The Most Successful Safety Strategy

How to WIN at Safety?

I am going to tell there is a way to WIN at safety - there truly is and it is achievable. The first secret is understanding that you never will have the success you desire with standard and conventional approaches and/or any other new age approach to safety management in the workplace, if you maintain safety as your language.

For those who remember (may have seen) Fight Club.

"The first rule of the Successful Strategy for Safety is never talk about Safety"

It is not that you don't care about safety in the workplace.

It is actually that you care for safety knows no boundaries - you are invested, you are passionate and you want to ensure it is delivered "perfectly" to achieve your desired expectation. To do this you are prepared to invest your thinking to find a better way to connect the team of people in your workplace to ways that allow them to protect themselves and protect others. You are not afraid to step out from standard approach. You have courage. You will stick your neck out to try something new to prevent harm. You have the will to persuade yourself there is a solution that is 1000 times better than beating your head against the safety wall of no adoption and traction for safety management.

Frustration lowers the value of the safety professional and I guarantee at some point in your passionate career frustration has been at the wheel and create some chaos as a result.

Are you prepared to concede and believe there is a SIMPLE solution to delivering great safety outcomes?

or

Will you fight to be convinced?

If you are fighting then your mindset is so closely related to the mindset of the very audience you are endeavouring to support and guide. So first beat your own psychological bias to create the opportunity to let my words bias your thinking for a moment.

The Psychology you need to BEAT.

Safety has always been a "tough sell" and much of this has potentially stemmed from an unconscious thought pattern that you do actually have to sell safety to the audience. THINK! for a moment - how many examples can you identify where safety has been a sales proposition.

Hint 1: think of all the slogan marketing that is done relating to safety

Hint 2: think of all these Safety Culture Programs that have sprung up having us believe that previously we could have not possibly acted as a functional community in the workplace - we need a safety culture - no you need a business culture.

Hint 3: all the various Safety Leadership Courses that evolved over the last decade convincing so many that Safety Leadership was truly different to any other organisational leadership - wake up, this is just great leadership skill to foster the growth of others to be awesome.

Truth is, you have been sold and as a result you have been the on-selling what you have learnt and this has not been a successful strategy.

The First an Only Education you need - LANGUAGE is a WEAPON

You must drop all safety terminology RIGHT NOW - it is not serving you or your audience. For so many it just feels awkward and not natural so begin with - telling it exactly like it is in the language of your audience (don't get fancy).

If you identify things that go wrong in safety language like hazard, risk, injury, death people will immediately default to their own experience and most likely will say ... "that has never happened to me and therefore will not happen to me." I am better than that, I am more skilled, more experienced and don it for a long time, therefore it will not happen to me. This default position has forever been known and possibly not admitted readily enough by safety professionals as the "toughest" of roadblocks to pass.

What if the roadblock was not created in the first place?

The BEST Strategy

The short version of "The Most Successful Strategy for Safety" is to have a QUALITY approach to business. We all agree that as human we err and most regularly that impacts the quality and/or quantity of the item, service etc the process is attempting to produce. This kind of error is much easier for a person to agree to as an error that will occur. The errors will result in either or both of the following events (this applies to both internal customers in the process and external customers who receive the end product, service etc,)

1. not delivered in full
2. not delivered on time

There is WAY less opportunity for a person to default to their safety psychology thinking as during their time as a person, as an employee they will have made the very same mistake/error, made a very similar mistake/error and/or can draw a reasonable conclusion that they could make the mistake/error.

How to Successfully Deliver?

Know the safety issue/concern (know the problem) you are wanting to improve. - and NEVER mention it. You must work at defining a new frame of questions and education to work from. The tried and tested 5WHY thinking is a good way to support refining the "safety problem" into why and how based on the quality of the processes executed.

So your focus and your language turns to enhancing the QUALITY of a process that surrounds the safety problem and then you make the adjustments to the process that ultimately deliver the safety outcome you intended to treat/improve.

it's a covert attack on safety

I love this method and have applied in acorss various industry types over the past 5 years with amazing results. People are very proud of the quality and quantity of work as they see it as a reflection of their competence. So WHY not use that?

Simplified Example

Watching a forklift operator move a long length load that to me as the observer is looking a little shaky. Thankfully they get it into the rack without incident. You would know some history and places that move long lengths have a handful of events annually where a load is lost and damage occurs to the load and thankfully for some valuable workplace practices people are not in and around the loads.

You could simply say: "That load did not look balanced, if did not look safe - that was an unsafe operation." Said with heart, care and posed as a question you are likely to have success right in the moment. However the success ("the trick, the utopian position") we all chase is how do you embed the right practice when you or others are not there watching.

The ANSWER: You have to talk about QUALITY. Change the work process with no talk of SAFETY - it is all about the process of saving time, reducing waste, making it easier etc.

Back to the story ... You know, the operator knows that loads have been lost and materials have been damaged which costs the business. In fact it is likely they have had a small incident of their own. So the conversation takes shape around what better methods could be used to shift the long lengths to ensure there are not lost loads and no damage and no loss of productivity and profit to the business. Ultimately with your "safety mind" guiding the process you will help design a solution that achieves your safety outcome but uses the development and/or change of the quality process. (it's covert)

Think as You will - I encourage you to

You can call semantics ... you are potentially correct. Having practiced this daily I know the semantics are creating outstanding safety outcomes.

You might think ... people will see through this. Yes, of course they will if you do not have full belief in the approach. It might take time to transition out "safety language" and adopt a quality language. Like everything start small to GROW BIG!

You can tear this strategy apart ... well even I can do that. When you focus on what you want to find and hear, you will find the evidence to support it. Take the above as a learner as it just may create the success you desire.

This is not safety differently ... I refer to it as the NOT DOING SAFETY APPROACH that delivers GREAT SAFETY OUTCOMES (sorry no clever marketing term).

Cheers for your attention! - wish you all the success whatever approach you implement - we are all here for the single purpose to prevent harm and save lives.

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