Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/452309
AGGREGATES MANAGER February 2015 38 includes regulations, policies, proce- dures, processes, and accountabilities that all fit under the umbrella of culture. If you want your safety culture to con- tinuously improve, you cannot have a safety system that is static. Expecting to improve your safety culture by following the same playbook that has caused you to plateau or stagnate is, as they say, the definition of insanity. Dr. Petersen suggested that an organization's safety programs and culture have to evolve together. We can use the safety meeting or toolbox process to demonstrate how a flexible safety system can improve the culture. In the aggregates industry, a brief safety talk led by a foreman or supervisor at some frequency is fairly common. What is also fairly common, unfortunately, is that these meetings tend to be "check in the box" activities, and no real value is provided to those who are supposed to benefit from them the most, the frontline employees. The following simplified step-by-step exam- ple demonstrates a proven process that organizations around the world have used to improve existing or create new safety activities. Let's apply it to the "check in the box" safety meetings. 1. Seek out seven to nine volunteers within your organization who are safety-minded and respected by their peers to form a safety team. The majority of the volunteers should be frontline employees, with one or two supervisors. Since safety meetings are meant to keep those closest to the hazards free of harm, they (frontline employees) should have a say in what the safety meetings look like, and since supervisors are typically respon- sible for leading or facilitating those meetings, they, too, should be in- volved in improving the meetings. 2. With this safety team in place, start by finding out what doesn't work with the current safety meeting process. Create a list of complaints, which might contain words or phrases like: boring, repetitive, too short, too long, can't hear, read and sign, no recognition, no employee participation, no management par- ticipation, etc. 3. These documented complaints then become the team's goals. How will we ensure our safety meetings are not boring, that employees partici- pate, and recognition is provided on what we do safely? This is an exercise called "complaint equals goal." The team has identified the current state of the safety meeting process, and now they are tasked with creating the future, desired state by creating solutions to their complaints. In establishing the im- proved safety meeting processes, the team needs to establish defined activities within the process that are clear, specific, and measureable. These become the accountabilities that, if followed, will ensure suc- cess. Each level of the organization must have its own set of defined activities that connect to the levels above and below them. An example of accountabilities for middle man- agement might be to attend and participate in a safety meeting once a month and during weekly su- pervisor meetings ask open-ended questions on how the improved meeting process is going and what differences supervisors are seeing in employee participation. 4. After the safety team has estab- lished the improved safety meeting process, members will report out their efforts to the organization's management team. The manage- ment team, or an existing safety steering team, should provide posi- tive feedback to the safety team and support the improved process through implementation. The process outlined above captures all of Dr. Petersen's Six Criteria of Safety Excellence — engaging all levels of the organization, which is what I call an "engagement-based" safety system. There is much more detail to this con- tinuous improvement approach to safety, but now you have a glimpse of an alter- native process to consider when looking at ways to move your safety culture forward. Be advised, however, that Dr. Petersen cautioned leaders who decided to engage their employees in safety that, "Once employees have begun par- ticipating, it's crucial that management live up to the guidelines it established, or it — and the safety program — will lose all credibility with the employees." The last of Dr. Petersen's Six Crite- ria, #6 – Safety system is positively perceived by the workforce — can be considered the feedback loop. If your employees perceive the safety program or system as positive, it's an indication that the first five criteria are being met. On the contrary, if the perception is negative, then there may be disconnects between various levels of the organiza- tion in how safety is being managed. The best way to gauge perception is to go out and ask, or to conduct a safety perception survey of all employees in your organization, from the production workforce to the president or company owner. If you want to get the same results