An Israeli safety study looked at a practice termed “Management by walking around” (MBWA). This practice has aroused much interest in management science and practice. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the adaptation of this practice to safety management. We describe a three-year-long case study that collected empirical data in which a modified MBWA was practiced to improve safety in a semiconductor fabrication facility. The main modification involved integrating an information system with the MBWA to create a practice that would generate safety leadership development and an organizational safety learning mechanism while promoting employee safety participation. The case study results demonstrate that the SMBWA practice facilitated thousands of tours in which safety leadership behaviors were practiced by managers and employees (employees performed five times as many tours as managers). The information system collected information about safety behaviors and conditions that could not be obtained. Thus, this study presents a new organizational safety practice SMBWA and demonstrates how SMBWA may improve safety in organizations.
What is MBWA?
Luthra (2004) explained that MBWA is an unstructured hands-on approach in which managers directly participate in their subordinates’ work-related activities. In contrast to rigid and remote management approaches, MBWA managers spend significant time informally visiting work areas and interacting with employees. The practice is unscheduled, casual, and friendly. As managers walk around, they can chat with employees. The two primary purposes of MBWA are given below.
Leadership
MBWA can build quality relationships between managers and employees, facilitating employee motivation and encouraging employee involvement. For example, Fombrun et al. (1984) suggest that when managers ‘walk around’ the shop floor or assembly line, there is an implicit invitation to the employees to repay the visit. Kunda (1992) argues that the MBWA initiative encourages and reinforces a managerial ‘people-focused’ approach. He claims that ongoing interaction between employees and managers builds relationships of trust and good communication. In the field of safety, trust and quality of relationships between managers and employees were found to be essential for safety (Kath et al., 2010; Luria, 2010). Furthermore, leadership quality/style was found to be positively related to safety level (Barling et al., 2002; Hofmann et al., 2003; Yagil and Luria, 2010; Zohar, 2002; Zohar and Luria, 2010), and the employees of leaders that interact more about safety were shown to behave in a safer manner and even to have lower injury rates (Zohar, 2002; Zohar and Luria, 2003). Thus we propose that SMBWA can improve manager-employee relationships within organizations and facilitate employee safety motivation.
Learning
Luthra (2004) suggests that the purpose of MBWA is to collect quantitative information, listen to suggestions and complaints, and keep a finger on the pulse of the organization. Callaway (1999)feels that the observant manager can detect problems firsthand by watching the workers, talking to them about their work, and by looking at work results rather than at summaries and reports. Harte (1997) suggests that a good manager can detect problems before they become severe by keeping physically in touch with every facet of a business organization. Another purpose of MBWA is to learn how work is done in real-time. This is exploring firsthand the existing and potential constraints and obstacles that should be confronted, corrected, and controlled to achieve management quality and production objectives. In short, SMBWA can be defined as an organizational learning mechanism (OLM) that allows management to react and provide feedback on the safety information they have acquired. Safety-related OLMs were found to promote high reliability and improve safety in organizations (Allen et al., 2010; Hofmann and Stetzer, 1996). Thus, we propose that SMBWA can provide a practical tool to promote safe learning within organizations.
In the next section, we will elaborate on the two main theoretical foundations of the SMBWA practice (leadership and learning) and their relevance to safety practice. Based on these theoretical grounds, we will present a case study built on empirical data which describes a three-year-long SMBWA initiative in a FAB.
Method
Participants
The participants were managers and employees of a semiconductor FAB in Israel. A total of 1697 participants reported about their MBWA tours during the three years period of report sampling. Most of the participants were males (1205) aged 22–55 with an average seniority six years. Most of the supervisors hold engineering diplomas, and most of the operators are practical engineers.
Procedure
To perform SMBWA integrated with OMIS, all managers of the FAB were asked to perform SMBWA once in two weeks (employees were encouraged to perform SMBWA tours but were not required to do so). At the end of each SMBWA tour, each manager/employee reported on a specifically designed intranet MBWA OMIS about what was done during the tour. These tours concentrated specifically on the safety issue. Reports included:
- Manager details: name, department and e-mail (only the manager or the employee performing the tour were required to identify themselves. It was not allowed to specify the names of employees or managers who were observed or approached in order to ensure anonymity and preserve the informal and ‘friendly’ nature
of the original MBWA practice). - Location: building, area (e.g. production, office, kitchen, etc.), workstation.
- Safety topic and sub-topic: a wide range of safety topics, from personal protective equipment to ergonomics (see examples in Fig. 5) were discussed.
- Action taken: according to instructions given in the MBWA workshop (feedback, reported a problem in the system, etc.)
- Participants: The management of the FAB encouraged group tours, and the system tracked the frequency of group vs. individual tours. In every report, the participants in the tour were identified.
- Managerial presence: Employees could participate in the safety process and in decision-making in the absence of managers, they could use their discretion about where to tour, what to observe, what action to take, and how, etc. The report stated if a manager was present during the tour.
- Free text: Not all information can be acquired from the above categories. Therefore, a space for free text was left at the end of the
report.
To encourage their involvement in the SMBWA, the management of the FAB trained all employees in performing the SMBWA tours and also opened the information system to all employees. Employee participation was implemented in three ways. First, the manager could ask an employee to join him on a SMBWA tour, during which s/he could coach the employee while observing the performance of other employees and improving their work if needed. Another alternative was for an employee to make a SMBWA tour on his/her own when the opportunity offered itself according to work demands. Although it was not mandatory to participate in a SMBWA, management encouraged the employees to do so in order to improve their sense of motivation and responsibility. Third, employees could participate in a SMBWA tour as a part of a group since it was felt that this could promote teamwork and cooperation among members of different units.
It is important to note that SMBWA training was part of the general safety training in the organization in which all employees participated. The management of the FAB insisted that employees (in addition to managers) be trained in performing SMBWA for three reasons:
(1) Promoting the SMBWA within the organization as an important safety practice.
(2) Educating employees: equipping the employees that are willing to conduct SMBWA with the knowledge on how the conduct this practice and how to use the SMBWA information system and report their findings.
(3) Openness to SMBWA – the goal was that even employees on the “receiving end” of the practice (i.e. employees who choose not to perform SMBWA tours but who are approached by SMBWA groups) will be aware of the procedure, its goals, etc., so that, their interaction with managers or peers conducting a SMBWA tour will be productive, and that they will be open to accept the feedback provided to them during SMBWA.
The system generated feedback summarizing the acquired information every few weeks or on management demand. This system was designed to achieve the two goals of SMBWA.
- Safety Leadership Development – All managers and employees in the FAB had to participate in SMBWA training which lasted for 3 h and included background about the OMIS, expected outcomes, and how to perform effective SMBWA tours. Simulation techniques on how to present safety feedback to peers and/or subordinates were included. These techniques focused on guiding the managers/employees and enhancing their ability to interact constructively with others about safety. Feedback from each SMBWA participant (manager or employee) was used to facilitate safety leadership development. Each participant was asked to describe her/his interaction with employees during the SMBWA tour, choosing a behavior from a scroll-down menu, e.g., I gave safety training; I gave positive/corrective safety feedback; I corrected an unsafe condition myself; I notified the system engineer about an unsafe condition, etc. These behaviors were
then discussed in training. These scroll-down leadership action categories create a uniform database that makes it possible to compare different managers and to offer meaningful feedback concerning a wide range of safety leadership actions. Actions that could not be classified according to the list were added to the report and explained in free text.
Managers were also requested to practice participative leadership and to allow employees to participate in the SMBWA, as described earlier. During the tour the manager and employees could coach others, give feedback, consult or check employees working in the line. At the end of each tour the SMBWA participant was responsible for documenting in the OMIS the number and identity of employees/managers participating in tour. This provided data about the level of employee involvement in safety matters. Data included tours per period of time, feedback, training, role modeling, frequency of tours with employees, and frequency of unaccompanied employee SMBWAs. This data was analyzed by higher management and organizational consultants in order to provide feedback and safety coaching to managers. - Safety Organizational Learning Mechanism (OLM) –
- Knowledge acquisition – Knowledge acquisition by the managers and employees after each tour is relatively easy and based on an easy-to-use web-based application accessible to all employees of the FAB. It is designed so that report writing is not time-consuming and the system can acquire safety information without consuming time from members of the organization.
- Knowledge distribution – Knowledge distribution was accomplished during the SMBWA by cross-departmental tours in which employees and/or managers toured other departments and distributed the knowledge accumulated in their department about safety. Knowledge distribution was also accomplished using the data accumulated through the SMBWA practice. A steering committee reviewed and distributed all reports according to their relevance to members. For example, reports about layout, workstation, accessories and infrastructure were sent to members of the industrial engineering department while reports concerning driving were sent to the safety and ergonomics team. A weekly e-mail summary was distributed to the managers, which was also accessible on the website to all employees.
- Knowledge interpretation – Interpretation is based on an advanced database that enables users to analyze data in a variety of ways and to initiate appropriate action. If, for example, an analysis indicates an undesirable trend, such as unsafe use of tools in some departments, the managers can then launch an intensive drive to correct the matter. The system can also respond to individual requests to analyze a particular matter and with user-friendly interfaces, users can create a variety of data intersections using bar graphs, pie graphs, etc. The system can also convert collected data to MS-Excel or MS-Word, enabling users to continuously analyze the data on their personal computers and to cross-check the data with other external metrics.
- Organizational memory – All information from the SMBWA tours is saved in the OMIS database. Each category of the data is saved separately in order to allow cross-investigations. New information is added to existing data without deleting any previous records, so the system can follow up and check whether a problem recurs or is a one-time event. The system also saves the location of each report, so that the organization can learn about safety conditions in individual departments.
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