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Nurturing a Safety Mindset

Nurturing a Safety Mindset Where it is Safe to be Safe.

January, 2018
DJ McKinney, Rinker Safety Director
Russell Ellis, Forterra Director of Safety
From where did
this information
come?
• Judy Agnew

• Aubrey Daniels
Do This….
1. Focus on Leading Indicators
2. Behavior-based Incentive Programs
3. Provide Good Quality detailed training
4. Emphasize Safety Signage
5. Punish People for Making Mistakes
6. Encourage and stimulate Near Miss reporting
7. Thinking that Checklists Change Behavior
Don’t Do This….
1. Focus on Lagging Indicators
2. Injury-based Incentive Programs
3. Awareness training
4. Safety Signage
5. Punishing People who Make Mistakes
6. Misunderstanding Near Misses
7. Thinking that Checklists Change Behavior
 Safety is Not a Separate Function
Production Safety Quality

Safely Producing Quality Pr

oduct
Three Legged Stool

Success

Un
Quality

suc
ces
Safety

sf u
Production

t ion
Quality

duc

l
P r o
Safety
Pillars of Safety Leadership
• Relationship Development. How we
interact with employees

• Maintaining a safe physical environment.

How we observe, detect, and correct

• Creating systems that encourage safe

behavior. How we provide tools and
procedures

• Measuring Leading Indicators not past

results. How we foster growth
Relationship Development
Relationship Development
The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems
is the day you have stopped leading them. They
have either lost confidence that you can help
them or concluded that you do not care.

Either case is a failure of leadership

> Colin Powell

Relationship Development
Excellence in safety requires:

• Discretionary Effort – effort that goes above and beyond

• Conversations to know employees individually
• Understanding their issues and concerns
• Providing a comfortable means for their voice
• Erasing fear factors which inhibit reporting of vital information

Discretionary effort will become habit (“just the way the day
goes”) as personal relationships improve
Relationship Development
• Just telling a person that he/she is doing a good job
assumes they care about what you think.

• Managers and Supervisors who have good

relationships with their crews tend to have better
results in safety and everything else.
Relationship Development
• People who demonstrate genuine interest and
concern in the success of others are most often
liked, respected, and appreciated.
Relationship Development
• Safety improves through the behavior of people
• Employee behavior is driven by expectations but
most importantly by consequences
• Consequences are delivered more effectively in the
context of good relationships
Relationship Development - Summary
Good relationships drive good safety

“It all came down to employee engagement. It all came down

to recognition. It all came down to leadership, which led to every sailor
feeling ownership and accountability for the results.

You can ask a team to accomplish a mission but you can’t order
excellence.”

–Mike Abrashoff, Commander USS Benfold (retired)

Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment

• Creating and maintaining a safe workplace is the

ultimate responsibility for leadership – They have
the authority

• Companies that are excellent in safety have well-

designed and well executed systems.
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment

• All hazard identification and remediation processes

should have three goals:
1. Resolve hazards efficiently creating a safer workplace;
2. Expand the probability of reporting hazards;
3. Encourage employee commitment and enthusiasm
around safety
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment –

Best Practices
Make reporting easy
• Conversation works best
• Most hazard identification systems involve too much response cost
• For most people paperwork discourages reporting

Best Practice: Let those reporting hazards do so verbally

and have someone else do the paperwork/enter it into the
system.
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment –
Best Practices

• Make one person accountable to document

• If everyone is accountable, then no one is accountable.

Best Practice: Assign one person to be responsible

for the hazard process and make sure that everyone
knows who the go-to person is
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment –
Best Practices
• Transparent Priorities
• Gain input in correcting the issue
• Obtain feedback with results
• Ensure public communication

Best Practice (s):

• Feedback loop established to reporter of issue (Priority, etc.)
• Share public results
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment –
Best Practices
• Publicly display the hazard list.
• Public notice of what was reported and how it was fixed
• Keeps employees informed of progress

Best Practice: Post the hazard list (including date

reported, priority, and projected date of resolution)
on the bulletin boards in common areas.
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment –
Best Practices
• Reporter of issue: Input on resolution
> You get much better results if the person who reports the issue is
made part of the solution.

Best Practice:
(1) Involve the person reporting the hazard in the resolution
(2) Present the potential solutions and involve them in the
selection
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment –
Best Practices
Include financial decision makers
• Equally important is to ensure Leaders managers
know what, why, and how $$$ resources are used

Best Practice: Ensure all leadership is involved in

correction of hazards.
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment –
Best Practices
• Close the feedback loop face-to-face.
• Tailgate talks, group meetings are excellent places to let everyone know
something has been repaired of improved.

• If a person reports a hazard and then doesn’t hear anything about it for
weeks or months, they are much less likely to report hazards in the future.

Best Practice:
1. Create a feedback loop to keep employees informed and
2. Close the loop by verbally with the person who reported
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment –
Best Practices
Publically acknowledge hazard resolution
• This serves as another form of feedback to all performers that hazards are
being resolved.
• It also reduces rumblings that “nothing ever gets fixed around here”

Best Practice:
1. Have those reporting the hazards (not the supervisor or
manager)verbally acknowledge that the hazard has been
addressed.
2. Use group meetings to do so.
Maintaining a Safe Physical Environment –
Best Practices

• Visual display of progress

• Once a hazard is fixed, there is often no reminder that it was ever
there.
• A picture is worth a thousand words

Best Practice:
1. Have graphic displays of hazard resolutions in addition to
public lists of hazards.
2. Use “before and after” boards or programs.
Encouraging Safe Behavior
Encouraging Safe Behavior
• Leaders create the physical and social work
environments within which work is done.

• Like any other kind of system, a change in one area

has ripple effects.

• Often decisions on topics seemingly far removed

from safety, influence safety.
Encouraging Safe Behavior
• If safety is only attended to when there are
problems, then proactive safety activities will
always feel like extra work.

• High-performance safety cultures are those in

which proactive safe behavior review is not
considered extra work, but essential work
 Encouraging Safe Behavior
A conversational driven relationship building Process

1. Budget time to observe and converse (1/2 - 1 hour)

2. Converse to improve not to condemn
3. Consistency is key
Encouraging Safe Behavior
• Communication Processes
> High-performance safety cultures have frequent and
effective methods for communicating about safety (and
everything else). Safety should be discussed daily at all
levels of the organization.
> Face-to-face brief interactions that are either scheduled
or that can and do happen spontaneously are required.
Make such opportunities exist.
Encouraging Safe Behavior
• Peers
• One of the best ways to get peers engaged in more
proactive safety behaviors is for management to
improve the hazard identification and mitigation
process.
Encouraging Safe Behavior
• Work Procedures and Training

> Make sure that your work procedures are concise, well written,
and easy to follow

> Some procedures are very difficult to follow even for a well-
intentioned performer.

> Training to procedures should be focused and well administered

The Process (example)
1. Stand Back and observe. Organize thoughts and
observations (+/-) for conversation.
2. Approach. “Have you got a minute?
Why? Their time is as valuable as yours
3. Start Positive. I noticed you were using proper lift
techniques, I’d like to thank you for that”
Why? Reinforce the positive and kick off a good
conversation
The Process (example)
4. Discuss the challenge(s).
• Focus on the potential result – not the person, i.e., “I don’t want you to get hurt” vs. “why in
heavens name are you doing it that way?”
• Try to have the employees identify the challenge – this makes him/her take ownership
• Discuss safer alternate approaches to eliminate the challenge(s), i.e., “OK, let’s go get the
ladder” / “No problem, let’s go and retrieve a better tool”
• Gain commitment.

5. Ask if they have any questions. Address them as

they come about
6. Thank h/her for their time. “I appreciate your time
and if you have any questions, please let me know”
7. Follow up. Later or the next day.
Measuring Proactive Indicators
Measuring Proactive Indicators
• Positive Accountability
> Positive accountability system that holds people
accountable, not for incident rate, but to eliminate
hazards and prevent accidents
> If you have an effective accountability system for
production, quality, et cetera, then build behavioral
measures of safety into those systems.
Measuring Proactive Indicators
• Positive Accountability
> Accountability requires measurement.

> The measurement tool is less important than the conversation and
relationship
> Measurement simply allows ongoing assessment of impact and
opportunity for adjustment
> When safety meetings and discussions are events separate from other
business, the sense of safety being “extra work” is strengthened. They
should be part of “what we do”
Wrap Up
Wrapping it all up

• Safety is not a separate function. Safely Produce a

Quality Product. Three Legged Stool.
• Developing Relationships. Conversing with employees
is vital to good reporting.
• Encouraging Safe Behavior. Where the activity exists is
where the injury will take place.
• The process to observe, detect, and remove hazards.
Wrapping it all up

Ensure that safety is fully integrated into all aspects

of an operation. A high-performance safety culture is
one where every employee is focused on delivering a
product or service in a productive, quality, cost-
effective, and SAFE way.
In closing
• Questions?