safety in the workplace | Safety Excellence For Business

The Focus on Safety Situations is Not Working Well

November 10, 2023 By Richard N. Knowles 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: hazards communications, OSHA, partnering in the workplace, reducing risks in the workplace, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, safety situations in the workplace, safety training, teamwork, teamwork in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace support

Close Up: YOUR Safety and YOUR Security in the Workplace

October 10, 2023 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

It is a nice exclamation mark on my day when I’m asked to participate in a blog-talk radio show on topics I’m passionate about: Safety and Security in the Workplace.

On October 2nd, I was interviewed on Close Up Radio by host Jim Masters.

Below is the gist of the broadcast, and while everyone has a crucial and personal role in workplace safety and security, leaders have an even higher level of responsibility and accountability.

Consider this: Employees in the public and private sector are extremely apprehensive about workplace violence. Over the years many incidents of terrible injuries and fatalities have occurred from active shooters and other homicides which has become shockingly all too common. Whether physical, psychological, or sexual, workplace violence is a major concern for employers and employees. We are all entitled to a safe and secure workplace – All of us! The responsibility for preventing these tragic occurrences falls directly on the leaders who must adopt a different mindset and decide on the best approach to commit to the business and their people.

I shared that leaders play a critical role in creating and maintaining a healthy work culture. Leaders need to lead by example in creating a supportive and inclusive environment. That is why in my previous work as a plant manager in chemical plants and now, as we consult (Nagele, Knowles and Associates), we prepare leaders to improve employee engagement and retention. Because an intentional, highly engaged workplace results in employee satisfaction where a sense of community is established, and the business and the people thrive.

Respect is one of the most important traits in the workplace because it creates a positive work culture, promotes teamwork, productivity, and collaboration. Treating people with courtesy and kindness should be the standard in any workplace. Examples of respect in the workplace include listening to one another’s opinions and conversing with an open mind so we build nurturing relationships. It is also about insisting on good behavior across the board – codes of conduct and respectful workplace policies are necessary for eliminating dysfunctional workplace behaviors like bullying, and harassment of all kinds.

Respect is essential for leaders to build connections.

Leaders are in charge of making certain that all employees feel valued and that each has voice, so they feel like part of the team.

How leaders and workers treat each other by interacting respectfully is critical. Effective leaders model this behavior and set the example resulting in more respect being shown by employees. It becomes a genuinely good place to work with increased job satisfaction where employees work well together and stay productive, boosting the company’s bottom line. Foster a culture of respect and you will create a safe working environment where they will feel emotionally safer, happier, even in these challenging times.

If you’d like to hear the broadcast in its full form, here is the link.

Always willing to answer your questions – Call me at 716-622-6467.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: Close Up Radio, Jim Masters, Nagele Knowles And Associates, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, working safely in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace security, workplace violence

Teen Injuries for Young, Inexperienced People at Work

August 10, 2023 By Richard N. Knowles 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.

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.

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: reducing risks in the workplace, safety challenges in the workplace, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, safety procedures in the workplace, teens being injured at work, working safely in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace safety for teens

The Culture Wars

July 10, 2023 By Richard N. Knowles 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.

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.

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: collective behaviors in the workplace, culture wars in the workplace, effective workplace, reducing risks in the workplace, safety challenges in the workplace, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, understanding each other in the workplace, working safely in the workplace, workplace culture, workplace safety

The Stockholder Revolt at Dollar General

June 12, 2023 By Richard N. Knowles 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.

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?

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: equipment training, equipment training in the workplace, reducing risks in the workplace, safety and injury performance, safety challenges in the workplace, safety in the workplace, safety inspections, safety leadership, safety violations, working safely in the workplace, workplace injuries, workplace safety

We Remember Them… Workers’ Memorial Day

May 10, 2023 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

We honor their memory by doing SAFETY better and differently!

April 28^th 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.

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 1990â€™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:

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.
Help to build trust by talking respectfully with the people in their workplaces, listening and learning about their challenges and contributions.
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.

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: Bureau of Labor Statistics, environmental safety, environmental safety in the workplace, reducing risks in the workplace, safety challenges in the workplace, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, Workers' Memorial Day, working safely in the workplace, workplace injuries, workplace safety

Safety Isn’t Just Safety Anymore…

February 10, 2023 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

What every Manager needs to know that OSHA and ISO already do!

It started out in 1970 with OSHA’s regulations to enhance Safety in the Workplace – the first leg of the Safety Stool, a.k.a. as Occupational Safety, exampled by preventing slips, trips and falls, requiring hearing protection, hand and foot protection, and eye-ware.

Then came the second leg of the Safety Stool, Occupational Health, exampled by preventing environmental/respiratory and ergonomic hazards. Then came Process Safety Management (PSM), exampled by what it takes to keep hazardous substances in the pipes, and which became an essential part of workplace safety with the comprehensive issuance of OSHA 1910 – the third leg.

All three legs are important and are critical for Safety professionals, HR professionals, Managers and Supervisors to embrace and for people to understand. Indeed, OSHA requires this attention to keep our people safe (life and limb) within the workplace.

Now, with this new decade of Workplace Violence rearing its ugly head, we know that we must add a fourth leg to the Safety Stool. Because attention to this 4th prong needs diligent awareness, it is now becoming paramount that every manager and supervisor be schooled in Situational Awareness:

What is happening around you?
What is happening between and among people in the workplace?
Where are your vulnerabilities?
Are you noticing the cultural dysfunction happening in your workplace?
Are you able to engage appropriately to find out what’s happening?
How do you address these dysfunctions?

The fourth leg of this stool is what is called Psychological or Social Safety. Another way to describe it is the psychological harm that comes with repeated bullying, harassment, incivilities, and dysfunctional behaviors, that leave workers dreading to go to work, or that increase the risk of home-growing an active threat/shooter, or having a suicide or murder in your workplace, let alone the bad press that comes with a highly publicized incident.

If no one steps in to stop bad behaviors when they are happening, they continue and escalate over time. Not paying attention to social risk manifests into psychological harm as the continuum of bad behaviors escalate in the workplace – and ultimately can impact people in harmful ways. Yes, OSHA is keen on this 4th leg of the safety stool, too, and wants to know what your business, company, organization, or team is doing about it. Prevention of Workplace Violence is the operative word.

What is Workplace Violence?

OSHA explains that workplace violence is violence or the threat of violence against workers. It can occur at or outside the workplace and can range from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and homicide, one of the leading causes of job-related deaths. However it manifests itself, workplace violence is a growing concern for employers and employees nationwide.

OSHA makes it very clear. Employers are responsible for ensuring that the workplace does NOT become a hostile workplace. (Bullying, harassment, and incivilities contribute to hostile environments). OSHA requires employers to provide a safe workplace for their employees…both physically safe and psychologically safe. This is covered by the General Duty Clause Section 5(a)(1).

Enter the new ISO Standard: ISO 45003 IS THE NEW INTERNATIONAL STANDARD (2021-06) – Occupational Health and Safety Management – Psychological health and safety at work – Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks. This new standard states that Management must be prepared to deal with violence that involves a person (employee, visitor, vendor), etc., losing control, without a weapon. This normally means dealing with psychological safety factors.

It is difficult to predict violent acts, so the Standard expects managers and associates to be vigilant. Report any concerns of erratic behaviors to supervision and HR as soon as possible.

Examples of violent behavior include but are not limited to:

Intimidating or bullying others
Abusive language
Physical assault
Threatening behavior
Sexual or racial harassment
Concealing or using a weapon
Anger
Tantrums

You get the picture. None of these types of behaviors belong in a workplace, thus the underscoring of new Respectful Workplace policies.

At Nagele, Knowles and Associates, we understand the construct of workplace violence and how to identify it. It starts with knowing your inside culture (culture assessment) to understand where bullying and dysfunctional behavior is happening and how to stop it in its tracks. What is your workplace doing to ensure a Respectful Workplace? It equally starts with a physical security vulnerability assessment to understand where you, your site, your people are most vulnerable to a perpetrator entering your workplace to do harm, and how to deter that from happening.

The 4th leg requires Situational Awareness – that is the tip of the spear when it comes to the prevention of workplace violence…from the inside or from the outside! This holds true in the workplace, and in living our daily lives. Wake up! Be Alert! Observing, expecting, embracing, and requiring a Respectful Workplace is powerful for reducing those harmful dysfunctional behaviors.

Employees must become stakeholders in their own safety and security and develop a survival mindset as well. Vigorous prevention programs, timely interventions, and appropriate responses by organizations and their employees will contribute significantly to a safe, secure, and respectful environment. That’s what we teach; that’s what we do.

Want to know more? Check out our book “Guide to Reducing the Risk of Workplace Violence…the Absolute Essentials” available on Amazon. It has been labeled the “gold standard” – a comprehensive guide to reducing your risk of workplace violence happening in your workplace…from the inside or the outside or give us a call at 716-622-6467.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: bullying in the workplace, harassment, ISO, occupational health, occupational safety, OSHA, OSHA regulations, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, situational awareness, social safety, violence in the workplace, work safely, working safely in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace violence

Trust is so Important for Improved Safety Performance

January 10, 2023 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

I have been trying to understand why the number of people getting hurt and killed at work is not getting better.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since 2017 the number of people being killed at work is averaging about 5,130 a year, with no sign of improvement and the injury frequency rate is stuck at about 2.7 for that period.

There is a lot of effort being put into trying to improve safety with the global effort totaling about $20,000,000,000 being spent for services, regulation, equipment, trade associations, etc. This is a huge industry; I call it “Big Safety.” Why isn’t Big Safety making more progress in reducing the number of people getting hurt and killed? These are real people and their families that are suffering so much.

I have been getting some help from Kerry Turner and Marc Pierson in looking at the safety work from a systems perspective. The safety system is huge with many factors at play. The systems approach is helpful in being able to see the whole system, the various components, how they interact, find key points where changes can be made.

One thing that I have seen is that injuries and incidents are local events, and it is hard for Big Safety to know what really happened in detail. What it offers often does not fit quite right and comes across to the people as “the Flavor of the Month.” The people doing the work have little confidence in what the offerings provide so they often do not stick very well.

Another thing that I have noticed is that the consultants coming out of Big Safety often are seen as “experts” and come into the organization to fix the people rather than teaching the people how to solve their own problems. This weakens the people and tends to disempower them. This is a lot like Big Government coming into a local community to fix a problem when they do not know the people or much about the real nature of the problem they are coming in to fix.

In studying the Safety System, it becomes obvious that trust is a central feature that is often missing when Big Safety comes into the organization. There has been a lot written about the importance of trust, and in using a systems approach, trust really emerges as the central feature that needs to be in place before much progress in improving safety performance can take place. Real progress requires the energy, creativity and commitment of the people doing the work. This is a gift that people will give if they have trust in the other people and feel safe in opening up to meet the safety challenges.

A Suggested Approach to Building Trust

Perhaps when a consultant comes into an organization to work on a safety issue, they come into the organization 2-3 days before their planned work begins and walk into the facility among the people to get acquainted with them. Talk with the people, listen to their concerns, and discover what the real problems are that are causing the need for improved performance. Talk about their work with them and find out what they need so they can work more safely and effectively.

Open yourself up to their questions and concerns about you. Creating a safe space where they can talk with you is an important step in building trust with the people. Then the consultant needs to reflect on all that was learned and see how their knowledge and skills can be used to help the people to solve their problems. Don’t try to solve their problems for them or fix them. Rather teach them how to solve their own problems.

I have found that this approach works very well in helping to get to know the people, the issues, and to begin to build trust.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business Tagged With: building safety trust in the workplace, reducing deaths in the workplace, reducing injuries in the workplace, reducing the number of people getting hurt, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, safety performance, safety practitioners, safety professionals, safety systems, systems in the workplace for safety, work safely, working safely in the workplace, workplace safety

Building Respect and Trust

December 12, 2022 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Why do so many managers and safety professionals keep treating the people in organizations as objects to be controlled so they will work safely?

They seem to assume that the employees can’t or won’t think for themselves and have to be made to work safely. These managers and safety professionals are not bad people, but they are stuck in their basic assumptions about people. So many seem to think that they have the answers and the power to make people do as they are told.

Thinking of the people as “employees” is part of the problem. Thinking of people as “employees” brings different thoughts to mind. The word “employee” is a legal word that defines my relationship with my employer with respect to things like hours of work, pay rates, benefits, etc. It also carries some tough top-down implications. If the boss gives an order, it better be done. The boss and the employee are not seen as equals in terms of respect, hopes, aspirations, good ideas and creative energy.

This has been the approach for generations and yet, there are still over 6,000 people a year getting killed at work and thousands are suffering serious injuries. Just using the same approach, with variations, over and over, and expecting to see real improvements is a problem!

There needs to be a fundamental shift to assumptions like these.

My Safety Focus: Building Respect and Trust.

My basic assumptions are:

We work with people who have brains and can think; their hopes and dreams are similar to my own.
People do want to work safely and not get hurt.
People want to be treated with respect.
The people doing the work have important knowledge and ideas to contribute.
People want to be listened to.
I do not know what they know, so we need to share information together so we can do our best.
Safety is connected to everything we do; it is part of the whole system.
It takes everyone pulling together to achieve excellence.
I do not have a right to make my living at a place where it is okay for people to get hurt.

I did not work on safety as such. My focus was on the people and building trust and a better, safer future. The more I worked this way with the people, the better our performance became. Within 4 years, our Total Injury Rate had dropped by about 97% to a rate of about 0.3. (The rate was only a way to keep score.) The people liked working this way and sustained their performance for 19 years. I wrote about this in my recently published paper in Professional Safety [Knowles, R.N. (2022, Nov.). Leading vs. Managing: A tale of two organizational processes. Professional Safety, 67(11), 42-46].

The importance of building trust and working with people has been known for a long time. Douglas McGregor wrote The Human Side of Enterprise in 1960 about Theory X and Y. Recently the work of others like Rosa Carrillo in her book, The Relationship Factor in Safety Leadership, 2020, and even in this current issue of Professional Safety [ Sarkus, D.J. (2022, Nov.). Building community through servant leadership. Professional Safety, 67(11), 24-29.] are emphasizing the importance of respect and trust.

This shift in thinking and working with the people results in a lot fewer people getting hurt or killed at work. Yet why do so many safety people seem to be all wrapped up in chasing injuries and incidents? Some just counting the numbers. Others developing more advanced ways to get employees to work more safely, or to develop better ways to analyze incident situations. Many are just pushing production with little or no regard for safety. Some safety consultants have learned to give great motivational talks that are fun to hear, but have almost no impact in the workplace. The BLS statics on workplace injuries and deaths are not showing much improvement.

The global safety improvement industry was estimated to be over $20,000,000. The trade shows have lots of very fancy safety equipment and the consultants are selling their approaches. Is there a vested interest it doing things like we have always do it and getting the same results?

Many managers think that you can not have excellence in safety and earnings at the same time. That is not what I found at the plant I led where we cut the injury rate by 97% and increased the earnings by 300%.

Conclusion

If the whole safety effort was shifted to treating people with respect, listening and learning together and doing what makes sense, there would be a huge improvement in total safety and a lot fewer people getting injured and killed.

Is the effort to build trust, learn to treat people with respect, to listen more carefully, to build on each other’s good ideas too high a price for saving many, many lives?

What will it take to make the shift?

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Safety Partnership Tagged With: building respect and trust in the workplace, creating a safety culture, D.J. Sarkus, Douglas McGregor, leading versus managing, Rosa Carrillo, safety improvement, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, safety management, safety performance, safety practitioners, safety professionals, safety systems, work safely, working safely in the workplace, workplace safety

A Safety Systems View for Organizations

November 10, 2022 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Everything happens through the people and all three phases of safety are interconnected.

Note: Many Safety Practitioners go about their safety work task-to-task without considering the broader “systems” in which they work, nor the people that are impacted by their decisions. This newsletter is intended to help lift up safety thinking and actions to a higher level. A systems approach can have a big impact on improving the total safety performance.

In October, I introduced a new figure showing a whole systems view of safety, where occupational safety, occupational health and process safety management are connected and work together through all the people in the organization.

I have thought a lot about this figure and want to share a new figure with you.

the whole safety system

We all live in a world with dynamic systems moving all around us all the time. When we can see the systems around us, we can be much more effective in understanding how things are interacting and deciding what we need to do. We can become much more resilient and sustainable. This is certainly my own experience when working with organizations. In many ways the safety system behaves like a living system where everything is connected and working together.

The traditional approach I see being taken in most safety work is one where the organization is treated as if it were a machine. The belief is that if we take it apart and fix the parts, that it will work better when we put it all back together. The “master mechanic” comes in, fixes the parts, (the employees) and tells it what to do. Improvement is modest at best, and resilience and sustainability are low.

Taking the “living” safety system apart to fix it, kills it.

In thinking about the living safety system, all the people in the organization are involved and partnering to build a better safety future through continuous conversations in a psychologically safe space, at all levels, about how to improve together, think about new ideas, learn, and do things for improvement. All the people in the organization are the center of it all.

Each component of safety is placed around the people. Each safety component has their own particular technology which needs to be done very well. In doing each part as if they are separate does not result in achieving safety excellence. It is in embracing the whole safety system where everyone wins. Together we co-create a culture that is both resilient and sustainable.

You’ll notice that I have introduced a new term I call “Environmental Safety,” which looks at process safety management in a different way. Environmental Safety relates to impacts on people and the air, water and land from wastes, spills, fires, explosions, leaks, sloppy operations, etc. It includes a lot that is already in process safety management PSM When the PSM is done well, the environmental safety is excellent. When the PSM is neglected disasters like the Deep Water Horizon kill people and create huge messes.

The safety system does not exist in isolation. There are a lot of other systems surrounding it that connect directly or indirectly that can be influenced by how well the safety system performs. A highly effective safety system can have a powerful, positive impact on the larger systems in which is functions. A poorly functioning safety system can negatively impact a lot in the larger systems around it, which can then raise concerns, drive regulations, anger the people, the families, the communities and weaken the business in countless ways.

dig deeper to reach a little higher when it comes to business safety

Conclusion

When we use a systems view and see what is going on around us, we are much more able to make effective decisions. Everything moves through the people. In sharing all information, treating people with respect and trust, and giving people the credit for their learning and accomplishments, we create the conditions where energy and creativity are released. We can effectively move in response to changes and become much more sustainable. The people and the business are winners.

Note: I refer to the people in the organization as “people” rather than “employees.” The word “employee” is a legal term that defines the relationship of the person to the organization with things like hours of work and rates of pay. It also carries strong, negative implications about the boss/subordinate relationship. However, referring to people as “people” implies that we are all in this together coming from different perspectives, bringing different gifts, knowledge and skills which are all needed for shared success.

We all work together with respect and build trust.

Please call me at 716-622-6467 or email me at RNKnowles@aol.com if you would like to talk about these ideas. See also RNKnowlesAssociates.com and SafetyExcellenceForBusiness.com.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: creating a safety culture, environmental safety, occupational health, occupational safety, safety in the workplace, safety management, safety performance, safety practitioners, safety systems, work safely, workplace safety