Safety through employee engagement

We found an interesting press release recently by Jon Kaufman of KL&P Motivation. Although the article was a promotion for their workshop at a conference, it raised some interesting views.

Kaufman contends “organisations that invest in employee development out-perform their competition, posting 2 to 3 times the earnings per share (EPS). A workforce that is encouraged to innovate and apply discretionary effort to the goals of the organisation will be fully committed and motivated”.

Kaufman suggests that the adoption of Behaviour Based Safety programmes, which have been popular since the 1970’s is futile if the corporate culture is unhealthy and employees are disengaged. At its core, Behaviour Based Safety efforts include specifications of target

behaviours, the collection of observation data, a process to decide on actionable items from the data and feedback and review.

"The fact is that most companies have been so focused on policies and lagging indicators such as OSHA recordable rates and lost-time metrics that they've lost a handle on the very safety culture that keeps productivity high and workers alive and healthy," says Kaufman.

Why are some workplaces different?

At SafetyPro, we’ve always been fascinated by safety culture and what makes for the sort of workplace where people are “part of the solution”, rather than the problem. Why are some workplaces adopted by employees and become “communities”, while other workplaces become breeding grounds for apathy and discontent? Why do some employers find that employees “go the extra mile”, while other employers suffer high levels of absenteeism, accidents and poor industrial relations?

Certainly there are factors such as careful recruitment, the quality and content of communication mechanisms, the manner in which the employer responds to employee requests and the depth and quality of employee consultation. We would suggest, however, that the style of management is by far the biggest factor of all.

People based safety

People-based safety is an extension and evolution of behaviour-based safety. The concept, whose exponent is E Scott Geller (the “Psychology of Safety Handbook” man) – see our article -  is a natural result of good leadership. The components of people-based safety are reflected by the acronym - ACTS. Specifically, in a “Total Safety

Culture”, people Act to protect themselves and each other from unintentional injury, Coach themselves and one another to identify barriers to safe acts and provide constructive behaviour-based feedback, Think in ways that activate and support safe behaviour, and focus and scan strategically to See hazards and at-risk behaviours.

The ACTS vision for a Total Safety Culture is easier said than done. Specific leadership principles and strategies are needed to empower a work force to become self-accountable for injury prevention and actively care for the safety and health of others. Geller distinguishes between managers who hold people accountable and leaders who inspire people to be responsible or self-accountable. While mangers are assigned their supervisory position, leaders earn their role through interpersonal interaction. Everyone can be a leader, including managers.

Characteristics of effective leaders

Geller proposes that effective leaders:

  1. Focus on process (or the behaviours needed to achieve an injury-free workplace).
  2. Accompany training with education (in order to provide a reasonable rationale for certain safety instructions).
  3. Use conditional statements (that allow for relevant refinement to fit a particular context).
  4. Listen first (to learn the other person's perspective before offering direction, advice or support).
  5. Promote ownership (by giving conditional directives and allowing others to customise safety-related procedure to achieve desired outcomes).
  6. Encourage personal choice (thereby increasing participation and self-accountability).
  7. Set expectations rather than mandates (in order to increase self-direction and self-accountability for safety-relevant behaviours).
  8. Are confident but uncertain of process details (realising the process-relevant workers know better than they what hazards must be eliminated or avoided and what safety related behaviours must be improved).
  9. Look beyond the numbers (acknowledging management requires measurement but realising unmeasured human dimensions like self-esteem, optimism and sense of belonging need attention.
  10. Make more distinctions between people (thereby disabling stereotyping and appreciating the unique interests, talents and attributes of individuals).

Interested in the subject of Safety Culture/Employee Engagement? Perhaps you would consider taking part in our on-line survey. Click Here to take survey.

It will take about 10 minutes and you can either use it anonymously just to stimulate your own thoughts, or you can supply your details at the end of the survey and receive a report back showing how you stack up. The survey closes end March 2010, so get in before it’s too late. Every respondent  will receive a special discount offer at the end of the survey.

Your responses will be treated confidentially. We will not use them in any way except to send your results. We also paid a bit extra to have the survey encrypted, so you can be assured that no one else will be seeing your responses or details.

Have a go now. At the very least it might create some ideas or pointers as to your own organisational safety culture.

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