How I Failed as a Safety Manager

I have managed safety for some 30 years, to one extent or another. This includes union and nonunion as well as all trades, from transmission line men to laborers in different states. I feel that a good safety manager is also a good safety mentor. The primary function of a safety leader is to coach, correct and train, in other words, educate and influence.

Safety Managing isn’t easy; it’s an emotionally charged rollercoaster, if you take the job seriously, and try to build a safety culture from little or nothing. To do it right, you can’t give company management the answers; rather you must gently guide them, as they learn and process the safety lessons you provide.

From the outside looking in, it seems to be an easy job, and I have been asked by many companies and people to tell them or teach them the magic formula for a successful safety program. A successful safety program, really! For my part, I can never quite see myself as successful. “Success eludes the malcontent”. By definition malcontent is one who is in active opposition to an established order or dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs. So, hearing “that’s the way we always do it” just challenges me.

My first mistake was not recognizing the company for what it really was. It was another production machine needing window dressing. Where production rules the company goal or is top priority. When this happens, then safety fails every time. It’s an immense ego stroke to have the company president during an interview say, “I want you to be our safety leader. Will you coach us, train and teach us, and build us a safety program”?

I set out to teach the company what it needed to know about safety. Developing a significant HS&E program was the first step. But it was soon obvious to me that they didn’t really want to learn how to achieve safety goals or develop a safety culture necessary to successfully grow the organization in the coming years. Rather, they wanted a magic potion that would turn them into that kind of company. That being said I have been very successful with 70% of the field personnel, 50% of the foreman overseeing the individual tasks on a project, and 30% of the superintendents. The closer to the top of the company I go the less success I can find.

Failure is guaranteed when accountability or consequences are missing.

So, what did I learn from all this? Well for starters you can lead the company “horse” to water but you can’t make it think. I could provide the best advice, guidance, and safety leadership, and training, but if the company doesn’t want to listen and learn, it is all for naught. Safety and production must be blended into forward motion. I feel no production should be valued in the absents of safety. As an example, I once asked the president of a company to do just one thing to help safety. Start each and every meeting with a question to the group. “What did you do for safety yesterday”? If he had done nothing but that, it may have started the thinking that the top man is looking for some safety.

Secondly, I learned that if the company management and workers sees you as the sole source of safety you will fail. Safety must be everybody’s job, every day. You can’t be the only source of safety for a company. For safety to work the company, from top to bottom must be part of the solution. Not in a confrontational and dysfunctional way, but in a way that forces you to rethink your ways of doing things.

Cultures are based upon shared values, beliefs, and perceptions that determine what?comes to be regarded as the norms for the organization; i.e., cultures develop from?social agreements about what constitutes appropriate attitudes and behaviors. If the?organization feels strongly about a particular behavior, there will be little tolerance for?deviation, and there will be strong social pressures for conformance. Each individual?in the organization has a role in reinforcing the behavioral norms.

Thus, in the broadest sense for a sound safety culture, “The organization and each?individual” is the most appropriate answer to the question “Who is responsible?” In a?sound safety culture, an individual would be expected to intercede if they saw a coworker?about to commit an unsafe act. In a sound safety culture, leadership would be?expected to monitor the heath of the safety culture and reinforce and nurture it when required. In a sound safety culture, individuals and groups would be expected to speak?out if they perceived management acting in a fashion inconsistent with the organization’s?values.

Finally, I learned that the company cannot want success in safety that is beyond the dreams or reach of the group. If the superintendents and foreman are always going to be the ones in the workplace complaining about how unfair the new safety policy is, then the company has already established barriers they will never overcome with or without your help.

As I travel around working with various companies, safety directors, and company managing executives from a wide range of businesses, I find it very interesting that some understand the value of, and take great pride in their corporate cultures, while others don’t give them much thought. I have also noticed that those who value them the most tend to do far better over time in safety and success in business over all.

The failure was rhetorical.