safety performance | Safety Excellence For Business

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.

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

Respect, Trust, Partnering and Safety…Excellence Emerges…and it Matters!

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

Safety and Environmental Performance

When I was the Plant Manager of the DuPont Belle, West Virginia chemical plant, I developed a practice of walking around the Plant 4-5 hours a day, every day for almost 8 years, for the safety of the employees. The plant was a mile long and a third of a mile wide, with about 1,300 people working there.

I needed to engage with everyone to get to know them, their work, and to see what I could do to help them. I did not make decisions as I walked around, since that would weaken the line supervision. I would talk about our mission of being the best we could be with our responsibilities for safety, the environment, the people, the quality of our products and work, our customers, our customer service, our costs, and our community. I would share the news of the day, talking openly about things I knew about the plant, our businesses, and the community.

I would also ask if they had any news to share. I would ask for help in how I could improve my own job. There was a lot of give and take; some days were great and some were very hard. My mantra was, “I don’t have a right to make my living at a place where it was okay for you to get hurt. We also need to make a living so let’s figure this out together.”

In our conversations, we talked a lot about occupational safety and occupational health. Many good ideas emerged. I would encourage the people to follow-up on their good ideas and support them. We would also talk about process safety management and the importance of keeping the chemicals in the pipes, improving yields, and reducing waste.

I encouraged them to go after leaks and to talk with the engineers about how they could run the processes better. I encouraged the engineers to teach the supervisors and operators about the theory and processes they were running. I encouraged them to learn as much as they could. I would ask about the safety and environmental maintenance work orders and if they were being taken care of promptly. When people asked me questions I couldn’t answer, I told them I did not know the answer, and promised to get back to them with the answer, which I always did.

We had a Central Safety Committee of about 50 people, which met monthly. People from across the organization participated and led the various committees. We integrated all our discussions, so everyone was thinking about their roles in improving occupational safety, health, and process safety. The 4-person safety group, operators, mechanics, supervisors, and engineers were all involved.

While each of the three parts of safety have their own technology, they all overlap in the people doing the work. We saw all aspects of safety and environmental performance as an integrated whole where everyone could make contributions. As the safety and environmental improvements built, this way of working, sharing information, building respect and trust, and helping people to see the importance of their contributions and to find meaning, spread all across the plant.

Treating the People with Respect and Building Trust

In addition to improving our safety and business performance, we emphasized the importance of treating people with respect and telling the truth. I modeled this as I walked around and visited with the people. I apologized for the mistakes I made. I encouraged them to talk together this way as well. I also worked hard to eliminate any bullying or harassment behavior because it is bad for the people and blocks the open flow of information, greatly hindering any improvement efforts. As it became safer for people to speak up and share their ideas and thinking, our total performance significantly improved. Everything happened through the people giving their energy, creativity, and resourcefulness.

The Integrated Whole

Everyone does some of each of these three phases of safety in their jobs. While each of these has different technologies and requirements, they are all in play all the time. For example, an operator moving a container of chemicals needs to be wearing the correct PPE, lifting correctly and being sure that nothing gets spilled. Or a clerical person needs to be seated properly to take care of their back, handling office equipment like scissors carefully, and putting their trash into the proper containers. Or a truck driver needs to use three-point contact when entering and exiting his truck to prevent a fall, have proper cushioning in the truck to support their back and adhere to speeds that are appropriate for the highway conditions.

All dimensions of safety are taking place all the time, as each person does their work. Each person needs to integrate these as appropriate for their particular assignments and tasks. When these are an integrated whole, their jobs are much easier as they think about them together.

Having them as an integrated whole also goes a long way to preventing disasters like the Deep-Water Horizon where the people on the drilling platform received a safety prize for great occupational safety, and then the platform blew up a day or so later because the process safety was falling apart.

The work of the Belle Plant people clearly shows that if we approach safety as an integrated whole, the total performance of the people improves.

Summary

Trust was built, people opened up, shared their ideas, learned, made decisions about improving their work, and brought occupational safety, health, and process safety management together into an integrate whole. The mood of the entire organization became very positive as things came together. In just four years the people had cut our injury rate by 97% to a Total Recordable Injury Rate of 0.3, reduced our emissions to the air, water, and land by 95%, improved productivity by 45% and increased earnings 300%.

This integrated way of working can happen for your business too. Give me a call at 716-622-6467 for more details. Let’s get started! Please check out our website: Safety Excellence for Business.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: accountability in the workplace, creating a safety culture, embracing safety in the workplace, engaging employees in workplace safety, environmental improvements, environmental safety, improving productivity in the workplace, improving safety performance in the workplace, occupational health, occupational safety, safety performance, workplace safety

Working Together Makes All the Difference

November 10, 2021 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

When we are asked to come into an organization to help them improve their safety performance, we do not work on safety in the traditional sense.

We work with them to identify an important, complex problem they want to solve. It needs to be a problem that everyone thinks they know about and wants to solve. While the stated problem is something like, “How do we improve our total safety performance?,” their problems are usually much deeper than this surface level. We help the people to find the deeper problem that is driving a lot of their poor safety performance.

We then gather a group of people together from across the organization, from the top management to people on the floor, and have a focused conversation about their problems. Our workshops usually last 1-2 days, depending on the size of the organization. As the people open up, a lot of important information emerges. Their answers are arranged around a circle (circles indicate wholeness), and they discover who and what they are as a group and how to work together in resolving this concern for the long-term.

This figure illustrates the process:

As they look at their question from these nine perspectives, the collective intelligence of the whole group rises. People often tell us that they did not know that they knew so much.

As they talk together, they discover that their main problem is in how they chose to work together which they describe when they talk about their Principles and Standards. Initially, a lot of dysfunctional behavior surfaces. They see that stuff like bullying, harassment, and lying are really causing their poor performance across the organization. It’s not just in poor safety performance. These poor behaviors contaminate all their work.

Paul Glover of the Forbes Coaches Council reported recently in LinkedIn that 48% of American workers are looking for other work because of dysfunctional behaviors like these, 70% see no reason to speak up about problems because they fear their bosses and co-workers, and only 33% are working at optimal levels. There is little psychological safety for raising and resolving problems together. Many organizations are in denial about problems like these. These dysfunctional behaviors adversely impact all aspects of the organization’s performance, and lots of people want to get out of there. Leadership, unfortunately, is in denial – often because egos are involved, or they don’t know how to turn things around. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way!

Note: This model works, when you decide it is time to make that big difference for your organization, to be intentional about the safety of your people! This model becomes your extraordinary leadership magnet for improved safety performance – because it contains all the critical elements – and because it is collaborative, alignment and effectiveness comes quickly.

Most people want to work in organizations where everyone is working together for the good of the whole. Leaders are seeking better ways for embracing safety. People want to be proud of their place of work and feel good about it. So, in our workshops we help the people to tap into this way of working and everything gets better, quickly. For example, we have seen the safety performance change for the better the very next day. When people decide that they want to change, they do it.

Call me at 716-622-6467 soon and share with me the safety concerns that are happening in your organization. It’s a free consultation. Leaders are looking for answers…I’ll demonstrate for you how quickly your safety issues can be rectified, and your people can be more engaged in the betterment, as well.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: 360 degree collaboration model, business safety, embracing safety in the workplace, leadership in the workplace, organizational safety, organizational success, reducing workplace violence, safety performance, stop workplace violence, teamwork, working together makes a difference, workplace safety, workplace violence

Closer Look: Safety, People, Culture, Change, Business Excellence, Agility, Impact…It all Fits Together!

February 10, 2020 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Avoiding the losses and waste means that our businesses are more competitive and healthy. How much do you suppose an OSHA lost time injury costs the business?

The pain and suffering is miserable.
There is the direct cost of the doctors, hospitals, medications, etc.
We lose time
- having to investigate the injury and incident.,
- writing reports,
- having an OSHA investigation,
- perhaps the cost of challenging OSHA’s findings,
- legal costs for the company attorneys,
- preparing for a potential law suit,
- the cost of lost production time,
- the cost of bringing someone and train them to replace the injured person,
- the cost of lost sales,
- the cost of bad publicity,
- the cost of lower morale among the people,
- and so on.

When the safety gets right, everything else gets right as well. In this more positive culture, not only does the waste of injuries and incidents go away, people shift the way that they chose to work together resulting in other improvements like:

fewer arguments,
fewer grievances,
better meetings,
fewer meetings,
more suggestions for improving our systems and processes,
people taking the lead in helping to fix something that is not right,
new ideas for better customer service emerge,
lean manufacturing works better,
the quality of products and services get better,
absenteeism drops, and
people can work together to build a better future.

Cultural improvement: bullying, harassment and dysfunction decrease.

When the safety performance and culture get better, the organization thrives.

These are things that each organization can work on right now. In Partner-Centered Leadership, Richard N. Knowles & Associates can help organizations to achieve all these things. This does not require investment.

Get clear on your thinking and purpose.
Go into your organization talking with and listening to the people.
Help them to build on their ideas.
Let them know how important they are to the success of the business.
Do this with respect and honesty.

Change is happening all the time!

Changes are coming fast and furious. Everything seems to be changing all around us. This can cause unsettling feelings and a loss of control. However, in the middle of all this change, one area that can be steady for us is our relationships with each other.

If we have a good agreement about how we are going to work together including things like respect, listening, helping, learning together, these can provide us the stability we need.

These are like the pole in a subway car. With everything around us bouncing and moving, holding the pole provides the stability we need.

We can treat each other with respect,no matter what is happening in the world around us; this is within our control.

Please look out for and help each other. Let’s keep our agreements. Now is the time for being our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers, which is really important. It is up to each of us!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: business culture improvements, business safety, business safety performance, engage employees in workplace safety, injury costs for businesses, make a difference in safety, OSHA, safety compliance, safety performance, workplace injuries and incidents, workplace safety

As the World Turns…

January 10, 2020 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

We are coming to the end of another decade of change, turmoil and uncertainty.

Artificial intelligence and robots, block chains and bitcoins, the opioid epidemic, political strife, and workplace violence, international worries and potential conflicts are some of the challenges facing all of us. There is a critical need for people, in all walks of life, to come together to openly and honestly talk about our challenges, share our thinking and learn together. We do not have to be blindly swept along. We can make decisions and do the things that we need to do to help to make the world a better place.

We can make a marked difference!

One important challenge that we can do something about is in improving the safety performance in our own organizations.

For the last 4-5 years, the number of people getting killed at work has been holding steady at around 5,300-5,500 people. Lots of safety professionals and other people are working to improve safety in many ways, but we are stuck at the level of safety compliance. We have to shift our thinking in order to break out of this box and significantly cut the numbers of people getting hurt and killed.

This is not about blaming the people and seeking root cause. It is not about just working on safety. In our complex world, there is so much more going on and there is no single root cause. Organizations are complex, adapting, self-organizing networks of people so our thinking has to shift to fully grasp this complexity and do the things we need to do.

Partner-Centered Leadership

The best way to improve the organization’s safety performance, beyond compliance, is in using Partner-Centered Leadership©, which I have been developing for over 3 decades. I used this approach when I was a Plant Manager for many years and together, the people cut our injury rate by 97%, our emissions dropped by 95% and earning rose by 300%. I further developed this approach in my consulting work over the last two decades. Everywhere this approach is used has resulted in rapid, significant improvements in the organization’s total performance.

In building on the base of safety compliance, the focus of our work is on developing more effective leadership and improving the total performance of the organization. Safety performance is just one aspect of the organization’s performance so when the entire organization improves, safety improves as well.

When I talk about safety. my thinking goes well beyond the traditional safety numbers, training and procedures. It includes ideas about respect and how everyone has agreed to work together. It includes ideas about personal responsibility, integrity and dedication to helping everyone improve. It includes openness, honesty and sharing information abundantly. It includes ideas about the deeper, often hidden patterns of behavior which have a profound impact on the work environment and drive much of the behavior. It includes the fact that the managers and leaders have the largest impact on their organization’s performance. It includes the understanding that managers focus on reliability, stability, predictability and control as they try to maintain the status quo and that leaders focus on the people, change and the future sharing information abundantly, treating people with respect and helping people find meaning in their work. Both good leaders and managers are needed.

It includes spending a significant amount of time in the workplace with the people holding both casual and formal conversations about how the people are doing, asking them how I can help to improve their job, looking for feedback on my own performance, seeking better ways to do things as well as talking about the things that are important for the business to succeed and prosper. It also includes the need to maintain high standards and operating discipline. I spent five hours a day in the plant when I was the Plant Manager, every day for 5 years.

Keeping the Continuous Conversation Going is Key

These conversations are a very important part of building the metaphorical container that holds the organization together and provides guidance for everyone. Sometimes these conversations can get quite intense as we all are searching for the truth and better ways to do things. When people have a good understanding, the vision, the mission, the expectations, the standards of behavior and performance, and their own role in building the success of the whole organization, they have a sense of this container, and they are able to make the decisions they need to make regarding the details about how they can best improve their own work as well as the business. The container, which I call the BOWL, provides the order and focus for the organization and the freedom for the people within the BOWL to learn, grow and improve.

Improvement and change come one conversation at a time. As we talk together, listen and learn, everyone gains new insights and a better understanding of how things are going. As this thinking swirls around the ideas begin to synthesize into concrete pictures and new possibilities emerge. The people co-create their shared future. Everyone is growing and learning together.

Partner-Centered Leadership is the best approach that I know about that is proven to help us break out of compliance and move into much better levels of total organizational performance. Call me to learn more about this way of working and the central tool we use which is the Process Enneagram©. If you really want to make a difference then call us at 716-622-6467.

(We are on the cusp of a New Year, so as you draw up your strategies for improvement in 2020, know that the old way of doing things won’t get you to where you want to be…Give us a call…We’ll get you moving forward to better safety performance.)

Filed Under: Safety Leadership, Safety Partnership, The Process Enneagram© Tagged With: business safety, engage employees in workplace safety, make a difference in safety, Partner-centered Leadership, Process Enneagram, safety compliance, safety performance, workplace injuries and incidents, workplace safety

Some Simple Rules

March 12, 2018 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Production activity in most businesses is going up with all the changes in our economy.When there is a change in activity like this, we move into a danger zone. People are busier. More people are needed so the hiring picks up. Already there are reports of more serious injuries and fatalities showing up.

In a time like this, management must take a strong lead so the safety efforts pick up and fewer people get injured or killed. Extra attention is needed.

Simple Rules – Part I

One of the most effective things that I did in stressful and changing times like these was to follow these three rules:

Share Information
Build Relationships
Show how each person’s work connects to the larger business

First, I spent more time in the plant talking with the people, sharing information about all our safety, environmental and business activities. People were eager to know about these things so we had many good conversations. I talked about the importance of our safety work, the need to keep our standards high, and to work together so that we could all go home in one piece. I reported on our environmental standards and reports to the State and EPA. People felt good when I could report progress in lowering our environmental impact. I also reported bad news, if that was the case. I talked about our businesses, our key customers, and the need to keep providing high quality products on time and at competitive prices. We talked about near misses and the importance of learning from them and not covering them up. I emphasized the importance of all of us sharing information and talking together.

Second, as I engaged with the people in the plant, I was respectful and attentive to their ideas and thoughts. I answered their questions, and if I couldn’t, I promised I’d get back to them with an answer, and I did. I modeled the respectful behavior that we needed. We talked about the importance of treating each other with respect and that harassment and bullying were not acceptable. Sometimes we did not agree, but I never bullied or put people down. When I found that I was wrong about something, I would admit it and apologize. This always opened up the conversations where we could have honest dialogue. We created a safe space for the important conversations. I encouraged everyone to talk with whoever they needed to talk with (regardless of organizational level or department) to get the information they needed for their work.

Third, I shared a lot of information about the importance of their particular job to our total success and asked for their help. We talked together and learned more about our respective contributions.

These three leadership processes are very powerful in helping the organization to come together and grow. But I could not do it all myself. I needed a lot of help from everyone so that we could pick up our production activities and do it safely without environmental incidents.

Simple Rules – Part II

There are three important things that everyone needs to do to help to keep the safety performance and productivity high:

Everyone needs to look out for themselves. Be sure you understand the work, have the right safety precautions in place, use the correct PPE, be sure to have the right people there to do the work safely, and being sure that lock-out/tag out procedures and other critical procedures are done. You need to get the rest you need to be sure that you are fit for the work and ask for help when it is needed.
We all need to look out for each other, particularly when new people are coming into the workforce. The new people need to get up to speed and helping each other is critical. Help them to get oriented and learn how to use the PPE and other safety equipment. Teach them the right procedures. Keep an eye out for them to be sure they are fit for the work. If you see someone is getting into a problem, take the initiative and go to help them.
Everyone needs to look out for this place where we are making our living. Keep things in order. Housekeeping needs to be excellent and the preventative maintenance needs gets done. The equipment inspections need to be up-to-date. Equipment should not be abused and damaged. Broken equipment should be repaired expediously and taken out of service if necessary. Work orders need to be addressed promptly.

We are all in this together. Managers and supervisors sharing information, building respect, trust and interdependence, and helping people to see the importance of their work for the success of the whole venture combined with everyone looking out for themselves, looking out for each other, and looking out for this place is a powerful way to keep the safety and production at levels of excellence even in a rapidly changing environment.

Simple Rules – Part III

In your tool box meetings or shift start meetings, consider expanding your thinking to imagine how someone could get killed in work planned for the day. This is beyond what most groups do, but is an excellent way to prevent an unlikely tragedy. Talk together about how a fatality could happen. Even the most unlikely scenario will happen one day. Talk about what is in place that will prevent the fatality if the event should happen. Then ask yourselves if these preventative measures are good enough to really protect you. If not, then consider what you need to do so that you will be protected from being killed if the unlikely event should happen.

Many fatalities happen because some really unexpected event occurs. In hind-sight the problems are obvious. Let’s try to make them obvious before hand and prevent an unnecessary death.

Want more information? Or hold a conversation on this? Please give me a call at 716-622-6467. I am pleased to share how simple rules make a difference – a big difference.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: safety meetings, safety performance, safety rules

What If Your Organization’s Safety in 2017 was NOT VERY GOOD?

January 17, 2018 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

What Can You Do to Turn it Around…So That Every Person Goes Home Safe at the End of the Day?

Recognize Einstein’s Words of Wisdom: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.“

This means that a serious “retrospection” is needed. What happened right in 2017? What went wrong? Why? How do we make sure that injuries/incidents will not happen again? Where are we strong? Where are we missing the mark? Who’s supporting Safety? Who’s undermining Safety? How?

Look Deeper: Where are we at cross-purposes? What mixed signals are being given to the Organization? How is Leadership truly leading safety?

Look deeply at the processes you have in place that demonstrate authentic caring about your people and their safety. Here are some great examples…Are your first line supervisors asking these type of questions of their direct reports on a daily basis (individually, and team-wise) in order to manage risks, & engage people genuinely:

What are the top 2 or 3 risks you face today in your work?
How will you need to help (coworker) today (and vice-versa)?
What are the standards you are using today for this job?
What risks are you facing and how will you manage them today?
How will you know you’ve…done a safe, quality job?
What help do you think you might require today?
What extra precautions are you taking?
What did you learn today, in the course of your work, that you can share to help others on this team (gain competence and commitment to safety)?
How did you do on a scale of 1 to 10 today? What surprised you?
How can you share this new information to make tomorrow’s tasks be done more safely?

What is Essential to Know: The safety performance of any work team, work group, organization or company directly correlates to the Leadership of Safety…at all Levels of Leadership.

Call us at 716-622-6467 if you want to turn your organization around.

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

Some Unsettling Trends

July 10, 2017 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

The American Society for Safety Engineers (soon to be The American Society for Safety Professionals) in Denver, Colorado, on June 19-22, 2017, was attended by about 5,000 people. This was a record for attendance. There were lots of papers and a huge trade show exhibit. I never saw so much safety equipment and other offerings.

I presented a paper during the last series of talks. It was titled “Breaking Through to Safety Excellence, Self-Organizing Criticality and the Process Enneagram©.” Even though I was among the last of the papers, I had about 150 people attend and received a rating for my talk of 4.7 out of 5. Many people came up at the end to talk further. If any of you would like to see my paper, please send me an email.

In spite of the large attendance and all the safety equipment in the trade show, I feel some alarming trends in safety performance. The number of workplace fatalities in the US has been at around 4,700 each year for the last 6-7 years. New regulations and ISO Standards are not making a strong impact. This is true in other countries, as well like New Zealand, where they have already had 28 fatalities; almost as much as for all of 2016 even though they had a new National Standards issued in April 2-16.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: business safety, safety performance, safety trends