Safety Culture Excellence®

Certainly the average person desires to be both liked and respected. While a gross oversimplification of behavioral sciences, we behave in a way consistent with seeking out what we desire and avoiding what we don’t. Leaders of all kinds are often put in positions to make decisions that impact the lives of others. If our primary goal is to be liked, we act, or decide in accordance. The same is true if our goal is to obtain or preserve respect. Earlier this month the world lost Margaret Thatcher, the previous Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. She was once quoted as saying, “If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.” I’m sure we have all worked for people that we personally liked, but didn’t respect the professional position, with the opposite also being true. With leaders seeking out both hearts and minds and hands and feet, what should the primary focus be? Ultimately, we need to look at what the role of a leader should be (e.g., thought leader, challenger of status quo thinking, advancer of performance and culture)? Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author once wrote, “Among physicists, I'm respected I hope.” During a recent dinner conversation on this topic with very well liked and publicly respected CEO, he commented, “Being liked is more about an individual’s self-esteem.” I tend to agree. Being respected comes from accomplishing what needs to be done and through creating the desire among others to do so without question, due to regard for the person and position. I’m very happy if those I work with and lead like me. More important, do they respect what I do and what I’m trying to influence them to do without my direction or oversight? What are your thoughts? Shawn M. Galloway is the coauthor of two books: STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence and The Hazardous Materials Management Desk Reference (3rd Edition). He is also the President of ProAct Safety.  As an internationally recognized safety excellence expert, he has helped hundreds of organizations within every major industry to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture.  In 2012, ISHN Magazine listed him in the POWER 101 – Leaders of the EHS World. He has authored over 250 podcasts, 100 articles and 30 videos on the subject of safety excellence. Shawn is the host of the highly acclaimed weekly podcast series, Safety Culture Excellence and a columnist for several magazines.

When my children turned three years old, their heads were exactly the height of much of the furniture in our home.  Bruises and bumps abounded and we feared a call from Child Protective Services!  We were tempted to tape bumper pads on the key head-knockers to reduce the suffering when we read a book that asked the question, “Are you preparing the path for the child or the child for the path?”  We realized that even if we padded our home our children would visit other homes.  How could we keep them safe in any environment?  We discovered a behavioral precaution called “eyes on path” and our lives got better. In safety, we often face the dilemma of working on conditions or behaviors.  The best safety solutions don’t ignore conditions or behaviors.  The engineering hierarchy of controls defines how to start with conditional fixes and migrate to behavioral fixes for risks that cannot be eliminated or controlled adequately with conditional fixes.  This approach can result in both a safer workplace and safer workers.  Safe workplaces are stationary but workers are not.  While we continuously improve workplace conditions, addressing safety behaviors can enhance workplace efforts and also take a road trip with the workers as they go to even more dangerous places, like home and highway.  Make sure at least some of your safety efforts are portable. -Terry L. Mathis Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS’ in both 2010 and 2011. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Three has been a lot of dialogue lately about high-severity accidents.  Some have questioned the basic assumptions of people like Herbert William Heinrich that tended to think that all levels of severity come from the same risk pools.  Several research projects have focused on severe accidents and sought to determine their root causes and find strategies to prevent them.  The real danger in focusing on topics like this is that we tend to lose the balance of our safety efforts.  We tend to focus either on the highest frequency accidents or the highest severity accidents and not on both. While the majority of severe injuries result from process issues that are usually covered by rules and procedures, and the most frequent accident tend to be more personal and involve worker behaviors;  there are exceptions to both.  It is crucial that we achieve compliance with regulations and our own rules and procedures while encouraging and empowering workers to go “above and beyond.”  If we take our focus off one kind of risk while we work on another, we do so at our workers’ peril.  Even mundane risks can sometimes result in unusually severe injuries.  A behavioral approach should not take effort away from compliance efforts.  While we strive to better understand both our severe and our frequent accidents, we should balance our efforts to prevent both types. -Terry L. Mathis Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS’ in both 2010 and 2011. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Between the recent articles in safety publications and the capsizing of the Costa Concordia, there is a renewed dialogue among safety professionals and others about accident causation. In the first third of the last century Heinrich proposed, from his observations of accident reports, that 88% of all accidents were the result of unsafe acts, 10% from unsafe conditions, and 2% from undetermined causes. One author recently refuted this, mainly citing the tendency to blame employees for accidents when much of the “cause” was due to systems issues controlled by managers.

While there is validity in looking beyond human behavior, there is great danger in overlooking it and its critical role in accidents. We should always look at the “why”, but we can’t forget the “what.” It looks like we have opened the door to a whole new set of terminology around what has been traditionally labeled “immediate cause,” “underlying cause,” “root cause,” and “contributing factor.” If changing terminology or consolidating terminology helps prevent accidents, I am all for it.

From the discussions on line, there may be a need for better developing the talking points around accident causation. It is hard to synergize solutions when it takes 1200 comments in a LinkedIn group just to get everyone agreeing on terms.

The main point that must not get lost in this discussion is the fact that behaviors , regardless of what causes, prompts, or influences them are critical to risk control and, thus critical to accident prevention. We have assumed a lot over the years about what causes human behavior and how to change it. However we approach it in the future, we must not forget it. If a driver swerves into the other lane, the probability of an accident just dramatically increased. THAT is human behavior.

Now, how do we keep drivers in their own lanes? That is the next level. We err when we think that changing the influences on behavior will automatically and completely and immediately change behavior. If we don’t change behavior, we have missed the mark or are shooting at the wrong targets. It is not about blame, it is about prevention.

If we forget this basic premise as we strive to better understand its causes and influences, we are taking a step forward and falling hopelessly backwards. We need to understand the next level of causation or influence or systems issues or whatever we decide to call it so we can use it to shape behavior, not forget it.

Terry L. Mathis

CEO and Founder

ProAct Safety, Inc.

www.ProActSafety.com

Begin first with this question: Are you looking to provide feedback to this person for your reasons, or for someone else's benefit? If someone else, is the person open to the feedback and do you believe it will make a difference? If no, back to the first question. If yes, speak kindly, provide rationale for why you are concerned, and help them see it from another person's point of view. Ensure they know you are speaking from the heart and care for them as an individual, not just serving an internal desire to say something. You will do well if they know you care.

Give feedback, just be cautious in your approach.

In 1990 there were certain beliefs and practices that were viewed as state of the art and acceptable. I’m sure in 2030 we will look back at 2011 and challenge much of what is said today on the topic of behavioral approaches. Here in lies the criticality of never accepting a one-size-fits-all methodology to injury prevention and remaining continuously searching for a better approach. No one has the silver bullet, yet we all together can contribute to making this a safer world by striving for a better way to accomplish our goals through dialogue such as this.

My research and experience with hundreds of global projects in every major industry leads me to believe that the vast majority of incidents (injury, process, equipment damage, etc.) have a conditional, behavioral, organizational, and cultural contributing factor. Now the question is, contributing factor to prevention, or causation? The latter leads people to feel a greater sense of blame than the former. Blame isn’t beneficial for anyone other than those placing it. Moreover, it doesn't facilitate ownership in prevention.

It is my belief that behaviors can indeed prevent and cause an event to occur, they can also be the reason an event was avoided. We must look beyond the behavior and remind ourselves people do things for a reason. If we only address the behavior, without addressing the reason, the sustainability of our intervention strategies will be limited at best. Certainly focusing on behaviors in a vacuum might produce faster results, but is it fast or lasting improvement we want? A little of both would be ideal indeed. I prefer sustainable value-add.

What are your thoughts?

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.

www.ProActSafety.com

Some thoughts on Incentives and Rewards:

The following is from a 1993 HBR Article titled: Rethinking Rewards: “In fact, we believe our incentive compensation program is at the heart of our company’s success… Since we adopted this approach, the quality of the budgeting process has substantially improved. Finally, award opportunities are uncapped, and, as a result, they encourage the entrepreneurial spirit that we value. When designed effectively and integrated thoroughly into the management process, executive incentive programs work well for management and shareholders alike.” L. Dennis Kozlowski (Former Chairman and CEO of Tyco Laboratories and now residing in a New York Correctional Facility for financial crimes).

If a site were to imagine what safety excellence looks like, what role do incentives play? I would not define safety culture excellence by what we have to do to prompt desirable behavior. Excellence to me looks like a naturally occurring series of desirable behaviors that occur unprompted. I prefer approaches that inspire people to do things above and beyond what is required for the right reasons, and recognize them for then doing more than what is expected for their job. Often positive reinforcement (R+) is sufficient.

Managers can certainly reward the individual behaviors, nothing wrong with recognizing behaviors that helped achieve a result. I agree with that. I just want to ensure people are performing these desirable behaviors for the right reason, not the reward. If an organization cannot afford to pay their reward program and if the behaviors are not occurring for intrinsic reasons, they will often cease. I choose to set goals, inspire, coach, recognize and then lead by not leading.

When people see progress and are recognized for their individual efforts, you have developed a sustainable model for performance. Telling them if you do this, I’ll give you that and then no longer can, isn’t sustainable. It should be recognized that we all are trying to develop paths to the same goal: Creating a world safe and free from risks and a society that knows the precautions necessary to keep themselves injury and disease-free. Both I believe can only be sustainable through an intrinsic passion for excellence, and the right combination of tools. Incentives can certainly be a starting point; they just shouldn’t be the ending one. If this is a site’s ending point, than they aren’t there yet.

What are your thoughts?

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.