Leading With Safety
We have heard industry leaders and professionals say or use the phrase “Leading with safety”. What do they mean? What’s this concept or strategy about? Drawing from my experiences over the years, I would define this phrase as, having your employee’s well-being at the forefront of every aspect of an organization’s operations, strategies, and initiative execution. Leading with safety done right is critical to the success of any organization.
If you are an executive, manager, or supervisor, ask yourself this question. What motivates you to get up and work every day? What will make your day as efficient and as smooth as it can be?
Most people would respond along these lines; I would like for my superior to be respectful and understanding of my abilities and shortfalls. I would like the work environment to be friendly and inclusive. My laptop, tablet or cell phone should work properly so that I don’t have to keep interrupting my work or my colleagues. All the material I need to perform my job should be available and of good quality. Me getting back home the way I came into work is a priority. I do not want to get hurt. If these were some of your responses, front line workers feel the same way! All employees in an organization have the same general desires about their workplace and its environment. Remember, the most important resource an organization can have is its people.
What do all these responses boil down to?.. Engagement! Some are wondering why I am bringing up engagement when our main topic is leading with safety…? How is engagement related to safety? Well, let me break it down this way.
So, we all know or have heard that any engaged group of individuals is well invested in their endeavour. This is also very true for an engaged work force. Engaged employees will want to work every day. They will not make up reasons to be absent from work. They will be more productive at work. Furthermore, they will volunteer for business activities. They will speak highly about the organization. The list of positives goes on and on and on….
Well, how then do we use safety to create engagement? We will go over a few concepts to expand on our knowledge.
Leadership: an organization must leverage its leaders to spearhead this effort. We all get our cues from our supervisors or managers. Their visibility on site, how they talk to us and the way they carry themselves has an impact on how we feel about them, the organization, and the culture within the workplace. Safety programs have requirements centered around observations and workplace inspections. Have your leaders actively participate! Leaders participating in these activities will create situations where they can engage employees on different topics that impact their work. It’s imperative that an organization continuously develops and mentors its leaders, as it’s they that employees want to follow and emulate.
Attention to events and their management: when an event (Incident, near miss, property damage…) occurs, how an organization reacts to it has an impact on employees and the culture within the workplace. We have previously talked about Human Organizational Performance (HOP) principles. HOP principles are key when it comes to event management. How we investigate, who we involve and how we get to root causes and more importantly actions to prevent reoccurrence are critical. Avoid the blame game. Don’t immediately seek to pin issues on employees and their behaviours. Dive deeper into events and see where the organization my have failed and thus a contributor. Seek to reinforce expectations rather than to only punish.
Allocation of resources: manpower, raw materials, equipment to mention, but a few are all resources whose availability and provision in the workplace have an impact on engagement, safety, and productivity of any organization. If we have several employees call in sick with no backup, someone is carrying someone else’s load. We do not have enough equipment to get the job done, so some employees need to carry on the work manually. The raw materials that came in today were of poor quality and as such, employees had to exert unnecessary effort to manipulate them into a final product. All these examples of poor resource allocation or management are inherently unsafe, disengaging to employees and will ultimately impact productivity. When making decisions that impact resources, think about how they will affect employees and the culture within the organization.
There are several other concepts we can discuss, expanding on why leading with safety can only be a benefit to an organization. It should be clear now. A safety management system can be leveraged to make the workplace safe and a joy to be a part of, which will in turn lead to better business performance in all facets.
