It is so sad when I hear a management team talk about how their employees are the problems with safety like they are some beasts that can’t be controlled. And the look on their faces is priceless when a “consultant” tells them they should be proud of the “beast they have created.”
A review and discussion of their latest accidents, all of which were stated to be “unsafe acts” by these beasts of employees, show a clear pattern of the basic failure of CORRECTING UNSAFE WORKING CONDITIONS. Sure, a human is removing the guards and sticking their hands into hazardous points of operation, but WHY are they doing this REPEATEDLY? (I bet everyone reading this can guess why)
Now they looked me in the eye with a straight face and zero hesitation in their speech to tell me, “Safety is #1 at this facility”. In fact, there is a banner in the room from 2020 that all the employees signed proclaiming such. On our first break, I took a look at the banner. When the management team returned, I asked them to show me their signatures.
Reply: “That was done before I/we got here”.
How many of the employees who signed it are still here?
Reply: “Not many; we have a lot of turnover.”
I told them… “you are so lucky; you have the greatest opportunity of your careers in front of you.” Again, that look of “this fool is just crazy.” Fix safety, and you’ll fix your turnover issues, your quality issues, your cost overruns issues, your HR complaint issues, and OSHA being called monthly by employees after you fired them for having an accident.
But the first step is the hardest…
YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR SAFETY and the fact that the behaviors, attitudes, and accidents are a creation of your own doing or past management teams doing. ACCEPT the challenge to make this a workplace where people want to work by making safety matter – making it a core value in everything you do and every decision.
Don’t worry; you won’t be perfect; mistakes will be made; in fact, many mistakes will be made on this journey. Admit them and LEARN from them.
This is how we build TRUST and CREDIBILITY with the men and women doing our dirty and dangerous work. Once they realize and believe that all this safety effort is for them and them alone, great things will begin to happen in production, quality, costs, etc.
But without accepting this RESPONSIBILITY, I or any other consultant can do nothing to change your current out-of-control world. They will smile and keep sending you invoices, telling you what you WANT TO HEAR rather than what you NEED TO HEAR. The actions they will take and the programs they will implement will be literally useless and may be steps backward in this journey.
It STARTS WITH YOU – not the employees. Their behaviors and attitudes simply reflect this management team and your front-line supervision. NOTHING out there will change WITHOUT the change originating from in here.
Safety is like an addiction. Often management has to hit rock bottom before they can recognize that their safety performance is essentially a problem they created and cultivated over the years. They thought they had it “under control”, and that it was “not a serious problem” until they have that tragedy and they realize otherwise. But they have to truly want help. Not because they are losing bonuses or missing their injury targets set by corporate. They have to want it for the right reasons – THEIR EMPLOYEES are suffering from needless injuries that impact everything.
We left, and like most of these interactions, we rated the probability that we would ever hear from them again. Inside a management team’s echo chamber, it is just too easy to select the consultant who agrees with them that “behaviors are the problem.” That nothing but the workers’ behaviors needs to be “fixed.” But those who have run the gauntlet many times and have grown tired of wasting their time and $ with these “flavor of the year” approaches, will seek a new path. And that is the door we walk through!!!
