You might have noticed that I have not posted a blog in a month or so. I felt that in the new situation we are in with COVID19, the discussion of “world class safety” should be paused for a while. That left, though, a void of what I would discuss. I gave it a month to see how life would change with the new wellness protocols that are in place. The situation put me in a unique position that I now feel is worth discussing.

I currently work for an e-commerce company. With so many people being at home, e-commerce is booming. The company is in an interesting situation in which we need to hire many people across the entirety of the USA all while keeping them safe and well. In the new abnormal of COVID19, there was a needed amount of creativity of how to bring people into the company, meet regulations, and do it on a national scale.

Part of the creativity was the creation of a virtual new hire orientation [VNHO]. From a safety standpoint, it had to be facilitated to allow interaction, questions, and feedback live as part creating a compliant and effective learning experience. Around this same time, I was moved into a new role as a safety liaison for learning, communications, and projects. This began my journey of teaching 12 VNHO classes per week.

When it first began, dedicating 36+ hours a week to repeating the same presentation over and over became disheartening. Over 15 years ago when I first started my journey in safety, annual and new hire safety training was one of my primary items. Since that time, most safety training was delegated or performed by someone else. I was not the primary person for safety-focused training. I was thinking “why me?”. “How is it that after all these years, I am back to where I began. Repeating the same message over and over.”

One morning, I woke to do more training and began the same lament of “why me.” I am still not sure why or how [I have my theories], but my thought changed to “why not me”. That was my breakthrough moment! Who else should be welcoming all these new hires to the organization and prepping them with the knowledge and tools to work safely? I am the one that spent years of my life studying how to make lecture training meaningful to employees. This is exactly where I need to be. It is time to put all that knowledge to work. It is time to use all those theories to make something useful. It is time to do my very best to give these new team members the best learning experience I can provide. Who else would be better equipped with the title, knowledge, and experience other than me? The answer was clear, it was time to put my money where my mouth was, to put the rubber to the road, to pull out all the stops. . . to do my job the best way I know how.

In these strange and trying times, I was fortunate to learn this lesson. It is not “why me”. It is about “why not me”

One of the more interesting conversations that a safety profesional enters into from time-to-time is that of world class safety. This statement is used as part of an interview where the company is attempting to attract a better than average safety person or as part of a generic statement that makes the company sound marketable to the masses. It seems that the term world-class is thrown out a lot in many different aspects and scopes.

What I find most amusing is the idea that when someone outside of the safety profession says they want a world class safety program, it usually means they want one that meets basic OSHA compliance. Given the condition of many companies’ stance to safety that might be a very true statement. World class may be just simply meeting basic compliance. I once knew of a manager who stated that OSHA was the Cadillac of safety programs. He was looking for more of a Toyota. *heavy sigh*

I tend to believe that world class is more than OSHA compliance. A company should not use that term unless they really plan to put the money, time, and energy into that process. There are a few statistics that define world class. A couple of really large scale safety consulting firms have created the metrics and have the data to help support what drives the top 5% of all safety performing organizations. The data gives some strong indicators but I am still a skeptic at heart. I know that the methods of evaluating injuries goes back to the OSHA 300 log and the OSHA incident rate. This is a metric that can be deceiving and deceived.

What I do believe is that world class is based on a simple principle, is the company really looking out for the best interests of their workers? The data definitely shows the truth in this principle. Case studies about safety progress and turn-arounds show the same. It really is about caring about the team. A company that is really striving for world class is looking beyond compliance. They are looking for ways they can better protect and adapt to their employees’ needs

One of the first principles of world class is a functional safety committee. I have read many articles and attended various conferences that talk about what makes a great safety committee. A safety committee can lead many positive activities for a company. It is the voice of the employee, an advocate for projects, a sounding board for ideas, a public relations group, and so much more. One of the first items most companies talk about when they approach their idea of world class is starting a safety committee. My response is always, “Great! What is the committee’s capital and expense budget?” *wide eyed, mouth open, astonishment* “Budget?” They say, “we were not wanting to spend anything.”

So the not so long journey to world class begins and ends

As we enter the year, my plan is to continue this look at world class. What it is and what it is not. How do we begin the journey? What are some of the basic ideas of focusing on our employees and that real long-term, never-ending process that leads to real world class safety programs.

When someone says safety culture, what comes to mind?

Methods?

Systems?

Behaviors?

People?

Standardization?

I was recently at a conference with some peers and a great discussion started about global, organizational culture. I do have to note, I loved the way they talked about their company culture, not just safety culture. Safety was conveyed as an integral piece of the overall culture. In other words, they had no company culture without safety. 

The discussion was focused around creating a system that would create a company culture for their global network. Also, the company had been around for decades. So, they were a highly diverse company. They wanted everyone to use the basic tools, principles, and essentially speak the same cultural language of their company. The basic idea was to take that amazing diversity and create a single culture that could function in synchrony. Their goal was not to take away from the diversity but to use it to sculpt what would become the organizational culture. 

This is what got me to think more about culture across this scale. Can there be nuances of culture (specifically for me the safety component)?

Safety culture is like any other cultural component. It can be based on so many people based factors: location, age, education, and so many more. From the creation of a safety culture standpoint, this is where I feel we fail as companies. The company is driven by a laser focus on lean mentality to standardize. So much so sometimes that the tools and processes are forcefully integrated into the culture. They forget that lean is about having tools to eliminate waste and using the right tool for the right process. The local culture is not a waste. It is something that needs the right tool to be applied. 

Here is a rough example. The idea of peer-to-peer observations has always been a tremulous path. So often, it is not used or implemented in a way that reaches its full potential. If a culture of the location or region is one that does not bode well to that type of interaction, why force it? There are other observation and hazard recognition tools available that can be just as effective.

I love the story of a very dynamic supervisor I worked with. He was amazing. He loved uplifting his people. He was very handshake, high-five, pats on the back, energetic leadership. There was a subset of our team that culturally did not like to be touched. He had to adapt his energy to their culture. And he did! And he continued to be super successful! He did not force his method. He used other motivational tools to achieve the same goal. The overall company culture of inclusive and positive leadership was fully working. There was a nuance to the culture. 

So, how do you create the organizational culture and still allow you sites, regions, and people to maintain their culture? There is no silver bullet approach, but there are some basic principles that will help.

1. Create a cultural vision statement, and use it as the litmus test.

2. Teach the tools. Expect the right tools to be used. Don’t expect the same tool to be used everywhere

3. Focus the culture on embracing problem-solving and continuous improvement.

4. Talk to the front line employees about culture regularly and ask if it is working

5. Invest in training and reinforcing the principles and tools of the culture

Culture is the culmination of the people that make up the workplace. A company should have a company culture and should work to educate and reinforce that culture. The organization should also remember that cultures have little differences that make them special. These differences should be inclusive to the culture and embrace those aspects of the people.