Better Together

The Reality of Modern Safety Culture and How to Spark Long Term Change in Your Business 

For me, it starts with people - your people.

Coming from a consultancy background, my expertise is in making behavioral change happen and I believe this is where the answer lies, because when we look at other industries - sectors that specialise in transforming people’s day to day habits - there is an emotional approach to engagement which is largely untapped in safety.

Very few companies are in any doubt about the importance of health and safety within their organisation. Yet while its significance is acknowledged and it features prominently on boardroom agendas, many companies struggle to implement a strong and sustainable ‘top to bottom’ safety culture.

“Health and safety used to be all about policies, procedures and policing, and the focus on people wasn’t on the agenda. It’s much more progressive now. It’s about changing behaviour and influencing engagement.”

Change can be a daunting word in any business. Sustainable change can prove even more challenging. Yet by understanding what culture means, and how the engagement of both front line employees and management informs this culture, organisations can instigate change.

Some of the most frequent challenges include:  

Cultural mindset - People get stuck in their ways. Habit is human nature. Changing the collective mindset of a group of employees can be a daunting task. After all, they work together, influence and inspire each other, and look to each other for leadership. In short, they are a force to be reckoned with.

Leadership priorities - Company managers are busy people. Safety is just one item on their lengthy to-do list. Ensuring that they understand, support and ‘live’ the safety culture, and that it reflects the wider values of the business, can be a tough - but critical - job. They must be able to drive change.

Varied working environments and roles within them - Consistency is a key part of achieving an effective health and safety culture. Yet working environments can vary - from offices to factories, indoor spaces to outdoor. Establishing and replicating a standard culture across these differing environments can take time.

Bureaucracy - Every organisation has rules and regulations, policies and procedures, and sometimes these can stand in the way of delivering progressive, positive change.

Inertia - People are resistant to change. If they have been carrying out their role in a certain way for a period of time, persuading them to consider and adopt new behaviours can be challenging. We’re creatures of habit.

Multiple sites and numerous countries and cultures - Implementing change across multiple sites internationally can be a complex and difficult task, not least when there are language and cultural barriers to overcome. People are at the heart of culture, and ensuring that everyone not only understands but also believes is key to success.

Why Culture is King: Culture is about shared attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors. Within an organisation’s wider corporate culture is a health and safety culture. It describes how people think and feel about health and safety, and how this informs their behavior”

To achieve a positive H&S culture, the way employees behave must also be positive:

Common behaviours that need to change are:

• Cutting corners to save time - It may be tempting for front line employees not to use personal protective equipment to complete a quick task because they perceive it as wasting time.
• Ergonomic factors - If machine controls are inappropriately placed, employees might compromise safety to access them.
• Accepted practice - There is often a mindset of ‘we have always done it this way’. This can perpetuate poor practice.
• Reinforcement of at-risk behaviour by supervisors - Supervisors lead by example, and if they are not committed to safety this will contribute to a poor culture.
• Misunderstanding at-risk behaviour - Education is key to understanding and practicing safe behaviour.
• Instinctive risk taking behaviour - Some employees naturally inclined to take risks.

Change starts one step at a time & requires key actions to influence mindset and behaviour

1. Fostering understanding and conviction - Employees understand what is asked of them.
2. Reinforcing changes through formal mechanisms - Employees see that the structures, processes and systems support the changes they are being asked to make.
3. Developing talent & skills - Employees have skills, opportunities to behave in new way.
4. Role modeling - Employees see their leaders, colleagues and staff behaving differently.

Engaging Stakeholders?

According to voluntary employee engagement movement, Engage For Success, there are four common enablers of employee engagement:

Strategic narrative – Visible, empowering leadership providing a strong strategic narrative about the organisation, based on where it has come from and where it’s going. Engaging managers – Managers who focus their people and give them scope, treat them as individuals and coach and challenge them. Employee voice – Giving employees a voice for reinforcing and challenging views, between functions and externally. Employees are seen as central to the solution, to be involved, listened to, and invited to contribute their experience, expertise and ideas. Integrity – The values on the wall are reflected in day-to-day behaviours. Promises are made and kept.

These are four strong and recurring themes, but there is no one size fits all answer for every organisation. The most effective way of engaging employees will depend on multiple factors, from the size of the company, to its culture and structure.

Peer influence

Peer recognition is another powerful tool. A 2015 Oracle study polled 1,500 workers across Europe, revealing that 42% felt their peers were the biggest influence on their engagement levels. Just 21% cited line managers (create a peer recognition program that allows team members to nominate each other for living their values)

Practical Ways to Drive Engagement: Requires the employee to ask themselves the following three key questions before commencing a task:

1)   Do I know how to do this job?

2)   Do I have the right tools and equipment?

3)   Is my environment safe?

Practical examples of employee engagement initiatives can include:

• Safety walks – senior leadership visit client sites to talk to front line employees about safety. Is informative & inspiring for both audiences, and exemplifies a positive culture.
• E learning – Short online modules that cover different aspects of health and safety.
• Quizzes – These tap into the competitive nature of employees and make it easier to engage with learning about health and safety.
• Training – Including individualised training programmes tailored to specific roles.
• Toolbox talks – Encourage employees to explain safety procedures to their team.
• Training tools – There is a wealth of tools and technologies available - for example, Virtual Reality (VR) – which can be deployed in the effective training of both frontline employees and management 

Leading Metrics

“Our aim must be to keep KPIs fresh and effective. Instead of just continuing to use the same KPIs, as before, it is important to monitor performance against them. If all actions items are closed, if your dashboard shows green all the time, that is the time to be suspicious, not the time to relax and be complacent. It is precisely the moment to ask yourself what is going on and whether you shouldn’t be re-evaluating your KPIs and digging deeper”

Leading metrics can include a number of measurements such as:

• The number of people who have completed training courses
• How accident investigations and corrective actions are managed
• The number of safety observations / Culture survey and Safety audits

Using Predictive Analytics - More inspections predict a safer worksite – As inspections increase, reported incidents go down.

• Action: Carry out more inspections.

More inspectors, specifically more inspectors outside the safety function, predict a safer worksite – the probability of having an incident decreases as the number and diversity of the people performing inspections increases.

• Action: Get a greater number of more diverse people involved in your inspection programme.

Too many ‘100% safe’ inspections predicts an unsafe worksite – Your organisation may be ‘flying blind’, with inspectors not seeing or reporting the leading indicator signs of those incidents.

• Action: Train for and recognise/reward the reporting of unsafe observations from safety inspectors.

Too many unsafe observations predict an unsafe worksite – A high level of unsafe conditions and behaviours are being identified but are not being resolved.

Once again it is about being proactive and not reactive. It is about predicting and preventing accidents, not investigating them.

• Action: Commit time and resources to resolving unsafe conditions and behaviours.

Once again it is about being proactive and not reactive. It is about predicting and preventing accidents, not investigating them.

Enabling Leadership

1)   Give Employees Responsibility: “What do you think we should do.”

2)   Conflict Understanding: “Better understanding of root causation.”

3)   Communicating need for change: “Compelling story that creates involvement.”

4)   What do you believe in: “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

5)   Extrinsic motivations with intrinsic motivators: “self-direction works better.”

6)   Agenda Setting: “Transparency - company doesn’t create ideas people do.”

7)   Engage regularly and communicate progress: Ask good questions.”

Be mindful that people change gradually and not at the same pace. Consider this when applying your different actions, and adjust these depending on each individual. Otherwise the change will not happen.

Health and Safety - The differences of ISO45001 and 18001: (Annexe SL)

• ISO45001 covers mental and physical health (It follows plan – do – check – act model)
• ISO45001 will look at context of organisation (communities, culture, technological, legal) establishing management system, taking into account internal & external factors

Leadership and worker participation will be actively involved in ISO45001

• Terminology will be different. Where in the past OHSAS18001 would refer to documented information ISO45001 will make it clear that information may be stored in many different ways such as online, iPads etc.
• Clause 6 of IOS45001 will look at planning, setting occupational health objectives including how you will conduct risk assessments
• There will be more of a focus on continual improvement, continual assessment of risks and opportunities – not just hazards, hierarchy of control, and compliance status. For those currently using the OHSAS18001 standard, there will be a migration period until 2020/2021 (depending on when the new standard is published) to change over to ISO45001.

What should we be doing now?

• Understanding the requirements
• Raising awareness – gaining commitment from top management
• Up skilling, where needed
• Brushing up on interpersonal skills

Making sure CEOs and directors are up to speed – with OHSAS18001 companies were allowed to appoint a representative to speak to auditors, now they will be able to talk to anyone, so they need to demonstrate they can talk about company’s occupational safety and health.

Security - Hotels & Restaurants or Education

• It is accepted that the concept of absolute security is almost impossible to achieve in combatting the threat of terrorism, (National Counter Terrorism Security Office - NACTSO)
• Managing the threat / Attack methodology / Physical security / Personnel and people security / Personal security / Cyber security / Checklists (ETHANE)

Safeguarding (Ofstead & CQC + NSPCC)

1.    Child protection: Safety & Security

2.    Pupil behavior, Emotional Health & Wellbeing

3.    Working with Parents & Multi-Agency Working

4.    Staff & Governance

Leadership & Audit Changes?

The challenges around auditing leadership are changing. The standard is clear in terms of what top management needs to do to evidence its commitment to the occupational health and safety management system.

Because these requirements are clear the auditor might assume it will be straightforward to assess these. But the challenge going forward is that organisations will have much greater freedom in how they wish to structure their systems and record evidence of compliance.

The OH&S manual, procedures and records have all been replaced by ‘documented information’, which can take almost any form and format that the organisation chooses.

As a result, the auditor is likely to be faced in the future with a wide variety of electronic and paper-based evidence sources which they will then need to interpret in order to determine compliance or otherwise. This may mean certain auditors will need to improve both their IT and analytical skills.

The second challenge for auditors is an interpersonal one. Top management means those at the highest level of the organisation such as the CEO and board – not the OH&S manager. As there are requirements now that cannot be delegated, top management will need to become accustomed to being audited and auditors will need to become accustomed to auditing them.

Auditors will need to learn to speak the language of the boardroom, and be able to converse with top management over context, objectives, strategy and risk.