Sure, your company has a great safety program. Yes, you have trained safety professionals on your team. You think all your workers are following the safety guidelines outlined in your organization’s safety program. And yet — injuries and incidents are still happening. So what’s the problem?
It starts with a conversation with your team members, asking them questions like “Can you tell me a little bit about your company’s safety program?” and “Could you explain it to someone who doesn’t work for the company?”
Building a safety culture of real value takes time, intentionality and a shared belief system throughout the organization.
Are You Just Checking the Safety Box?
Does your company have a safety program that’s usable and manageable? Or is it all just smoke and mirrors?
There are lots of companies that invest a great deal of money in safety, and, on paper, they have amazing safety programs. But they are still having incidents and safety situations and wonder what’s wrong. The first step is getting a safety needs assessment.
The assessment process starts with a desktop review of all paperwork relating to a company’s safety program, including workplace injury and illness incidence rates and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reports. Then, the next step is to build out a variety of questions into a customizable survey — and start meeting with and talking to leadership and employees at all levels of the organization.
There’s a lost art of people talking to each other face to face. It’s important for supervisors and managers in an organization to communicate with each other and have conversations with their employees on a personal level. That builds trust within the team and the company, and that’s the foundation for really building a safety culture that has value.
How do you know if your company or organization is simply checking the safety box? Have your employees watched a safety orientation video and then signed a document saying they watched it? Check. But what does your team really know about those safety procedures? Do they know how to use them on a jobsite?
According to the Learning Pyramid, or Cone of Learning, developed by the National Training Laboratory, people generally remember 10 percent of what they read; 30 percent of what they see during a demonstration; 50 percent of what they see and hear by engaging in a group discussion; and 90 percent of what they do by practicing what they learned and showing someone else.
If you have 20 people in a trailer watching a 20-minute safety video, half of those employees are not actually watching the video and aren’t going to remember most of what they watched. But if a trained safety professional talks to the group, leads a safety training and then has those individuals in the training actually work through a scenario together, the employees will retain much more. And having them retain and understand is key to creating a safety culture in the workplace.
Face-to-face conversations with team members throughout the company are essential to identifying the gaps between a safety program — and a safety culture.
Safety Program vs. Safety Culture
Your safety program may be unbelievable, but the problem lies in the leadership, communication and engagement of team members, and you’ll find that out when you start doing a deeper dive into conversations at all levels of the organization.
Many safety leaders don’t often learn about the soft skills of conflict management and active listening, so it’s important to teach them about verbal versus non-verbal cues, barriers in communication, how to reset an employee and how to correct behaviors.
People want to do the right thing. They don’t want to be injured on the jobsite. The question for leadership becomes, “Have I communicated our safety protocols the right way to be a positive example and show employees how to get things right and be as safe as possible?”
A safety program is the book of guidelines a company has to follow in order to comply with state and federal regulations. A safety culture is built over time. Leadership and employees are invested in the ideas, the thoughts and the processes of the organization, and they see value in what the company is doing from a safety perspective.
A safety program can be created, manufactured or developed. A safety culture is embedded in the way you live and work on a daily basis — it’s the truest picture of your company’s safety. A true safety culture in an organization is one in which the workers do the right things — even when someone’s not watching. And that comes with teaching them the why.
Teaching the WHY of Safety
Instead of focusing solely on book terminology, coaching team members on the whys of safety will not only help them retain the knowledge of the rules and regulations but also help them become more invested and engaged in the safety culture as a whole.
There’s an innate behavior in every human being to ask why. And that includes following safety guidelines. People want to know why they are being asked to do something, why a certain rule or regulation is going to keep them safe, and tapping into that is important when it comes to teaching employees the value of safety on the job.
Safety on the jobsite and in a business or organization at large is challenging. It has to be done correctly each time. There is never a guarantee if, or when, an incident is going to happen. Therefore, you always have to be ready. And the best preparation is doing the best you can as a leader or a supervisor to put safety measures into place and ensure your team members understand and buy in.
We all want zero injuries and for no one to get injured on the jobsite. That’s always the goal, and it looks good on paper, but it’s unrealistic to some degree. We are all imperfect humans, and there are going to be mistakes and incidents and injuries. But have you done all you could to mitigate the risk?
Everything has some amount of risk involved. But supervisors should identify the risks of each situation and try to lower them as much as possible by adhering to the organization’s safety rules. And if employees question those rules, remind them of the why.
If people understand the value and reasoning behind what you’re asking them to do, they are much more likely to invest in the company’s safety culture and follow those guidelines of the safety program. Teach people why it’s important to do things a certain way in order to keep themselves and others around them safe.
Once team members have bought into the why of the safety program, that’s how a safety culture of value is built. Employees are staying safe and following protocols for all the right reasons, and they will practice safety not because they have to — because they want to.
Safety isn’t just something you talk about; you have to show it, believe it and live it every day.
If you’re ready to shift from a program for safety compliance toward one of safety culture, reach out to us and schedule a chat. We’re here to help.
