One missed opportunity for many businesses is an SMS Training Orientation for the new Safety Pros and Management Team members. The safety pro usually does not even sit through the “new employee safety orientation” when they arrive at the facility. But even rarer is an orientation for the safety and management team members on the functioning SMS.
It’s not that the safety pro needs to be trained in “safety,”; but they most certainly need to be trained in the facility-specific safety programs. If nothing else, it is an excellent way to evaluate the content, maturity of the programs, and the ability to train adequately. And the same goes for any new member of management; they, too, need to be orientated on the requirements of the “safety program” so they can “own it.” But an SMS orientation differs greatly from the traditional “safety orientation” that everyone needs to meet OSHA compliance requirements.
What are we missing if we do not have an SMS orientation training for new hires?
This new employee SMS orientation is really geared toward management personnel. It is the time we expose them, some for the first time in their careers, to what an SMS is, how it functions, and their role(s) and responsibilities.
They learn how safety is managed and measured and how it will be measured in their SMS management activity. For many new managers, this may be the first time they are being measured within an SMS, not solely on end results such as an injury rate.
This orientation exposes them to all of the activities that the people they will be responsible for must participate in and at what frequency. Things like compliance training, personal skills development, leadership training for up-and-coming personnel, etc.
They get a 50,000′ view all the way down to ground level (depending on the maturity of the SMS and its level of detail). I have written several articles explaining how our compliance programs should transform into part of the SMS, as all the required compliance activities are merely a starting point for our SMS. So these new employees and managers got the basic safety orientation in their “new employee safety orientation,” but they did NOT receive the bigger picture of how those programs get managed. For example, in the safety orientation, they learned about Lockout/Tagout basics: the color of locks, the application of when LOTO is required, etc. But they do not receive info on how to perform periodic inspections, when these inspections are required, what happens when someone fails an inspection, who is responsible for developing new machine-specific procedures, and who is responsible for maintaining them. The SMS orientation is intended to cover these types of management functions within our compliance programs.
If we do not convey these roles and responsibilities to new managers (even for managers who are NOT new to the facility but new to a management role), then we are not setting them up for success within the SMS. We should not be surprised, nor disappointed, when they fail to meet the SMS manager’s expectations – since we failed to convey those expectations to them at the very beginning of their new role.
The 20 or so clients mature enough in their SMS to have an orientation have learned that their content can not be delivered adequately in less than 8-hrs. The SMS they are using is either a version of my 16-element SMS, which is built upon the 14 PSM elements, or the ISO 45001; so this equates to around 30-minutes for each element, not counting breaks and lunch. Looking at the facilities that have launched their SMS orientation vs those that have not, it is clear from their SMS performance and interviews with managers that the orientation is a critical piece of the SMS itself. Managers who received an SMS orientation were much more prepared to meet their expectations within the SMS than those managers who had no idea what their time commitment would be in managing safety. Those who did not receive any orientation will be the first to say they were “blindsided” and “still do not understand their role in the SMS.” Not the kind of welcome that we want our team members to receive.
We must remember that most managers will come with the concept that “safety is managed by safety.” That has been their experience throughout their careers, so entering into a facility with a functioning SMS will greatly change their role and responsibility for managing safety. In fact, when we interview these managers after 1-2 years of being emerged into the SMS, they will admit they were skeptical in the beginning, but now that they can see the bigger picture, they understand why safety was such a problem at their other jobs. They clearly understand their role and responsibility in the SMS and how the company provides personal development training to meet their role and responsibilities. They will make comments like:
I have learned more about safety in the past year than in my previous ____ years.
I now understand what “safety management” (air quotes) really is and what it means by saying “management owns safety.” (air quotes)
I never knew what the role of a safety professional was until this past year… you all aren’t so bad, after all.
A functioning SMS can be a massive change, and a scary one, in the expectations for a new manager, and it is ONLY fair we explain their role and these expectations up front when they begin their new job. Failing to do so, hampers the ability of the SMS to function within their department/unit and is not setting these managers up for success within the SMS. And what better way to demonstrate senior management’s commitment to safety than to start with all this safety orientation? It sets the stage by demonstrating that “safety is a core value” at this facility, and we invest in our safety sucess. If the facility is managing safety via their SMS, this will be an entirely new experience for most managers, and we set this stage in Week 1 of their arrival.
