kevin Burns Blog

Safety people and supervisors get concerned when their employees won't buy-in to safety. They also complain about employees' lack of engagement and a lack of accountability in the safety program. But what if the safety messaging is aimed below the intellect of the same people you're trying to reach? What if you've dumbed it down too far? What if you've underestimated your own people? Communications that miss the target can undermine your efforts in safety. Generic slogans and feeble safety campaigns downloaded from the Internet do not resonate with most people (Hint: there's a reason they're free for the taking on the Internet). And people do not connect with anything that doesn't resonate with them. A slogan for a slogan’s sake can do more harm than good. Generic safety messages are like an ill-fitting suit. Buy a suit off the rack and it looks like a cheap attempt to dress-up. But go to a tailor and have one built specifically for youy and you are willing to wear it proudly. The same too with a safety message. It has to fit perfectly, or your people won't wear it.

Selling is about solving a problem or uncovering a benefit of safety in a way that makes people want to buy-in. Safety shouldn’t have to be sold. That comment is typical right across the varying types of safety personnel. People get hung up on the word selling as though selling is a bad thing, a manipulative thing. Truthfully, what now seems like a lifetime ago, I used to sell photocopiers. But, my clients would never buy the photocopier. They bought what it could do. And more importantly, what it could do for them. Prior to photocopier sales, I sold radio advertising. Again, people weren’t buying commercial time. They were buying the foot traffic to their business that the commercial time created - what it could do for them. You must sell safety the same way too. It’s not about shoving safety down the throats of your people. It’s about helping them see that safety improves their lives in a way that they are probably not seeing it. As a supervisor or safety person, you have to help employees see what safety does and can do for them. Selling anything takes a communications skill-set and trust. Rarely are the best salespeople the newest salespeople. The best salespeople are the experienced veterans who always keep the interests of the client at the forefront. They know that the product or service they are selling will help to eliminate a client’s pain-point. And the client knows it, too. No one buys anything that doesn’t make their lives better in some way. It’s why we buy homes, vehicles, vacations, education, insurance and investments. Those things make our lives better, more comfortable, less uncertain. So, why wouldn’t we buy-in to safety too?

Anything that makes lives better, creates more success and more freedom is easy to sell. Safety, for it to be done effectively, needs to be viewed as a marketing strategy - not a compliance program. Forcing people to comply against their will creates a disconnect - a sense of disengagement. And, when people are no longer engaged in their work, it's safe to say that they are no longer engaged in safely doing the work. How you present safety will either help or hinder your people in deciding whether to buy-in to safety for themselves. The job of safety supervisors and managers is to remove the mental barriers of buying-in to safety. And to get employees to choose safety for themselves - both at work and at home. You know well enough that safety isn't just a thing that people do at work - at least not to be successful. Removing the mental obstacles creates opportunities for employees to buy-in to safety. Help them to embrace it as one of their personal values. People who cut the lawn in sandals, drive with broken tail lights and cracked windshields don't buy-in to safety. Those who speed and forget their seat belts don't buy-in to safety - even though they seemingly work safely. They tolerate safety rules. That's very different than buying-in and owning safety as a personal value. Look at it this way, you cannot buy that which is not for sale. So in order for there to be a buyer, there has to first be a seller. Don't be afraid of the idea of selling safety. It's easier than you think. Here are three things you need to know about helping others buy-in to your safety program:

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.

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.

Help people develop a plan to positively embrace safety instead of negatively avoiding injury. Safety has done a terrible disservice to itself. It has aligned itself with gruesome scare tactics in the hopes of getting workers compliance. “Fail to follow protocols,” you hear them say, “and you too could lose a body part.” What-if’s and maybe’s don’t sell safety. And safety needs to be sold.

You don’t need to harass your employees into improving safety. Once they own it, they will do it willingly. When professional athletes buy-in to the team’s vision for success, they become unstoppable. An excellent coach who touches his players one-on-one each day can help the players buy-in to the team vision and plan. When the coach gets buy-in from his players, they are more willing to do the right things more often and are less likely to do the wrong things. After all, it’s a team and every team member has a role and importance.

There are 4 levels of safety buy-in you must progress through before safety becomes a personal value. Like most people in the safety industry, I came to safety from somewhere else. Twenty years ago I was selling photocopiers and fax machines. But, I preferred the idea of training salespeople more than the idea of being one.

When employees buy-in to safety, you focus less on what they do wrong and expect more that they will do right. It’s a fairly simple argument: when employees buy-in to the safety program, you no longer need to police them. All they need is a little coaching and mentoring. When employees buy-in to the safety program, they don’t forget their PPE. They engage in safety meetings. They demonstrate courtesy and respect for their fellow employees. In other words, policing, compliance enforcement and “gotcha” management goes right out the window. Those become archaic, cumbersome, outdated practices that slow down safety performance.

Like conferences, safety meetings should inspire people to want to be safe in future - not scold them for not being safe in the past. I have received several notices this week of upcoming safety conferences across North America. In fact, I am proud to be speaking at a couple of them: Workplace Safety North and Safety Services Nova Scotia.