Safety Culture Plus

As a Professional we have an opportunity to conduct training. And when you do conduct training and quiz the trainees on the subject manner, some trainees got the message you were trying to convey, while others just did not get it. Does this mean that you are a poor trainer? Or is it my technique? We all, from time to time need to step back and ask ourselves the following questions:

• Could it be the way my training program is developed?
• Did I deliver the training in a logical and consistent manner?
• Was the training provided in a good learning environment?
• Do we tend to know our subject so well that we have a hard time conveying our message to others?

I challenge everyone to think about these statements for just a minute.

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This article is a guest post by Dan Schawbel, the author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, April 09), and owner of the award-winning Personal Branding Blog.

Any intelligent company understands that employees are their greatest asset.

That’s particularlly true now. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just announced that the unemployment rate is now 8.5% and that there are 13.2 million people unemployed individuals in the US (16% of the population).

Companies are cutting back, and they have to make the resources they do have go further.

To read the rest of the story click on the link below.

Five Reasons Businesses Should Support Their Employees’ Personal Brands

Evaluate the Safety Committee, its organization and effectiveness

From your observations and file reviews, on a scale of 1 (ineffective) to 10 (great asset o the process), does the existing Safety Committee currently operate in a manner that enhances your safety process efforts? 

Many organizations have developed a safety committee.  These may be mandated by management, regulation or labor contracts.  Committees are recommended in safety and quality theory as a way to assure involvement by employees.  However, the effectiveness of safety committees varies widely.   Some are highly efficient and an asset to the safety process.   On the other end of the spectrum, they can be a great place to meet, gossip, gripe, and have coffee and a snack, accomplishing nothing.  If you find that you have a dud committee, you need to take action to reorganize and regenerate it.   The employees may or may not welcome the change and it will require an element of tact and diplomacy to effect any change. 

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Day 23 – Reflect – What have I seen and accomplished to date?

Back on Day 12, mission and vision were reviewed.   You’ve had several weeks to continue your assessment and now is a good time to begin developing a more strategic approach to your long term planning.   Whether a military, marketing, charity, political or other campaign, there are fundamental activities that can help keep the process within scope and increase the probability of successful implementation of your efforts.  

If you’re like most of us, you are caught up in activities, the day to day crisis that arise and take our focus off where we need to go or want to go.   This is normal.   Situations will develop that must be attended to without delay and our priorities can be changed by actions of others. But the overall mission must be kept in view!

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A veteran safety consultant once told me, “Always look in the employee restrooms.  If they aren’t clean and sanitary, then everything else they tell you is smoke and mirrors.”  His comment has held over many years.   This simple observation can tell you the regard management has for employees.   If the restrooms are vile (not old – but dirty and vile!) then you will may not be able to build much of a quality safety culture.   Housekeeping is much more than bathrooms but if basic human hygiene needs are not met, then the process has a long way to go.

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Getting your message to Stick

One of the issues facing the EHS professional is how to get their message out to the key individuals who can make things happen with budgets, time and authority.  As with advertizing, political slogans, campaigns for charities, etc., why do some messages take on a life of their own while others fall flat and are quickly forgotten.  Those whose “message” is heard and accepted have the advantage over competing messages.

A book I have recently come across, “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Health, provides interesting information on what it takes to have your message stick.   Their research and work has been highlighted in a number of publications and offers templates that can be followed in the quest for getting a message to stick. 

How do you make your message “stick.”  Stick?   An example,  complete the sentence “Don’t squeeze the ______”.  This ad hasn’t been shown in years yet many of us can easily fill in the word “Charmin”.  How about “Safety _____”?  Most of us will quickly input “First” into the message – and much discussion has ensued over that very sticky message.  Is safety a value or is it first in “priority” and can shift in importance?

You are competing for the attention of managers, supervisors and employees in the midst of their being inundated with messages from other parts of the organization – HR, Security, Quality Control, Production, Facilities, etc., etc.  The theme I have routinely heard, from many companies is that the safety program takes up too much time, is not relevant, and change isn’t needed.   How do we cut through the obstacles whether real or imagined?

The authors discuss six principles of sticky ideas:

1.  Simplicity – What is your core message? When meeting with managers, etc., your objective is to briefly present your key point on the status of the safety process.   The message is critical.   You must make a positive impression even if the picture you must present is negative.   Much  been written that one should not bring problems to management, only solutions.    This is not the time to launch into a diatribe about how bad things may be, quote detailed regulations or imply management has screwed up.  Cull back on the number of items you want to present – which of all the things you want to communicate is the main theme, the critical item?  Hone in on the core message you want to convey.

2.  Unexpectedness – You have a very brief time to present your message.   How can you clearly structure your message in a way that is unique, creative.  How can you get beyond the PowerPoint slides or spreadsheet?  How can you engage your audience’s curiosity and interest in the message?A great presentation to a group of safety professionals by Shane Jenkins at the Georgia DOL EHS Conference last week made the science of flammable liquids literally come alive with his demonstrations – nothing like having the speaker ignite various vapors when you’re 5 feet away!. 

3.  Concreteness – Use the “elevator test”, use bullets, short clear statements.  What “concrete” images can you use to get your idea across?  Regulations can be abstract, hard for the audience to understand.  While quoting the full regulation may be a pleasure to you, your audience may better remember a demonstration, role play or activity.  Shane made flammable liquids safety very concrete at his session…   

4.  Credibility -  When presenting at a managers’ meetings, you are being observed, tested whether you want it or not.  How you present your objectives and goals, how you appear as a team player, how you dress and appear are all in the open.   You are being viewed as a possible leader, a go to person, someone who can get the job done or merely someone who will be tolerated to keep the regulators away and be allowed to only do the minimum to meet expectations.  What you convey must be credible.   

5.  Emotional – Can you find examples that can bring emotion to your message?  Stories of injury, damage or loss that can connect with managers and employees.  If you have completed a solid loss assessment, just showing the data is not enough.  What appeals to your audience? Self interest? Learning? Belonging?

6.  Stories -  The authors write that stories provide essential details that people can link to and buy into.   Stories stick.  What is your story?  Their research has three types of plots that represent the majority of story plots – Challenge, Connection and Creativity.  You need to look for examples of these plots and recognize them within the company.  Is your program a challenge that you must get the company to accept?   Do you need to connect the people to the needs of the program?  Are you needing employee and management creativity injected into the program?

All the various disciplines involved in an organization believe that their message is “the” message.  Working with them as part of the team is essential.  Using the Heath’s ideas to get their and management’s buy-in to your process may give you the edge needed for success.

I’m going to incorporate their concepts into my mental models. 

Day 21 – Find a way to get your message out – get sticky

Nathan Crutchfield

n_crutch@comcast.net

www.crutchfieldconsulting.com

Begin the Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) process

The recent previous JHA blogs by Tommy Bristow puts emphasis on the need for the development of a JHA process.  You can’t sit and remain in the office developing programs.  As part of the process, you must begin to take direct action.   The initial loss data analysis should have identified several types of incidents that might be the critical few – see the Paredo Principle.  Scanning the OSHA 300, discussion of incidents with employees and managers, reviewing accident investigations and looking at insurance loss runs, specific departments and job titles may now stand out.  Based on this history and the risk assessment of severity potential, you should begin to target jobs/tasks and steps that are creating the loss-producing history.

You can now focus in on where losses are developing.  While the strategic plan that covers all aspects of your process must continue on a number of fronts,  the JHA allows you to begin a rifle shot approach to begin the control of specific losses or risk.  You must balance your approach between areas of risk (potential and severity) with existing losses as these two areas may or may not converge.   Some jobs may have no losses but be a high uncontrolled risk.

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In the early years of management science, the Hawthorne Studies came about as the results of experiments conducted at Western Electric and involved in changes in workplace conditions that produced unexpected results in employee performance. Two teams of employees took part in these experiments, where the lighting conditions for one team was changed. Production for that group rose dramatically. The interesting thing that happened is that production also improved in the group where the lighting remained unchanged.

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As businesses change, running leaner, and more responsibilities are added to individuals, there is greater separation of management from day to day activities. As this occurs, the management team can become short sighted or complacent with regard to the hazards in their facility. So it is interesting that management will complain that they cannot get employees to follow safety guidelines when the effort is not put forward. However, as management does not perform the task regularly, they may not have the correct perception of risk, based on their increased responsibilities, or the scope of hazards that employees face daily. Financial, purchasing, other commitments of sales or production may obscure what conditions really are. When times are good, production is up and products must be produced, therefore the probably of injuries may increase. It is important to address safety concerns immediately to understand the condition and the reason that employees are not following the safety rules.

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“Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment!,” Steven Covey

Andrew Carnegie understood the importance of quality and the variation as a competitive weapon. We have learned this from Six Sigma. At one point in his career he suggested an epitaph he felt would be appropriate that captured his management philosophy: “Here lies a man who was able to surround himself with men far cleverer than himself.” It is my view that Carnegie did not understand how to engage the employee as part of the team. This is the essential difference between the safety efforts and all other priority initiatives in building a successful organization culture.

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