Safety is a marketing strategy - not a compliance program. Every word, sign, directive and safety meeting will either help or hinder your people in deciding whether to buy safety for themselves.
Your job as a safety manager or safety supervisor is to remove the barriers to buying the idea of safety for themselves - both at work and at home.
Remove mental obstacles that separate home and work safety - whatever it is that makes people cut the lawn in sandals, drive with broken tail lights and cracked windshields, speeding and forgetting seat belts will also be brought to work. Mental obstacles make people choose something other than the safe thing. That means they don't always obey your compliance directive. If they ignore safety at home, they will do it at work.
What's stopping you from really selling safety? Usually, it's one of two reasons.
Selling Safety Is Vulgar
Understandably, the idea of safety managers selling safety to employees is going to be met with resistance. After all, historically, safety has been a compliance measure. It is the rules, the processes and the procedures for ensuring that no one gets hurt on the job. But safety doesn't actually work until someone "buys" into it and chooses to own safety for themselves. And they will gladly buy safety when they can clearly see the benefits of owning safety.
People sometimes get suspicious when they sense they're being sold something - and that makes safety managers wary of being put in the position of salesperson. When you put these two ideas together, you're looking at a tough sell indeed. The thing is, while we hate to be sold - we love to buy. You need to get your employees into a buying attitude when it comes to their safety choices.
Safety Is A Commodity
Safety needs to be bought like any other commodity. Safety doesn't work until someone "buys" into it and chooses to own safety for themselves. And people will gladly buy safety when they can clearly see the benefits of owning safety.
Whether its a tangible item or an idea, people buy all the time. The vulgarity only exists when someone feels they are being coerced into doing something they don't want to do - like comply with a safety procedure that they don't agree with.
But you willingly buy life insurance, medical insurance, RVs, boats, snowmobiles and motorcycles not because you have to, not because some sleazy salesman sold them to you but because you wanted to. You buy when you convince yourself that your life will be better, or that your family will be protected, or you will finally have a sense of freedom ... if you could just have that thing.
Safety is that thing. And it, more than any other thing you will ever choose to buy in your life, will make your life better.
Your Job Is To Sell
Your job as a safety manager is to remove the barriers to buying. That means getting into the heads of your "customers" and removing the mental barriers that are preventing them from choosing to buy your safety program.
Truthfully, if you're trying to convince someone to comply with procedures, you're already trying to sell your safety program to them. And you're hoping that they'll buy what you're selling. If they don't, then that reflects badly on you when incident numbers rise.
Selling is nothing more than helping people get what they want. And what people want, is the goodness and richness that life has to offer. Safety can deliver that. Your job is to reframe their preconceived notions about safety and remove the barriers that prevent them from openly buying safety for themselves.
As a safety speaker and safety communications consultant, I can help you in selling safety to your employees and help inspire them to want to choose safety for themselves. I'm willing to show you how. Let's start a conversation.
