Safety Culture Plus

Ideas and thoughts adapted from my very old US Army leadership card:

SUPERVISION IS: The art of checking on the progress of actions and job assignments without harassment or taking on the job yourself.

LEADERSHIP IS: The art of influencing and directing personnel to obtain willing teamwork, confidence, respect and cooperation to accomplish the daily task assignment. Leadership is essential in developing a solid safety and health attitude among personnel

INDICATIONS OF LEADERSHIP:

• Morale – The morale of my area is high (How do I know?)
• “Esprit De Corps” – My personnel act as a Team (How do I know?)

• Discipline – My work areas and personnel clearly show quality and orderliness (How do I know?)

• Proficiency – My personnel know how to properly do their tasks (How do I know?)

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Nov 23rd, 2008 by safetyculture

Greetings, I am recording from the Normandy Region of France. We had a recent request to expand on our thoughts about Yogi Berra’s quote that was referenced recently, “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.” So Terry and I sat down and recorded our thoughts on how that philosophy could impact safety and the overall safety culture. If you are listening to this file through streaming media and would like to download it for later use, all files and other ideas to help you bring positive improvement in your safety culture; can be found at www.safetycultureexcellence.com. You can also visit our consulting firm’s website at www.proactsafety.com

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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Safety Culture Excellence » The Difference Between Theory and Practice?

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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Is Safety About Achieving Success or Avoiding Failure – Part 2 of 4

Oct 19th, 2008 by safetyculture

Greetings from Anaheim, California. This week I will be focusing on (part two of this series), how to get out of the avoiding failure mindset and move our thoughts and efforts more proactively. If you think about it, proactive effort is the opposite of reactive effort. Many sites tell us that they perceive themselves as highly proactive. Certainly this might be the case, ask yourself this: what is the level of activity pre-accident vs. post-accident? In addition, how much do you trust your pre-accident or predictive data vs. how much you trust accident data?

I hope you enjoy! If you would like to download this file, all can be found at www.safetycultureexcellence.com Thanks and have a great week! Shawn Galloway ProAct Safety

Safety Culture Excellence » Is Safety About Achieving Success or Avoiding Failure – Part 2 of 4

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

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. 

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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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Content, Context, Law of the Few

Not to be redundant, but it pays to keep a mental model running (actually several) to keep process obstacles in view – the obstacles of organizational politics and structure.  To recap ideas offered in “The Tipping Point”, a classic text by Malcolm Gladwell, you are working in three primary areas that overlap.   In one fashion, you are trying to start a safety epidemic:

Stickiness – you need content for your process that can stick! – Programs, procedures, protocols, methods.  Content is generally widely available through many sources but is it written and presented in a way that “sticks” with personnel?  Content for behavioral models, regulatory criteria, basic safety programs are there for the taking.  Per Gladwell, you’ve got to keep “tinkering” with your message and its delivery. 

You may have a great writing style and great ideas but if they cannot be conveyed, they are for naught.  Jim Roughton discusses various approaches in Chapter 7 of Job Safety Analysis.

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Listen to a discussion concerning this subject at  Pro Act Safety.

Safety Management vs. Safety Leadership

Safety Culture Excellence » Safety Management vs. Safety Leadership