MailChimp Template Test - "Safety Thinking. Edition #5 - 28...
Subject: MailChimp Template Test - "Safety Thinking. Edition #5 - 28 Oct" From: <kristy.mcgrath@generativehse.com> Date: 24/11/14 9:37 AM To: <kristy.mcgrath@generativehse.com>
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Webinar Invitation: Mindful Safety Leadership Industry expert Marc McLaren will be unpacking and exploring the idea of how mindful safety leadership can improve safety performance for your organisation. There will be time allocated at the end to ask Marc any questions you might have on the topic. The session will go live at 2pm EDST on the 14th of November so be quick to register as there are limited spaces available.
What does a leader need to focus their time and energy on, to improve their organisation’s safety? It can be well argued through evidence-based research that a leader plays a critical role in improving an organisation’s safety. While in the field it’s not always clear what attributes and practices a leader must pursue to improve their work team’s safety climate and performance. Just before we launch into the discussion it’s important we define some key terms, if we are going to rely on these to measure effective safety leadership.
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The definition for safety climate is based on the work supporting the NOSACQ-50, an innovative diagnostic safety climate tool. The tool has been developed over the past decade and has been successfully deployed across multiple industries and continents. Safety climate is defined, “as a workgroup’s members’ shared perceptions of management and workgroup safety related policies, procedures and practices.” The definition for safety performance is drawn from several studies that have looked at a large body of existing safety research. Safety performance is defined as, “an increase in safety participation, compliance and risk mindfulness leading to a reduction in incidents and injuries”. In order for the evidence-based findings to be useful it must provide, in an everyday operational context, practical decision-making guidance for senior through to frontline leaders. In other words, what does an operational leader need to be mindful of, both in their thinking and actions, to concretely improve sustainable safety performance? What does the leader need to commit their time and energy to, in order to change people’s safety behaviours? The leader is faced with a myriad of choices in how they could expend their time to improve safety. Do they work on making sure the safety system, policies and procedures are clearer? Do they put more effort into conducting quality risk assessments? Do they spend more time in the field engaging in behavioural observations? Do they work on their presentation skills in order to improve their safety talks? Do they make sure that their actions line up with just and fair safety principles? Do they get more involved in safety incident investigations? The list of legitimate leader led safety activities is endless. Over the last decade Sharon Clarke a safety researcher from the UK, has wrestled with this question of what a
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leader needs to focus on to really change peoples’ safety behaviours, leading to an overall improvement in an organisation’s safety performance. In 2013, she published a helpful article in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology titled ‘Safety leadership: A meta-analytic review of transformational and transactional leadership styles as antecedents of safety behaviours’, which shone a bight light on the safety leadership question. In 2011 a comprehensive search of the research literature on safety climate, behaviour, compliance, participation, injuries and leadership was undertaken. A staggering 800 plus papers were found on the topic. A study was included in Sharon Clarke’s meta-analysis if it had relevant measures, data was measured at an individual level and was drawn from an organisation wide sample. 103 studies were found to meet this criterion. Read More This article was written by Marc McLaren for Safety Snippets.
Making Common Sense Common Practice Ron Moore’s book, ‘Making Common Sense Common Practice’ uses a fictional company called ‘Beta International’ to present proven models for achieving world-class performance. The book is an excellent read and provides great insights for safety and risk professionals. Through Beta International, Ron presents his case that concentrating on certain aspects of plant performance in isolation (such as safety) is not enough. Where we focus on one area of a business, cracks will inevitably form. The best performing plants are disciplined about all their practices, leading to a synergistic effect in all of their performance measures. Ron supports this claim with the below diagrams that demonstrate the strong
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correlation between reliability (asset utilization capability) and safety (injury rate). We see that when an organisation is focused on excellence across all areas of the business, there is a shift in mindset and a reduction of failures across the board. Moore also advocates the introduction of diagnostics and benchmarking initiatives across all functions. Moore’s suggestion is that the best manufacturing companies use benchmarking to drive the cultural shifts necessary to generate momentum for change. This is a topic that is close to Generative HSE’s heart. We see this time and time again when we rollout our Safety Climate Survey and see the benefits derived from benchmarking both across functions and within industries. When managers see that line in the sand they are eager to dive in and take action. So, to take advice from the wise Ron Moore: 1. If we want to improve safety performance, we need to strive for peak performance from the entire organisation. 2. Use diagnostics and benchmarking as the catalyst for meaningful change
Five more ways to improve your safety climate 1. Introduce a ‘no crew left unsupervised program’ to ensure all crews receive the planning and management they need 2. Provide supervisors with ‘soft skills’ training on how to handle common people issues, especially giving and receiving feedback
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3. Senior management makes the commitment to shake at least 10 workers hands twice a month with a specific safety topic in mind 4. Bring new employees back after their first three months to see how they feel about safety and what the company should do differently when they bring on new employees 5. Include ‘safety’ in the job title of all supervisors or set out clear safety leadership accountabilities in their position description
Listening for improved safety performance It’s a fact - People who feel heard are much more likely to listen to you. It runs this way in society as it does at work. Effective leaders make things happen and the best way to make things happen is to engage with staff. It comes at no surprise that the best way to do this is to listen to what they have to say. This can be difficult when there are tens, hundreds or thousands of staff to listen to. But there are tools to help. Safety climate diagnostic tools provide leaders with the insights they need to make change meaningful and more importantly, ensure that staff buy-in to the change. If you’re a leader and you’re looking to improve your safety performance, we recommend that you adopt a safety diagnostic tool to help you listen and reach the hearts and minds of the people you’re trying to keep safe. Generative HSE’s Safety Climate Survey tool is designed to help organisations measure safety climate, motivations, perceptions and self-rated
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behavior. It has been developed and refined over the past 10 years by a highly regarded team of Nordic occupational safety researchers and has been subjected to rigorous academic and field reviews.
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Anton, I never follow procedures because they are all wrong or theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not worth using Excerpt from Anton Guinea's book - Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Talk About Safety Mate, you are crazy! Safety procedures are not designed to make it difficult for you, they are not designed to make the job take longer, and they are not designed to create obstacles to you getting your work done. Procedures are developed as the safest way to do the job. Procedures are developed with one objective; to keep you safe. This belief, that the procedures are wrong or worthless, can be formed if you continually see that procedures are outdated, you feel that you were not part of the procedure development process or you were not consulted about the implementation of the procedure. If the procedures are outdated, what have you done about it, mate? You know your job better than anyone and if the procedures need to be updated, have you taken steps to get the changes made? Sometimes it can be easier to whinge about them not being correct, than to actually do something about getting the procedures updated. It is important to remember that the expectation is that you will follow safe work procedures on every job. If you do not,
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you really need a good reason why, because the boss thinks the procedure is up-to-date and is the safest way to do the job. In your situation, I would get in first, and raise the issue with the boss. If you just don’t see a good reason to follow procedures, you might like to think about why that is: is it because you have been doing the job in the same way for the last however- many years; or is it because you just can’t understand how someone in an office could write a procedure that tells you how to do your job; or is it because you think there is a better, maybe even safer, way to do the job? Remember, even if you are doing the job in an even safer way than the procedure dictates, you are still taking a short cut if you are not following the procedure – you may reduce your own risk, but what about your mates on the same shift or on the next shift? Perhaps you could let them know how they could work safer – they will certainly appreciate the information, if it will make them and their jobs safer. If you have a reason not to follow procedures, you need to think it through, to be sure that your reason is valid. Perhaps you are just being stubborn and the procedure is the best way to do the job, but you have an issue with it because you don’t like someone telling you how to do your job. So mate, always remember that safety procedures were put in place to keep you safe. If you find a safer way to do the job, update the procedure.
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