safety in the workplace | Safety Excellence For Business

Announcing: New Edition – Hot off the Amazon press!

May 11, 2020 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

“Guide to Reducing the Risk of Workplace Violence”

Our new comprehensive guide, revised and updated, is now available on Amazon.

It is the “Gold Standard” in providing people who are concerned about reducing all sorts of violence in their work places. The guidance ranges from a hostile workplace to bullying to sexual harassment to threats to fighting and even to murder.

Some safety professionals do not see workplace violence as a safety issue, but if you stop to reflect a moment, you’ll see that these sorts of behaviors distract people from their work. Distractions lead to safety problems. When the behaviors are acute, someone can get hurt or even murdered. The leading cause of death in the workplace for women is murder or suicide. The third leading cause of death in the workplace for men is murder or suicide.

Our “Guide to Reducing the Risks of Workplace Violence” is a must read for all who are interested in creating a safer workplace! All HR groups should read, understand and share this critical information so that everyone can learn about the hazards of workplace violence and their role in helping to create a safer workplace. Safety and Security people – it is all in here, including active shooter protocol and situational awareness. And, it is a no-brainer for Supervisors – this comprehensive guide covers the gamut!

Check it out here on Amazon!

Leading in High-Consequence Industries – Red Flags are needed!

August 12, 2019 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Every now and then a major disaster occurs in high-consequence industries like chemical manufacturing, petroleum production, refining, and aviation.

These disasters tend to be low-frequency events, which often look like some big surprise just happened. A lot of people get killed and severe damage to their facilities, their customers and the environments results. Often things looked like they were going fine just before the disaster strikes.

For example, the workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform received good recognition for outstanding occupational safety performance (the slips, trips and falls sorts of incidents) just a day or two before the explosion on April 20, 2010, that killed 11 people and injured 17 others. The pressures from top management to get into production led to failures of their process safety management (PSM) systems and processes. Communications were limited because management did not want to hear of more problems; they were driving the production schedule. The fine occupational safety performance masked the PSM deficiencies which are more subtle and invisible to upper managers, unless they are keenly aware of the needs for excellent PSM.

Part of being keenly aware is getting out of their offices and into the field looking, listening, talking with the people, and learning what is really going on. The gap between PSM-as-imagined and PSM-as-done was huge. When the pressures for production begin to overwhelm the safety systems, red flags need to be raised. The culture needs to be one where people can bring up problems and challenge the pressures without sacrificing their careers.

Another example occurred at the DuPont Belle, West Virgina plant (now Chemours) where I was the plant manager. I used the Partner-Centered Leadership (PCL) approach when I was there. I spent 5 hours a day in the plant looking, listening, talking with the people, and helping to build higher standards and performance. Along with all our other improvements, our occupational safety and ergonomics injury rates (Total Recordable Case Rate (TRC) dropped by over 97% to about 0.3 and emissions to air, water and land (a measure of our PSM performance) dropped by over 95%.

When I was transferred, the people close to the actual work continued to self-manage themselves with all we had learned about PCL, and their TRC stayed around 0.3 for 12 more years. However, the new managers that came after me used the traditional top-down approach and pulled lots of the PSM decision-making up to themselves. The TRC rates were so good that they left the people close to the work using PCL alone. The managers started to cut corners by limiting funds, cutting back on engineering support, letting inspection timelines slip, and the like. While the TRC looked great, the PSM was slowly rotting away and things fell apart.

They eventually had a series of disasters and an operator was killed. The managers hardly got out of their offices, lost contact with the people, let the standards slip and trust fell apart with the result that the gap between work-as-imagined and work-as-done became very wide. This sounds like the Deepwater Horizon pattern.

Safety in High-Consequence Industries

Now we have another example with the mess at Boeing and the 737 Max crashes. Top management was feeling the pressures for market share from Airbus and putting terrific pressures on cost reduction and faster production.

According to an April New York Times story, the people were forced to take short cuts, and about a dozen whistle-blower claims and safety complaints on things like defective manufacturing, quality problems, and debris left on planes were ignored. Training of pilots was shorted from 4 to 2 sessions in flight simulators. These problems went from the top of the organization all the way down. Now after two crashes 346 people are dead. There is a lot left in this story as it unfolds. Again, this pattern is like the first two stories.

In these high consequence industries, the top management needs to have a discipline of raising red flags when they are feeling the pressures to hurry up, cut costs and produce more. These pressures shutdown and destroy the communications, quality, and safety standards. This takes discipline and courage but that is the nature of the business. Leading businesses where there are high-consequence, low frequency events requires focus, skill and leading using the PLC approach.

When the system fails, it is not the top managers who get killed!

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: business safety, engage employees on workplace safety, making businesses safer, respect in the workplace, safety culture in business, safety in the workplace, safety professionals

Building a Civil, Respectful, Engaged, Safe, Profitable Place to Work

June 10, 2019 By Richard N. Knowles 1 Comment

I think that most people want to work at a place that is like this. We spend a large part of our lives at work, so let’s make things really good.

This is quite attainable with authentic, courageous leaders who take a stand that this is the sort of place they want to lead. The knowledge and technology are available and broadly known by lots of people so I want to share my own experiences.

Building a workplace like this results in the elimination of a lot of waste.

Some examples of the sources of waste are:

HR time spent investigating claims of harassment or bullying
High turnover
Low morale
Low engagement
Indifference by some people
Resistance to change
Graffiti and vandalism
Fighting
Sloppy workmanship
Many injuries and incidents
Poor housekeeping
Unnecessarily long times to get work done
Some OSHA investigations and law suits

In some organizations where there is a lot of bullying, harassment and worse, the level of waste could be as high as 20% of their payroll cost. This can all be avoided!!!

Here are the things I did that helped me a lot in tackling this problem when I was a plant manager:

I had to develop the focus within me that lack of respect and incivility were serious problems and I had to personally address them. If I was the problem, I had to work on that. I had to take a public stand on my beliefs that disrespect and incivility among us was unacceptable.
I then had to let everyone know that I would not tolerate anyone being treated with disrespect and incivility. I had to explain that:
- none of us had a right to treat each other this way,
- the open, free flow of information was vital for us to learn,
- we needed to create a place where it was safe for people to talk together, share and learn,
- it is very hard on the people impacting psychological safety,
- it can lead to injuries and violence, and
- it is very big, darn waste that we can eliminate if we work together. All of us need to play a part.
Then I had to go into all the workplaces in the plant, respectfully yet firmly, talking with everyone. Sometimes these conversations were not easy as some people pushed back and challenged me.
I did this day after day for months; trust and interdependence grew; slowly things changed. Everyone could see what I was doing and they knew that they could correct me if I made mistakes. Improvements in all dimensions of our work began to show up. Morale grew. There were fewer injuries and incidents. Turnover and absenteeism dropped. The environmental performance improved along with better customer service. Housekeeping improved. More work was getting done on schedule and costs were lower.

This all began with my determination to work on improving respect, civility and safety. As I built credibility and trust with everyone, people began to make improvements in many other areas. Everything got better.

I need to emphasize that respect in the workplace is so very important. Lack of respect degrades everything. Lack of respect leads to harassment, bullying, sabotage, fighting, and even murder. The leaders set the tone and the standards. Bullying is a problem in over half of our workplaces and about half the bullying is from managers. This is just unacceptable. Not only does it demean the people, it causes safety problems and wrecks involvement and productivity.

Some managers have told me that they do not have the time for working this way. For me, working this way led to far better results than anything that I had learned in all the management courses I had been sent to over the years. As we at the plant came together, working with respect and civility, the level of engagement went way up. This led to more and more improvement. Injury rates dropped 98%, productivity rose 45% and earnings rose 300%. I found this to be a much more satisfying way to work.

It was easier for me.
It was fun to see the people grow.
The results were terrific!

Shifting to this way of working is quite do-able. It takes courage, concern, care, and commitment. Do you have the will? It is worth the effort!

I would be happy to talk with anyone about working this way and share experiences. Call me at 716-622-6467.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety Leadership Tagged With: business safety, engage employees on workplace safety, making businesses safer, respect in the workplace, safety in the workplace, safety professionals, stop bullying in the workplace

Engagement Matters

May 10, 2019 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

In this newsletter, I want to share some insights about the level of engagement of the people, the impact of low levels of engagement on profitability, safety performance, and workplace violence.

In 2017, Gallup, Inc. published their “State of the Global Workplace,” looking at the levels of productivity around the world. They were concerned about the decline in productivity and wanted to develop a better picture of the situation. High productivity is a key to having a good quality of life, and this relates to how involved people are in their work. They found that worldwide, only about 15% of the people are highly involved. This varies from country to country with the highest levels of involvement in the USA and Canada at 31%. Those businesses in the top quartile of employee involvement in their global study are 21% more profitable and 17% more productive. They also have 70% fewer safety incidents, 40% fewer quality incidents, 41% lower absenteeism, and 59% lower turnover. The positive impact of employees being highly involved is huge.

These benefits of high levels of involvement are impressive.

In my newsletters, I have written extensively about the importance of leadership in improving involvement. Leaders focus on building respect, sharing information and making it safe for people to talk together, to share ideas and to build their future together. Leaders focus on change and improvement. Leaders also focus on helping people to see how their work is important for the success of the whole organization; this helps people to develop meaning in their work and builds commitment.

Most people in management positions focus on systems and processes like running a payroll or production line. They want reliability, predictability, control, and stability, which are important for much of the business. But when they apply this approach to people, things go downhill. This approach results in 71% of the people globally being unengaged and 19% being actively disengaged. Morale, safety and engagement are a mess. Managers engage in managership, and this will not solve the problem of building higher levels of engagement.

People in manager positions need to become stronger leaders. They need to spend several hours every day with the people around them, as well as those reporting to them. They need to go into their workplaces, talking respectfully with the people, sharing information, building trust and interdependence, listening and learning together. In doing this with quality, focused conversations, people open up, share ideas and come up with better ways to do their work. When I did this when I was a Plant Manager in a chemical plant with about 1,300 people and lots of hazardous chemicals and demanding jobs, our injury rate dropped by 98%, productivity rose by 45% and earning rose by 300%. The people were involved and committed because they wanted to be. I just set the conditions where this could happen.

If the people at the top of our organizations really want to improve involvement, the treatment of people, safety and earnings, then they can do it. It is a matter of will. The knowledge and pathways are well known and proven.

Filed Under: Safety Leadership, Self-Organizing Leadership Tagged With: business safety, engage employees on workplace safety, making businesses safer, safety in the workplace, safety professionals, understand situations and safety

Breaking Through

April 10, 2019 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

I think that we, safety professionals, are on the verge of breaking through to our next major shift in building safer, more effective businesses. We can do both of these things at the same time.

The way in which we think about and work with all the people is a key shift that is needed.Leading thinkers like Eric Hollnagel, Tom McDaniel, Beth Lay, Carl Stent, and Ron Gantt are searching for better, more effective ways of engaging with everyone to build on the good things people are doing.

This is not about looking at things through rose-colored glasses but rather a hard-headed, practical, proven shift in how we all work together. Most people want to be treated with respect and be listened to. Most of the people I’ve met want to do a good job and be proud of their work – even the grumpy ones. They want to have the opportunity to have their ideas heard and considered. They want to have the opportunity to explore better ways to do their work. The people working close to the actual physical work know their jobs and often have good ideas about how to do the work to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and safety of their jobs. It is highly frustrating for them when managers do not listen to them or care about what they are thinking and know. This frustration usually leads to all sorts of counter-productive behaviors that are both unsafe and costly.

What has been you own experience when treated this way? This is not just a problem for the front-line people. This sort of behavior happens at all levels of the organization and is hugely expensive. Frustrated people do not share constructive information together, decisions are avoided, learning is blocked, and opportunities for improvement are lost.

I think that safety professionals are in an ideal place to help their organizations break through to higher levels of performance. We are often called upon to work across many different parts of the organization to provide safety insights, investigations and consulting. We often have access to many people at different levels in our organizations. This gives us a lot of opportunities to engage respectfully with the people and open up the important conversations.

We can model the behavior of asking questions for understanding, of listening deeply, helping to understanding the situations and exploring ideas together. As we engage with the people with respect and consideration, trust builds. As trust builds, people are more willing to open up and discuss their ideas and concerns. Each positive conversation builds on the ones before it. In this process a space for open, honest conversations develops.

The breakthrough comes as more and more people are building on their successes, sharing ideas and insights, testing their thoughts with each other, and seeing what is possible. People find meaning in this way of working; they feel better about themselves and their jobs. More and more focus and clarity develop about how to do their work more safely and better. In addition to the good work you are doing with the safety systems and procedures, with your compliance and training efforts, you are bringing the people into the business. New ideas keep emerging and more good decisions are being made.

Engaging with the people this way takes courage, care, concern, and commitment. This is an ongoing way of working. Getting out of our offices and into the workplaces takes time and effort. When I learned to work this way, I discovered that my job got a lot easier. The gap between work-as-imagined and work-as-done almost disappeared. I found I was working on real challenges and getting out ahead of problems. All of us can engage with people this way. It is a matter of will; just do it!

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: business safety, engage employees on workplace safety, making businesses safer, safety in the workplace, safety professionals, understand situations and safety

Drugs in the Workplace

October 10, 2018 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

The opioid epidemic is devastating many parts of our country.

It is a problem across society in general and a big safety and HR problem in our organizations. In 2017, it is estimated that there were about 72,000 overdoses across the country. About 70% of businesses report that they have been impacted by this terrible problem. The National Safety Council reports that there are problems with poor prescription drug use, higher absenteeism, injuries, and accidents resulting from overdoses.

In 2016, at least 217 people died from drug overdose at work. This is a 32% higher level than in 2015. No business or industry is free of this tragedy. The National Safety Council survey showed that fewer than 20% of the 500 employers they surveyed felt that they were prepared to deal with the problem. Many other managers are in denial about the problem in their workplaces so they are totally off base.

While many of the large companies have strong drug treatment and rehab programs and spend as much as $2.6 billion to help their people, there are things that all of us can and should do.

What can you do in your own workplaces to address this problem and help the people?

The first step is to acknowledge that you may have a problem and you need to find out what is going on.

Next, you need to reach out to the people with respect and offer to help them. Many people with drug problems believe no one cares, so reaching out to help would be a step forward.

When we have workplaces where respect and caring are the norm, reaching out to people when they seem to be in need can be done as a routine experience. But, in too many workplaces, people are not treated with respect and this leads to a lot of harassment and bullying. In this situation, people feel more alienated and alone so the drug problems get worse and worse. A big step you can do to address this problem is to work to build a respectful workplace. Eliminate the disrespect, harassment, bullying, and other negative behaviors that are infecting your workplaces.

Go into the workplace, sit down with the people, talk together about the drug problem, and ask them to help to look out for those who appear to be unfit for the work, sleepy or drowsy, or careless. This is caring and not tattle-telling. If we care, then we reach out. Ensuring no one gets hurt by caringly addressing a person’s inability to function/do their work safely…impacts all of us…not just the individual.

EAP’s (Employee Assistance Program) are an essential connection for providing help to employees needing help and employers who are seeking ways to have safer workplaces. There are many services and organizations in your local communities who can also provide expert help and advice for your people who are having drug problems so search them out and ask for their help. None of us need to feel like we are helpless bystanders in the face of this devastating drug problem.

You can get help on this from Nagel, Knowles & Associates, so please call us!

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety Leadership Tagged With: drug problems in the workplace, employee assistance program, Nagel Knowles & Associates, safety in the workplace