Safety Culture Change

Experience shows that change, especially culture change: happens best from within.

Some people behave as though they appreciate that perspective. Others are quite content living in the rut that has become all too familiar. After leading countless organizational change efforts in entities of all shapes and sizes, experience shows that change, especially culture change, happens best from within.

" The art of life is a constant readjustment to our surroundings."

Health and safety professionals are still often viewed negatively within organisations, as discovered in a recent poll on SHP, which found that 90% of industry professionals believe that health and safety has an image problem.

The concept of influencing and changing an individual’s behaviour to improve risk management and reduce accidents/incidents was hailed as the utopia across the profession. However in more recent times conversations have been taking a different route with an increasing number of organisations becoming frustrated in the lack of progress, and in behavioural safety generally as a concept.”

The issue largely stems from the mainstream press where, until a few years ago, barely a week would go by without a negative story about health and safety hitting the headlines. The amount of negative press has reduced in recent years, but does occasionally rise to the surface. To change the stigma within an organisation, often how the information is communicated is as important as the message itself.

As a wise man once said:

 “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.”

 If we are able to take the current challenges with a mindset of opportunity and don't see our work as just a job or a title, What opportunities would emerge if we tapped into our compassion and empathy and started truly creating shared purpose around every part of our work?

·     What if we chose to see opportunity instead of only problems?

·     What if we started every meeting focused on the opportunities first?

·     What would our stories and our world look like then?

“Imagine what would happen if we each had clarity on how we could help our organization’s succeed”

 If we connect with people at a core level, and understand the importance of trust and relationships in every part of their life.

We need to start conversations about the opportunities we have to rethink business and its impact on the planet and our human spirit.

• People are not the problem – People are the solution
• Safety is the absence of Negatives and the presence of positives
• Safety is not a bureaucratic activity but is an ethical responsibility.

We should not continue to replace one fragmented and broken system.

This is a time of discovering and integrating many relevant truths and possible directions, with diverse approaches and ne (and very old) values coming to the foreground (e.g. AI / Chat-bots etc.).

CEOs, boards and investors are increasingly aware that talent is key to moving the business forward. In fact, the percentage of companies that talk about talent during earnings calls has increased by 25% since 2010. 

Key Priorities from the Corporate Leadership Council Agenda Poll 2018

Priority 1: Digitalizing HR to improve Services and the Employee Experience

Digitalization: The use of digital technologies and capabilities to improve processes, engage talent across the organization, and drive new and value-generating business.

 Both CHROs and CEOs feel the urgency to transform the functions to meet the new standards of the digital age. 94% of CHROs are pursuing digital Initiatives.

• The average organization is taking on 5 new digital talent initiatives over the next 3 years.
• Focus on: operations (77.2%), Employee Experience (60.4%), and Employee Productivity (53.5).
• While identified the opportunities to digitalize, they are struggling to execute on these initiatives due to major logistical barriers.
• 61% report that they do not feel prepared to manage digital transformation efforts.
• This is largely in part due to the lack of key resources and buy-in from other stakeholders.

Areas to develop:

1. Looking forward, to digitalize their function must begin building a more grounded business case for digital initiatives that other stakeholders might otherwise deem overly costly and less urgent than other priorities.
2. Garnering the support of stakeholders across the C-suite

Priority 2: Continuous Performance Management

• CEO’s are looking to replace episodic performance management with continuous performance management.
• Functions across the board are moving from more encompassing, standardized methods of managing performance to more frequent, iterative, and conversational processes to more effectively assess and develop employees.
• Many are struggling to implement these continuous management processes because of resistance from the managers themselves.
• Managers may already feel strained to perform even one annual performance review, and may therefore perceive the change to continuous processes as more work that they lack the time or skill to perform.
• CHROs cite the following barriers of manager resistance: Manager capability (i.e. skill) / Manager time / Manager commitment (i.e. willingness to change) 

Areas to develop:

1. As leaders we can explore the ways in which these new continuous processes could actually make a manager’s job easier, and make managers more willing to embrace and advocate this change.
2. Position the change not as additional work, but as a more valuable and efficient way to assess and develop employees
3. Hold managers accountable for the outcome, not the frequency of reviews
4. Make the process easier on managers by holding the employee more accountable for leading their own performance journey

Priority 3: Enhancing the Employee Experience

Cited challenge: “Getting very independent, siloes departments to think in an enterprise fashion, and to adopt an enterprise-wide approach to the employee experience”.

• ·Seek to implement a holistic approach to enhancing employee experience.
• Creating a different-in-kind employee experience to keep up with competitors.
• Implementing digital initiatives to enhance the employee experience, and ultimately offer a unique value proposition for employees to come to and stay at their organization. Many are citing the pain point of existing fragmented employee experience systems and processes across functions and organizational siloes.
• Implementing a holistic approach in the midst of fragmented technology systems and processes presents a seemingly irreconcilable tension.

Areas to develop:

1. To mold a truly holistic approach that best reflects the business’ values and needs and can: Create a unified definition of what the employee experience means across the enterprise
2. Assess how the employee experience is managed across disparate business functions
3. Designate a senior leader or team to own this unified employee experience platform

We need to create the next tipping point to include tapping into the knowledge created by networks (underutilized resources) as we see Safety Champions become experts (Risk Assessment Training) in their workplaces conditions – and we see that their knowledge improves with the right tools and that other Operatives can to the same (Peer Pressure).

Business is the most powerful force organizing humanity and our aspirations. It is very ne to think about business in this way for doing good in the world and how it can have a positive impact.

We need to work with people who are vibrant and intellectually curious, and growing helps us create the kind of energy that keeps people engaged and inspired.

What is Safety Differently?

People are the solution they are not the problem

• People create success far more often than they are involved in failure;
• Recognises difference between work as done and work as planned;
• Allows mature conversations around risk to occur;
• Recognises that people are a source of innovation and insight.

Safety is the presence of positives not the absence of negatives

• Absence of accidents does not indicate presence of safety;
• Safety must be about capacity to adapt, tolerate change, be resilient and recover;
• Serious incidents are preceded by long periods of accident free operation.

Safety is an ethical responsibility not a bureaucratic activity

• Systems manage safety not liability;
• Lean management systems enable effective risk management;
• Systems are designed to promote relationships and not transactional.

Leadership goes beyond leading a group of people. We all have the opportunity to lead through our influence, and that means being a leader of ourselves first. A deep understanding that our actions or our lack of action and our words – what we say or what we choose not to say – mean a lot, and they not only communicate our point of view and how we want to show up in the world. But also they set an example for others who are watching.

Be it a conversation between people or a board meeting or delivering on a commitment – its all about conversations between people. It's a network of people talking among themselves, and hopefully they are focused on a shared purpose. The structure of the company could be aligned around the agreements, the goals, and the measures, but at the end of the day, it’s all about people.

Organizational culture is a fancy way of referring to a bunch of micro-moments taken together: a series of things people do and decisions people make when they think no one is looking.

Isn’t it time for us to recognize the power business has to shift humanity in a new direction for future generations to create a new path forward with shared purpose. We need to have more faith in our ability to build and create and change the mindset of leadership by providing exchanges between people.

When there is a shared purpose, people feel proud of their work and they become generous in working with others and it creates a positive impact.

More people want to work for an organization that shares purpose and knowing that they are helping people beyond simply being another program or idea that needed to be implemented.

A key element in the next stage of conscious sustainability will consist of a growing ecosystem that aligns with CSR and Good Governance that appeals to conscious consumers, idealist entrepreneurs, financers and other stakeholders that are ethically aligned with investors to allow for on-gong growth.

Most people are so focused at work on executing their goals and objectives that they spend little time reminding themselves of why they are doing what they are doing. And the “WHY” is more inspiring and motivating, because that's really our human essence – What inspires us. We can have that experience of inspiration at work; we don't have to wait until we get home to be inspired and how we engage with clients, how clients engage with us, and our ability to be more innovative?

A successful business is a co-creation with its customers; you have to get them enthused and build strong relationships word of mouth is still the best communication between company and customer.

Our conversations need to focus not only on differences – which we need to understand in order increase our potential for unity – but also especially on what we are creating together.

Communication, transparency, and connectivity are the traits of new leaders are made in tandem with other stakeholders and not in a closed room where no one else outside the room knows until three months later.

The leaders of the future are the ones who do not just sit in the high office and make decisions in a vacuum; they reach across and are transparent in their leadership style.

Living in an open and connected world requires more self-reflection and vulnerability as we share more openly and connect more easily. And while we recognize the importance of new technology, will focus us on more on adding value and a higher shared purpose with enabling others to fulfill their job role more easily.

The network of safety’s long-term success is based on partnerships with local governments, and local partners. We intergrade local resources and collaborate with local stakeholders, key leaders, local community members an our own members

Shared Purpose. Trusted Relationships, and communities are at the heart of Leadership

Lets remember our opportunity to dive into conversations that connect us heart to heart and have deeper conversations about what their thinking offers us and how we can apply it to our own opportunities.

ASK YOURSELF:

• What do I care about deeply?
• What is my biggest opportunity right now?
• If I did not have any limitation, what would I be creating?
• What’s is the next step on my Journey?

What opportunities would emerge if we tapped into our compassion and our empathy. And started truly creating shared purpose around every part of our work?