| On The Safe Side |
| Features | |
| Written by Dr. Steve Roberts | |
| Sunday, 30 November 2008 | |
 You’ve fixed the hazards, provided better equipment, and enforced procedures. Now, how can you lower your lost-time incident rates? A work environment that minimizes, contains, or controls serious hazards should be a necessary precondition for an ideal safety culture, but it is not enough. We need to consider how safety is supported through the interaction of equipment, facilities, procedures, and people, and focus on what might cause at-risk behavior. Interestingly, the hazards most likely to cause harm are not necessarily the ones that get noticed and corrected. Addressing the reasons people don’t accurately recognize hazards and why we don’t always act on the hazards we identify (complacency) is also critical. Leadership’s role Most employees want to do a good job and attempt to do what organizational leaders expect of them. Thus, it’s leadership’s responsibility to ensure that employees know production means safe production. Knowing that organizational leaders truly don’t want unnecessary risks to be taken because they care about people not getting hurt can create a more comprehensive safety culture than one focused on reducing the injury rate. Indeed, focusing primarily on injury rate can inadvertently lead to under-reporting of incidents and at-risk behavior. Although senior leaders are usually (and correctly) held accountable for outcome numbers such as injury rate, because they are the primary decisionmakers, they are less effective if they manage safety by using these outcome numbers to motivate others. Outcome numbers in occupational safety are typically based on the relatively rare occurrence of an injury, making these numbers reactive and a poor tool for prevention. Effective leaders go beyond outcome numbers to hold people accountable for proactive process activities that contribute to group and organizational success in productivity, quality, and/or safety. When people see improvement in the process numbers, they feel rewarded for their efforts and develop a sense of personal responsibility for continued contributions and improvement. Developing a process in which leaders at all levels of the organization receive feedback on safety matters and creating a forum where leaders can openly discuss the activities they are currently performing can help identify best practices and set expectations for leadership behaviors that cascade through the organization. Fixing systems Organizations rely on systems to manage risk and decrease the chance of incidents and injuries. These include safety rules and procedures, safety training, hazard identification and correction, discipline, incident reporting and investigation, safety communications, safety suggestions, and recognition/reward. At best, a poorly designed system will fail to accomplish its primary purpose. At worst, a poorly designed, badly implemented, or ill-functioning system can have a destructive influence on an organization’s overall safety culture. For example, if incident investigations create an air of mistrust and fault-finding, safety incentive programs discourage injury reporting, accountability processes fail to recognize individuals for their accomplishments, and performance evaluations only look at whether or not an individual was involved in an incident, the culture will not advance. We’re only human Even when workplaces have been designed to reduce hazards, incidents and injuries still occur. Complex systems require a great deal of human contribution to maintain productivity, quality, and safety. Human error is the inevitable byproduct. To eliminate human error would require us to eliminate the best source of creativity, flexibility, and problem solving. People are not perfect and occasionally make mistakes despite their best intentions and working in the best of surroundings. Therefore, no matter how safely our work places are designed, how thoroughly we train our employees, or how harshly we enforce compliance, people will still occasionally perform at-risk behavior. Rather than blame employees, we need to focus on understanding when and why at-risk behaviors occur. Many misunderstand a focus on at-risk behavior as an attempt to blame employees for injuries and other incidents. The opposite is actually true. Analyzing the contributing factors to at-risk behavior is needed to develop long-term solutions for reducing injury. A proper analysis of at-risk behavior can lead to better job design, modification of systems, development of personal strategies to reduce at-risk behavior, and implementation of safeguards and recovery strategies to mitigate negative outcomes when at-risk behaviors do occur. When people understand why certain activities are done and feel they have been part of the process, there is less potential for us-versus-them feelings. When employees are involved in safety activities, they are motivated to make them succeed; people care about the things they own. Involving employees in the development of safety activities or systems will also increase the likelihood they will be seen as relevant/important. The more relevant people feel safety activities are, the more likely they will be willing to participate in performing them. Person-states Obviously, safety cannot excel where people’s knowledge, skills, and abilities are insufficient or inappropriate for their jobs, but we must go beyond those basics. When people not only know what to do and how to do it, but also feel good about themselves, their work teams, and the organization as a whole, they are more likely to go out of their way to assist others and take personal responsibility for their actions. Organizational policies can either build up or tear down relevant person-states such as self-esteem, group cohesion, and feelings of empowerment that increase the likelihood of these beneficial activities. Interventions or activities focused only on changing behavior are not good enough; we also need to be concerned with how these activities make us feel. Reducing injuries requires a comprehensive view of safety as an interaction of the physical environment/conditions, leadership, organizational systems, employee engagement, and the behaviors of all people in the organization. Only by treating safety as multidimensional will we see continuous improvement in this critical area of organizational and human performance. Dr. Steve Roberts is a senior partner with Safety Performance Solutions, Inc. He and his partners help companies worldwide apply human dynamics to industrial safety and beyond. For more information, go to www.safetyperformance.com or call (540) 951-3993. |
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