I have grown up in safety and emergency response and found that the tools used in both aspects can cross over to the other. For example, I use the National Incident Management System (NIMS) Incident Command on accident investigations to bring structure to the team. In that IC we have a “span of control” of no more than seven (7) people reporting to any one person. This lets people properly manage their team members in a high-stress working environment. And it works. So when we visit a facility/business and see front-line supervision-to-employee ratios of 30:1, we can almost predict what we will find in terms of culture. And this has a dire impact on safety performance and the culture of safety. Looking back to some of the more extreme cases we have encountered, we also remember the “over-the-top” effort by management with their safety banners, safety parties, etc., to overcome their cultural problems.
Let’s be transparent (and honest): RELATIONSHIPS are a huge part of safety. I have been talking about TRUST and CREDIBILITY in the safety effort as a crucial part of turning around both safety performance numbers and the culture around safety. Both of these are highly dependent on RELATIONSHIPS. Now, I am not talking about supervisors becoming everyone’s best friend – it is a tough job, but being fair, honest, and approachable are traits a supervisor MUST have. However, even a great supervisor with these traits can not properly manage 20-30 people AND allow them to build relationships with their team.
In a recent project, we interviewed 12 department supervisors, each with over 20 years of experience as a supervisor at the facility. A very stable and dedicated group of professionals. The company had invested in the folks; several had gone on to get degrees in business (paid for by the company), and all had undergone some excellent “supervisor” training throughout their careers. But when asked to name their employees, they could only name 25-30%, and you can probably guess which 25-30% they could name: the great ones and the problem ones. This was also, across the board, the most significant frustration they had.
