I have always said that 90% of establishing a safety culture is communication of safety ideas and information. Safety is competing for the minds of all workers to THINK about SAFETY in all that they do. We are competing with Quality, Production, Costs Control, Family, etc. in the thoughts of our workers. A lot of marketing companies have made a ton of $ on selling posters and banners that display the safety message. Early in my career I contributed a lot of company $ to these businesses as I have bought a TON of banners and posters in my career. But I have to give credit to three plant managers that I had the honor to work for. Claude Bloom, Dale Fannin, and Jim Krumholtz, were instrumental in molding me and developing me into a “radical safety professional” (as some have called me – which by the way is a compliment in my book). These PM’s let me spend big money on banners, posters, safety talk packages, incentive programs, etc., but they also showed me how a message from within the plant was MUCH MORE effective than any commercial message could ever dream of being. They also pushed me to share more and more of my thoughts and discussions about safety to a broader audience so workers could understand WHY we implemented a program or WHY this safety program requires this or that to be done in such a specific manner. It is ALL ABOUT educating the workforce in the subject of THEIR SAFETY. All of my plants were in their “safety revolution” stage when I was there; in that I mean everyone was saying the right things, but our actions were not reflective in what we were saying. It would have been political suicide for a member of management (supervisors included) to say anything bad against safety as these plant managers would not hear of it. These PM’s knew that they had to lead this effort and that I was just a tool to help them achieve their safety goal; and after all, the PM’s safety goals are the plant’s safety goals – are they not? So in their use of me as a tool, I learned how safety cultures are developed and how communications are KEY to this development.
I would like to share a learning I was privileged to see happen under these three men’s safety leadership…At a staff meeting someone comments on all the safety e-mails I send out each day and how it may be “an overload of safety”. ALL THREE of these Plant Managers had the same type of response. They asked the group how many safety e-mails they get from “the safety leader” a day. Some thought this was the opening they needed to voice their displeasure…it was a clever trap they never saw coming. After of minute or two of complaints of how my e-mails are “disruptive”, “impossible”, “an overload that causes them to be deleted”, etc. the PM’s then asked the group about how many e-mails they get a day in total and the usual answer was 100+. My number was 4-6 e-mails. The PM quickly pointed out to the group that he would have a talk with me about my e-mails and that this level of performance was unacceptable! Now the first time I went through this with Claude I was thinking “!@#$$ I am in trouble over this????”. Then they dropped the bomb…if only four e-mails a day out of 100 is safety related that means that safety is only 4% of what you are spending your time on. “Bryan will immediately pick up his message by sending an additional 10-15 e-mails per day so that safety communications can compete with all the other items you deal with in the 100 e-mails. Dale took it to a new level in that he took the same tact, but his position was “yes that is too many safety e-mails from the safety leader”, so instead of Bryan sending out the nearmisses, incident notifications, reminders of safety training, the weekly safety talk topic, etc. each manager was then assigned to send out the nearmiss reports, incident reports and the weekly safety talks. After all, shouldn’t the safety message come from the employee’s direct leader? So Dale had me stock up the plant server with all my safety messages, safety talks, etc. and the managers EACH DAY and WEEK had about 5-6 e-mails or postings they were responsible for. I was still feeding them the information, but employees saw this coming from the “person who controls their raises” and not some safety guy that no one works for. Dale even made it a monthly metric that he and I tracked to ensure these managers were doing as required. PROBLEM SOLVED…no more overload from the safety leader!
I thought this was such a clever way of painting a picture of what safety should look like in a facility. Supervisors, operators, and maintenance personnel quickly noticed the message was not ONLY from me, but was from their manager, and it was having MUCH MORE impact than I could have ever hoped for. Management also got a more clear picture of how we were trying to win the hearts and minds of the workforce to be SAFE. Managers liked the positive feedback they began receiving from their workers and notice their workers were more engaged in safety discussions, participation in the safety committee(s) increased, attendance to weekly safety talks increased, attendance to monthly training sessions increased; ALL arrows in safety, EXCEPT INJURY TRENDS, were pointing UP!
So when someone at your plant complains to you that you are sending out “too much safety information” or they ask to be removed from your distribution list for safety e-mails (yes that happens!), just ask them how many e-mails they get a day. Everyone likes to complain about the number of e-mails they get per day. Take their total and get the percentage of your e-mails and point out to them that only __% are safety e-mails and apologize for letting them down and let them know you will work harder to make safety communications even with Production, Quality and Cost Control. If they go to your boss and complain and your boss actually comes to you with the complaint, then AGREE WITH YOUR boss that “YOU” (the safety leader) are sending too many safety e-mails and that these communications are best suited to come from MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP. The easiest communication to make this transition is INCIDENT REPORTING. Department Managers should be the communicator of incidents that occur in THEIR DEPARTMENT. They SHOULD BE sending these notifications ON A DAILY BASIS as we know we have nearmisses EACH DAY. Having management send out these notifications drives OWNERSHIP of incident reporting and communication to the MANAGEMENT and not a function of the safety department. The safety department is RESPONSIBLE for putting in place a management system that MANAGEMENT can use to report, investigate, and manage THEIR INCIDENTS (e.g. II procedure, reporting process, root cause and causal factors identification, corrective action tracking, etc.). The idea here is that safety communications SHOULD NOT slow down, it should actually increase to match all the other messages and signals that management sends out each day, but rather we change the messenger to reflect who is LEADING the safety revolution.