Why Are People Getting Killed At Work?

August 10, 2024 By Leave a Comment

Indifference… At a local event this past week, I asked a friend who is involved in safety work the question, why are people getting killed at work? He quickly came up with this answer.

“A lot fewer people are being killed than it used to be before OSHA. There has been a lot of progress. We must be at about the best we can do.“

Then the conversation moved off to the Olympics. He just brushed this off as no longer important.

But this is important to the approximately 5,200 families who have had someone in their family killed. This experience remains with the family forever. And this 5,200 total number is an every year statistic!

Those of you reading my newsletters know that I am constantly trying to help people reduce injuries and deaths by building Partner-Centered Leadership and sharing real case studies that have been published in Professional Safety. We can reduce the numbers of injuries and fatalities, and we shouldn’t just push this problem aside with indifference.

hard hats save workers from being killed at work

Leaders Lacking Insights About What Is Possible

At a recent graduation celebration gathering, I was talking with a family member who has a very responsible safety leadership job in a large company, about my efforts to have fewer people killed at work. We talked about Partner-Centered Leadership and having everyone involved, co-creating our shared futures and taking more responsibility for the whole business efforts, including safety.

I was asked, “How do you work this way across widely dispersed sites?” This is a challenge for sure. The way I see it, this effort has to begin with the CEO and the Leadership Team. They need to talk about Partner-Centered Leadership and walk the talk at every site visit so people can understand that they mean it. The top people need to personally engage the lower levels in learning to lead this way and insist that everyone is involved. The CEO and Leadership Team should do some of the training of the lower-level people.

If someone does not get on board, then some tough decisions need to be made. The message should be that this is the way the company is going to do business going forward. But equally important is helping everyone to see that going home to one’s family at the end of the workday with all one’s body parts intact – no injuries, no incidents, is the absolute answer to What’s in it for me?

My mantra when I was a plant manager was, “I don’t have a right to make my living where it is okay for you to get hurt!” Does anyone have this right? The methodology for success is to engage people – for supervision across the board, up and down the organization to learn how to ask process questions. When it comes to safety, leaders who are in denial, or pretending one “doesn’t know” just doesn’t cut it. Asking process questions can ensure accountability.

We then talked about why there was so much resistance to these ideas. Based on some hard systems thinking, I think that the whole US safety industry with all the training, audits, fines, blame, etc. is driven by FEAR! This idea can be startling. Examining safety from a systems perspective was a different idea – particularly noting that fear was a key driver.

The problem with a culture being driven by fear is that it is very difficult to learn and do new things. Just about everyone is concentrated on covering their backside rather than talking together in an environment that is safe enough to explore new ideas together. When we work together using Partner-Centered Leadership, we can open up the vast knowledge that is lying hidden in our organizations. When we treat people with respect, listen and learn together, amazing new ideas and possibilities bubble up.

Everything changes! Productivity goes up. Earnings go up, Safety improves. The culture becomes one where almost everyone is learning, growing, taking more responsibility and producing great results. New possibilities emerge which often lead to much better earnings.

workplaces should value safety

Partner-Centered Leadership

When the CEO and the Leadership Team learn what is possible and how to work this way with authenticity and caring, this can spread throughout their organization and achieve significantly better results. It takes some effort and dedication, but there is no need for new capital investment. In a sense, Partner-Centered Leadership is free!

Contact me (716-622-6467) and let’s discuss how this can work for you and your organization.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

The Focus on Safety Situations is Not Working Well

November 10, 2023 By Leave a Comment

Each day I read in various news reports and items about different safety situations and people getting hurt or killed.

It is rare that there is no report of a fatality somewhere.

These are real people getting killed doing their work. Most of these incidents are not new. Things like a boiler explosion, a grain silo explosion, a train wreck, someone caught between things, someone falling, a crane tipping over, a fire in a refinery, a boat accident, and I could go on and on. It is very sad to think of all the families, their losses and suffering.

The technology is there to avoid most of these situations. There are often safety people somewhere around the incident. Presumably there are supervisors around. Most of these incidents are not occurring with people who are working alone. Who is paying attention?

Tool-box sessions at the start of the day help some organizations.

Training is advocated by a lot of people. Some safety professionals look closely at the causes of these incidents. Sometimes the employer is cited by OSHA or fined. Some states pass new laws to try to force better compliance. All this is focused at things and situations, and not having the positive impact we all want.

Partnering with the People

All this safety stuff, the good and the bad, occurs through people. Most people want to be engaged and involved in their own safety…if anyone will listen. Many people are angry and cynical about safety because no one listens and just imposes the rules. Meaningful conversation is missing.

safety is about teamwork

One of the top reasons the OSHA cites organizations is the lack of proper hazards communications.

Hazard Communicating is a core element of any OSHA safety training compliance program, yet it has often been trivialized. You would think that supervisors and safety people would utilize the HazCom opportunity to converse with employees on a regular basis – not wait for an annual review.

Hazards are in the workplace; people need to understand the hazards and Management needs to create the conditions for meaningful, respectful conversations to occur. The conversation avenue for partnering is right there – among our people, not only about hazardous chemicals, but about all safety concerns…all people concerns. Why is there this level of disrespect for the people doing the work? Who cares? This is not difficult work. It takes commitment and time, but aren’t these both worth doing to save a life?

As I engage with people about their work, they are usually quite willing to talk about it, and often have good ideas about how to improve the situation. I have found that in talking together to explore what is the best way to do something, the people get quite interested and pay a lot more attention to what they are doing. Talking with the people, listening, and learning together results in a lot fewer injuries and incidents.

Our safety efforts across the various industries needs to shift to working with the people. We need to help people do things right. We do not need new safety philosophies; we need to be with the people, talking together, listening, learning, growing, and releasing our skills and insights to really make a difference to improving workplace safety.

All of you can walk among the people in your organizations, talking together, listening, learning, and doing together. Try it for 20 minutes a day, every day, for a few months and see what happens. What do you suppose you will begin to see and hear?

Changes Before Us

Change is a time when the possibility for getting hurt increases. By the time you read this, we will have shifted back to standard time. Daylight hour will change. Conditions around commuting will change with different hours and day light.

Some people will be extra tired until they adjust to the different hours. Work conditions may change. Our weather will be getting colder, often wetter, and slippery. Our windshields will need scraping, so we need to start a little earlier.

All this change, the bigger and the smaller ones, will cause us to be more alert and focused. Please pay attention to yourself, others and come home safely each day.

Below is a link to a short recap video on Hazards Communication. As you watch this, count how many opportunities you are provided with daily to:

1) Talk up general and/or chemical safety
2) Converse respectfully with an employee about the work
3) Respect and honor the individual and the task being done

Communicating is a huge key to Partnering in the Workplace. HazCom communications lend an excellent start for meaningful conversations across the board.

Hazard Communication Training for General Industry
from SafetyVideos.com

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Safety Partnership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Teen Injuries for Young, Inexperienced People at Work

August 10, 2023 By Leave a Comment

I recently saw several reports of teen injuries or teens being killed at work.

All these deaths involved young people working in dangerous environments like logging and heavy equipment work. It is sad to have any person killed, especially a young person with all their life ahead of them.

But these are not the only places where young people get killed. They are often hired to do basic tasks in unfamiliar environments. They do not know the potential of serious injuries from fork trucks scurrying about, or logs being sawed, or cardboard compactors, or woodchippers, or other moving, dangerous activities. Many get put into these new jobs with little safety training. They think that bad things will not happen to them and take dangerous risks. Their understanding of safety is usually very sparce. These young people are very vulnerable. And it is unconscionable that adults are willing to put these vulnerable youngsters into such situations.

teen work injuries

With the heat waves we are experiencing, they probably do not understand the dangers of heat exhaustion. They may be assigned to work in a closed warehouse, a truck, or other confined space where the heat dangers can be very high. I have a young friend who just started with a package delivery company and was out making deliveries. He was very active and darting in and out of the hot truck to deliver packages. The sun was blazing. He knew he was getting tired but did not know the dangers of heat exhaustion. He became dizzy and threw up but tried to tough it out. He wound up in the hospital.

Newcomers Need Our Help

All of us who know our workplace understand the hazards and know the safety procedures necessary to help these young people. For many of us, these newcomers may seem like they are from a different world. Their work ethics may be strange like thinking it is okay to be late for work or to not follow safety rules.

We need to reach out to them and give them a hand. They need guidance and help as they enter our strange, new world. It helps to talk with them about the work, the expectations, and rules in a way that makes sense to them. We need to sit together with them and talk about this new world they are entering without putting them down or making them feel stupid. Tell them some stories about incidents that have happened. Show them, with hands on, the things they will be doing. Show them where they can find help if necessary. Maybe assign them to an experienced person who cares about people and who can help them get established. Make sure that they have the safety equipment they need. We should not baby them in the process, but make sure that they have the information they need and know the people to whom they can talk if they need help.

It is important to let them know what the standards and rules are so they can clearly understand what is expected of them. We need to be sure that they understand the language we use. Be careful with all the acronyms since they will sound like a foreign language to them.

We, as leaders and managers, have a great responsibility to
these young people and their families to really help them.

The plant manager of a big sugar mill where I was doing some safety work shared a powerful, sad story with a group of men with whom we were working. He asked the men if they remembered what happened to Joe, a mill operator, when he was so severely injured. They all remembered Joe’s tragic accident. The plant manager then told them about visiting Joe in the hospital. Joe’s parents were there also visiting. At one point Joe’s father turned to the plant manager and said, “I trusted my son to you and the company and look at what you did to him!”

Let’s all help the young people coming into our workspaces,
and never have to look a grieving parent in the eye,
apologizing to them for having failed them.

teen work injuries and workplace safety

Leadership

When I was a Plant Manager, I did not work directly on safety issues. My focus was on the people and our relationships together. I spent hours every day talking with people all around the plant about things that were happening, how the business was doing, and some of our challenges. Safety often came up, and we addressed it as we went. Many of them began to take the initiative to identify and solve their own problems.

I felt it was important for people to know what was going on around them. I did this with respect, listening, asking them how I could help them, what problem was bugging them, and how we could improve things. I worked hard to let them see that I genuinely cared and built trust. Sometimes I would have to apologize for something I had said or done unintentionally. I also wanted them to see that they were an important part of the whole plant and were making a positive difference.

Sharing information, listening, and building trust, and helping people to see that their work (including their safety) was important and both their work and integrated safety connected to my leadership work. As I did this every day, things changed and the whole culture shifted. Our total performance significantly improved and in just 4 years we cut our injury rates by 97%. Then they sustained this for 19 years.

Why am I emphasizing this?

Because safety attention is integral to all work…and all work gets done through people…People do their best work when they understand the whole picture, and caring, authentic leadership (listening, sharing information, and building trust) are the absolute essentials to extraordinary outcomes.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Culture Wars

July 10, 2023 By Leave a Comment

Our country is being pulled apart by people at both ends of the culture spectrum.

The political parties and most of the candidates are engaged in this hateful act. Over and over again they say and do things that are far out and of little use to anyone except the big internet companies who make money by getting people to click on something. People in other countries with whom I talk are amazed and wonder what we are doing to ourselves.

culture wars in the workplace

This is not just spoiling much of the public discourse; it also is poisoning our discourse at work. It is very risky to bring up something that may be controversial because arguments may break out and everyone gets angry. The pace of work slows down or even stops. Safety incidents are more likely to occur as people lose focus on their jobs. The culture of the organization gets broken down such that people stop talking together and learning stops.

There are many organizations that offer consultants to come into fix things as if culture is a thing like a car that we can take to the auto shop to fix something. Culture is not a thing.

In my view, culture is the outcome of the collective behaviors in which the people engage in their organization.

Here are some ideas about culture to think about:

  • Does your organization have a culture of respect and trust where people can come together to learn, share ideas, help each other, try new experiments, grow, and create new things?
  • Does your organization have a hard, top-down driven culture where directives and orders flow downward with little or no feedback?
  • Does your organization have a culture where things are so disorganized that no one seems to know what is going on?
  • Does your organization have strong silos of various experts who don’t talk and protect their territory with a vengeance?
  • Does your organization have different business objectives, often conflicting with one another so no one is working for the greater good?

When consultants are hired to fix these sorts of problems, they usually fail. They are working at the wrong end of the process. The culture is the collective outcome of what we are doing.

Shifting the Culture

When Richard N. Knowles and Associates is asked to come into an organization we come with questions and create a safe space for people at all levels from across the organization to come together to solve their complex problems.

Most organizations have about 85-90% of the information they need to solve their problems. So when they work together on an opening question like, “How do we make this place better and more effective?” in a space that is safe to be open, to share, to listen, to explore new ideas, to explore old ideas in a new way, to learn together, lots of new possibilities emerge.

They co-create their agreements about how they want to work together like helping each other, telling the truth, treating each other with respect, working for the greater good, apologizing for mistakes, sharing all information and building trust. Since these are co-created by all the people, they hold each other accountable and learn. As they come up with things that they want to do to address the opening question, they form teams to address them and work on them.

As people begin to work together in a new way that they have co-created, the culture begins to shift to one that is vibrant, safer, more productive, and healthier.

culture wars in the workplace

In our workshops, all these ideas which the people come up with are written onto a big poster which they put in their workplace so everyone can talk about it and keep it alive.

All their work needs to be kept visible and open for sharing and upgrading as conditions change. Everyone from top management to those working below needs to be a part of this process.

We have done this in many organizations of all types, and the process always works as long as the people are willing to talk together, learn and make things happen.

A vibrant, new culture quickly emerges from doing real work together this way and is sustained by posting their chart and continually talking together about it.

For example, in working with the City of Niagara Falls, NY, the Mayor and her leadership team cut $16,000,000 out of a $62,000,000 budget (24%), improved services and ended up with a $4,000,000 fund balance in their first term.

Please give us a call at 716-622-6467 or go to RNKnowlesAssociates.com to learn more.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Stockholder Revolt at Dollar General

June 12, 2023 By Leave a Comment

I just saw an interesting safety item in my morning safety alerts about the Dollar General Stores.

If you have been paying attention to the safety news, you know that Dollar General is under a lot of scrutiny from OSHA over their very poor safety and injury performance. They have been experiencing a lot of safety violations, accidents, and deaths.

dollar general stockholders

When I go into a Dollar General Store, it is amazing to see all the variety of things that I can buy. They are the modern-day version of the old country general store. They are quite popular and new stores are springing up in many communities around the US. They really seem to focus on pleasing the customer with all sorts of things we most need and want. In just looking around their stores, it is hard to see why they are having safety problems.

Their safety problems are not usually in the front of their stores, but rather back, behind the scenes where new merchandise in being delivered and empty boxes and other wastes are being disposed of. They have mobile equipment like fork trucks and push carts to help unload their delivery trucks, move heavy pallets of goods around and restock shelves. They also have trash compactors to crush and bail cardboard boxes to make them ready for the paper recyclers to pick up.

Slow moving, heavy equipment is dangerous. The equipment is very heavy, does not make much noise as it is moved around, and is easily overlooked by other workers. There is a lot of history of people being maimed or killed by equipment like this. There is also a lot of training that needs to be done for everyone who works around or with this equipment to keep them safe.

The cardboard trash compactors are also very dangerous and need to be carefully used by well-trained people. How many stories have you heard of people being caught and pulled into a compactor with tragic results? You must know what you are doing when using equipment like this. Do all their people get the training they need to do their work safely?

Dollar General tries to keep their labor costs as low as they can, so they keep their workforce at a minimum level. This means that their people are very busy and preoccupied with getting their jobs done. Do they take the time to have the people thoroughly trained and knowledgeable about the safety hazards?

you always have to think about safety

Very busy people mixed in with slow-moving, heavy fork truck and movers, and having to get the trash out of their stores as fast as they can is a very dangerous mix. In this article I just read, they mentioned that Dollar General has had 49 fatalities in the last 10 years. OSHA is pushing them hard to improve with little progress being made. Their board has not been very aggressive in improving the safety in their stores.

However, the Dollar General shareholders have had enough, and they have voted to over-rule the Board’s resistance, and to have safety inspections and audits in their stores. This is a powerful and great event of the shareholders deciding that killing and injuring people is wrong and that it is time do what is the right thing to do. This effort combined with the efforts by OSHA are very likely to have a major, positive impact on Dollar General’s safety performance. We’ll see.

Why am I emphasizing this situation at Dollar General? Because in your own workplace, there can be similar situations: crowded conditions, products and goods being rapidly moved around, housekeeping concerns, fork-trucks, and pallet movers, etc. Diligently adhering to the safety rules and keeping logistics running smoothly, while fully training your people – all come together for reducing the potential for injuries and incidents.

We can all take heed of this situation and learn from it!

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

We Remember Them… Workers’ Memorial Day

May 10, 2023 By Leave a Comment

We honor their memory by doing SAFETY better and differently!

April 28th was Workers’ Memorial Day. This was a time to reflect on all those who have lost their lives or were seriously injured at work. This was a time to honor their memories and the suffering of their families.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports about 5,200 deaths and 2,300,000 serious injuries in each of the last 6-7 years. The AFL-CIO’s 2023 “Death on the Job” report estimates that occupational diseases kill 120,000 people each year. Not only is this bad for the people and their families, it is also bad for the businesses. These injuries cost businesses far more than the work that can be done to prevent most of them.

It seems that for many companies, the dash for profits is their primary goal, and it must be achieved regardless of the adverse impact on the workers. I don’t know why the financial losses seem to be ignored by the businesses.

OSHA is taking a stronger stance and is increasing the fines and penalties for violations. The EPA is also more involved through their initiative titled Reducing Risks of Accidental Releases at Industrial Facilities.

The EPA participated in a recent court decision against the DuPont LaPorte, TX Plant where four people were killed on November 15, 2014. The decision resulted in:

  • $12,000,000 penalty,
  • $4,000,000 Community Service payment to the National Fish and Wildlife foundation to help to restore the western shore of Galveston Bay, and
  • One-year probation for the Unit Operations Manager.

workers memorial day

There is a far simpler, easier, and less expensive way to quickly reduce the number of deaths, injuries, illnesses, and uncontrolled releases.

No one can claim that they do not know how to vastly reduce incidents, injuries, fatalities, and wastes to the environment. Over the last 35 years, I have helped a number of organizations cut these rates by over 90% quickly. When I was the Plant Manager at the big DuPont Chemical Plant in Belle, WV, in the early 1990’s, we cut injury rates by about 97%, wastes dropped by 95%, and earnings went up about 300% in just 4 years. I have also published several articles in the ASSP journal, Professional Safety, which prove we can do a lot better in reducing the number of deaths, injuries, and illnesses at work.

I don’t work on reducing the safety and environmental releases numbers, they are just an outcome that is useful in seeing if the work is accomplishing its goal of having everyone go home healthy and injury free, and we are not hurting the environment.

Building the Capacity of the People

The focus of my work is building the capacity of the people to:

  • be together
  • think together
  • listen and learn together
  • solve problems together
  • make decisions about their work and act together, and finally
  • reflect on what they are learning, make improvements and co-create their future together

The managers and safety leaders can make this happen by doing just three things, every day:

  1. Go into your workplace, be among the people, sit with them and talk with them about things like:
    • the safety problems they are running into
    • what is holding them back
    • what are the challenges they face every day
    • how you can help them to solve their problems
    • how the business is doing
    • what the competition is doing
    • how their family is doing
    • what activities are their kids are involved in like baseball
    • etc.
  2. Help to build trust by talking respectfully with the people in their workplaces, listening and learning about their challenges and contributions.
  3. Give them credit for their good work and help them see how their work helps the business and builds the long run sustainability.

I walked among the people every day for 5 hours a day (the plant was quite large) for almost 8 years. I did not make decisions there; I listened, watched, and learned how to help the people to build capacity and achieve excellence. I stayed in integrity with them – creating meaning, behaving with honesty and reliability, and caring for ourselves and others. We built a culture of trust where we could all learn and grow. Some managers have told me that this was a waste of time, and they have other, more important work to do. Really? I have not talked with any manager who got the improved safety, environmental, productivity and earnings improvements we achieved at the Belle Plant.

Workers' Memorial Day

This is simple work which requires the will and courage to be in the process and do it. By helping each other, we can all do this important work!

Call me with your questions (716-622-6467). I’ll be pleased to help you in your Safety Excellence endeavors.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

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