Trying to get employees to embrace safety as a personal value is one of the toughest things that safety personnel are faced with. It's not impossible, but it will take skills, commitment and perseverance.
Workers bring their own values to the workplace and it is those values that run into conflict with corporate safety values. Face it, compliance safety programs are rules-and-procedures based programs. That means little personal choice for employees in the fulfillment of duties and responsibilities. People who feel that they have little personal choice (autonomy) also feel that they are being dictated to by higher-ups (compliance). Resentment results if there has been little effort to establish dialog and mutual trust.
Safety values are not instilled in safety training classes. Values are instilled when people discover that what they believe about safety actually aligns with what the safety program is trying to accomplish. To uncover that takes communication, discussion and coaching.
But people don’t just buy-in after one conversation. It takes a full safety marketing strategy: a wholistic approach. Here are the three places you absolutely must start if you are to change minds and shift values:
1Management: Safety Management is made up of two parts: safety and management. Certification is required for the first but not for the second. This is where safety management is weakest. Safety managers who have never taken a course on basic management skills end up with compliance programs by default because there are no management skills required to be a safety cop - just enforcement. Without management skills, the safety knowledge that you’ve acquired over a lifetime is trapped in your head. And, the older you get and the younger your workers get only creates a larger chasm between what you want and what your employees want. The workplace is changing. Do you know what motivates a young worker to want to be better?
2Motivation: A sports coach who can tap into each player’s individual motivation to want to improve themselves becomes the most valuable asset on a team. A great coach can get outstanding performance from mediocre players. Players will follow a coach that can inspire them to improve their performance. Conversely, a coach unable to connect with his players eventually gets fired. In case you missed the memo, staff don’t work for managers: managers work for staff. The job of the manager is to inspire work ethic and communicate individual value to each of his/her crew members. Do your safety meetings encourage your players to want to be better safety performers?
3Meetings: Safety meetings have become disjointed, last-minute, uninspired attempts to meet a legal requirement; without a plan, focus, targeted outcome or a real purpose for being held other than “we have to.” Nor are there expectations placed on employees in safety meetings to be able to recall anything being discussed. They're not required to write anything down or to even be actively involved in the meeting. There are no consequences for not attending or skipping out of safety meetings anyway. Safety meetings have become poorly constructed one-way lectures. Employees are not told the purpose of the meeting or what is expected of them after the meeting. And yet, there is no better forum than the safety meeting to put every employee on the same page, to inspire them to want to be better and to buy-in to safety. But the opportunity is squandered over and over again because as much as you may want your people to change their safety ways, you won’t change yours when it comes to conducting the meetings.
Safety managers, supervisors and foremen, here is your 3-part homework assignment if you want to become a safety leader and to become exceptionally skilled at safety communication and motivation:
People’s lives depend on your ability to communicate the message of safety effectively. Your knowledge of safety is not in question. But if you want your people to align their safety values with yours, you have to get really good at the management, motivation and meetings parts. That's where you change values and consequently, safety culture.
To help encourage your people to think differently about safety, download the 3 free posters below and post them up around the worksite. (Click on the photo.)