ABSTRACT
As with any endeavor that involves change, you will face hurdles big and small. I have listed the most common hurdles that I have faced. If you know they are coming and are prepared, your chances of succeeding will improve.
The 80/20 Rule (some we will never convince). Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist and mathematician at the turn of the 19th century. He determined that 20% of the people owned 80% of the land. His studies eventually became known as the Pareto Principle. We know it as the “80/20” rule. In business, as in the safety field, we use the Pareto Principle or analysis to identify areas to focus resources to obtain the greatest impact. Based on this principle, we can assume that somewhere around 20% of the front line will never sign on to your vision. Accept it and focus on the 80% that do.
Company culture is the elephant in the room. The safety culture is impacted by the organization’s culture. A quote that is been attributed to more than one management guru, but most frequently to Peter Drucker, goes something like this, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” In other words the best strategy will come up short if the culture does not support it. Cultures come from the top of the organization and are based on the beliefs, values and assumptions of leaders and their experiences. More informally, culture has been defined as “how we do things around here.” For example, on-time performance dominated and defined our culture when I worked in the airline industry. It was the key metric that everyone knew and worked toward achieving. Leaders clearly valued on-time performance. It was not an inherently bad culture, but it impacted the safety culture. We learned to leverage the corporate culture by showing how safety impacted on-time performance.100
If you are struggling with leveraging the corporate culture, my suggestion is to focus on the area where you have the most influence. Maybe it is a particular department or site. Maybe it is a shop where you have a strong ally. Maybe it is a person with influence and a broad span of control. Look for opportunities to start the discussion. For example, a near-miss that had the potential to be serious or a trend within your industry. A benchmarking activity with another organization can also provide the inspiration to change or at least start the discussion. We can create learning experiences based on the results of these activities that support a strong safety culture.
New hires and high turnover rates. High turnover rates mean lots of new-hire employees. That can make getting your message out an ongoing chore and uphill battle. Imbed your message in new-hire orientation. Use various communication means including video and stories. Define your vision in operational terms and form a 10-point “Make Safety Personal” pledge that each new hire signs and posts in their work area. If you hire groups of people at a time, you might opt for a poster-sized version they all sign. You might even make it a celebration event at the end of orientation. Be sure to post the commitments in a common area. Visible displays of commitment can be very powerful influencers. Pair your allies up with a new hire as a “buddy” for the probation period. Provide your allies with the “Make Safety Personal” pledge and have them review and reinforce each line item with the new employee.
Number of employees and geography. Getting one message out to hundreds or thousands of employees in one location is a challenge, but when those employees are spread across the country or globe, the challenge is compounded. This is where your allies in the field show their value. At one company I worked with, we established and grew a network of allies (we called them Safety Leaders). We provided structure in terms of a job description, training through monthly conference calls and an annual Safety Leader conference to align efforts.
Ensure your allies are clear on your vision and expectations for communicating your vision, what it means and their role in achieving progress toward the vision. Organize periodic conference calls to reinforce your message. I held monthly conference calls with the site operations managers, many of whom were also 101my safety allies. They could invite anyone on their team to join. The purpose of the call was to share a success story. It could be the lessons learned from a near-miss incident and the action they took, or a hazard they identified and the engineering controls they put in place, or the success of a safety committee and their level of employee engagement. I prearranged the call by identifying a success story and helped the site manager prepare the presentation. The executive leader and middle managers were on the call and publicly recognized the manager. Over the four to five years I facilitated these calls, I never had a site manager that was not excited about talking about their success and proud of their accomplishment. I heard from many site managers about how their pride was reflected in each team member. Within a few days of the call, I published the presentation via email, which gave the executive leader an opportunity to once again recognize the site manager, which in turn created a learning experience that reinforced the vision and safety culture.
Trust. I talked a lot about the importance of building trust in earlier chapters. Trust works both ways. If the front-line does not trust management to support them if they make a decision based on risk, they will quickly lose faith or confidence in any safety initiative. In addition, if management does not follow up on reported safety concerns or hazards in a timely manner, your job as a safety manager or supervisor just got tougher. I use the term “management” collectively to mean supervisors to middle management up to executive leaders. If you are faced with this situation, focus on what you can control, where you have influence or who you have influence with. Encourage prompt and thorough follow-up on all action items.
Management styles. Management styles vary from supervisor to supervisor, from manager to manager and from leader to leader. Some, more specifically the command and control (just tell them what to do and enforce it through disciplinary action) or theory X manager (employees are generally lazy and you need to entice them with carrots to get them to work) will view the approach I take as a soft, “country club” approach. There are situations where a command and control style or transactional style of management is most appropriate. Further, in over 40 years in the workforce, I have seen firsthand how establishing a vision, engaging employees and recognizing their efforts 102can far exceed the minimum standards that you get from other management styles. Stay your course and focus on incremental changes, quick wins and even small wins. Successful change does not come from a keenly written safety policy. It comes as the result of persistence and building on a series of incremental successes that are celebrated. Soon they will be coming to you to ask “What is your secret?” You can smile and say “It is all about making safety personal.”
