ENGAGEMENT: THE KEY TO CHANGING YOUR SAFETY CULTURE

The most important book on worker safety of the 21^st century may already have been written, and it’s not about worker safety. I’ve been reading the recently released book, Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT™ by Dr. Paul Marciano, and it struck me that what he is talking about transcends organizational development in a general sense and hits a bulls-eye on some points that many of the purveyors of safety culture products miss completely.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that Dr. Marciano did have contact with me as he researched the book, and while my involvement fell far short of anything approaching a contribution, it is fair to say that I was a sympathetic audience to his message. The book itself is a great read and should be required reading in any curriculum that confers a degree or certificate in worker health and safety. Frankly, I recommend that it be a part of any leadership or supervisory skills training. It’s that good.

My intent is not to create a commercial for this book but, as I read it, I keep thinking about behavior-based safety (BBS) and employee recognition programs aimed at safety. So much has resonated within me that I thought I would take a moment and apply the book’s key points to worker safety and the elusive hunt for the Utopian safety culture.

According to Marciano, recognition and rewards don’t work chiefly because – and he gives 20 reasons why – the programs focus on changing behaviors and not on engaging employees. People who are motivated change their behaviors to achieve a short-term goal, but they don’t make the lifestyle changes necessary to sustain meaningful results.

In terms of changing the safety culture, recognition and reward system tend to change the organizational climate, but do little to change the culture. And since recognition and reward (along with discipline) form the foundation of most BBS systems, these types of systems appear to get results . . . but often the organizations that use them find that once the rewards become routine (or worse yet, entitlements) the organization must either “up the ante” by increasing the reward or risk falling back into old, bad habits. In other words, the initial gains can only be sustained by spending more and more time and money motivating employees to work safe.

Engagement is different from motivation. Whereas motivation seeks to manipulate behavior for a short time, engagement seeks to win over individuals such that they link their own personal success to that of the overall organization. A motivated employee will work hard for a week to win a sales prize, but an engaged employee will work hard every week because working hard is good for the organization, and what’s good for the organization is good for him or her.

Having said all that, watch out for people selling “safety snake oil” disguised as engagement; engaging employees is hard work and it takes true leaders to do it. Nobody is going to sell you a magic bullet that will suddenly engage your workforce, but plenty of the pundits will try.

But worker engagement is only one of three keys to sustained safety improvement. The other two, Just Culture and Problem Solving, can be just as difficult to achieve.

The idea of a “Just Culture” grew out of research that found that people make numerous mistakes per hour and that it seemed to be a function of the human brain (some researchers postulate that these errors are subconscious experiments that the brain makes to test adaptations necessary for survival). The research found that people make mistakes and that the number or seriousness of those mistakes didn’t seem to correlate between how careful a person was, or how smart a person was, or anything that could be addressed/modified by recognition, reward, or discipline.

The goal of a Just Culture was to create an environment where people felt comfortable making and reporting mistakes; the logic being that if one were comfortable making and reporting mistakes, the organization would be far better equipped to determine the root cause of the problem and implement counter measures to prevent recurrence.

Critics of Just Culture (and after the Texas City, Texas BP incident there are more than a few) contend that sometimes it is appropriate to blame an individual and that Just Culture does little to hold people accountable and the results can be catastrophic. These critics contend that there are circumstances where people should be held accountable and, legally, people most certainly will face criminal and/or civil penalties if their mistakes rise to the level of gross negligence or depraved indifference.

Unfortunately for the critics, research has shown that the clear majority of mistakes are either the result of workers who were never trained to do the job the correct way, workers who were unaware that they were working out of process, or workers who believed that what they were doing represented an improvement and innovation. In other words, very few people made errors because they were negligent, stupid, or malicious.

The final element in achieving lasting safety improvements lies in an organization’s success in creating a problem solving, or learning, culture. I have worked with scores of companies who enlist my help in improving some element of their organization and the common thread that I find in the companies that struggle the most is a deeply rooted belief that they already KNOW what the problem is, they just need me to fix it.

Whether it be safety, or quality, or any other business element, resistance to learning poses the greatest threat to organizational growth. And this is especially true in safety. I’ve talked with dozens of organizations that will tell me that the biggest cause of injuries is (blank), and yet when I examine the data it just isn’t true. The organization’s first response is typically to challenge the data, but ultimately it is the company’s lack of a robust problem-solving methodology and, more significantly, a lack of value placed on problem solving itself that is responsible for their problems.

In my experience there is a direct correlation between those organizations with ineffectual problem-solving methodologies and/or a poor problem-solving structure. When I have been the most successful in refining corporate cultures I have essentially helped the organizations do three simple, yet powerful things:

1) Engage the ENTIRE workforce. Workforce-wide engagement starts with you. Stop bellyaching that you get no support from leadership and start leading. However, engagement starts with trust, and that may never be possible for you and your organization. If that is the case, it is time to get out and find a place that will foster that trust and respect. But you do need to recognize your role in the process. People tend to trust people who they believe are trustworthy, but there is enough to say there to fill another column.

2) Create a blame-free Just Culture. In my opinion, it is impossible to make a Just Culture work without first having a sufficiently engaged workforce, so don’t attempt this step before verifying that you have significant progress toward this end.

3) Foster an atmosphere where problem solving is valued and effective. Too many problem-solving efforts are poorly designed and even more poorly executed.

It amounts to this: If you want to foster a culture in which individuals value worker safety, you must build an environment of trust and learning. There are no short cuts, no magic bullets, and no bag of tricks that will take you there. You must work hard and stay focused to achieve it.