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Human Approach to a Sustainably Effective Safety Culture
Jason Yost • February 21, 2023
The Human Approach to a Sustainably Effective Safety Culture at Work
Some restoration and remediation professionals (employers and managers) and I were, recently, discussing an article found in EHSToday magazine, called Safety Culture - It's About the People. In this article the authors, Scott Falkowitz and Grace Herrera, point out, "A simple way of building and sustaining an effective safety culture is by taking a human approach and focusing on the people of the organization." But, some of the professionals, whom I spoke with about this article, disagreed on what that meant; in fact, two main points of view arose: The first pointing fingers at employees for incidents in the work place; and, the second pointing the fingers at the employers or regulators. In this blog, I want to share my response to that discussion, or at least some of its principles.
1. Arbitrarily directing funds and resources doesn't work.
There are two resources every business requires to exist. Those are the (1) human and (2) material resources. What happens when a material resource is not optimized is a common understanding by most managers and business owners; because, they are immediately impacted by its dysfunction or lack of optimization. But, when I asked the above-mentioned remediation and restoration professionals to relate other areas of a business' resources and the effects of their lack of optimization, very few could answer, "human" . . . . And the ones that did, suggested that arbitrarily spending money, as they had in the past, in training and equipment "should suffice in providing employees everything they needed" to keep the workplace safe. If there was a problem, it was the employee's fault in some way, shape or form.
By arbitrarily directing funds, these employers and managers expected a reduction in frequency and severity of workplace accidents, injuries, and illnesses. However, this method of addressing workplace safety and health can lead to high employee turnaround and a lack of goal achievement; all of which cost money, reduce productivity, hurt one's competitiveness, can lead to citations, injuries, illnesses, or death. No one wants to see these things happen, but not everyone accepts their potential. Consequently, they ignore real risks and hazards, fail to respond to current incidents in a corrective way, and are constantly struggling with the list of negatives I just outlined.
2. Treating incidents as someone else's responsibility is a formula for disaster.
Unfortunately, this happens every day: An employer, somewhere, misses the opportunity to correct issues that lead to an incident by not performing the proper incident investigation, utilize information from that investigation to generate a corrective action plan, and apply that plan to the workplace in a way that is monitored and adjusted for sustainably meeting the business' safety and health goals. In place of this process of corrective action, these employers choose pacification.
What is pacification? Let's look at an example: (The following is a true story. Names have been changed to protect the identity of the employer and employee.)
John Doe Restoration recently had someone get sick while working on cleaning out a crawl space exposed to a sewage back-up. This employee, after seeking medical attention herself and reporting to the medical staff that exposure (she believed) had occurred at work, found herself standing before her supervisor and the business owner - being blamed for the exposure. Management had decided: Had she worn her Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) as she must have known to have worn (although there were no records of training this employee) she would not have gotten sick; therefore, it was her fault the illness happened.
Management moved this person to "off-duty" status and placed her into an arbitrarily funded training program. Until such time as she completed this training, she would not return to "work-duty" (meaning she was getting paid minimum wage instead of her regular $19/hour). Management believed, by doing this, that they would send a strong message to the rest of their employees; however, after everyone returned to work two things happened: (1) everything went back to the way it was before the incident and (2) some employees became irate and distrustful of their employer.
This is an example of pacification, and an example of how its negative consequences begin.
3. Behavior safety becomes an issue when it is the only means used to derive comprehensive preventive solutions.
What the management was attempting, in our pacification example, was use "behavior safety" to positively make the workplace safer. While behavior safety does play an important role in positively modifying the workplace behavior, it becomes an issue when it is the only means used to derive comprehensive preventive solutions. Why? Because it is one dimensional, assuming behavior modification as the end all for determining root causes. Not only does this approach limit its own perspective in relation to why the incident happened to begin with, it limits the organization in its ability to (1) comply with regulatory law, (2) optimize its operations in a safe, effective, and sustainable manner, (3) prevent animosity in the workplace, (4) keep a positive, competitive brand in the marketplace, (5) prevent unnecessary expenditures, and the list goes on and on. . .
4. How do I convert my incident investigation process into a corrective action tool?
My first bit of advice would be this: Establish a mindset that says: All outcomes are the result of processes. Some of these processes are positive, desirable; while, others are negative, and not desirable. Then, and only then, are you ready to look at an incident and investigate it properly.
Secondly, a good incident investigation will be performed by a competent person. Depending on the circumstances, different competencies will be necessary. Where a competent person is lacking in-house, a contract safety and health professional, like Gulf Coast Center for Indoor Air Quality Services, will be necessary. This will assure the investigation is performed properly, in a way that will meet your company goals for a sustainable remedy, and provide for compliance with occupational safety and health laws.
A good incident investigation should ask key questions for specification determinations. To accomplish this, the investigator should look at all avenues of known, suspect, and potential causal factors. This will illuminate the necessities for corrective action, thus providing justification in corrective action expenditures. For example, ask things like: What processes where identified and what changes can be made to those processes that will prevent this incident from happening again? The answer to that question should lead you, your safety and management teams, and other teams' members to act together, a part of a unified mindset of business personnel. One body and resource for sustainable, safe, effective, desirable growth and service.
In Closing:
In every industry there are, inevitably, those who will (1) continue to ignore corrective action, choosing, instead, to a point finger at someone else, (2) and, in the process, jeopardize themselves and others. These types of businesses are stuck in a settled condition of complacency. They are lackadaisical to the costs to themselves and others; because, they've either (1) gotten away with it for so long they don't believe in the risks or hazards anymore or (2) they are content with their income verses cost ratios. For consumers and these business' team members, I challenge you: Don't settle, yourselves, for this mindset and for these risks and hazards. It's unnecessary.
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