Rethinking Safety Culture

In this episode we are going to talk about safety culture or just culture. Yeah we’ll get into that and how we can take a new look at improving safety, integrating safety into the organization and drop the s-word when we refer to culture. We’ll get into all that good stuff in this episode. Hey guys, welcome to the Safety Pro Podcast. My name is Abraham Gibson. I work at Amazon.com as a safety specialist. One thing you should know, there is nothing you cannot do if you get the habits right. Safety is the habit. All right, here we go. Thank you Abraham for that incredible intro. Remember, you know, listeners, you can submit your own intro to the Safety Pro Podcast.

Go ahead and record a clean audio. Send that audio file to info at thesafetypropodcast.com and you may just get to intro the next episode. Before we get into today’s topic, I want to remind everybody if your business is reopening after any kind of closure due to COVID or you continue to remain open but you’re struggling and relay important information about safety and health as it relates to COVID, I want you to go visit our friends over at MightyLine Floor Tape. MightyLine has some great products for you to mark your floors, whether it be the stand here, the six feet distancing, or just floor tape to denote lanes of travel. They have everything you need to mark your facilities.

So, hit the link in the show notes, visit our friends at MightyLine Floor Tape. They are incredible partners in safety. I can’t thank them enough for their support of the podcast. Again, MightyLine Tape for all of your floor marking needs. All right, as promised, we’re going to talk about culture. And you know, I’ve come to this realization over the years that one of the problems that we have as safety professionals is we look at absolutely everything through the lens of our profession. Not safety, but just who we are as professionals. And it’s a professional bias, to be honest with you. It’s exactly what it is.

So, when it comes to culture, we think, oh, well, we have to create a safety culture. And it’s a very specific thing. And sometimes we run up against other aspects of the organization’s culture that already exists, or that the leaders are trying to promote at the same time. And sometimes they butt heads. They were both heading in one direction, but sometimes it just doesn’t sync up the way we think it does. And, you know, that causes friction and we get frustrated. I see posts even today all the time, you know, how can I get this company to embrace a safety culture? So, maybe what we want to start doing is dropping the S word and just look at the organization’s culture.

Okay, so let’s talk about that a little bit. And I’m just, you know, off the cuff, I have no script in front of me. I’m just kind of thinking out loud my way through this. If we take a look at the organization as a whole, we look at why the organization exists, what the organization makes, what the senior leaders represent, and how they work, and what they drive and focus on. And then, of course, that trickles down to who they like to hire. Because, think about it, if your organization, I used an example on another podcast I was a guest on recently. I used the example of a widget, right?

If your organization is to make the highest quality, just the best featured widget in the world, you know, there’s a certain type of culture that you have to build, right? That you have to then hire for to create that. So, same thing. If your company is, we’re just going to mass produce as many widgets as we possibly can. So, you know, that are affordable to get it out there so that, you know, when you go to buy a widget, that’s all you need is a widget. I mean, how complicated can a widget be, right? And that’s the culture you have. Same thing. Think of the type of culture that you need to have in place and who you would hire to support that. Maybe it is the lowest price.

Maybe it’s the highest quality, you know, with the least defects. You know, our widgets just work. They’re not the most expensive, but they’re not the cheapest, but they will work every single time and they will last the longest. So, that kind of, you know, the quality and craftsmanship that goes into that, engineering that and manufacturing that consistently, you know, from one widget to the next, the kind of culture you have to have in place in that organization. So, you can use this for any type of company, right? Just take a look at the culture that you need to have in place. To be able to be in business and achieve the stated goals of that business, of that company, okay?

Now think how safety can support that. How safety helps you achieve that. So, I don’t care if it’s, we’re just going to make the most affordable, cheapest widget you can buy. Not cheap in quality, just cheap in price, right? We are going to source materials that are the lowest cost. We are going to manufacture in a streamlined way to keep costs down. We are going to distribute in a way that, you know, and our supply chain is set up as such that keeps costs down, that reduces costs because we want the consumer to pay less than anybody else for this widget, okay?

Now, if you have multiple incidents and you are constantly stopping the line, you’re, you know, you’re, you’re constantly interrupting that production process, you’re going to have quality defects, you’re, you’re going to increase costs because your work, your comp rate’s going to be too high. You’re going to have turnover because, you know, folks are eventually not going to want to work there. You’re going to develop a reputation. So, that turnover introduces, you know, that learning curve. You’re, you’re constantly in a constant state of training and developing workers and, you know, there’s a certain percentage of your workers, right? Because of churn.

And so, you’re not able to produce the number that you need for that economy of scale to work for you. So, you know, safety can, can actually help support that goal, that stated goal. Same with having the highest quality of widget out there. Same thing, you know, quality goes down as incidents go up, okay? The more incidents you have, the more likely it is that you’re going to have quality issues. And the more likely it is, same thing, you’re going to have to constantly be training new people. And it takes that learning curve of taking, taking a new hire and getting them up to a standard of the quality that you’re looking for. That’s going to take a little while. So, and then cost goes up.

And so, same thing, right? You know, if it, it doesn’t matter if you want to be the most affordable, if you want to say the highest quality, the best features, we’re the premier brand, it’s going to be difficult to achieve that as a business if we have an extremely high incident, you know, injury illness rate. So, safety can support just about any culture that the organization purports to want to instill, to have. So, maybe it’s about alignment, right? Maybe as a safety professional, our job is to align safety within the organization to support overall the company’s goals.

So, that’s a different way of looking at culture than through the lens of a safety professional saying, well, we need a safety culture. Let’s talk about how you can actually achieve some alignment. So, let’s say in a high quality environment culture in a business where quality is the main focus. So, chances are there are senior leaders and managers and even workers, this is drilled into them, how to do the quality checks, how to maintain their machines and equipment, how to, you know, inspect and review materials before they go into the production process so you don’t have defects. All this in an effort to reduce defects, you know, upstream, right?

To prevent them from producing a defective product to begin with. That fits perfectly with what we’re trying to do. You know, taking an operator away from the machine out of that production process, that’s waste in the process. That’s an unplanned stop in work. It’s an unplanned interruption. So, we can certainly sell that, using air quotes here, sell that to managers and leaders that, okay, why don’t we fold in some safety checks with the quality checks that they’re already out there doing. When I’m checking my equipment, I’m checking the e-stop. I’m checking housekeeping.

When I’m checking my tooling and equipment and do my 5S, I’m checking that shadow board, making sure I’ve got all the tools are present so that I don’t have to stop and go find something. But why don’t we also check the condition of those tools and those hand tools and, you know, all that stuff, right? Why don’t we do that with managers and supervisors? They do their Gemba walk, their morning walk or whatever. We add, you know, three, four, five things that they also check that reinforce safety. And we kind of integrate, we align with what it is the organization has to do, has to achieve.

I mean, that’s actually a better plan than trying to come in after they’ve already set all this up and then say, on top of all that, we want you to do these things too. I’ve been in organizations in the past. I visited organizations, client sites where, you know, the biggest frustration for the managers was like, yeah, I mean, I go and do my morning walk from quality walk where we all get together as a team and go through and do the quality thing. And then I got to turn right around and try to see which meeting I’m going to duck out of because I have to do this safety walk. And I’m like, well, did you just walk that same area? And they’ll say, yeah, I did.

Well, then can you chew gum and walk at the same time? I mean, who’s to say you can’t also be checking for safety? I mean, think about it. Think about the messaging that brings to the workers. First thing in the morning before we start our shift, you guys are out here drilling us on quality. Then sometime later on, after we’ve already got started and we’re already working, we’re already using these tools and equipment and materials. And then you come along and go, oh yeah, I’m out here to do my safety check as well. That sends a message that safety isn’t as important as quality. We’re doing it later. We’re already allowed to get started. And now you’re going to come by later and check, right?

But if you do it at the same time, right? Quality, safety, hey, how are you doing today? How are you feeling today? Is everything going all right? You know, so your people, you’re working on your people skills, you’re showing you care about them. So HR may have some input into this, you know, get some feedback from the employees. So you can align with, you know, and streamline this and kind of lean it out a little, but still put that emphasis on, you know, we care about whether or not something happens to you here. And you can do that.

So I would suggest for the alignment piece, a good place to start is go find out what managers and supervisors and even employees already have to do as far as checks, inspections, things like that. And make sure that you kind of round that out. You’re able to contribute in a meaningful way and, you know, your safety piece, right? So that you’re integrating safety into its meshing and it feels natural.

I see this, and you may have heard me talk about this in past episodes that I’ve mentioned this, that, you know, big frustration of mine is that we have these, you know, quality and engineering, they produce these work instructions and then safety comes along later on and we produce a JSA that’s hanging there, laminated and it completely looks different, different font, different form, has photos. And why not fold in safety checks with or steps with the work instructions so that it is natural when that worker sees the work instructions, they’re instructed to do something that, you know, impacts safety, right?

So that’s just another example of how we can continue to integrate with the organization’s existing culture or culture. They’re actually trying to build instead of feeling like there’s, it’s a tug of war. We’re, we’re in this silo and that’s exactly what you’re doing is you’re creating silos that you’re competing for attention. You’re competing for resources. You’re competing for, for people. So same thing with your safety committee. If there is a, you know, a quality team and they have, you know, individuals that are volunteered to be, you know, you know, on a quality audit and quality team, you can also, you know, pitch a safety team as well. You don’t have to call it a safety committee.

You can just call it a safety team where you do like a four corner walk of the whole facility. You require at least one supervisor. You can do all that, right? Because you’ve got, you’ve shown you can integrate safety and support what it is that they’re the organization as a, as a whole, as a company is trying to achieve. And then you can start to ask for some of these, these outliers that you would like to build out. And maybe it won’t be as difficult as you think. I have done this in, in my recent past and it worked really, really well. Everybody top down, even the safety representatives at the facility.

They loved the idea that the managers and the senior leaders and the VP of manufacturing going out and doing the Gemba walk had a list of safety items that they needed to look for at the same time. And they loved it. They loved being able to, to see that prompt, you know, on their little sheet of paper and go, oh, wait, I’m going to ask this worker about, you know, the e-stop procedure or the jam clearing process and, and, you know, go and do that. And then they go in and they, they type into the computer their notes, what they found, they check off that they did these things. So, you know, we’re satisfied.

They’re checking that box, but really our focus is out there where the work happens, engaging people that do the work. And we’re able to take this holistic approach. We’re able to touch on, you know, quality, safety, their wellbeing. You know, how do you like working here? So, you know, like I said, HR is happy. You know, it’s this whole ball, ball of wax. These aren’t separate standalone pieces that we do. Like we do quality. And when we’re done with quality, we’re going to do safety. We don’t, you don’t do safety. We just are safe. We just, we are quality. You know, we care about our people. At the end of the day, those are the folks that are getting the job done.

They’re producing the parts, the pieces, the products that we’re trying to sell, which is achieving what the company is all about. Right? So that’s my challenge to you. I want you to rethink safety culture. Start with the culture, the organization. You’ll see it right away. You know, every one of us knows exactly what kind of culture we feel like the upper managers, the senior leaders are trying to build. And we don’t like it because it’s not all about safety. And so in order for us to be happy and us to be sane, it’s okay that the company wants to be, have the cheapest widget on the market and get the largest market share.

Well, I’m going to tell you, you’re not going to be the cheapest widget if you’re hurting people all the time. It’s a great way to leverage that organization’s culture towards having the most affordable widget and the largest market share. Okay. You, you can totally sell that to them. I mean, they’d be crazy not to see the direct connection between their comp costs and, and turnover to increase costs of production. Same with quality, right? Same with like, just the highest featured, you know, device or, or, or, or tool or product. So start with culture, start looking at the culture as, you know, more as a more holistic view than through the lens of being a safety professional. Okay.

We are very likely the only, if not the only one or two that are in that organization that see it this way. Okay. We have to be better at seeing through those other lens, the, the lens of the organization and how we support that. Okay. And we do hands down. It’s a valuable service that we safety professionals provide to the organization through protecting the workers. Right. So that’s my whole thing on safety culture. I mean, I think we need to drop the safety word. I think we need to, we need to focus on integrating safety more naturally. We need to speak the manager’s language. We need to speak the worker’s language.

We need to drop this, you know, and I know, I only know some say a few safety professionals that are just dogged about this. Most of us do it without thinking about it because it’s just, it’s what we read and, and eat and, and drink and sleep, you know, safety. We, we use jargon and lingo that only we understand, you know, when we’re talking to each other, that makes sense. But, you know, we’ve, we’ve really got to learn how to talk to others in their language in terms that they understand and, and go and see what work has to happen so that we can support them and go down to the supervisors and say, you know, what is it that you have that you struggle with on a day to day?

What, you know, what metrics are you driving? What metrics drive you from higher up? Right. And talk about and think about how safety supports that, how we can integrate safety into that and, and focus on that. You’ll start to find that you’ll get to a point where you will have to ask for time or material support or budget. For example, if the labor schedule, the production schedule, I should say, the production schedule is so tight that you really can’t have a safety committee go around for one hour a week or one hour a month, even to have a meeting or to work on projects or things like that.

So you, you’ve got to find ways to free up some time, but then you also have to be willing at some point when you’ve kind of shown your, you know, the benefit of, you know, this approach to upper management, you, you should be able to go to them and say, Hey, look, we’re going to need, if this is going to work and we’re going to sustain this over time, we need to make a little bit of an investment that will pay off. But that investment is one hour a month with five people, 10 people or whatever, for example. And so, you know, the art of the pitch, right?

You know, you’ve got to be able to nail that, but start thinking now very frugally and very shrewdly about how you can integrate a lot of what needs to happen into existing processes. I did a whole episode on integrating safety into existing business processes. So go back and listen to that one. That all still applies. I, for this topic, I wanted to focus mainly on the culture piece and how we think of the company culture. You know, we think of, we’ve got to build a safety culture. I’m going to say that it doesn’t need to be a separate, specific safety culture. Safety is an aspect of the organization’s culture that we need to improve. That may be true. I get that.

But to say that we need a, we need to build a safety culture that actually will run counter to the overall culture, the organization needs to be able to compete in the marketplace and to be sustainable. I think that, that we can do that as safety professionals. I see more and more people talking about it in these terms. I’ve been talking about it in these terms as well. What do you think? Let, let me know what you think about this. You know, what are your beefs about, I’m using air quotes, safety culture, what are your biggest obstacles in improving safety within an organization? Will this type of vantage point work better for you? I know it has for me. I know it has for many others.

It’s repeatable. I’ve seen it done. I’ve done it. But what do you, what do you think? What’s your feedback on this? I would love to hear what you have to say. You know, nowadays we are collaborating and communicating with each other over at the Safety Pro Podcast community. So I’ll have the link in the show notes. Think about becoming a member of the community. $4.99 a month for a premium membership. You can cancel at any time. There’s no obligation. You can become a free member and you can read and view all the free posts and videos. There are a lot of premium content, you know, getting uploaded there. There is a lot of premium content, I should say. We’re building more.

We’ve got more video courses coming and that’s exciting. We’ve got live chat. We’ve got direct messaging from me for premium members as well. But, you know, head on over to the Safety Pro Podcast community site. Let us know what you think, especially about this topic. That’s my episode for today. I wanted to bring this up. It’s an important aspect of what it is we have to do as safety professionals. And I think we can make a lot of headway by just rethinking safety culture all together, right? I truly believe that. I’ve seen it and I have done it as well. So let me know what you think. I would love to hear your experiences as well.

Again, head on over to the Safety Pro Podcast community and I will talk to you on the next Safety Pro Podcast.