You need to communicate huge amounts of information in your business. Making people page through information they don’t need to get to the things you they do need to know on your schedule is an exercise in futility. You can push headlines at people and even require them follow up and read the details, but you can’t force information they don’t need into them. When I watch a DVD, I am forced to see the anti-piracy warnings and disclaimers – now in four languages. The skip forward function is disabled. But they can’t force me to read them. I don’t intend to pirate DVDs, so it is not relevant to me. We need to understand that if people believe too much of our communication is irrelevant to them, they’ll at a minimum be frustrated trying to get the information they do need. With safety communications, too many people may believe too many safety practices can be winged. So while I end up watching the DVD after the anti-piracy messages, our people may decide they don’t need to hang in for the information that really is relevant to their safety. We must allow them freedom to filter.

Communication is not the same as training. Do not put training into your regular communications; put it into training sessions. Reminder snippets or extracts from training can certainly be good communication, but if you cloud your communications strategy by trying to accomplish your training, you won’t accomplish either.

*I didn’t invent this analogy, but I can’t remember where I came across it. So to whoever did invent it, thanks!

On the other hand, even the same basic message, for instance Hazard Anticipation, needs to be varied frequently enough to get people’s attention. A safety team can come up with hundreds of ways to illustrate the point. Pictograms showing the key points of an incident or near miss are excellent topical communications until they turn yellow. (Tip: do not let bureaucrats dictate a standard format. Content is what matters here. Formalizing simply makes a simple tool- this/not this – a pain.)  If you don’t want to or don’t have the means to do it internally, there are lots of companies that provide a subscription type of service, sending new posters every month.

Most motivational communications need variety. In a previous post, I cited a best practice where a business had their people’s children create safety posters. These were also celebrated and a source of pride, but this team went even further. They made the children’s safety posters into calendars. The posters therefore would be refreshed every month. They would not be destined to fade into the wallpaper.

One plant laminated charts they had used to analyze group norms around safety culture. These were celebrated and also a source of pride. But eventually, they were historical – yesterday’s news – and the team realized they needed to be refreshed. Not a problem; a healthy safety culture never stops analyzing its group norms. When this plant looked at safety posters, the first thought was “that’s us”. These are the best posters money can’t buy.

If you read the previous section, maybe you think I don’t get this part. Fact of the matter is: it’s hard to do. But it must be done. Digressing to my procedures peeve again, I’ve been told many times by operations people, essentially that whatever’s in the communication, it’s too long and they don’t have the time to read it. Here the technology can help – you can’t make a scrolling message board message too long. With other media though, you must be concise. One way to do this is called toplining.

That is, using a deductive format:

• what’s the headline? (Men In Tyvek)
• what do I have to do? (Personnel must stay out of the taped-off areas.)
• what’s the short version? (Contractors will be in the [something] area for [whatever] this Thursday through Saturday. They will be wearing protective suits. The area will be taped off and there is no risk to our people.)
• background / what if I want to know more? (See your supervisor or EHS representative.)

This format allows people to quickly decide if they need even know this and what to do, or just go about their business.

Another example:

• Changing Group Norms – Mentoring
  • The second shift Gloppita-gloppita Department is adopting a new norm of assigning a mentor to new personnel. The mentor will work with the new person during their first time operating gloppita furnace and will act as the new person’s contact for any safety questions.
  • If you are interested in serving as a new person mentor, please see the second shift Safety Culture Team. The Safety Leadership Team will be asking for feedback on possibly implementing this norm in the rest of the operation. Please let your safety rep know what you think.
  • The second shift Safety Culture Team identified an unsatisfactory norm that it was ok to operate the furnace without full confidence because it wasn’t clear that asking for help would be welcomed.

Presumably, the headline will arouse curiosity. In this example, people from outside the second shift Gloppita-gloppita Department, could ignore this message as not pertinent to them, or consider it for investigation or implementation in their area.

The point of these examples is they are concise. On a CCTV monitor, they could be read in seconds.

Culture is our set of basic assumptions and beliefs about reality. Culture influences or determines the way we make decisions, feel, think and act.[1] or:

“The product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behavior that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organization’s health and safety management”[2]

Those are some very broad-based definitions. They pretty much cover everything – after  “the way we make decisions, feel, think and act”, what’s left? Well, nothing. That’s why culture is 80-90% of what drives workplace safety and why without addressing culture, all the work on procedures, policies, training, etc., important as they are, gets marginal results.

How about an Informal definition:

Some people define it as “what happens when no one is watching” (third shift, away from the offices, at a customer site, etc.)

Safety Culture is Not:

Safety Culture is not a better set of procedures or policies. It is not better training. It is not new PPE or better equipment. All those things can have an effect on culture, and if we can’t have good procedures, equipment and training, it certainly is hard to have a credible safety culture. But even if all those items are the best in the world, that’s only 10% of the whole picture.

Assumptions and Beliefs:

Let’s go back to the formal definition – assumptions and beliefs about reality. What kind of beliefs lead to an unsafe culture? Do people believe that it is basically a dangerous job and some injuries are bound to happen no matter what we do? Do people believe that we can’t compete if we do everything the safe way? Do some people believe their boss would rather not know if they take some safety shortcuts, as long as they don’t get hurt and it gets the job done on time and in budget? Do some people believe that even if they bring up a safety concern, it won’t be taken care of anyway? These are real beliefs, expressed by real craft people at real business. And these are the kinds of beliefs that can get people hurt, crippled or killed.

How about healthy safety culture beliefs?  Do people believe that the most important thing on the job is staying safe and that nothing the company makes, services or sells is worth sacrificing their back, their hand, their eye, their finger? Do people believe that their boss would rather miss the ship date or go over budget than see them get hurt? Do people believe their boss has the support of his bosses and if everything possible was done to meet the budget and deadline, but it wasn’t safe, that we’ll miss this time, but find ways to do it safely for the next time? Are people proud that people work for a company that never sacrifices safety for money?

Finding Out

Think about what assumptions exist where you work and what assumptions your employees have about safety there. When you’re done thinking about it, realize that, whatever you think, there’s a very good chance you’re wrong. Sorry, you probably don’t have the time to keep tabs on a significant portion of your employees’ assumptions and beliefs about safety. I had thirty employees reporting to me. What does Mr. Pareto tell you about where my energies went? What’s worse is your employees don’t really know about the organization’s beliefs and assumptions either. They work on a limited set of data too, and it is usually influenced by the “tyranny of the articulate”.

This is where a validated formal assessment is necessary. Time after time, upon showing the group the results of the assessment, managers are amazed at the disconnects between what they believed employees believed. And time after time, employees are surprised at what their co-workers really believed.

[2] U.K. Health and Safety Commission

What’s the worst example of this in safety communications? In my opinion, it is very often the “New Employee Orientation”. I know of companies that spend many hours in “intensive” safety training on an employee’s first day, give them a 200 page safety manual and expect them to know all they need (or most of it) at 7 am the next day. With immediate JIT reinforcement, this might be ok, but many companies have no real mentoring or buddy system to follow through. It’s dangerous and strains credibility when they then talk about safety culture.

Second worst are probably badly written procedures. As though one can write a procedure like a bad novel and expect it to have any utility, they probably at least make the legal department happy. But, people being able to refer to it and pull out useful information that is needed right now, that seems to have been an afterthought at best.

Enough griping; what are the best examples of JIT communications? Job Safety Analyses (JSA) are among the best if done right. That means they are immediately available for reference, are not cluttered with extraneous “information” and are owned by the operators. By owned, I mean the operators created them and maintain them, within the bounds of the organization’s policies. Even better is having the JSA built into the job’s planning.

Computer applications that incorporate the safety information needed for the job are ideal – again, assuming they are not cluttered. Clutter is a real hazard and requires every contributor to be brutal editors. If you’ve ever been involved in a new system rollout, you may have experienced the crush by all departments to get their needs into it. That problem aside, having PPE specified in the job planning, links to the MSDS involved at each step, approach distances for electrical work, etc. allows users the ability to get the information they need without weeding through information they don’t need. It is an excellent way to make the safety information Just-In-Time. Think about how you get information from the internet – you click links you want to follow up, when you want to.

For safety awareness subjects, topical announcements (such as updates on incident investigations, corrective actions, etc.) can be placed into scrolling message boards, CCTV messages, or announced at shift-start meetings. The topical messages need to be distinguished from regular ongoing reinforcement messages. That’s easy enough in a standup verbal presentation, but more challenging using electronic technologies.

Next time: Rule 2: Bite-sized

AQ=Audience Quotient.  E.g., a potential audience of All = no. employees at the shop.

FQ=Frequency Quotient.  E.g., Daily Frequency FQ = No. days per year.

CQ = Communication Quotient (Higher is better)

MBWA=Management By Walking Around

OPM=Operations Management

ST=Safety Team

SLT=Safety Leadership Team

This is obviously not all inclusive. One best practice I’ve seen is wearing “Remind Me” buttons. This was where a culture recognized it had a problem with people reminding each other about safety. In that case, “remind me” translated to “I care about my safety, appreciate your concern and promise not to snap your head off for pointing out a risky situation or behavior.” The buttons sent a clear communication that:

• they recognized an unhealthy culture norm;
• were willing to consciously try to change the unhealthy norm for a healthy one

It was cheap and very effective. It was also thought up and developed by the group. In every effort at culture change, the most effective are the ones that are “uncommanded”.

Getting It Done

Once the communications plan is established, we need to provide a means for keeping at it. Again, leaving it to chance isn’t going to work. The other demands of the business will continuously crowd it out. A simple spreadsheet such as the one below can be used.

” I used to bring up safety issues, but nothing ever seemed to get done.” Maybe you hear that. Probably only if you ask. If you hear it, or if you just wonder why few employees do bring up safety issues, it’s one of a few things: things don’t get done, the wrong things get done or yes they do, but they’re not appreciated. If it’s the first, obviously there is a leadership culture problem. If the second, then there needs to be a system to review actions as a team. It is the last possibility that I have observed most often and want to address here.

Over and over in facilitating Culture Change sessions, I have heard from employees that nothing seems to get done. That is immediately followed by the management that yes, lots of things get done. It doesn’t matter if safety issues are being taken care of, if employees believe they aren’t. Perception is reality! I often tested the belief by getting the group to do an accomplishments inventory. I grabbed a marker and challenged them to give me a safety concern that has been fixed. It starts out slowly, but invariably a momentum kicked in and the list grew until the flipchart was full. Then everyone would be amazed at how much has been accomplished. (I learned to do this close to the beginning of sessions, so no one gets to feel smug, would have to retract statements or otherwise save face.)

What’s Going On Here?

Again; failure to communicate. It happens. Things happen so fast that once one problem is solved people move on to the challenge in front of them. That’s business. The thing we just fixed fades into the background. The only exceptions are the big very visible changes – the big shiny new gloppeta-gloppeta machine that eliminated all the old hazards we had to deal with. Most of the time though it’s “what have you done for me today?”

 Sometimes, a solution takes a while to spec out, purchase, fabricate, install, etc. If that solution is to an issue I raised a month ago, do I know the current status? That would at least let me know it’s in process. Do I even ask what the status is? (If I do and the answer is a convoluted version of “we forgot”, that’s another issue.) If it’s delayed, is the delay communicated? In the context of business, if the rest of your culture is pretty healthy, people will understand some delay, provided it not imminent hazard stuff. (Unless “it’s delayed” is code for “it’s been blown off.”)

What To Do

Obviously communicate the status of ongoing projects. But also celebrate the completed ones. It doesn’t have to be Times-Square-New-Year’s-Eve stuff, but might just be a standard review in the Safety Meetings and a mention in the usual communications channels. The bigger the accomplishment, the bigger the celebration. Like all safety communications, it has to be planned – built-in.

The last thing your culture needs is a belief that safety issues don’t get addressed because they don’t. The second to last thing, is a belief that safety issues don’t get addressed – when they do!

Today’s Caution Flag

I cringe every time I’m in a staff meeting and during the incident discussion, someone exclaims “What were they thinking?” or ” We’ve told them a million times!”. Sometimes, “what were they thinking” is followed by comments including phrases like “checked their brains at the gate”, etc. These two statements are inter-related, but let’s take them one at a time.

What were they thinking? Clearly, not what you wanted them to think. In my experience though, they were thinking and didn’t just check the brains at the gate. It may have been very quick and ultimately wrong, but we probably know what they were thinking: it won’t get me; the risk is not worth going to all the trouble, taking the time, derision from co-workers, hassle from the supervisor if it goes over schedule or budget; or, it won’t get me and I just want to get this over with faster.

“We’ve told them a million times!” Really? By comparison, how many times have we told them: how tough the market is; how we need to cut cycle (and by the way, cycle has been cut and everyone needs to figure out how to meet it); how we need to cut costs? After what we’ve told them, what did they see and hear? Does their work-group have a means of telling each other, to be, how to be and what to do if they can’t be safe? Even if we’ve told them a million times, were we as convincing as the things they see, like headlines of layoffs, closures, or just the count of their co-workers compared to last year? How about co-workers who take the same safety shortcut and never get  hurt?

No Reproach

This happens as an unfortunate side-effect of the complexity of the business environment. The crises at hand crowd out the absolute need for safe behavior at all times.

What To Do

• Education: We need to educate the workforce on how Safety Culture and Group Norms develop.
• Training, facilitating and empowerment: We can’t just educate employees about culture and tell them “now git-r-done”. Employees have to have the skills and tools to change.
• Leadership: The business’s leadership has to make the time and provide the support for the empowered employees to be successful. That means responding to safety concerns and improvement ideas immediately and following through. That also means planning it into operations. If it’s an afterthought, that will be loud and clear. The good news is that the longer the healthy norms operate and the deeper the healthy culture is embedded, the more autonomously it works. It’s an investment. It’ll always need tune ups, but once it becomes a seamless part of business operations, it pays off big.

In terms of volume, safety communications will always be at a disadvantage versus most of the other required business communications. I don’t mean loudness; I mean amount. It’s hard to imagine any business startup that begins with the idea that we’ll have a really good safety program and then figure out what we’ll make, service or sell. That emphasis on what we sell can only be minimized at risk to the business’ viability. So, ninety percent of the day-to-day, hour-by-hour communications will be  on schedule, delivery, cost, and the immediate challenges of doing what we do – and oh, by the way, “be safe” gets squeezed in. Unless the problem of volume is understood and dealt with, that’s just the way it’ll go. Unless safety communication is Planned, Deliberate and Checked for effectiveness, the message on safety gets drown out. Remember the David Hume quote: “The strong image is the image believed”.

How many great safety communications ideas have you run across? If you get around much, you’ve probably seen lots of safety scoreboards announcing how many days since the last lost time or recordable accident. These are excellent at communicating commitment, reminding everybody how important safety is and showing pride. Unless, of course, they are not maintained and not updated since three managements or three safety teams ago came up with the idea.

Have you heard the idea of starting every meeting with safety? If so, is it a good quality discussion or just a rehashing of the last accident (usually accompanied with comments like “what were they thinking? or “we’ve told them a million times”)? How are the posters – fresh, changed regularly, relevant to the work being done? What goes on in safety meetings or during the safety topic in other meetings – meaningful discussion with results? How about that message “Safety Is Our Top Priority!” – is it believed?

Done properly, these are great individual elements of a communications effort, but individually, they are not a plan or strategy. Since most employees didn’t take up safety as a trade, or go to school for safety, or (hopefully) have not had some incident in their lives that has programmed them to really think safety first, it doesn’t usually come first. That is a norm that has to be created. Maybe in the long run I have to brush my teeth to survive, but the more immediate concern is eating. The brushing though, is a well communicated norm – so well in fact that it has become so habitual that it requires next to no thought. Getting a culture for whom working safely is so habitual that people do it naturally and can’t imagine not, takes the three elements of a effective communications. Effective communication: uses every medium, is frequent, and is repetitive. Let’s take each of those individually.

Every Medium

“Different folks, different strokes” certainly applies to how people receive information. Depending on their psychological makeup, upbringing, education, generational culture, what works for me, may be ineffective to the point of invisibility to the next person. Some people are very graphically oriented and love pictures, flow charts and maps. They may go unconscious when faced with a long text procedure or check lists. (For those so inclined, a mind map of this subject is attached.) On the other hand, I’ve seen people just shut down when faced with a mind-map. They need something much differently structured, like check lists, specifications, etc. Need is often not an overstatement with both types!

Some people will walk past a dutifully maintained bulletin board for years and its existence not even register. Others will read every word on it and know as soon as something is updated. Message boards and posters are a good way to get short messages to a lot of people, but some people won’t even notice them. The scoreboard at the entrance and the banners proclaiming the commitment to safety are good reminders as people enter each day and there’s not much downside to them unless they’re not credible.  I’ve run across many employees who are aware of the scoreboard but don’t know what a “recordable injury” means.

Emails as communication have some very specific ways to be effective, and many ways in which they are a complete loss. In addition to the information retention afforded by a written form, concise emails allow the recipient to prioritize any actions required and take the time to fully understand. This is not always the case in face-to-face verbal communication. In the case though, where immediate impact and immediate feedback are paramount, face-to-face is infinitely better.

Who’s communicating may be extremely important depending on what level of culture health exists in the organization. At first, for credibility, more frequent communications from senior leadership should be planned . Later, as people are more confident in the group norms and organizational commitment, more faces on the communications will help get the messages across. Of course peer communications are essential, but management must not simply shunt the responsibility to employees until the organization is completely confident that the peers are empowered to truly speak for the organization. In one organization I know of, they even got the employees’ children to help by creating safety posters, which were proudly displayed throughout the workplace.

 The last medium I’ll cover here (there are many more) is the communication of meetings, celebrations, rallies and other employee get-togethers. Effective meetings communicate not only explicit messages but group cohesion. It’s probably hard to have an ineffective celebration, but it can be done. There are myriad validated processes for having effective meetings, yet too many meetings:

• experience absences of the right people (shows lack of commitment/caring – whether you like it or not);
• fail to make decisions;
• get too easily sidetracked (what’s the mission?);
• don’t tolerate or can’t accommodate free exchange of ideas (got ground rules?)

When this happens, there is clear communication that says “we don’t care”. This message spreads like Kudzu in Georgia – except it is easy to prevent. These days there is no excuse for serial bad meetings – occasionally with quick recovery is normal; three in a row usually means doom. Remember: “Actions speak louder than words.” You must put thought and effort into making meetings effective. People in a room with coffee and donuts doesn’t make a business meeting, and it sure doesn’t communicate credibility.

 On the subject of actions that speak louder than words, one action that is indispensible but drives a lot of passions and is volatile if not done well, is insisting on following the safety rules. I avoid the words enforcement and discipline here, because they carry so much baggage. You don’t need to resort to disciplinary action except when all else fails. However, people usually want to work in a just culture. I have heard numerous times from line employees, in cultures where “disciplinary action” is extremely incendiary, that they strongly resent it when they follow all the rules, but see others flaunt them without consequence.

 Enforcement is a topic for much more in-depth consideration, but what stronger statement of commitment and caring is there than insisting on following safety rules? Who wants confrontation? There may be hard feelings, in many organizations the effort is procedurally or bureaucratically undercut and it may be much easier to just turn a blind eye. But at best, the message communicated is “I don’t really care about people’s safety – not all of them anyway – or not compared to getting the job done.” It seems obvious that it needs to be done consistently and fairly, even if later the effort is undercut by the bureaucracy, but it will be extremely challenging  if the message “we care unless it’s too much trouble” and “we allow double standards” infects your safety culture. The majority will recognize the right thing is being done.

 Frequent

Effective meetings don’t have to take over your business, but effective communication has to be part of its fabric. Think about the problem statement. You want every person to ask themselves “what’s the safe way to do this?” before they start every task and “what else needs to be done to make the job safer?” – all the time. Is it reasonable to believe this can be accomplished with occasional reminders? Any effective communications campaign must include planning for how to keep the message fresh. When up against overwhelming odds (90% production / maybe 10% safety – or insert your own numbers, but you know it’s not the inverse) you need every bit of the people’s available attention to get the belief ingrained. A sign at the gate, a few minutes at the start of a “real” meeting, an occasional blurb in the company newspaper, won’t do it. One thing this means is the supervisors need to be very involved. My immediate boss drives my priorities. If his message to me is “git-r-done”, leaving the safety, not only in my control, but at my discretion, then my motivation can become very simplistic. That is:

1. he doesn’t talk about safety;
2. “git-r-done” can’t be any clearer;
3. if I have to choose between doing something the safe way even if it means not gitt’n-r-done and taking that safety shortcut where I know “it won’t get me” and I will git-r-done, that’s an easy call. Heck I might even get a pat on the back for gitt’n-r-done and doing it safely! (assuming it didn’t get me). He won’t know about the shortcuts unless I have to report an injury.

 Repetitive

I would like my wife to believe I love her. I’m sure I told her that many years ago and it’s probably documented somewhere. If I were to rely on that (perfectly logical!) belief, I’m pretty sure I have had to write that in the past tense. Remember: “The strong image is the image believed”.  She’s no dummy. She doesn’t have memory problems. Neither are your company’s people. It is just positive reinforcement. Perhaps in the beginning of developing  your healthy safety culture, it is what you want people to believe. But assuming you are working on all the other aspects of your safety culture, over some time, it will become what they believe.

 Sound like selling soap? True, advertisers certainly are repetitive (because it works), but reframe it to something you passionately believe in. Do you tell people about it every chance you get? Does your business have any problem with repeating (a lot) that you need to be more efficient, cut cycle time, improve quality? Here’s one to repeat as often as possible: “I care about your safety” or “nothing we do is worth you getting hurt!”

 All this assumes of course, you are working the rest of your culture. Here’s a message for you as a leader: you can’t choose to have a culture or not; you can only choose whether you want it to be healthy.

©Stonewater Consulting, LLC, 2010 All Rights Reserved

The second assumption is on the part of the employee being assigned the work. Specifically, “my supervisor must realize the risks involved with the task or that we haven’t really thought the risks through. So, he must expect me to take my chances. I haven’t been hurt yet. I’m pretty skilled and careful, so I guess I can do it.” The employee does a quick assessment of his or her incentives and disincentives  (P.O. the supervisor, slow the job down, risk being labeled a whiner, etc.) and sets out to work without raising the concern.

Here we have a perfect communication breakdown. The hazards are not brought up. Both parts of the equation are balanced. Then when the employee “makes do”, without the fall protection, the multi-meter, the lift equipment, the crane or help from another employee, we’re playing the odds, which just tilted away from our favor.

This perfect breakdown really works. If something goes wrong and the employee gets hurt, the employee can claim the supervisor knew darn well what he was setting up. The supervisor will be able to exclaim “why didn’t you say something?!” Perhaps the worst outcome for the safety culture though, is the case where no one get hurt this time. In fact, if no one gets hurt, it’s very likely everyone involved will be rewarded for a job well done – on time and on budget! The dysfunctional system and complacency about safety is reinforced, no knowledge or skill is gained in avoiding hazards, and trust in the commitment to safety takes another hit.

As I’ve noted before, I don’t believe in, and my experience has never confirmed “evil-doers” in safety culture. Of all the hundreds of supervisors/managers I’ve worked with, I’ve yet to meet one that really doesn’t care if employees get hurt. I’ve also never met any employees that really wanted to risk injury for spite. Organizational cultures create this kind of breakdown. The culture that leads the supervisor to despair of having enough time, materials and manpower, and rewards output while turning a blind eye to the risks taken to achieve that output, create it. The culture that leads employees to fear being ostracized for risking the deadline or budget over a safety issue, that rewards risk-taking employees as the “good guys”, or insidiously conditions employees to believe it risks everyone’s  jobs if they take the time and expense to do the job safely, create it. The organization forces the players into the assumptions and when something goes wrong, forces them into the finger pointing that follows. It makes both take positions they know are disingenuous forcing them down a path of further distrust.

What to do:

Time after time, one of the most favored safety improvement projects among employees is planning safety into the job. To work, this planning has to be built into the workday. It really should start at the proposal stage. It has to be formalized to the extent of being on the critical path – no safety planning, no work. For predictable tasks, it should be built into the planning documentation. Then, there has to be an acceptance of stopping and solving when something unanticipated comes up. There is no excuse for an organization putting its supervisors and employees in the no-win position of having to choose to risk safety or risk punishment (formal or informal) for not getting the job done.

©Stonewater Consulting, LLC, 2010