Delivering Safety Excellence. Michael M. Williamsen
own appropriate ideas or plans for implementing the many needed improvements. The Doc warns that joining the BMW group would likely be a fatal career decision for Aaron. The Doc mentions that in his past job situations he has made some poor decisions which came back to bite him. Each time he did so, the result was the Doc got to “eat his own plate of dirt.” He tried to make sure he learned these lessons so he didn't have to eat the same plate of dirt twice. Aaron shudders at the plate of dirt analogy yet is thankful for the good counsel.
There has been a very recent CEO change which brought in a new leader, Craig. In last week's staff meeting Craig outwardly publicized his belief that personnel safety is the number one item on his agenda. Aaron makes an appointment to meet with Craig.
Note
1 1 First used in the comic strip “Pogo,” by Walt Kelly, in the 1960s.
5 Weak Culture Miseries
Aaron thinks about his future with his struggling company as he wrestles with what kind of future awaits him. After all the frustrations, discussions, ups and downs, Aaron decides it is his turn to be completely committed. At this moment Aaron's decision means he needs to take responsibility for developing a strong safety department that can both serve and lead the needs of his company's safety, health and environmental issues. However, all of the above are not looking all that great at this moment in time. He considers the recent coaching he has received and how this can help him move forward with the daunting challenges that his commitment to stay, serve, and excel will require of himself and those who work with him.
Aaron's next gut check is not all that encouraging. The Doc talked to him about leaders, followers, and resisters. In a weak safety culture it seems: leaders go to more important jobs, followers follow them, resisters and poor performers are put in safety where they can be hidden. Indeed, this is Aaron's lot in the life as a safety manager in an organization which only gives lip service to safety. This too had been the Doc's experience with the Fortune 20 company trying to dig their way out of the poor safety culture hole.
Aaron pulls up his consultation notes and reflects on what the Doc refers to as a unit operation called excellent safety culture performance, but which safety societies often think of as one of a number of normal safety processes. As with any other unit operation/normal safety process, there is an ongoing dynamic of many moving parts:
Each of the number of individual process steps must be done well.
All these moving parts must fit together if an organization is to achieve anything that has a chance of putting an end to a culture of mediocrity.
Any attitude of “good enough” or “close enough” is a death knell to achieving anything in which people of the organization want to commit to delivering world‐class performance.
What are the necessary steps to achieve safety culture excellence? Aaron noted extreme shortfalls in: management commitment, leadership involvement for hourly and salaried personnel, training, engagement, near miss, etc. ad infinitum. But which one(s) do you lead with? There is just too much to do with not sufficient resources, and everything needs to be done now.
There is the additional complication that over the years a weak culture seems to reward poor performing salaried employees by not requiring much in the way of anything which even remotely approaches excellence. As a result, the status quo momentum of “good enough” drags down one part of the organization after another. This type of vicious negative cycle is especially true in a company like the one where Aaron works. Aaron faces daily frustrations as ER (Employee Relations department) sets hurdles that take forever for Aaron to overcome as he tries to resolve the poor performance of the few bad apples who drag down the overall performance of the entire group. So where to start? Aaron decides to take on a challenge required for his success. With this decision he commits himself to successfully navigating all the ER and interpersonal challenges required to shed himself of his worst bad apple person. If the safety department is to move forward this is Aaron's personal “must solve” challenge.
Thus, Aaron returns to his decision of a commitment to getting rid of the worst apple. He must take the lead in doing whatever it takes to resolve his personnel issue. ER cannot be an excuse for Aaron in this matter. If Aaron is to run the race set before him, then he must personally be successful in getting over the hurdles as they come up.
As this saga unfolds, in however long it takes, the second part of the weak safety culture strategy has Aaron beginning a process of mentoring the other few safety staff members in order to help them deliver better performance. Aaron plans out the needed steps for success. As a part of this improvement strategy he also decides how he will give them the needed personal appreciation/recognition for good performance as it occurs. Personal, frequent, sincere feedback for a job done well is a true asset in lifting the performance of an individual and an organization. Such reinforcing feedback is also a necessity for the team comprised of the various individuals who are keeping all the moving parts going in the correct directions. Aaron wishes he had been given this kind of reinforcing feedback, but no need to whine about past events. Therefore, he realizes that, “I must take responsibility for what I can do now to improve our lot. If it is to be, it is up to me; so suck it up buttercup. Here we go!”
And then a significant surprise occurs when his best trainer, who quit because of the worst apple, comes back and tells Aaron that if he can get rid of the bad apple he would like to come back and help the department to improve the company's safety performance.
6 Injury Plateau
Aaron digs into the many difficulties of building a successful case necessary to remove his poorly performing employee. As he does so there is welcome relief from the long, hard grind in his next task; building the skills of the safety department's other resources. These two very different tasks are both about building personal relationship skills which are necessary for a team to function well with positive reinforcement, adult correction and skill building. Aaron smiles as he realizes this part of the plan to improve safety is coming together. But then there is still the cloud of a just plain sick safety culture that rains down on all the employees every day. How to “eat” this next elephant in the room will be just as challenging, if not more so. After his many discussions with the Doc, Aaron recognizes that applying the classic safety tools will do little or nothing to improve safety performance at their RIF plateau of 10+. These standard safety approaches will not address the real issue of a very weak safety culture. He writes down the “usual suspects” and thinks through what the result would be if this was all he planned to do:
The OSHA compliance approach of necessity has a condition centric focus. Aaron's injury and incident information show that facility physical conditions (and not personnel actions) account for very few of the injuries. Furthermore, the compliance tool is always reactive to an event that has already occurred. What is needed is a proactive strategy which will prevent incidents from occurring. His compliance audits have strong scores, the basics are in place. But his organization's current safety culture management has no thought of improving the underlying culture, just keep doing the same things and hope to get better;” The beatings will stop when the safety performance improves”
Aaron did not give high marks to the anemic data from the “program of the month” behavior based safety (BBS) which was in place before he took over. The project kicked off well, but then faded within a few months as all scores seemed to magically get to excellent, even though injuries continued to occur. Aaron picked up an article the Doc sent him and reached the same revelation that was explained by the probability equation from Dr. Dan Petersen; the fewer observations that highlighted safety problems, the more observations are required to be statistically significant. Dr. Petersen's article provided statistical insights not normally considered by BBS users: