2015 is the year that you are going to see an emergence of attitude being a major factor when it comes to workplace safety. That doesn’t mean that the process safety will take a back seat. Besides improving the safety process, safety attitudes will create buy-in to the safety program.
Use the word "sell" and safety managers get their backs up. The belief is that safety shouldn’t have to be sold. The word “selling” gets in the way of the true purpose of safety.
No one wants to see anyone injured. To build a safety culture requires more than just viewing safety as an injury-prevention program. It’s more than following rules and meeting minimum standards. To build a safety culture requires employees to be respectful of each other, to display courtesy and care about each other. Safety is a teamwork philosophy.
Strong safety cultures are built on character and values like courtesy, respect, sharing, teamwork and personal leadership. They are not built on certifications, hierarchies, self-congratulations, position or tenure.
Safety Culture will improve when the communications about safety within the organization improve. Besides increasing the quantity of communication, consider the quality.
There are some things you can control and some you can not. What you can control is your participation in the safety program. No one can turn down or increase your participation in safety.
Stop using the word leadership to describe management. We have all worked for managers who had zero leadership skills. You don’t call them your leader. You call them your boss. Leadership and management have little to do with each other.
The safety department complains that it’s difficult to get workers to buy-in to safety. Employees resist buying-in to a program of checks, forms and paperwork.
Can employees lead the safety meeting? It is an idea that hopes to lead to increased engagement. The thinking is that if a new voice speaks, people will listen. If a staffer leads the meeting, then others will engage better. It might be true. But there is a stronger case for not putting the responsibility onto employees.
Safety managers complain that they have difficulty in getting safety buy-in from senior management. Senior management seems more prepared to roll the dice on safety by under-funding the safety program. Executives understand profit and loss. But maybe they’ve never had safety explained in a way they understand. Maybe the pitch has been all wrong.
