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David Sarkus, The Safety Coach®, Speaker Blog

Complacency is a Leadership Problem Not a Worker Problem!

I’ve been thinking about workplace complacency and injuries a lot the last few weeks. Maybe because we are in the holiday season and injuries around this time of year are emotionally devastating. It seems that really bad accidents are highlighted by the extreme sadness felt by our loved ones. But for me, complacency at work, or even away from it, provides a reason for us to look deeper at the way we lead.

Here’s a few tips and tactics to help diminish complacency, especially among your workers.
1. Discuss the importance of using hazard and risk assessments with greater focus and rigor.
2. Slow the work down with more timeouts – giving all of your workers time to discuss concerns.
3. Talk and work through new or higher risk jobs before the work begins.
4. Build a higher degree of consensus before starting various work activities.
5. Help your workers pay attention to the right things by being very clear and concise about the hazards
and risks they are working around.
6. Tell stories about lessons learned from the past that can keep them safer.
7. Help to align your personal values with every day actions so your workers realize that all this safety stuff is really
about them!

Have a great Christmas and Happy New Year and I hope to work with you in 2022!!!

Here’s a recent set of testimonials from a keynote I delivered in Saratoga Springs, NY:

5 Human Performance Strategies and Tactics to Help You Minimize Losses

5 Human Performance Strategies and Tactics to Help You Minimize Losses

I was rushed and thrown off just a bit from my normal travel routine — flying to a keynote event in French Lick, Indiana.  For one, I normally leave my packed bags in the hallway, just outside of my bedroom.  But the night before, I decided to carry my travel bag to the basement, nearer to my vehicle.  I left my house that morning around 7:15 and halfway to the Pittsburgh Airport, I felt that horrible sinking feeling in my stomach.  You got it — I left my travel bag at home and had to make a quick management decision. Do I continue to the airport and buy clothes and necessities after I land, or do I go back home for my bag and drive to Indiana?

The decisions we make before, during, and after work are filled with starts, stops, distractions, and potentially harmful errors.  Individual oversights and errors can and will eventually lead to unwanted consequences.  However, we need multiple checks and balances that limit fallout and the continuance of loss, or possibly, an egregious event.  But what can we learn from sound safety management practices and human performance strategies and tactics?  Here’s five simple and straightforward ways we can improve safety performance and minimize errors and their effect. 

Build It In All The Way Through
Specification and design reviews help to build safety in from the start.  Our specification and design reviews of materials, tools, equipment, and facilities require multiple checkpoints and verifications to ensure diverse views and assessments with varying degrees of approval prior to testing and final acceptance by our end-users. Oversights and errors also happen within these work processes.  We don’t normally think about human performance errors on the management or engineering side, but they can certainly lead to serious incidents down the road. 

Time-outs during our operations don’t always occur when and where we think they should occur.  Sometimes conversations before and after our travel to work, at lunchtime, or at other normal breakpoints afford opportunities to discuss hazards and risks that may be changing because of work group interfaces with equipment and each other.  All of this leads to a broader potential path that’s cleared for further discussions as well as efficient and effective time-outs while work is being performed.    

Walk-throughs and talk-throughs should be part of pre and post-task discussions and briefings that allow you to play your work forward, as a group, to discuss “what if” scenarios based on various work events and possible outcomes that may produce harm.  These discussions help to create salience or top of mind awareness (TOMA) in workers and their decision-making.  In turn, workers will draw upon their most relevant discussions and create their own form of mental rehearsals that help them to make safer choices.

Peer checks and checklists should engage everyone, whether someone is working alone, or with any number of other individuals.  Individual checks should rely on some type of list or process that identifies and helps to control for various hazards and risks.  Peer checks with other experienced workers also help to limit errors by relying on each other to verify and validate work efforts before work begins, and throughout the job.

Open your communications channels to ensure that consensus building within important decisions occurs.  If you have several workers engaged in a task, make sure everyone is heard and is given the opportunity to speak up.  Make for certain that concerns are brought forward before work moves forward.  Three-way communications are often necessary to verify or correct and redirect the steps of an important process and to keep everyone safe.  Communications need to be clear, confirmed or corrected, and repeated when necessary.   

Guess what?  I did go back home for my bag and enjoyed a beautiful 450-mile drive to Indiana. I also had a rocking great keynote with my audience!  I decided to drive because, at times, I tire of flying and the weather was great.  However, part of my next trip will include checklists.  A checklist to use while I’m packing and one downstairs to help ensure that I limit errors and oversights, before my travel starts.  Moreover, once my travel begins, an important part of my mental outlook is to remain flexible, and not wrestle unceasingly with mistakes that over-occupy my thoughts.  This will allow me to think clearly when I must move ahead with a given decision.  Determine to stay calm, with positive self-talk, and keep it 65 and breezy, all day long! 

Mistakes aren’t always related to safety rules or violations, and errors and oversights will occur. However, we must help ensure that their effects are minimized.  Finally, it’s obviously important to hold people accountable, to be deliberate, intentional, and thorough in each of these types of efforts. 

David Sarkus, MS, CSP is Chief Servant Leader and Founder of David Sarkus International Inc., a leading health and safety management consulting and training firm based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. David is a motivational safety speaker who delivers keynotes, training programs, and consulting in a variety of verticals. His experience, education, and leadership qualities have allowed him and his firm to successfully apply strategies and tactics within various mainstream work-processes for over 30 years.

Mutual Transparency is Key

In March of 2011, a nuclear meltdown in Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant occurred during a 9.0 earthquake. Within a week, the Chinese government stopped approval of construction at more than 40% of its own nuclear energy sites, worldwide.

Mutual Transparency and Respect

The primary concern lying beneath these failures in Japan may have been a lack of transparency by the Japanese government, and lack of public involvement in these same nuclear activities. Similarly, the Chinese government may lack the same type of outside involvement, relying largely upon the engagement of groups of experts, who plan and implement the construction of nuclear energy facilities (Chen & Wang, 2012). In our own country, there may be a similar lack of transparency and involvement when it comes to construction activities that could increase public risk and harm. All of this points to current transparency concerns when dealing with world health issues and risks such as Covid-19. 

In the midst of our battle with Covid-19, leaders have to be increasingly transparent about exposures and risks at work, as well in public situations. At the same time, workers need to be objective about their exposures, off the job, and in social and recreational settings, which could be similar or greater than their work exposures.

As we eventually return to our workplaces, leaders and workers must learn and practice transparency in a way that leads to reciprocal transparency and increased trust. Organizational leaders will need to be even clearer about hazards and risks that are faced in day-to-day operations. These same leaders must deliberately work to limit fear that may cause workers not report or to under report concerns, near misses, or accidents, all in order to keep their jobs.

As we adapt to this worldwide crisis, it will be up to our organizational leaders to instill calm, and create a safe and open work environment; where workers feel comfortable approaching their leaders in order to voice objective concerns related to their health and safety, and not take on the label of troublemaker.  There’s little doubt, as our plants, factories, and worksites start to run full-tilt, the real troublemakers are not those who raise their hands about particular hazards and risks, but those who bring about silence, a lack of mutual transparency, and ultimately, unacceptable consequences. In the end, both leaders and workers must be forthright about their intentions and actions. 

References

Chen X. & Wang Q. Regulatory transparency – how China can learn from Japan’s nuclear regulatory failures? Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 2012; 16: 3574 – 3578.

Leadership Gaps and Situational Awareness

Leadership Gaps and Situational Awareness

The knowledge gap within utilities, construction, and related industries is more of a growing concern than ever — especially when it comes to serious injuries and exposures.  I often speak with clients about their need for trainable or experienced workers in carpentry, electrical, plumbing, welding, or in HVAC systems.  And if we look further, this gap certainly extends to leaders who are expected to support workers with these skills, especially leaders who have limited experiences of their own.  Leaders who lack hands-on experience often lack the competencies to more fully understand various jobs and the situational hazards that could lead to various errors and harm producing incidents.    

We now have more tools at our disposal than ever before.  One evolving field of study that is showing more interest and application is that of the cognitive sciences, and mental errors, cognitive slips, attentional control, and situational awareness. There are many models and thoughts floating around but I believe our efforts should be directed toward using applied work that is readily understandable for both front-line leaders and workers.  The aerospace industries along with the medical researchers have taken the lead in this arena, especially over the past 20 years or more.  So, please let me throw some mud against the wall and see what may stick for you and your organizations.

Having a taxonomy of causal factors to categorize errors and appropriate interventions is a good starting point.  And situational awareness seems to be one causal factor that often becomes a major contributor to errors and subsequent accidents (Endsley, MR, 1995).  I believe in parsimony in creating a practical model for use by front-line supervisors and workers.  When we do this, we can obtain greater buy in and use but may limit the enhancements and comprehensive nature of a more sophisticated model.  But I’ll take buy-in and practical use, any day of the week.

Poor Planning at any level will cause a host of safety-related problems.  Good planning includes materials, people, tools, equipment, and processes.  Each of these are a big part of getting a job done efficiently, effectively, and safely. 

Failure to Recognize Hazards needs to be supported by training and follow-up.  Pre-job briefings, task hazard analyses, and related learnings requires attention and abatement of the concerns identified.   

Failure to Incorporate Hazards.  When work operations become busy, workers may recognize various hazards but forget about them throughout the course of their day, which may lead to unabated hazards and injuries.  Mental overload may be an underlying concern that should be addressed. 

Incomplete Information.  Some leaders make decisions on the floor or in the field with limited knowledge and proceed somewhat blindly.  Some hazards on a start-up job may not have been well identified, subsequently a line or job is launched, leading to a serious accident.  Something as simple as a guard or new tool that wasn’t properly installed, or appropriate training may be part of the solution.    

Procedural Deviations such as omitting an important step or task is an oversight, knowledge or execution gap that requires significant attention.  Salience in communications and a thorough understanding of procedures becomes increasingly important. 

Failure to Predict Consequences. In some cases, workers recognize a given hazard but fail to attach meaning to what they’ve seen. Individuals may continue working but fail to understand how that hazard could eventually impose harm.  For example, the movement of people and related line-of-fire risks, or an open container of low flash point solvents that could be ignited
though the use of nearby tools or equipment. 

Fatigue may play a big part in physical and mental miscues that underlie many near-misses and accidents.  Time-outs, appropriate breaks, diet and exercise are all part of the solution. 

I’m fully aware of other contemporary taxonomies that are more comprehensive, but some organizations, along with their front-line leaders and workers may not benefit from such complexities (Zhang J., Patel V.L., Johnson T.R., Shortliffe E.H., 2004).  Even more, today’s data-driven solutions provide similar models that may need to be enhanced. Our challenge, as professionals, is to provide meaningful categorizations of situational or mental errors, and corresponding interventions and training that can lessen their impact. 

Finally, today’s complex organizations, with intricate people interactions, processes, and human factors interfaces,  may require more robust but practical strategies.  However, having a starting point to limit cognitive errors and issues, through front-line leaders and workers, is a key factor in diminishing unwanted consequences. 

References

M.R., Endsley, A taxonomy of situation awareness errors. In Eds. R. Fuller, N. Johnson, and . McDonald (Eds.), Human Factors in Aviation Operations. Aldershot, England:  Avebury Ashgate Publishing Ltd.; 1995.

Zhang J., Patel V.L., Johnson T.R. and Shortliffe E.H.  A cognitive taxonomy of medical errors.  Journal of Biomedical Information 2004; 37, 193-204. 

David J. Sarkus, MS, CSP is a speaker, consultant, author, and coach with over 30 years of experience. He has written five books and more than 100 evidence-based articles. He is president and founder of David Sarkus International, Inc., which provides a full menu of safety leadership and culture driven services for some of the biggest and best run organizations in the world. Please visit www.DavidSarkus.com for more information. David can also be reached at
1-800-240-4601.

Leadership Awareness and Organizational Connections

In my early 20s, I was working as a laborer on a construction site when I heard a story about a worker who jumped into a trench without appropriate protection. He was suffocated and crushed within minutes.  I was also told about another worker who was seriously injured when a jury-rigged clevis broke away from a crane cab and he plummeted to the surface below.

Each of us learn about hazards and risks through our personal experiences and those of others.  And some of the stories we learn about have a lasting impact.  Even more, we acquire related knowledge through reading, research, and training.  But we also need to discipline ourselves and others to pay attention to the right things and continually scan our environments at work and away from it too.  Leaders and workers must continually enhance their personal sense of situational awareness; talking and walking themselves (and others) through an array of “what if” scenarios so that contact incidents and losses can be avoided and minimized.

Not many people walk around throughout their day with a risk assessment in hand unless of course it’s the one in their phone.  We should, however, always have an informal risk assessment tool in our mind that allows us to perform at least a cursory assessment until we can dig deeper or in a more formal way.

Through experience, whenever I’m in an environment where trenching and shoring is of concern, I immediately scan further for situations that may present an elevated risk and first talk myself though abatement issues.  If I’m around equipment where a clevis or connection can fail — I want to look deeper and ask questions regarding redundant forms of protection and eliminate high-risk single failure points.  Outside of work, I continually scan situations while driving, at home, or in social settings that may place people at harm for injury or loss.  Over a period of three decades, I’ve developed a keen sense of awareness, just like many of you.   The bottom line, scanning our environments is a very important leadership skill.   

Some of this sounds a bit technical or commonsensical for some, but scanning our environments is an important leadership dimension that also has an emotional and organizational connection to specific hazards and risks.  Assessing and analyzing everyday situations and asking important questions is what good leaders do.

A Few Organizational Dimensions

Is there a sense of purpose or mission before a job begins? Are pre-job task briefings and risk assessment tools used with focus and rigor?  Do leaders observe and participate in regular risk assessments at the worker level?  Many organizations continue to perform work that has become comfortable, at a less than acceptable level, because failures or serious incidents have not occurred.  In other words, there has been a normalization of deviation from safer work practices.    Astute organizational leaders know that risks must be identified and controlled, daily.  Risk assessments should categorize, identity, and control for those same risks.  Analytics should be used to further aid in the monitoring of ongoing assessments.  Engineering controls that eliminate or significantly reduce the risk would be the first step in abatement while procedural controls may offer the least desirable form of risk reduction.    

Are you and your leaders paying attention to how openly people share their knowledge?  Individuals should freely share their knowledge regarding what is necessary to complete a job safely.  However, are some individuals protecting their personal knowledge as a point of political leverage?   I have worked in several large organizations over the years where various specialists did not openly share their knowledge so they could be viewed as more valuable to the organization and protect their jobs from possible elimination.  Finally, is near-miss reporting open and candid – reflecting the concerns that could be devastating if formidable change doesn’t occur.    

How about other critical organizational dimensions like consensus building?    Leaders and their workers need to assess risks and arrive at some form of agreement regarding their potential harm.  Are varied and differing opinions sought out so that a variety of cognitive biases don’t allow for important risks to be overlooked?  For example, your supervisor may not perceive a given risk as a “no-go” issue, but your most experienced and trusted worker does.  Going further, is there a sense of urgency to improve and abate ongoing risks?  Is there a deep sense of responsibility amongst workers to protect the health and safety of each other?   And does your organization make time for fun and celebrate successes that relate to proactive contributions and improvements?    

Archeologist Edward T. Hall once said that “real intelligence is about paying attention to the right things.” 

Are you encouraging, even training your leaders and workers to pay attention to the right things and continually scan for hazards and the associated risks often overlooked by their familiarity? 

David J. Sarkus, MS, CSP is a speaker, consultant, author, and coach with over 30 years of experience. He has written five books and more than 100 evidence-based articles. He is president and founder of David Sarkus International, Inc., which provides a full menu of safety leadership and culture-based services for some of the biggest and best run organizations in the world.  Please visit www.DavidSarkus.com for more information.

Hey You – Keep Your Open-Door Open!

“Hey you!”

I hated hearing those words, shouted toward me from a big burly guy named, Hog Jaws! That’s right, Hog Jaws! That was my construction foreman’s name on a summer job at a mine prep plant near Wheeling, West Virginia. Hog Jaws wasn’t very likeable, but I guess he got the job done. Most workers avoided him and talked badly behind his back. I wasn’t fond of the guy either. And after two months on that job, he never bothered to learn my name, and I still heard, “hey you!” Maybe I was in good company, I believe I once read that the great Babe Ruth seldom learned his teammates names, and simply referred to many of them as Fred.

Most all of us have been around a boss or supervisor who isn’t very likeable or open to feedback. He or she is often avoided, and people may even fear approaching that boss with a safety-related concern or idea for improvement. And even if he or she says they have an open-door policy — it’s not very open. Workers who perceive their bosses as open, believe their leader really listens to their ideas and acts upon them when appropriate — or at the very least, gives their ideas a fair shake.

Weighing the Price
By their nature, some workers are simply more confident and vocal. They speak up with little hesitation and provide ideas for safety-related improvement. This is especially true when they feel there’s an important safety concern that that could lead to a serious injury or loss. Leader and group acceptance also seem to keep these workers speaking up and being heard. Largely, that worker is valued by leaders and doesn’t feel threatened when sharing his thoughts. In contrast, other workers often weigh their opinions and options before sharing ideas with supervisors, analyzing whether they will be scowled at, growled at, or penalized in some way. These workers typically weigh the personal cost before considering speaking up. Will my perceived worth to the organization be diminished in some way? Will my peers think I’m trying to kiss-up and no longer accept me? And yet, other workers may not be invested in the organization — they’re simply not sticking around. It’s not uncommon for these employees to remain silent and disengaged. Employee-driven communications should be encouraged and plays an essential part in eliminating serious injuries and making greater ongoing strides in safety improvement. It also helps to build a culture of openness for safety where everyone feels they have a voice and contributes to ongoing safety improvements — a very real part of engagement!

Leaders are the Key
Good leaders who embrace their roles in improving safety performance exhibit behaviors that encourage employee openness in communications, and in that way, live out a personal vision for safety. These leaders also understand, if there is a vision to be shared and embraced, they must create greater dialogue by encouraging all workers to speak up and be heard.

Leaders and workers help keep the door to communications open. Training both leaders and followers to better understand the importance of being heard is essential. Leaders must discern individual behavioral cues that serve as an antecedent to greater or lesser forms of worker-related communications. Shouting, name calling, frowning and crossing arms, often serve as cues and barriers to productive conversations. A leader’s consequent behaviors of encouragement help to keep the door open, ensuring that perceived worker problems and precursors are reported, early and often. In turn, workers must learn, when and how, to say what needs to be said.

It’s up to leaders to create the right climate for ongoing communications so that good ideas will be shared, listened to, and acted upon. Less vocal employees need to have peer advocates who can be trusted to disclose important information for them. In many organizations, important worker voices are either drowned-out or silenced when the price for speaking up is perceived as costlier than the potential gains — certainly an unhealthy situation.

Perception surveys and sensing sessions add structure to regular forms of communications and provide workers with an important means of exchange, particularly when the door needs to be pushed open. Having data from which to make decisions further encourages openness and potential changes in communication strategies and tactics.

In construction, and within many other industries, far too many Hog Jaws still exist, mostly to the detriment of their respective organizations, and the personal safety of those they supervise. I don’t believe my Hog Jaws was a bad guy, he just didn’t realize there was a better way.

It’s not just big egos that silence employees’ much needed upward communications for safety, but I do like what Robert Schuller once stated, “Big egos have little ears.”

Hey you! Don’t you think it’s time to help your leaders create greater dialogue, so the door to important safety communications remains fully open?

Reference
Detert, J.R. & Burris E.R. 2007. Leadership behavior and employee voice: Is the door really open? Academy of Management Journal, 50, no 4: 869-884.

David J. Sarkus, MS, CSP is a motivational speaker, consultant, coach and author. He is also the President and Founder of David Sarkus International, a leading health and safety management consulting and training firm. He has nearly 30 years of occupational health and safety management experience in large, diversified industrial settings. David and his colleagues have been helping others apply leading-edge strategies and tactics over the last two decades. Customized safety interventions have produced reductions in key performance indicators from 35% to over 85% from the previous year. These kinds of results are both scalable and sustainable. David holds a Master of Science in Safety Management from West Virginia University and a Master of Science in Industrial Psychology from St. Mary’s College of California. He is a Certified Safety Professional (CSP) by examination. Visit https://davidsarkus.com

 

Want Better Outcomes? Try Servant Leadership!

Twenty-five years ago, as a young safety professional, I struggled to find a set of leadership practices I could call my own. In 1996, I wrote about many of the leadership practices I was already using but found more clearly established in servant leadership (Sarkus, 1996). Since then, I’ve helped my client’s leaders better understand and use servant leadership as a powerful base of influence and some of the results have been nothing short of remarkable.

Generally, servant leaders look out for others before taking care of their own needs. They typically place their agenda aside – they’re not self-serving. They principally choose to serve others through a vision for safety, listening, empathy, persuasion, and the empowerment of others. The selfless dimension of servant leaders helps them to better influence the safety-related attitudes and actions of their followers because they aren’t manipulative. Trust is critically important to the servant leader, particularly at the worker-level, and evolves into greater efficiencies and an improved safety climate (Goh & Low, 2014).

Servant Leaders and Trust
Engaged workers are formed when supervisors are credible (having both expertise and trustworthiness). Workers commit to their supervisor and their goals because that supervisor is well liked, respected, and credible. In terms of influence, individuals tend to work in (safer) ways to maintain a positive relationship with a leader who cares about them and has high expectations for safety. As we know, relationships do matter, and the servant leader has a strong desire to care for his workers’ safety above their personal needs. Uniquely, the servant leader understands the ethical dimensions that relate to their role as a leader, which in turn guides their intentions and actions to care for their workers, even when production challenges may compromise worker safety. Credibility, or even trust alone, leads to broader forms of positive organizational change.

Self and Collective-Efficacy
When trust is nurtured, servant leaders don’t continue to rely exclusively on their own power and influence, but desire to give it away — to empower others. I continue to see more organizational leaders create better and safer workplaces by increasing a worker’s self-competence and confidence (their self-efficacy). These same leaders help to empower their workers as peer-leaders. These champions for safety positively influence the attitudes and actions of their co-workers. Overall, improvements in individual and collective efficacy lead to a greater shared commitment to the mission of a given group — and in our case — getting the job done safely, efficiently, and effectively. Servant leaders create more servant leaders and a larger sphere of influence for safety, beyond what any one leader can do, alone.

Climate for Safety
How do things change even more? Well, the worker’s perception of what’s going around him becomes more positive — that’s the climate for safety. Workers like what they see. There’s a good overall view about how people are treated, and workers appreciate leaders who treat them fairly. Regarding safety-related discipline, there’s a deliberate intention to apply fairness which translates into greater employee safety engagement and ownership. It also leads to more openness in communications within work groups and increased reporting of near-misses largely because the fear of punishment and harmful peer pressure is appropriately diminished — first through the servant leader and then through their workers. I’ve seen greater forms of empowerment, ownership, and a sense of community, where nearly everyone looks out for their co-worker’s safety, predominantly when leaders serve first.

Can you see the progression? The servant leader has a strong desire to care for others and their safety. This in turn builds greater forms of trust as the servant leader persuades, gives away more power — creating more servant leaders. The effect now becomes broader and wider — shaping a more open and positive climate for safety and a greater sense of community and ownership (Walumbwa, Hartnell & Oke, 2010).

Servant leadership and servant leaders aren’t about making everyone happy. Servant leaders are about possessing and sharing a personal vision for the critical importance of safety because they’re concerned about every individual, especially their safety; and have a parallel concern for productivity.

“Good leaders must first become good servants…. and for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams. Much more than a dreamer is required to bring it to reality; but the dream must be there first.” ― Robert K. Greenleaf

I’ve always had a great dream for safety, how about you?

References
Goh, S.K. & Low, Z.J. (2014). The influence of servant leadership towards organizational commitment: the mediating role of trust in leaders. International Journal of Business and Management, Vol. 9,
No. 1, 17—26.

Sarkus, D.J. (1996) Servant leadership in safety: advancing the cause and practice. Professional Safety, 41(6), 26-32.

Walumbwa, C.A., Hartnell, C.A. and Oke, A. (2010). Servant leadership, procedural justice climate, service climate, employee attitudes, and organizational citizenship behavior: a cross—level investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 95, No. 3, 517—529.

David J. Sarkus, MS, CSP is a speaker, consultant, and coach as well as founder and chief servant leader (CSL) of David Sarkus International, Inc., www.DavidSarkus.com.

Five Things Every Safety Professional Should Want from Their Leaders

I’ve often expressed my opinion regarding the question of “what should safety professionals want from their organizational leaders?”  Most organizational leaders are relatively clear about what they desire from their safety staff, but shouldn’t these same leaders ask what’s needed of them to achieve ongoing EHS success?  And shouldn’t safety professionals be clear about what’s needed of organizational leaders to create a culture for safety that’s a major source of organizational pride and performance, especially if that’s part of what your leaders want.

  1. A Vision That’s Embraced and Lived. My experience and research strongly suggest that a company with a formal vision for safety, or a vision that includes safety in some way is more likely to have greater success. In addition, many organizational leaders should have a desire to express that vision in ways that are readily observable – to give the vision greater clarity and life for those who need to see it and feel it. And an organization’s values, which support the vision, should be well understood and lived out in discernible ways that relate directly to EHS. As an example, a value such as “integrity” should be talked about and acted out in ways that support the vision. Leaders need to know how their “walk and talk” relates to their organization’s values and their vision. Yes, starting from the top.
  2. A Seat at The Table. For the last several years, I’ve heard more and more conversations from safety professionals who desire to have a seat at the “leadership table.” But why? Well, certainly to influence strategic matters and tactical issues so that EHS will not be forgotten but becomes an integral part of important decisions that could impact EHS performance, productivity, quality, and morale. EHS professionals who possess credibility (trust x expertise), should either be called to this seat, or work their way to the table by earning it and having others see the need to have them at the table. Finally, maintaining a seat at the table through one’s insight and influence is key to building a great culture for safety.
  3. Accountability Measures with Teeth. Part of your organization’s alignment strategy should include measures that hold leaders accountable for actions and activities that will move the EHS needle forward. Accountability metrics for many organizations often remain a touchy subject when it comes to senior leaders holding their peers and others accountable for safety-related actions and activities. However, any way you look at it, to have consistently great safety leadership, accountability measures need to be in place and used. Mature organizations require that safety-related performance make-up an important part of a leader’s performance reviews, goals, and objectives. And this part of a leader’s review must be recognized as acceptable before moving forward and assessing other individual areas of performance, which in turn, may lead to career advancement, pay increases, and bonuses.
  4. Resources for Sustainability. A substantial budget for EHS is one thing, but having a budget that supports critical aspects of your culture is another. I’m thinking about your reporting systems and related tools, BBS, physical improvements, leadership and other value-added training, serious incident and fatality-related programs and processes, or analytic platforms that allow for increasingly focused interventions – all very important. These kinds of resources are likely to become a staple for higher levels of achievement. Sustaining EHS success through appropriate resources should be viewed as critical to the health of an organization and the productivity of the workforce. Having appropriate resources should also free up EHS professionals to focus on building relationships through EHS, affording greater opportunities to sell and integrate the EHS vision, embedding it more deeply into the operations.
  5. Time for Celebrating Success. Adequate EHS resources and a budget are very important, and yes, this could fall under that topic. But having the time to bring people together to bond and to celebrate success is independently valuable. Celebrating and having fun while tying safety performance and actions into the celebrations allows leaders to talk about their organizational vision and values in descriptive and actionable ways, which further helps to strengthen overall EHS alignment and sustainability. Periodic and meaningful celebrations, small and large, are effective ways to show leadership support and discuss concrete actions that have led to successes, and the celebrations that are occurring. Celebrating various safety achievements helps to strengthen the types of everyday actions that are most desirable, and for aligning activities that further help to support long-term success and the building of a great culture for safety.

Tom Peters said it, “Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change.”  No matter where you and your leaders are in your journey of EHS improvement, these five areas provide a means for ongoing advancement and achievement.

David J. Sarkus, MS, CSP, The Safety Coach®, is a motivational speaker, consultant, coach, and author with more than 30 years of achievement in health and safety.  He is the president and founder of David Sarkus International, Inc. and you can find out more about David and his organization by visiting www.DavidSarkus.com.

Working Through Your Safety Troughs and Plateaus

Safety troughing, and plateauing should be scary for most of us. Of course, many individuals may get concerned when lagging indicators, like recordable injury or illness rates have flattened or troughed-out, but what about other indicators? Are you appropriately concerned about what may be causing your troughs and why your leading indicators plateaued? Certainly, this should be of even more concern.

What are you measuring and what are you doing with your data? Do you have access to big-data or data from varied sources and data points that lead you to intervene in very definitive ways? How about medium-data from audits or safety climate surveys – are you drilling deeper, looking for ways to limit your plateauing? And how about small-data that evolve from one-on-one conversations or focus groups? How revealing is it, how well are you managing it, and how deep are you drilling into it?

All safety leaders should be concerned about overcoming extended troughing and plateauing, but don’t simply rely on one or two measures, like your injury or illness rates. Look upstream at large, medium, and small-data that relates to facilities, tools, and equipment. Better understand what’s really occurring when it comes to safety leadership, coaching, communications, and near-miss data to overcome obstacles to creating and embracing more positive performance measures that push you beyond unpleasant plateaus. We need to be steeped in making good data choices, so troughing and plateauing occur less often. We should know what to do, drill deeper, and grind harder, so troughs and plateaus can be aggressively pursued and worked through, regularly.

As W. Edwards Deming has stated, “In God we trust. All others must bring data.”

Get comfortable with your data, evaluate and execute from your data to make efficient interventions that help you work through the troughs and beyond the plateaus.

Safety Leadership

Dear Friend and Colleague,

In your training, you should work toward impacting each of the three domains of attitude formation for your leaders and learners, so you can maximize the outcomes which ultimately impact their everyday actions as a leader.  And your leaders should also learn strategies, principles, and tactics that impact each of the three domains of attitude formation of their workers.  Even more, your workers can do the same to become a better safety leader and coach for their peers.

The three domains of attitude formation I’m talking about are the behavioral, affective or emotional, and the cognitive or thinking.  Each of these domains of attitude formation have corresponding types of changes they tend to impact, but in fact, all three must be positively affected in order to optimize the influence of a given leader.

All of my keynote work and extended learning sessions focus on impacting and optimizing a leader’s influence and expected outcomes through each of the domains of attitude formation, and ultimately a worker’s everyday actions.

Take a look at the very recent video below from a safety keynote I delivered in Norman, Oklahoma.  I addressed each of the three domains of attitude formation, and leaders will end up doing the same with regard to their influence.  It happens over, and over again.

If you’re looking for a leadership safety speaker or trainer – give me a call.  I work with all levels in a broad spectrum of organizations so that everyone can become a better safety leader and safety coach.  And yes, that includes your workers, front-line supervisors, managers, and senior leaders.

 

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