Safety attitude doesn’t come from compliance. Safety attitude comes from aligning the safety program with a worker's personal values.
After delivering a safety keynote presentation, I spotted a driver in treacherous, icy winter driving conditions fly through a yellow light with vehicle windows, side mirrors and tail lights completely obscured by snow. Upon parking, the driver, a construction worker, emerged from his vehicle in full PPE prepared for a full day of working safely.
He purposely chose to drive his unsafe car in an unsafe manner to get to a job that requires safety. And although he was in compliance with his PPE, it was readily apparent through his actions, that he was not mentally invested in safety at all.
PPE can give the illusion of safety. Employees may dress in safety gear, but it doesn't mean that they own a safety attitude. They are simply tolerating the rules as a condition of keeping their job. That should not be an assurance that in an emergency situation, they would always choose safety.
Don’t confuse lack of incidents (due to complying with safety rules) as proof that your people buy-in to safety. In order to develop the right safety attitude, workers have to embrace safety as a personal value.
Here are four reasons compliance ignores safety attitude:
1Contradiction: The guy who speeds to work, rolling through stop signs in a vehicle with burned out brake lights and who goes home at the end of the day to cut the lawn wearing flip-flops - but he follows safety rules at work. He doesn't own a safety attitude. He tolerates rules. Rules don't encourage safety buy-in.
2Enforcement: Safety managers, officers and coordinators complain that they are viewed as safety security guards. But if you insist on making your main job function enforcing rules, how else would employees perceive you? If you're not taking the time to engage employees one-on-one in honest conversations in an effort to appeal to them at a personal level - outside of full-staff safety meetings - then they see you the same way they see a cop at the side of a highway. You are enforcing the "law" in your workplace. Workers resent being policed.
3Communication: Safety is so much more than JHAs, near-miss reporting, MSDS and orientations. Safety isn't about HOW they work safely - it's about WHY they work safely. Your safety certification may indicate that you passed the required course materials and have a very good grasp on how to instruct in safety. But it doesn't mean that you have the communication skills necessary to reach a worker deep inside to turn on their safety attitude switch. More paperwork won't open up the attitude floodgates.
4Education: Just because you educate them in safety doesn't mean they will choose safety in every situation. Education alone doesn't change values. Education combined with experience, coaching, exposure to new ideas and new decisions and an assessment of corresponding results together change values - at which point they buy-in to safety for themselves. But you've got to figure out where the gaps in education are for each employee.
Brute force doesn't change values. A threat of punishment or termination for safety violations doesn't change values. It simply forces people to tolerate rules. People slow down to the speed limit when they spot a cop and then speed up again once they have passed. The threat of punishment for non-compliance makes people comply for a short time and then they return to breaking the rules once they believe that no one is watching anymore.
Safety attitude doesn’t come from compliance. Safety attitude comes from aligning the safety program with a worker's set of personal values. In order to convince a worker to buy-in to safety, you must appeal to their desire to live a long and happy life with their families. Make safety personal - more than just a collection of rules to be enforced.
Not every employee has the same values on safety. Not every employee acts the same, performs the same, communicates the same or responds the same. Safety attitude is not activated by blanket approaches in impersonal safety meetings talking of safety generalities hiding behind PowerPoint slides. Safety attitude gets tapped in those messy and very personal conversations one-on-one.
If you want to convince someone to buy-in to safety, do it the same way salespeople have done it for centuries: talk with them, not at them, one-on-one and remove their mental obstacles to safety one at a time until the only choice left is to embrace and buy-in to safety.
