Kevin Burns Blog

Safety complacency is addressed at the ultra-local level; at the front-line. That’s where the complacency takes place. That’s where it gets fixed.

Who could have ever foreseen that you could get so good at your work that complacency would become a safety issue? Safety processes and procedures are done so well that your crews have become exceptional safety performers. And because they do work they can be proud of, they take satisfaction in how well they do the job. That satisfaction can create complacency.

It’s not your fault that you never saw it coming. You followed the processes and procedures, the rules and regulation so well that you got into the habit of always doing it well. They are not negative habits. They are the same positive habits that are creating a safety risk.

Consulting and speaking clients have discussed complacency-creep with me. They gush about their people, competent teams who do excellent work. But, niggling issues are starting to show up in the form of small mistakes, and memory and judgment lapses. They are afraid that the small issues have the potential to become more serious. That’s complacency-creep sneaking in.

The longer crews work on the job together, the more they get into a kind of rhythm working together. But that rhythm can become a routine. And where there is routine, there is rote: doing the job robotically. “Auto-pilot.”

Complacency is not something that is fixed or repaired or even addressed at the senior management level. Complacency is addressed at the ultra-local level; at the front-line between supervisor and employee. That’s where the complacency takes place. That’s where it gets fixed.

People cannot recall everything they are exposed to in a single message but safety people think they are.

This year, the cost of a 30-second Super Bowl ad was $5 Million. And advertising availabilities were sold out … again. Companies lined up to spend millions of dollars for a single 30-second time-slot. But, do you think that expenditure of $5 Million for a single ad drives enough revenue to the sponsor to pay for that ad? Nope. It will not. At least not alone.

Advertisers who take a 30-second time-slot on the Super Bowl are not expecting to drive tens of millions of dollars of sales from a single ad. No. They are using that expenditure of a single TV ad as a showcase for their product. But it is only a small piece of the overall mix of their marketing tools.

In addition to the ad buy, companies will spend millions of dollars more marketing attention on their ad. In other words, they will tease their customers that they will be unveiling a new ad during Super Bowl. They will employ millions of dollars on social media strategies to engage people to watch the ad both prior to the Super Bowl and even more after the Super Bowl is over. They will look for the media to talk about their ads (giving them more free publicity), hope people will share social media links (more free publicity) and even wait for others to mock the ads with spoof ads (even more free publicity). Thousands of people will go to work to get people to take an action: to watch the ad during the game, to share the ad with their social media network, to click links to watch the ad online. And it’s all done in the hopes of driving more foot traffic through the doors to sell more product. People buy what they are aware of and what intrigues them.

Safety marketing is what creates value and motivates people to action.

In the summer of 1974, a tractor in a rocky field was cutting the soil and dropping 200-foot long lines of copper wire in the ground. When completed, there were five miles of 200-foot sections spreading out like a spider web. At the center of the wire web was a radio broadcast tower. The copper wire strands connected to the base of the tower grounded and dissipated energy from potential lightning strikes. This was my Dad’s radio broadcast tower in our hometown.

I learned a lot of things about both marketing and communications in that first year the radio station went on the air, especially the difference between marketing and communications. The simplified version is this: if you’re listening to the news, the weather or a talk-show on the radio, that’s communications. If you’re listening to a commercial, a contest or an on-location broadcast, that’s marketing.

Communications inform. Marketing moves you to an action. And this is where most safety programs make their biggest mistake. They assume that informing (communications) is enough. But it isn’t.

PowerPoint slides, inspection reports and incident reviews are information (communications). Statistics, lagging indicators and white papers are information (communications). But none of them move people to take an action. It is information; nice to have and good to know. And although this information may influence your decision (or not) to take an action, in and of itself it does not move people.

Selling is about solving a problem or uncovering a benefit of safety in a way that makes people want to buy-in.

Safety shouldn’t have to be sold. That comment is typical right across the varying types of safety personnel. People get hung up on the word selling as though selling is a bad thing, a manipulative thing.

Truthfully, what now seems like a lifetime ago, I used to sell photocopiers. But, my clients would never buy the photocopier. They bought what it could do. And more importantly, what it could do for them. Prior to photocopier sales, I sold radio advertising. Again, people weren’t buying commercial time. They were buying the foot traffic to their business that the commercial time created - what it could do for them.

You must sell safety the same way too. It’s not about shoving safety down the throats of your people. It’s about helping them see that safety improves their lives in a way that they are probably not seeing it. As a supervisor or safety person, you have to help employees see what safety does and can do for them.

Selling anything takes a communications skill-set and trust. Rarely are the best salespeople the newest salespeople. The best salespeople are the experienced veterans who always keep the interests of the client at the forefront. They know that the product or service they are selling will help to eliminate a client’s pain-point. And the client knows it, too. No one buys anything that doesn’t make their lives better in some way. It’s why we buy homes, vehicles, vacations, education, insurance and investments. Those things make our lives better, more comfortable, less uncertain. So, why wouldn’t we buy-in to safety too?

Shifting your safety culture from one of compliance and rules enforcement to one of human engagement will require marketing.

If you think that marketing is all about sales, advertising, and late-night infomercials, then this post should change your mind. Marketing is a way to communicate the “why,” the meaning and importance of safety.

A sign in the workplace that reads, “Stop. Do Not Proceed,” is a warning, and nothing more. It’s a type of communication, but it doesn’t communicate the “why.” Memos, PowerPoint slides, emails, toolbox talks, and safety training are all forms of communication.

You need to take communication to the next level; to create communication that motivates employees. This is where marketing comes into play. In my book, PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety, marketing is discussed as the third critical component of the M4 Method.

Here are three reasons your safety program should have a marketing strategy:

To fix safety performance, you must first fix the engagement issue.

Gallup pegs the disengagement rate of employees and workers at around 70%. 7 out of 10 employees, workers and contractors are not actively engaged in their work. Here’s why that spells big trouble for safety. If a worker is not engaged in their work, then they are not engaged in safely doing their work. You cannot be disengaged from the job but still engaged in safety. To fix the safety performance, you must first fix the engagement issue.

PeopleWork lays out a new safety model. It changes the discussion from rule-based enforcement to performance-based culture focused on mentoring, coaching, and inspiring teams.

In my work as a safety management consultant, I’ve seen that when frontline supervisors buy into safety as a personal value, they better understand their role in keeping the workplace safe. In fact, if crews themselves can become safety leaders, the need for safety inspectors almost disappears altogether.

So, I wrote PeopleWork - The Human Touch in Workplace Safety to introduce the next level in safety. In the book, I lay out The M4 Method for taking workplace safety to the next level. The M4 Method combines four elements: Management, Meetings, Marketing and Motivation. All parts depend on the other parts to take safety from a compliance-based focus to one that is more people-based. The people-based approach helps employees to buy-in to safety.

Here are a few snippets from the book now on sale worldwide on Amazon....

Telling people to avoid a particular action or behavior does not automatically result in the right actions and behaviors.

Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't do what he did. Beware of the danger. Employed use of gruesome photos of severed and mutilated body parts. Safety messages are regularly reinforced negatively. Negative reinforcement does not automatically create positive safety behaviors.

A recent series of statistics offered some insight of how people react and behave to the words and suggestions of others. 

Let's take a look at how you allow yourself to be influenced by others when choosing to buy a product. Do you read the reviews on a product before you buy? Do you research what others have had to say about a product or service? Have you ever asked a friend or family member to recommend a tradesperson, a plumber, an electrician, a handyman, a carpet cleaning company, etc.? Have they ever told you which ones to steer clear of?

A study by Dimensional Research took a look at how we react and use online reviews. The findings have implications about how we react to communications.

In the study, 90% of people were swayed by positive reviews about a product. They were swayed enough to purchase the product themselves. On the other hand, 86% of on-line shoppers were swayed by negative reviews of a product. They were swayed enough to not purchase the product. You might think that this is a near dead-heat. But it's not. You have to consider what the reviews actually swayed people to do, or not do. The positive reviews swayed people to take action and buy. The negative reviews swayed people to take no action and not buy. Negative reviews did nothing to cause people to act. The negative reviews caused people to stop acting.

Your people deserve your best communication effort. Their safety depends on it.

The need to be effective in safety communications is perhaps the most important skill any supervisor or safety person can have. It has been proven that managers (including safety managers) and supervisors spend 50-80% of their day in actual communication. 50-80%! Communication is seriously important. If you have to repeat yourself, you're not being effective. And when your effectiveness is lacking, your people aren't buying-in to what you're saying. They're tolerating safety the rules. What you say and how you say it matters. You need to maximize your communication skills.

Here are four personal strategies that you need to embrace to begin implementing effectiveness in safety communications: