Misleading Indicators

“If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know you aren’t already there?”

By Phil La Duke

Nearly every safety professional worth his or her salt has been told that he or she needs to look at both leading and lagging indicators; it’s good advice, in fact, it’s advice I’ve given many times in articles and speeches over the years.  But in my last post (two weeks ago—I spent the last week at a customer site and with the travel travails I just couldn’t bring myself to hammer out a post, deepest apologies to my fans and detractors alike) I questioned the value of tracking (not reporting or investigating, mind you, just tracking) near misses.  Well, as you can imagine the weirdoes, fanatics, and dullards came out in droves to sound off and huff and puff about things I never said (reading comprehension skills are at a disgraceful low these days).  Not everyone one who reads my stuff is a whack-job however, and some of the cooler heads insisted that tracking near misses was important because near miss reporting is a key leading indicator; it’s not…and it is, but like so much of life, it’s complicated.

Near misses in themselves aren’t leading indicators; they are things that almost killed or injured someone, and most importantly, they are events that happened in the past.  Not that anything that happens in the past has to be automatically counted out as a lagging indicator, but unless you still cling to the idea proffered by Heinrich that there is a strict statistical correlation between the number of near misses and fatalities, near misses are no more a leading indicator than your injury rate, lost work days, or first aid cases.  They simply tell you that something almost happened, and nothing more.  Now some of you might try to argue that if you have ENOUGH near misses you are bound to eventually have a fatality, but that does hold up to careful scrutiny.  Leading indicators are often expressions of probability, and like the proverbial coin that is tossed an infinite number of times, the probability of the outcome does not change because of the frequency of the toss.  If you were to toss the coin 400 times and it came up tails, the probability that the 401^st toss would come up heads is still 50:50. So knowing that tracking near misses doesn’t really shed any light on what is likely to happen mean we should stop investigating near misses? Certainly not, but we really do need to stop thinking that the data is telling us things that it isn’t.  On the other hand, near miss reporting is indeed a leading indicator; if we accept (as I do) that when people report near misses they: a) are more actively engaged in safety day-to-day (and I suppose someone could argue that this doesn’t necessarily correlate) and b) the more the individual reports near misses the better he or she is at identifying hazards (again, this is a leap of faith, but  I believe in most cases this to be true.) So if you want to gage the robustness of your safety process I suppose the level of participation in near miss reporting is a good indicator.

The whole exercise got me thinking about indicators, and how often safety professionals (and everyone else on God’s green Earth for that matter) tend to be mislead by data because of the erroneous belief that the data is saying things that it isn’t.

Causefusion

Regular readers of my blog will recognize the concept of “causefusion”.  The term was coined by Zachery Shore in his book, Blunder: Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions which he uses to explain how people mistake correlation and cause-and-effect.  According to Shore, causefusion works something like this[1]: People who floss their teeth live longer than people who don’t floss or who floss irregularly therefore flossing your teeth makes you live longer.  It makes sense, right? Yes, except that it is wrong.  There are other possibilities for this correlation, for instance, isn’t it possible that people who are more interested in their health overall might be more likely to floss regularly? In a world where eager safety professionals provide data to Operations people who are hungry for quick fixes, Causefusion happens a lot; and it’s a real danger because it leads us away from the true causes of injuries and may blind us to real shortcomings in our processes.

Another way that we can be lead by indicators is the paradigm effect. When we think of the word “paradigm” we think of the definition, “a typical example” or “viewpoint”, but in the world of science paradigm there is another, lesser known definition, “a worldview underlying the theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject” Joel Barker pointed out how damaging paradigms (in the scientific sense) can be.  Barker believed that there were many instances where the worldview is so powerfully believed that any new evidence that does not support the worldview is ignored. Consider the dangers of ignoring critical new information relative to worker safety because you believe in a particular tool or methodology so strongly that you can’t even consider another viewpoint.

A third way that we mislead ourselves is when we see patterns that aren’t there.  This phenomena is wonderfully described in another book that I really believe is important to the world of safety, Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average by Joseph T. Hallinan. According to Hallinan—and the latest in brain research supports his contention—the human brain tends to see patterns even where there are none.  So in cases where safety professionals desperately seek answers and are under pressure to initiate action, the pressure to see patterns where there are none can be extreme.

Perhaps the most misleading indicator is one of the most common: zero recordables.  Too often safety professionals (and operations, as well, for that matter) see a trend of recordables as evidence that they are at far less risk of injuries and fatalities than they are.  This isn’t to say that they AREN’T at less risk, but there isn’t anything more than a correlation between the two elements; they might be good but they are just as likely to be lucky.

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[1] The example is mine and mine alone, don’t get all huffy and bother Shore.

Filed under: Loss Prevention, Loss Prevention, Near Miss Reporting, Performance Improvement, Phil La Duke, Safety, Worker Safety, lagging indicators, leading indicators, measuring safety, Phil La Duke, Phil LaDuke, Philip La Duke, Philip LaDuke, predicting injuries, safety measures, Worker Safety

Trust Me

By Phil La Duke

There isn’t any magic bullet when it comes to making the workplace safer but the thing that comes closest is trust. No change, no improvement, no carefully crafted organizational change initiative will ever come to fruition until and unless workers trust the leadership of the organization. If workers mistrust their supervisors, the leadership, or the safety professional even the best safety efforts will fail. It sounds simple, but in my career I have seen more organizational change effort—whether aimed at improving safety or changing benefits—fail because of mistrust.

It’s a shame, because every day, we ask—no expect—worker’s to trust us, and let’s face it, in many cases there is scant reason why workers’ should believe us when we tell them that everything will be better if they just do this or that or when we tell them that this time things will be different.

Workers’ Aren’t Stupid (Well Most of Them Anyway)

Workers’ do stupid things, we all do, and like most (if not all) workers are skeptical when they hear that the “flavour of the month” will be the salvation of the workingman. Most don’t want to invest time, effort, and emotions into something that they know in the deepest recesses of their souls won’t last as long as the life of the alpha fruit fly. And with the safety community trotting this dog and pony show after that can we really blame them? Workers want to do their job, collect an honest wage and return home safe unharmed. It sounds simple, maybe even trite, but it’s true.  The problem with getting people to change the way they conduct themselves in a business setting—whether or not they follow the rules, whether or not they take unreasonable risks, and the very basis of their decision-making—depends on the level of trust within the organization.

The Nature Of Trust

When most of us think of trust we think about our willingness to believe that people wouldn’t deliberately harm us, whether the nature of the harm be physical, psychological, or financial, or some other means I’m too lazy or intellectually limited to ponder.  In basest possible terms we count on the fact that they, as The Simpsons barman Moe Szyslak put it, “wish (us) no specific harm”. When we trust someone we count on them to consider our best interests when they act, and not “screw us over” in some way.  Most safety professionals are trust worthy in this respect.  But there is more to trust than just believing that given have a chance your safety rep won’t mug you in the men’s room.  In fact, there are several different kinds of trust.

1. Trust in motives.  When we mistrust someone’s motives it’s generally because we suspect that they have an alternative agenda, about which they aren’t being completely honest and above board.  We suspect that the person we mistrust is putting their own needs  (or the needs of the Elvis impersonator who lives next door, for all we know or care) before our needs, and if momma ever taught us anything it’s that if we don’t look out for ourselves no one else is likely to. When workers mistrust the organization it’s not that they necessarily think the safety professional or the leadership are looking out for themselves at the expense
2. Trust in competence.  Sometimes we don’t trust people, not because we believe they have a larcenous heart, rather because we believe they have cheese and sawdust in their heads.  And when it comes to safety we want to know that the people making decisions about how work is completed actually know what they are doing, that their decisions won’t get us killed or leave us horribly maimed. We may believe that people making the decisions hear t is in the right place
3. Trust in Judgment. I know some safety people who have never met a dumb idea that they didn’t immediately love. The rest of the organization just rolls its collective eye when it hears the details of the hair-brained scheme-d’ jour
4. Trust the facts. It’s one thing to trust people have your best interests at heart and another thing to believe that they have the facts straight and still another to believe that they are properly interpreting the facts.  We live in an age where people are bombarded with facts. Facts without context, facts that are often confused and sometimes just made up. More and more people seek out the most ludicrous information to support whatever they want to believe, and its tough convince them otherwise.  So it stands to reason that workers will openly question the facts presented to them.  Just look at the practice of smokers.  There has been evidence linking cigarettes and cancer (not to mention heart disease) and yet as I write this, countless thousands will spark up another one. Why? Because sometimes even when the facts are known a person simply choses to ignore them.

It takes a lifetime to build trust and only a simple lapse in judgment or bad decision to wipe it out. Mostly trust is built on two things, past experience and consistency. And while we can’t change past experience we can develop a climate of consistency.  People tend to trust what they  can predict.

And let us not forget that trust is a two-way street; leadership can’t expect workers to trust them unless they first trust workers.

Filed under: Organizational change, Phil La Duke, Safety, culture change, nature of trust, organizational change, Phil La Duke, Safety, trust, Worker Safety

Real Men (and Women) Report Injuries

By Phil La Duke

It’s starts early in our lives: “Don’t be a baby”, “Stop crying, you’re all right”. It continues through our childhood, “Toughen up, you pansy” or “walk it off”. Even when we’re adults were told to “man up” or “play through the pain”.  At a very basic level we are conditioned to see injuries as weakness, as some sign of inferiority.  Heck even the dumbest predators target the weak and the injured among their prey. And yet organizations expect us to ignore a lifetime of conditioning and openly admit our mistakes, injuries, skills deficiencies, and weaknesses. We reward and revere the strong, the burly, the toughest among us.  They are the carry over from the warrior class, knights, samurai, and warlords.  For centuries a person’s power came largely from their physical brawn and his or her ability to withstand physical punishment and survive. This is the world in which we are trying to find ways to get people to report injuries.

What makes matters worse are the many “blame the worker” programs that reward those fortunate enough to avoid injuries and punish those who are less fortunate (the withholding of a reward is a de facto punishment, after all). Talk to any safety professional about why his or her injury rates are rising and you are likely to quickly get into discussions about poor case management and fraudulent injuries. Even safety professionals aren’t immune for showing disdain for the slowest gazelles in their particular herd.  We—everyone in the organization—are better than these ten-thumbed dolts who trip over themselves, do stupid things, and violate policy. Most of us are disgusted by these clumsy oafs for spoiling our safety records; they deserve to get hurt. Oh sure, none of us will say it out loud—our world is far to politically correct for that —but deep down, most of us believe that somehow we would not have shared the fate of the injured worker.

One’s ability to silently suffer injuries without making too much fuss about it is celebrated by society, scars are badges of honor, and the more harrowing the injury the greater the status bestowed on the injured.  Remember the scene in Jaws where captain Quint and Hooper are swapping stories about their injuries? Both trying to one up the other, with broad smiles of nostalgia for their injuries; contentedly remembering not the pain of the injury, but the stalwart way in which they endured it.  Not once did they mention their own culpability in the injury (how their injuries were caused seemed insignificant) rather they reveled in the heroic way they took it with out complaint.

Attempts to provide some sort of bonus for zero-injury workdays reinforce this conditioning. If you can take the pain long enough to get treated by your own physician you not only grow in the estimation of your peers but you’re more the hero because you saved the safety BINGO, or the bonus, or the pizza party.

Deconditioning a lifetime where we have been taught that the measure of a man is his ability to take more punishment than his peers isn’t easy.  In fact, reconditioning the workforce to believe that they have a responsibility for reporting injuries so that it can save others (who might not be as tough)  can be damned hard.  So what can be done? Plenty:

• Institute an aggressive problem solving training program.  Problem solving that focuses on areas where the system could fail and result in injuries reduces hazards without threatening the idea that tough as nails, hard-scrabble men are somehow expected to become simpering school girls.  Problem solving allows workers to keep their pride and puts a positive spin on injury prevention. It’s not about how tough someone is, it’s about how smart a person is, and how good he/she is at solving problems on the job.
• Reinforce training with structured conditioning.  Think it terms of sports, or military training.  It’s not enough to teach the person what they need to do know to accomplish a task, but the person needs to compete the task over and over until the task is hardwired into the person’s brain. The task needs to become part of the person’s muscle memory.  The conditioning will happen with or without your guidance, but unguided conditioning is more likely to hardwire poor practices than it is to produce a safer workplace.
• Focus on hazard elimination and not on injury prevention.  People are far more likely to tell you about something that COULD hurt people than about something that DID hurt people.  Focusing on identifying, containing, and correcting hazards is more about process and less about the soft side of safety.
• Make it clear that injury prevention is about saving money.  It stark terms the company doesn’t give one whit about how tough a worker is, how much a worker doesn’t need to use a lift assist, or how much punishment a worker can take. Companies care about money; and unsafe work conditions and practices subject the company to unjustifiable financial risk.  A worker may be able to slap a Band-Aid on a cut worthy of stitches, but the company doesn’t empower that worker to risk infection or some other complication that is likely to cost the company money.
• Reinforce the desired mindset continually.  The mindset that it’s laudable to get hurt, that it’s somehow a badge of honor or a right of passage can’t be changed by assailing it head on. Instead, safety professionals need to position reporting injuries for what it is: an important part of managing risk and doing business more effectively.  After all, a more efficient workplace means job security.

Our conditioning to suffer in silence, to stoically toil at our jobs and say nothing in complaint is deeply ingrained into our collective psyche, and mere training or behavior modification isn’t likely to move the dial (figuratively speaking). But if we approach things a bit differently we can make real strides in changing the way workers think about safety.

We need to recondition the workforce so that workers can do their jobs without harming themselves. This will require not only physical conditioning, but mental, and behavioral conditioning as well.

 

Filed under: Behavior Based Safety, Phil La Duke, Safety, conditioning, conditioning and safety, hardwiring safety, Phil La Duke, work hardening, Worker Safety

Why We Make Bad Decisions

Posting  about 20 hours early this week (so don’t expect a fresh one at noon EST tomorrow.

By Phil La Duke

The View From the Top Of the Cliff

I’m in the middle of reading, Risk Makes Sense: Human Judgment and Risk by Dr. Robert Long and I can already recommend it.  Dr. Long’s work got me thinking about the concept of risk and bad decisions.  I’m not going to talk about the book beyond saying that it is a must read for any Human Resources, Quality, or most of all Safety professional.  Instead I thought I would share some of the insights I had as I reflected on the nature of bad decision-making.

While it’s true that there are plenty of instances where injuries are caused by equipment failure, an act of God, or other freak occurrence, my experience has shown that a fair amount of injuries, if not MOST injuries, are the result of bad decisions. Whether the decision is to knowingly take an unreasonable risk or just to do something stupid; at one point or another we all make bad decisions. If we are ever going to hope to make the workplace safer we have to help people make better decisions, and to do that, we have to understand why people make such poor choices.

The Need For Expediency Trumps the Need To Be Safe

Human beings have a natural inclination to seek out expediency; we want to avoid unnecessary work and hassle whenever we can.  If asked to choose between the expeditious and the safe, people will generally gauge the risk of consequences and weigh it against the rewards.

Let me tell you a story that I think illustrates a lot about poor decision making. I am the world’s worst surfer.  I have been surfing for nearly 20 years and am not measurably better than the first time I surfed, but it’s something I enjoy.  The first time I went surfing was at Sanofre State Park, near Camp Pendleton in Southern California.  Trail Six is a winding path to the beach that creeps along the base of sandstone cliffs that overlook the Pacific Ocean.  As we approached the path, my buddy (who was introducing the world of surfing to me) looked at me and laid out a choice for me point blank: “Which way do you want to go? There’s the fast way and there’s the safe way.” I asked what the difference was and he told me about 20 minutes.  I asked, “which way do you usually go?” and followed him as we strayed from the path and headed to the edge of what I judged to be a 30-50 foot cliff.  As we walked past the wreaths where others had fallen and died and the signs that warned of unstable cliffs (and urged us to go back) I grew a bit apprehensive but I reasoned that these veterans were smart enough to judge the risks and they would never put themselves, and me, in harm’s way.

We reached the edge of the cliff and clutching a surfboard in one hand, literally climbed down its face, from one precarious foot- and handhold to the next, one handed.  “Don’t look down” someone warned in all earnestness.  The wind was brisk, and catching my board, threatened to pull me from the cliff and hurl me to the rocks below. I got scared but it was too late.  “I am going to die” I remember thinking over and over again. Our party of six surfers got to the bottom without incident.  I’ve made that climb dozens of times since, and each time it gets a little easier. Why would anyone, let alone someone who works in worker safety, make such a bad decision?

Reason #1: Expediency

Clearly it was more expedient to climb down the cliff’s face than it would be to walk 20 minutes down the trail.  All I gained from taking the trail was safety where as I lost 20 minutes, inconvenienced my friend and risked losing the respect of my newfound surfing buddies.  I chose expediency even though there were plenty of indications that expediency would come at the cost of my personal safety.  This same thought process is at play when a skilled tradesman decides not to lock out because he is only going to be in the robot cell for a minute, or a truck driver decides not to wear her seat belt because she is only going to be driving across the compound, or a someone uses a golf cart to move furniture or anyone of a thousand examples from around industry.  If it takes appreciably more time to do something the safe way, people will generally look for shortcuts even if they risk death.

Reason #2: Peer Pressure

Some industries, or even some workplaces, have the misguided belief that safety is for wimps.  And that anyone who advocates for safety over production or expediency is a mother hen, a goofball, or a nerd.  Let’s be clear: in my example, I imposed the peer pressure on myself.  My buddy was perfectly willing to walk down the trail with me if I was in anyway uncomfortable.  But I wanted to be one of the guys.  I was learning the norms and if I was going to be a surfer I was going to do whatever surfers did, and surfers walked down the cliff.  The same can be said of the workplace.  New workers want to belong (having a new job sucks) and they want to feel comfortable so they adopt the norms that they see on the job.  If the safety guy (or trainer) tells them one thing but the rest of the crew is doing something else, the new guy will adopt the traits that make him or her fit in.

Reason #3: Imperfect Knowledge

Often we make decisions based on something we assume to be fact, or think we know but don’t.  In my case, I was trusting that others had knowledge that I didn’t, and in my case I was correct.  I trusted that my colleagues knew the situation better than I did (or the state of California did for that matter). I believed them because they were there and able to assess the situation in ways that I (or the state park) could.  I have seen far too many fatalities that were caused simply because someone believed something was true when it was not—from machines that were believed to be locked out when they were energized to parking brakes thought to be engaged when they weren’t.

Reason #4: Past Successful Outcomes

The first couple of reasons explained why I took the risk in the first place, but it doesn’t explain why I continued to take the risk.  As I got to know my peers and gained their respect I could absolutely have said, “you know guys, maybe we shouldn’t…” but after successfully negotiating the cliff numerous times I downplayed the risk in my mind.  After all, why would I stop doing something at which I was repeatedly successful?  Think about workplaces where workers do repetitive tasks day in and day out.  How likely will they be to take risks that do not result in negative consequences but that reap real rewards?

Reason #5: Bad Decisions Breed Bad Decisions

Once I had committed to climbing one-handed down the side of a cliff there was no turning back.  I was in a dangerous situation and every decision I made from that point on would prove more critical.  This happens in the workplace often and many times ends in tragedy.  Consider the worker who is violating the company’s no smoking policy by having an unsanctioned smoke break in the work area.  When he thought he heard someone approaching he quickly throws the lit cigarette in  a trash barrel filled with acetone soaked rags which ignites, panicked he runs for a fire extinguisher…Often one bad decision leads to a string of worse decisions simply because the first decision eliminates the possibility of good decisions from that point forward. Someone smarter than me once said mistakes + blame = criminality; I think that’s true.

Reason #6: Under Appreciation Of Risk

I can still, years later, clearly remember thinking, “people have been telling me to be careful for years…how risky can this be?”  I have been warned so often about dangers so ridiculously remote that I dismissed the risk of falling almost immediately.  In some cases, we get so many ridiculous warnings (in Michigan, there are road signs that say “Bridge May Be Icy” that are posted year long;  every July I think, “not bloody” likely) that we just tune them all out.  How many people have you heard say, “everything causes cancer” in response to the latest medical warning? In the workplace sometimes we remind people to work safe so frequently and to be mindful of dangers so remote that our voices start to sound like blah, blah, blah. Worker’s know the difference between something that could potentially in some cases maybe harm them and those that most certainly WILL harm them; we need to stop acting as if that they can’t.

Reason #7: Lack of Immediate Negative Consequences

            After I successfully made the climb (climbing up that bugger after 4 hours of surfing was miserable, but I did it) it made all my apprehension seem silly and trivial.  I was fine and had been stupid worrying about falling to my death. The same dynamic plays out in the workplace.  Workers make bad decisions and they are fine so they start to disbelieve the laws of probability.

At the end of the day there is little we can do to control how people will make decisions, but we can work to obviate the negative effects of these seven reasons. But even if we can’t help people make bad decisions let’s all remember that even though everybody at sometime will make a bad decision, nobody should ever have to die because of it.  Ultimately, I—the worker—control my own safety, but I sure hope there is someone out there trying to shield me from the logical consequences of my own foolishness.  The answer isn’t in reminding me not to die, nor is it in taking away my right to make decisions, and we can’t bubble-wrap and mistake proof the world.  In the end we have to be our brother’s keeper.  It’s up to us as people (not as safety professionals) to help protect people from bad decisions, our own and others’ as well.

Filed under: Behavior Based Safety, Phil La Duke, Worker Safety, At risk behavior, at risk behaviour, Decision making, human error, Phil La Duke, Phil LaDuke, Philip La Duke, Philip LaDuke, risk, risk management, risk taking, Why We Make Bad Decisions

Why I Pick On Safety Professionals

By Phil La Duke

Why I continue to Pick On Safety Professionals.

By Phil La Duke

Whenever I post a blog entry or submit a guest blog entry the crys of injustice ring out.  “Why does he always pick on the safety professional? Doesn’t he know how hard we work? How under-valued we are? How much we sacrifice? Why does he tar us all with the same brush? WHY DOES HE KEEP PICKING ON ME?”

Such criticsm is not without merit. I do focus on the shortcoming of both the safety function and the safety professionals themselves. But why? Am I the self-important bully that some of you make me out to be? Before you answer, consider that a true bully is someone who abuses his or her power over those who are either physically, emotionally, or intellectually inferior to them. So if you feel bullied by my work, you have to ask yourself if you are inferior to me in these areas; I don’t think most of you are.  There are no victims in Safety.  If you’re feeling inferior in some way, well then… that’s on you.

We Can Only Control Ourselves

I address the shortcomings our safety professionals because that is an area where we collectively can effect real and lasting change.  Some where along the way the snake-oil salesmen us that we not only had the power control other people’s behaviours we also had the right and the responsibility. Most people I know can barely control their own behaviour yet the safety community arrogantly presumes to modify the behaviours of others to its own sophomoric and twisted vision.  When we pronounce our ability to influence the behaviours of the workers we assume the culpability for injuries.  If we have a monopoly on the  knowledge about working safe than every injury is on the shoulders of the safety professional.  But we can’t change behaviours, and more importantly we can’t change Operations, at least not with platitudes and tired rhetoric  In fact we can’t even positively influence changes in Operations  without changing ourselves. So where does that leave us?

So Where Do We Need to Change?

If there is anyone out there truly listening, if I can reach a single open mind, if my message can punch through fog created by the red-faced hyperventilating mouth-breathing brutes who can’t wait to finish reading so they can hammer out an angry, half coherent (and I am being kind) snorting response, if I can speak to one reasonable person, listen to me.  If we don’t change, our profession will cease to exist, and our profession is the only thing that stands between us and the return to slavery.  We are the only thing that prevents corporations treating people like chattel, like an expendable, use-them-up-and-throw-them-away commodity and the simpletons that we have entrusted this sacred trust our selling us out.  We need change right now, and specifically here’s how:

1. Enable Operations Ownership of Safety.  Operations clearly needs to own safety because only it has the power to aggressively manage hazards and risk.  But Safety can’t just dump its responsibilities on the doorstep of Operations like a box of unwanted kittens.  Operations ownership of safety will involve a great deal of education, not just of Operations but of Safety as well.  This shift in ownership will involve a great deal of education, not of Operations but of Safety as well.  This shift in is difficult to e effect from within and trust me when I tell you that the purveyors of bullshit are rapaciously watching and watching for any misstep.
2. Stop Belly Aching.   Far too many safety people don’t feel appreciated: suck it up and stop simpering like a three year old who missed naptime.  If people don’t appreciate your contributions it’s likely because you haven’t made any. I am sick to death of listening to safety “professionals” whining about how nobody appreciates them. Is this how we want the world to view us? If you are truly under appreciated then do something about it, either clearly articulate the value you provide, leave and go work someplace that values what you do, or shut the hug up and cash paychecks.  But know this: safety is a job for grown ups.
3. Learn the Business.  No business exists solely or even primarily to protect workers.  When you perpetuate this myth you make us all look stupid and out of touch.  What say you do us all a favor and learn how the organization makes money?  No one values advise offered by someone who refuses to take the time to learn the intricacies of the business. Safety professionals frequently act as if they are external to the core business.  This is wrong on so many levels.  First of all, safety professionals aren’t entitled  to their jobs.  Having a Safety function costs money and that investment is expected to return some tangible benefit. Secondly unless safety is hardwired into every process it will always be an after thought.  Safety has got to get in the game and stop waiting for someone else to do its job.  And safety can’t stop at operational processes.  Safety should inform organizational policies. Often the policies proffered by HR can actually encourage at risk behaviours.
4. Anticipate Business Needs and Prepare to Meet Them.  As the executives roll out their strategic goals, safety professionals need to find ways not to merely support these strategies but to enable them.  The savvy safety professional will meet with individual Operations leaders and see how safety can help them to accomplish their incentive pay goals.  Putting money in the leader’s pocket is a sure way to have them invite safety into their decision making process.  Even if the safety professional can’t help accomplish the goal knowing what motivates the leader is invaluable.
5. Collaborate, Communicate, and Cooperate.  Safety sounds great, but it cannot happen unless we tear down the internecine walls of the organization.  Safety needs to collaborate with departments like Continuous Improvement, Training, and Human Resources.  This collaboration will increase the power of the safety professional to effect meaningful change and to add real value.
6. Earn Respect.  The most frequent whine I hear from the self-pitying safety mopes is that they aren’t respected by Operations.  Well why would they? You haven’t earned it.  If you walk around the organization advocating safety gimmicks that would make a first year kindergarten teacher blush how can you ever expect to be respected?  If you want respect you have to show respect for others.  Respect runs pretty thin in workplaces today. Meetings that waste people’s time, emails that are indecipherable and inane safety activities are disrespectful and wastrel.
7. Grow a Pair.  Too many safety professionals acknowledge that there is a problem but quickly add how it’s not their fault.  And then continue to decry the injustice of it all.  Do use all a favor and consider for a minute that you might be contributing to the problem.  I have more respect for the safety veteran who admits his or her role in the problem but refuses to change then I do for those who refuse to be held accountable.

Now What?

Some of you reading this are getting all frothy and are gearing up to set me straight.  Well don’t.  I am beyond tired of reading crap from self-righteous safety professionals who are offended on other’s behalf.  If you think I am talking about you it’s because I probably am.  You don’t like it? Hammer out an email to somebody who gives a rat’s ass, but to quote Dylan, it aint me babe.  I hope some of you will heed what I have to say, or better yet send this post to those imbeciles who need it most.  But leave me out of it. Just change for the love of all that’s holy; you’re not just embarrassing yourself but all of us out here trying to make a difference.

If you feel picked on you probably deserve it.

Filed under: Safety, accountability for safety, Phil La Duke, picked on, rockford greene, Safety, Worker Safety

Effective Hazard Management: The First Step To A Safer Work Place

By Phil La Duke

 

 

Those of you who’ve just discovered my blog might be under the impression that the only things I post are things meant to provoke cranks from the lunatic fringe into a digital tête-à-têtes Some of you might be surprised that I am capable of posting without having some over-caffeinated brute send me semi-coherent hate mail. And while I do so love to rattle the proverbial cages, I thought for my own sanity I would stay away from any sort of controversy this week and address a topic that is especially near and dear to me: hazard management.

Don’t worry all you folks who read my stuff just to get offended worked up in a froth of self-righteous indignation, if you’re looking to take offense, I’m sure you will find something to rail against. Hazard management is one of four pillars of a universally sound safety management system (the others being: Incident response, risk management, and safety strategy—there are other elements that shape the efficacy of an individual safety system, but these tend to differ from industry to industry and government to governement.

To accept hazard management as a cornerstone of safety you have to accept that without hazards there can be no injuries, so effective hazard management, that is, containing and/or correcting the hazard before someone is injured, is the first step to a safer workplace.

Anatomy of an Injury

For a worker to get injured three things must be present a:

1. Hazard
2. Interaction
3. Catalyst

Hazards

Before we continue, I should define what I mean by a hazard. A hazard is any condition that may cause an injury. Hazards, therefore, can be procedural, mechanical, environmental, and yes behavioural. Effectively a hazard is anything that can cause an injury—accidental or deliberate. Since safety is an expression of probability (We describe something as safe as if the condition of safety is an absolute, but most of us (didn’t’ say ALL for all of those looking to take a slight on behalf of a bunch of people you will never meet) understand that no environment is absolutely free of risk and therefore cannot be described as completely “safe”.) Hazards are the things that increase the risk of injuries. What About Behaviour? Before we continue, I should define what I mean by a hazard. A hazard is any condition that may cause an injury. Hazards, therefore, can be procedural, mechanical, environmental, and yes behavioural. Effectively a hazard is anything that can cause an injury—accidental or deliberate.

Interaction

Whenever I meet a new client, I invariably get a worried Operations leader who worries that I am going to “safety them out of business.” I like to tell them that the safest organizations are those who went broke and closed their doors. Nobody is getting hurt in mothballed factories or abandoned mines. Being a good safety professional means recognizing that we can make a process so “safe” that it effectively makes it too inefficient to run. In those cases we protect the workers from injuries, but we also “protect” them from paychecks. A hazard in and of itself doesn’t injure someone unless the person interacts with it. This statement may seem so basic that some of you are thinking, “no kidding genius” but this understanding is key to how we approach containment and correction of injuries.

Catalysts

A catalyst is a factor that sets things into motion, call it the straw that breaks the camels back. Without the catalyst a person can interact with a hazard and escape unharmed. The lack of a catalyst allows workers to engage in at-risk behaviour without getting hurt, which teaches the worker that an unsafe act is benign. We walk by hazards every day, we see them in our homes, and encounter them every day on our morning commute. Think of the catalyst as that little extra element that either sets the injury in motion, makes an injury worse, or makes the interaction far more likely. For example, standing in a puddle of water is not in itself likely to injure someone, but standing in water while making repairs on an energized piece of equipment makes an injury far more likely. (In this case the hazard is the water on the floor, the interaction is standing in it, and the catalyst is working on energized equipment. You could also describe the energized equipment as the hazard and the water as the catalyst and be correct but now were talking semantics.)

Managing Hazards

Hazard management consists of eight steps:

1. Identification. The heart of hazard management is finding the hazards and containing them before anyone gets hurt. Unfortunately, we often learn of the existence of a hazard because someone has been injured. What’s more, hazards can be tricky: they come in all shapes and sizes; can grow and shrink with alarming speed; and can move throughout your facility or your process. They can crop up in different places, different times of day, and move across shifts.The best hazard identification process involves front-line supervision walking the work area and asking simple questions about where the process could fail. This is more than just observing workers’ behaviors, and involves taking a holistic look at the process and applying the 5 Ms of production (Manpower, machines, materials, methods, and environment—I never said the M was at the beginning of the word). Basically the front-line supervisor is conducting a process audit and gathering information on where the operation could fail.
2. Containment. Once a hazard has been found the person who discovers it should not leave the area until the hazard is contained. Documenting hazards without indicating how you contained them is a good way to get sued, but that notwithstanding how would you feel if someone was seriously injured because they interacted with a hazard that you knew about but did nothing? Containment actions are quick fixes designed to last only long enough for an unsafe condition to be fixed, so in many cases restricting access, warning employees or other similar low-level controls may be appropriate.
3. Root Cause Analysis. Before you can appropriately address a hazard you must know it’s primary root cause. I’ve noticed some confusion around Root Cause Analysis. Many people believe it is appropriate to look for a single cause of a hazard. This approach only makes sense if you have a specific problem structure with a sudden occurrence (things are going along just fine until a catalyst creates a problem). Unfortunately, the vast majority of hazards result from a broad problem structure with a gradual occurrence (the straw that breaks the camel’s back) where many interrelated causes and effects are at play. To make a long story well…less long, you usually have to look for multiple, interrelated causes of an injury.
4. Correction. Containment will only take you so far, and the ultimate goal of hazard management is to permanently correct hazards and keep them from coming back. Correction usually involves maintenance and all hazards are not created equally. The safety committee can work with maintenance to correctly prioritize hazard correction. For more on the safety meetings check out this weeks post on http://www.rockfordgreeneinternational.wordpress.com
5. Read-Across. Often a hazard that is present in one area of the organization is present in other departments as well, a solid process for read-across (checking to see where else the hazard might manifest) is a key step that many organizations miss. Read-across allows many areas to benefit from the discoveries of a single walk-thru.
6. Hazard Trend Analysis. Finding a single hazard is valuable, finding a trend that tells you where you are most at risk is invaluable. Hazard Trend Analysis should be the primary activity of the safety committee meeting, because it can help make the entire operation far more efficient.
7. Process Improvement. In world-class problem solving methodologies, they talk about the importance of fixing the system flaw that allowed the problem to manifest (for instance the recruiting and hiring policies that hire people who are physically unable to do the job.) This is step key in hazard management because fixing the system likely will prevent numerous problems down stream.

Remember as you implement a hazard management process to keep things simple. You will likely face considerable resistance as first line supervisors insist that they don’t have time to walk their areas and identify hazards. But if they don’t have time to do it right when will they find time to do it over, and ultimately when will they have time to stop work because of a worker injury?

Filed under: Loss Prevention, Phil La Duke, Safety, Worker Safety, containment, correction, hazard identification, hazard management, hazards, Phil La Duke, Phil LaDuke, Philip La Duke, Philip LaDuke, Process Improvement, Read across, Rockford Greene International, root cause analysis, safety meeting

La Duke’s 14 Points for Safety

Phil La Duke

by Phil La Duke

I am posting this as an extra (the official post for this week will be published at midnight tonight.—Phil

I have been trying for years to get Safety professionals to embrace the teachings of W. Edward Deming, specifically his 14 Points for Quality.  Deming’s points for quality are equally applicable to Safety, but for whatever reason my arguments have fallen on the deafest of ears.

Then it occurred to me.  Deming’s work was rooted in engineering discipline and process control but safety grew out of the Human Resources function.  This seemingly inconsequential difference has much to do with the state of Safety in the world and what needs to change. There’s a disconnect between HR and Engineering, a great and deep philosophical divide between the two.  Engineering is, at its purest core about change and improvement, it’s about continuous improvement.  Human Resources (as much as some may argue) is about keeping things the same.  A good Human Resources professional understands that change introduces dangerous variation into the a well oiled machine; it’s the job of HR to make sure that change isn’t capricious and more importantly that it doesn’t violate laws, unevenly apply policy, or a host of other dangers associated with change.  For centuries, the Human Resources function has been about governing the workforce, and organizational change is very disruptive.

I don’t mean to sound like Human Resources is incapable of leading change, it can and does lead successfully lead change all the time. It’s just that Human Resources as a function tends to be invested in the status quo.

Every organization needs a good mix of innovators and administrators, the innovators shake things up and the administrators find a way to make sense of it all and keep the organization running.  Engineering and lean practioners tend to believe that you can’t make an omelets without breaking some eggs while the human resources and safety professionals believe that if it aint broke don’t fix it. Of course these are generalities, and I am speaking of historical tendency (read: I am not talking about ever mammal who works or has ever worked in these functions)  but these parallel evolutions of these two disciplines explain why the Safety function finds it so difficult to lead meaningful change in the organization.

With that in mind, with apologies to W. Edward Deming here are my fourteen points for safety:

1. All injuries are preventable—FMEA’s and other predictive tools should be used to identify areas of greatest risk and efforts should be made to reduce the risk of injuries to the lowest practical level.
2. Move beyond compliance—compliance with the government regulations is important and compliance tends to correlate to a process that is in control. But we can never mistake being compliant with being safe.
3. Focus on prevention. Preventing injuries is more efficient than reacting to them. Injuries are caused by failures in the system.  By managing hazards (procedural, behavioral, and mechanical) organizations can reduce unplanned downtime, injuries, and defects.
4. Instill universal ownership and accountability for safety.  Every job plays a role in ensuring workplace safety, and everyone must be answerable when processes and protocols fail to keep workers safe.
5. Imbed Safety into all activities.  Safety is neither a priority nor a goal, instead it is a criterion by which companies measure the efficacy of its efforts to be successful. Safety is a strategic business element that needs to be managed as scrupulously as Quality, Delivery, Cost, and Morale.
6. Shift the ownership of safety to Operations— Operations has the greatest control and oversight of the safety of the workplace. Operations leadership should conduct routine reviews of key safety metrics.
7. The absence of injuries does not necessarily denote the presence of safety. Safety is an expression of probability.  No situation is ever 100% risk free.
8. Avoid Shame and Blame Policies and Tactics. Workers do not want to get hurt and an organization’s processes are not deliberately designed to hurt workers; no amount of behavior modification will change this.
9. Invest in basic skills training. The best way to ensure worker safety is by providing them with good foundational training in the tasks they are routinely expected to do.
10. End safety gimmickry. Incentives should only be used to reward active participation in safety, not to reward an absence of reported injuries.
11. Stop comparing your safety performance to industry average. Measuring an organization’s safety record in safety relative to the company’s industry average are meaningless and should be abandoned. Instead, use a combination of lagging and leading indicators to get a more meaningful view of your overall performance in safety.
12. Seek to protect people from their mistakes. People make mistakes and not necessarily because they took foolish risks or ignored safety protocols. Look for ways to prevent people from being injured by mistakes rather than preventing the mistakes themselves.
13. Support Operations.  Safety must be a key resource to Operations. Instead of impeding Operations and hampering its progress safety must support Operations to find safe ways of accomplishing organizational goals instead of work at cross purposes with production.
14. Cease attempts to manipulate worker’s behaviors. Safety is not about managing people’s behavior; it’s about managing risk. Behavioral psychology is over used and frequently misused in commercial safety solutions.

I have several more that I could add, but if 14 was enough for Deming than who am I to try to surpass the great man’s work?  I have said with irritating frequency that the Safety function must change if it is to survive. I believe wholeheartedly that the implementation of these 14 things can help the safety function not only to survive but to thrive.

Filed under: Behavior Based Safety, Loss Prevention, Phil La Duke, Safety, Safety Culture, Worker Safety, Attitude, Deming, Phil La Duke, Phil LaDuke, Philip LaDuke

You Say You Want a Revolution

“If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you aint gonna make it with anyone anyhow”—John Lennon

There are a lot of people in the safety world that are calling for change.  Typically this call for change is articulated in fairly gentle and vague terms. “We need leadership commitment” or “communication is key” leads the parade of platitudes.  This is harmless but it doesn’t accomplish much beyond making the safety professional feel and, to a lesser extent, sound engaged.  All these calls are likely to change precisely squat.

Changing from a culture where safety is for wimps, safety is too expensive and disruptive, or that safety is in any other way undesirable can not be an iterative process; in short this kind of change takes revolution, not evolution. When Deming first promoted his 14 points for Quality, he was far from universally accepted

Revolutions sound scary—the word conjures up images of guillotines and firing squads. But the business world has seen the quality revolution, the Lean Revolution, and the information revolution all brought exciting possibilities with them.  But even these weren’t bloodless coups.  As a new philosophy takes hold the business axioms they replace fight like wounded badgers for survival.

“All Change Comes From the Barrel of A Gun”—Mao Tse Tung

While the Utopian view of safety that many safety thought-leaders espouse sounds nice, few in the workforce see a compelling reason to change how they conduct themselves relative safety and without a compelling reason there can be no lasting change. As a former colleague used to put it, change comes when the pain of not changing exceeds the pain of changing. Or as noted culture expert, Edgar Shein, put it in his first fundamental law of change, “Principle 1: survival anxiety or guilt must be greater than learning anxiety” So in other words, nothing is going to change as long as people are either satisfied with the way things are or are too scared of what the future holds. A few worried safety professionals hunched over computers arguing over the finer points doesn’t foment the necessary discontent with the status quo to change a $10 bill let alone a culture.

Shein’s formula for organization can be loosely stated as:

D+V+N>R

where D=discontent, V=Vision for the Ideal State, and N=next steps and R=Resistance

Fomenting Discontent

Fomenting discontent in the organization means walking a line between being an agent for change and being a discontented and uncooperative turd who is unable to play well with others.  Additionally, organizations like organisms tend to have built in systems for defending themselves.  Changing a culture requires fortitude; it doesn’t take many missteps for the organization to turn on the fomenter of discontent.

Cast the Vision

Fomenting discontent without articulating a clear and compelling vision of how things could be, but are not. Casting a vision of a future state requires leadership, creativity and courage.  Unless one can question one’s most cherished beliefs, one’s most deeply held values, one can never hope to change a culture.  One has to look into the very eyes of God and call him fraud before one can honestly craft a vision of any real validity.  Casting the vision takes guts, in questioning the status quo one risks making blood enemies, because it’s one thing to question one’s own beliefs and values, but quite another to question someone else’s.

Articulate the Next Steps

A vision for what must happen and a healthy level of discontent alone can not lead the population to the Promised Land.  A leader must communicate a clear and reasonable roadmap for moving from the current state to the desired state.  Unless a leader can do so, the population will judge the change too risky and decide against adopting it.

Changing a culture is relatively easy to the far more daunting task of building an infrastructure for sustaining it. The safety snake oils are often able to fob off a climate change with a culture change.  Unlike a culture change, which the population typically defend a climate change will only last as long as the antecedent remains present. (Think of a climate change as exemplified by the speed trap.  Traffic slows because drivers know a policeman is laying in wait, but once the policeman is no longer present, the drivers resume speeding.) Culture change consultants love climate change because if the parasitic relationship between consultant ends so too does the change; it’s as if the consultant is able to repossess the services rendered.

The ability to sustain a culture change—without adding a complicated and expensive infrastructure or dramatically adding headcount—is what separates a good culture change initiative from a sham, climate change, smoke and mirrors.  Millions are spent on shoddy, junk science solutions that merely mask the problems in an organization and create climate change.

One must be prepared to topple the regime to effect change, but regime change isn’t the same as culture change. And a failed coup usually ends in the termination of those who attempted it.  Safety professionals who attempt to change the culture (even if they are successful) seldom survive the change.  Who needs revolutionaries after the revolution has succeeded?  While people will eventually accept change, they seldom forgive the person responsible for it.

Filed under: Phil La Duke, Safety, Safety Culture, Worker Safety, culture change, organizational development, Phil La Duke, Phil LaDuke, Philip La Duke, Philip LaDuke, Rockford Greene Interational, Safety Culture, Worker Safety

Mind Your Own Business: The Far From the Last Word On Building A “Safety Culture”

photo of the Diego Rivera Mall at the Detroit Institute of Arts taken by Phil La Duke

There is a nearly ubiquitous conversation ragging in the safety forums: how can one create a “safety culture” within my organization. This debate is troubling from a couple of perspectives.  First, there really isn’t any such thing as a “safety culture” the fact that people blather on about this topic shows a very deep ignorance of organizational culture.  Every organization of more than five people has a culture. In simplest terms, a culture is the codified collection of the norms, shared values, and rules of an organization. Cultures evolve to protect the organization’s interests and to determine what is acceptable behavior. In so doing, corporate culture makes it possible to govern the organization.

In some organization’s the corporate culture is so strong that changing from within is almost impossible, in fact, it is far more likely that a new hire will adopt the corporate culture rather than change it, no matter how strong the desire or ardently the new employee works for change.

I’ve studied corporate cultures and worked in OD for years.  I won’t bore you with a lot of pedantic excrement filled with a lot of jargon and theory, but if you want that, believe me there are plenty of people out there to fill your head with it.

Cultures are made up of shared values—kind of shared opinions of how important something is relative to the other elements of an organization.  Organizations tend to have a value of safety, that is, the organization places some value on safety relative to the other activities on which it can expend its resources.  Some cultures view safety as unimportant while others view it as of paramount importance, but all cultures place some priority on worker safety, and therefore, all organizations have a “safety culture” albeit some have a strong safety culture while others have a weak safety culture.

Even if a safety culture could be achieved (at some point it becomes a purely semantic argument) such a culture would neither be advisable or desirable.  A safety culture would mean that safety would be prioritized above all other business elements. Customer satisfaction, productivity, profitability, quality, and profitability all would take a secondary role over worker safety.  It sounds great, but in practical terms,  it doesn’t exist, nor should it.  No company exists primarily to ensure the safety of its workers.  In fact, most companies exist to make money.  This isn’t a bad thing; the safest companies in the world are the ones who went out of business because they didn’t make any money. Pursuit of a safety culture is a mish mash of Polly Anna idealism, cheap sales talk, and excuse making. (“I’ve done all I can; the culture is broken”).

As for the larger issue of a culture change, that may be necessary but that isn’t the job of the safety professional.  There are people with degrees in Organizational Behavior, Industrial Psychology, Organizational Development (OD), or other advanced degrees that qualify them to create culture change interventions. These people have years of Organizational Development experience before they are able to lead such a change; they aren’t safety professionals who have read a couple of books or attended a couple of speeches at a safety conference.   It’s been suggested that the skills of the safety professional and the organizational psychology field aren’t mutually exclusive; perhaps not. But just because someone read a couple of books about airplanes and has a flight simulator on his PC doesn’t make him a pilot. And frankly I would prefer a cardiac surgeon perform my coronary by-pass surgeon to a butcher, but effectively they share as many skills as a self-important puffed up safety huckster who believes—however earnestly—that he has the same skills as a professional skilled and experienced in OD.

So let’s shut up about creating a safety culture; it makes us seem even more out of touch than we already do.  We should however, foster an environment where safety is valued, but that isn’t a culture change, it’s a change in values.

Changing the values of an organization doesn’t take a whole lot of special skills.  A tenacious and conscientious safety professional can immediately start creating a heightened sense of value for safety within his or her organization.

Engage Leadership

I have written and spoken extensively on ways to engage leadership so I will just quickly summarize the key points here. In organizations that place a low value on safety professionals tend to have little or know credibility with the senior leadership in an organization.  Building credibility begins by speaking the same language and relating safety to the things that senior leadership find most compelling.  If the organization values sales above everything else, the safety professional should express the cost of injuries in terms of the amount of additional revenue it will take to replace the money spent on worker injuries.

Run the Safety Function Like a Business

Every safety function that is run like a business (i.e. the primary purpose of the function is to provide some service that is of quantifiable value) is much more likely to survive and thrive than those that are manage like overhead.  When the safety function sees itself as a for hire service provider it is far more likely to instill the kind of confidence required to build demand for safety.

Position Safety As a Partner In Improvements

For far too long, the safety profession has seen itself as serving a greater good that the rest of the organization, while the other departments busied themselves making money or improving quality, or making materials flow more efficiently, Safety saved lives. And while that is beyond important, it positioned safety as a parent and a policeman, but never a partner.  Safety became the smug outsider in the organization and then wondered why nobody trusted it.

But it doesn’t have to be like that, the Safety function plays an important role in bolstering operating efficiency (worker injuries interrupt production and make the operation less efficient), increasing profitability (worker injuries cost money), and creating a lean workplace (injuries are  waste).

Lead

Day after day I interact with safety professionals who deride leadership of their organization as indifferent or even hostile to safety.  These sad sacks talk in “us versus them” distinctions that make me wonder why they have jobs at all.  If safety professionals want to effect real change in how much value and priorities they have to be credible leaders not whiny crybabies who feel powerless to effect change.

People listen to those who have something to say, they learn from those who have something to teach them, and they follow people who are going to take them someplace better.  If you can’t these things for others there’s probably still important role you can play in worker safety, but shut up about culture; you don’t know what you are talking about.

Filed under: Behavior Based Safety, Performance Improvement, Phil La Duke, Safety, Safety Culture, Worker Safety, Corporate Culture, Culture, culture change, organizational development, Phil La Duke, Phil LaDuke, Philip La Duke, Philip LaDuke, rockford greene, Rockford Greene International, Safety Culture

In Harm’s Way: How Safety Professionals Brought Down the Safety Profession

Image courtesy of http://bilinick.blogspot.com/2011/02/homer-simpson-cartoon-photos-and.html

Image courtesy of TheGuardian.com

“My pledge to you this year is to kill off for good the excessive culture of safety and health that is dragging down business like a heavy wooden yoke.”— David Cameron, United Kingdom Prime Minister.

In a recent article in ISHN magazine editor, Dave Johnson does an excellent job of covering comments that David Cameron, UK Prime Minister recently made about the onus that safety puts on businesses and of his party’s intention to “crush” the culture of safety. http://www.ishn.com/blogs/16-random-sampling/post/politicians-just-dont-get-safety At this point most of you are expecting me to launch into another one of my pithy rants about how safety is being attached on all fronts and people of good faith should rise up in righteous indignation. You will be disappointed. I have been writing and blogging about safety for over 5 years, speaking on the subject for close to ten, and working in the field consulting and providing safety training for nearly thirty years. I have plenty to say on this subject and most of you aren’t going to like it.

Most recently I have pumped out some pretty aggressive messages that puts the blame for the decline in respect for the safety profession squarely on the shoulders of the safety professionals. I have been fairly clear in my message: Safety professionals have to reposition themselves as key resources for making the workplace more efficient, more cost effective, and more productive. Instead we continue to propagate the image of the safety professional as a bleeding heart social worker that wants to coddle workers and impeded progress. I have said, in no uncertain terms, that if Safety is going to regain a position of respect it will have to stop doing such stupid things.

“safety cultures (are) a too often farcical, marginal monster that must be crushed and killed.”— David Cameron, United Kingdom Prime Minister

When “Protect Your Dignity” was published in ISHN a couple of months back, I got a visceral response from a bunch of old-school safety half-wits who squawked and bawled because I asked what kind of sociopath introduces the possibility of a parent dying at work to eight-year olds in the guise of a children’s safety poster contest.

When I wrote an article that criticized the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) for sponsoring an expensive boondoggle to Brazil in the worst economy in a lifetime, no fewer than three safety publications refused to run it. And when I publicly criticized the organization for their actions—well…let’s just say if you are wondering why I am no longer speaking at their conference you have your answer.

When I made blog posts decrying Behaviour Based Safety as amateurishly shilled snake oil, one greasy, bloated, pig-eyed brute rallied the fanatics and the zealots who sent me a steady stream of venom, and made clear their intention to protect and preserve the Behavior Based Safety Bureaucracies at all costs. I’ve been called every thing but a child of God, simply for calling into question the status quo.

Well guess what? It turns out WE ARE under attack, and not by some third world despot or human trafficker but by the leaders of the free world.

‘Cameron, meanwhile, says, “I am hereby declaring war… on the safety and health monster.’ .”— David Cameron, United Kingdom Prime Minister. ”(ISHN)

As Dave Johnson points out, politicians don’t get safety, but politicians do “get” what messages people want to hear, as people the average politician is a thick-witted brute without basic skills to pour piss out of a boot when the instructions are written on the bottom. Except on extremely rarified occasions, politicians aren’t all that extraordinary, there are no heroes here and few villains either. The politicos are, like every other organism designed to survive and politicians can only do this by sensing public sentiment and regurgitating it back to voters.

The story here isn’t that David Cameron, the leader of one of the most industrialized and powerful countries in the world thinks its okay to kill workers, rather the story is that David Cameron thinks that voters will be sympathetic to those sentiments. What matters here is not that a single politician believes workers should be seen as expendables, and chattel to be used up and thrown away.

“Safety culture is nothing more than a straitjacket on personal initiative and responsibility. We must crush these cultures before any more damage is done.”— David Cameron, United Kingdom Prime Minister.

This Is a War That We Are Losing.

Public sentiment is turning against worker safety. Politicians equate safe workplaces with job loss and hyper-sensitivity for paper cuts and bruises. Less and less people are taking us seriously and human life hangs in the balance. “safety cultures (are) a too often farcical, marginal monster that must be crushed and killed.”— David Cameron, United Kingdom Prime Minister Is safety farcical, marginal monster (“farcical” means “absurd” or “ridiculous” for those of you who have been directed to this page by one of my many detractors who are reading this for the sole purpose of getting pissed off)? Well when you hear things like the case a friend of mine shared with me it makes it pretty tough to see safety as anything but the rightful object of ridicule. In this case, my friend’s safety manager slipped and fell but did not report the incident and instead sought treatment from her personal doctor so that she would not “ruin” the safety BINGO. When the writers of The Simpsons wanted give the hapless, drunken, and perpetual screw up main character Homer a job, they ultimately chose head of safety as the most ludicrous job (Homer has had jobs ranging from body guard to astronaut, but he always comes back to safety). And when you see some of the safety bureaucracies that try to manipulate people’s behaviours like so many lab rats the “monster” appellation seems pretty spot-on.

Where is This Coming From?

Lord knows I’m full of answers, but this one has got me stumped. Where is the big, unifying event that convinced the public that we have taken worker safety too far? As far as I can recall there has been no major fines lobbed at corporations for infractions that a reasonable person would see as frivolous. There have been no high profile cases of companies forced out of business because protecting the workers became to onerous. Why then, has the public turned on us? Fighting Back What can we do to turn this around? Because let’s face it, we have got to stop fiddling as Rome burns, and we aren’t going to win this fight without first winning the hearts and minds of greater society. • Advertise the cost of Injuries. In the world of corporate Learning we like to say, that “if you think Learning is expensive, try stupidity”. We have to make the average person understand how much productivity and efficiency is lost when a worker is injured, even when that injury was minor. And when we talk to people about worker safety we have got to stop filling the air with jargon that we think makes us sound smarter but in actuality makes us sound like pretentious dung heaps. • Seek Out and Eliminate Safety Gimmicks. End safety BINGO, scrap the gift card programs for doing something a reasonable person would do without being asked. If it’s cute give it the boot. Incentive programs MUST return a quantifiable return on investment and must DIRECTLY link to safety improvements. • Proactively Seek Out Ways to Lower Costs. Find ways to lower the operating cost of the safety function BEFORE Operations suggests it. If you are able to demonstrate a willingness to share in the responsibility for process improvement and waste reductions Operations leadership will begin to see you as a partner instead of a policeman. • Talk Dollars, Make Sense. Express the costs and savings in ways that make sense to Operations; if products sold is a hot button talk about the increase in sales that the company will have to make to pay for the injuries incurred. Or better yet, talk about how much more efficient the Operation is because of a decrease in injuries. We have to run the safety function like a business and we have to speak the same business language as Operations. • Lay Off the Platitudes. “Safety is everyone’s job” —oh yeah? Then why do we need you? “Safety is our number one priority”—no, making money and staying in business is our number one priority, and if you don’t believe that go somewhere else to work, safety supports this, but let’s not be stupid. “Safety Is the Right Thing To Do”—So is making money, so is being globally competitive, so is producing high quality, so is…there are a lot of “right things to do”. • Vote. Get out and make your voice known. Talk to your neighbors about this dangerous trend and how it should affect the way they vote. Refute the misconceptions about worker safety. Tell war stories, but most of all vote and make sure the candidates know that their positions on worker safety matter to you. A Parting Shot I have worked with companies that spend more money keeping worker’s safe from cuts and bruises than they will ever recoup in savings and I am often asked when I consult with new clients if I am going to turn their company into one of those paranoid companies that have 7 safety people watching a guy loading a truck. I always respond to those concerns the same way. The safest companies on Earth are those whose doors are shuddered because they went out of business. The job of safety is to keep companies in business by eliminating waste and boosting productivity.

Filed under: Behavior Based Safety, Loss Prevention, Phil La Duke, Regulations, Safety, Safety Culture, Uncategorized, American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), Behaviour Based Safety, David Cameron, ISHN magazine editor, Phil La Duke, Phil LaDuke, Philip La Duke, Philip LaDuke, Protect Your Dignity, rockford greene, Rockford Greene International, The Simpsons Homer Simpson