Yesterday, we talked about employee involvement in safety programs. Today, we focus on safety leadership. No matter how engaged employees are, there can be no successful safety program without full participation of management.
Dr. Terry McSween has developed a five-stage patented process he calls Values-Based Safety® that identifies leader behaviors essential for positive safety change. McSween is president of Quality Safety Edge (www.qualitysafetyedge.com), a Texas-based consulting firm.
1. Create alignment. Alignment means that behaviors and actions of everyone involved are consistent with and reflect the importance of safety in the organization. Alignment is about what leaders say and do and the decisions they make.
2. Communicate value for safety. Strong leaders consistently convey key messages that describe their vision, commitment, and expectations.
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3. Build support. McSween’s three-part formula for building support includes: (1) providing compelling information about the need for change; (2) making a clear request for actions, and (3) creating a contingency system that supports and reinforces actions.
4. Monitor the process. Evaluation is essential for assessing whether safety is becoming internalized. Evaluation can be built into staff meetings and ongoing management reviews and can include specific milestone reviews. Focus groups, surveys, and case studies are among the tools. McSween says ongoing evaluation is a hedge against programs becoming weaker over time.
5. Shape and reinforce behavior. Safety leaders are tasked with shaping the behavior of the team and the behavior of other leaders. This can take many forms, including asking direct reports to share safety success stories, providing positive feedback, and recognition for improvement, regularly thanking employees for specific efforts, and participating in celebrations.
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Compliance Is Our Middle Name
The information we presented today and yesterday is just a small sample of the wealth compliance reports, enforcement action, safety tips, and breaking news about workplace safety and health available all year around in BLR’s OSHA Compliance Advisor.
Safety professionals have depended on this twice-monthly newsletter for more than 2 decades, taking advantage of such features as:
— The latest OSHA and NIOSH news, court rulings, and proposed rules
— Compliance Report, with case studies of how promising ideas have been put to work
— Trainer’s Corner, providing practical, actionable tips to clue your workers in on safety
— Washington Watch, offering an advance look at what’s coming down the compliance pike so that you can be ready when it comes
— From the States summary, presenting little-publicized state regs that often trump the federal
— SafetyWorks monthly reproducible handouts for employees, ready to copy and distribute
— EHS & Your Business insert. A quarterly insert that provides a ready-to-use “selling package” to bring senior management on board with your safety plans, using language they can relate to.
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