Michael M. Williamsen - Delivering Safety Excellence

There was no credibility among the field facility managers that this was “the new normal.” After all, they had never even been evaluated on safety for all the years the company had been in existence. That was until the first quarter payouts occurred! Suddenly there were 40 plant managers wanting to know what to do and how to do it “because money talks.” Even with this significant incentive only four of the managers agreed to put forth the needed efforts to try the new approach in year one. The unit operation of safety culture excellence was a work in progress and they became the necessary developers (guinea pigs) on which to try “all this new safety culture stuff.” At the end of the year, their performance improvement was spectacular. In year two of the new safety culture initiative, seven more plant managers signed up for this accountability, continuous improvement, engagement type of safety culture, and they too did extremely well. However, the remaining plant managers seemed unwilling to take on a safety goal and yet still got ¾ of a good incentive payout, which seemed enough for them without having to go through the hassle of “another corporate program.” Once again, the safety culture improvement team received excellent backing from upper management as senior management issued a decree that went along the lines of “Safety excellence is a condition of employment for you to continue to be an employee of our company.” But it took a fatality and three years of extreme effort on many fronts to get to the managers to all “buy in to” (accept) the program. Clearly, safety incentives were, and still are, a major issue with which organizations need to contend.

In the classic operations, organization safety, if it is a part of the pay plan, it is small or minuscule when compared to the big three. If safety is a part of pay for performance, it is typically focused on the reactive negative effects of injuries, like RIF and workers' compensation payouts. Seldom does the classical safety payout have anything to do with requiring proactive accountabilities by management, frontline employees, and supervision. Mostly, classical safety seems to be viewed as being lucky or unlucky.

This pay roadblock often seems insurmountable. Upper management says it cares about not injuring the employees, but there is no visual or activity based‐evidence, only lip service. The union continues to vocally attack management and demand management personnel and/or attitude changes, but to no avail. How then can Aaron and his team overcome this significant safety improvement barrier?

Aaron considers his options and grows despondent over the impossibility of effective implementation. Why not just be like the rest of the organization and join the complaining group? The Doc warns Aaron that this approach is to no avail other than alienating upper management. In fact, joining the griping culture will hurt his efforts with:

Upper management, since Aaron will become just another of the whiners who helps destroy morale and performance, but does not engage to an extent in what helps improve performance

Supervision, since they have no need, desire, or respect for anyone whose modus operandi is BMW (Bellyache Moan and Whine)

Hourly employees, since those who were trying to help in improving the situation and culture are already overwhelmed by the resisters who for 10+ years have had the upper hand

There is just no value being added to resolving the noticeable shortfalls by joining a group that desires to tear down suggested changes without delivering any of their own appropriate ideas or plans for implementing the many needed improvements . The Doc warns that joining the BMW group would likely be a fatal career decision for Aaron. The Doc mentions that in his past job situations he has made some poor decisions which came back to bite him. Each time he did so, the result was the Doc got to “eat his own plate of dirt.” He tried to make sure he learned these lessons so he didn't have to eat the same plate of dirt twice. Aaron shudders at the plate of dirt analogy yet is thankful for the good counsel .

There has been a very recent CEO change which brought in a new leader, Craig. In last week's staff meeting Craig outwardly publicized his belief that personnel safety is the number one item on his agenda. Aaron makes an appointment to meet with Craig .

1 1 First used in the comic strip “Pogo,” by Walt Kelly, in the 1960s.

Aaron thinks about his future with his struggling company as he wrestles with what kind of future awaits him. After all the frustrations, discussions, ups and downs, Aaron decides it is his turn to be completely committed. At this moment Aaron's decision means he needs to take responsibility for developing a strong safety department that can both serve and lead the needs of his company's safety, health and environmental issues. However, all of the above are not looking all that great at this moment in time. He considers the recent coaching he has received and how this can help him move forward with the daunting challenges that his commitment to stay, serve, and excel will require of himself and those who work with him .

Aaron's next gut check is not all that encouraging. The Doc talked to him about leaders, followers, and resisters. In a weak safety culture it seems: leaders go to more important jobs, followers follow them, resisters and poor performers are put in safety where they can be hidden. Indeed, this is Aaron's lot in the life as a safety manager in an organization which only gives lip service to safety. This too had been the Doc's experience with the Fortune 20 company trying to dig their way out of the poor safety culture hole.

Aaron pulls up his consultation notes and reflects on what the Doc refers to as a unit operation called excellent safety culture performance, but which safety societies often think of as one of a number of normal safety processes. As with any other unit operation/normal safety process, there is an ongoing dynamic of many moving parts:

Each of the number of individual process steps must be done well.

All these moving parts must fit together if an organization is to achieve anything that has a chance of putting an end to a culture of mediocrity.

Any attitude of “good enough” or “close enough” is a death knell to achieving anything in which people of the organization want to commit to delivering world‐class performance.

What are the necessary steps to achieve safety culture excellence? Aaron noted extreme shortfalls in: management commitment, leadership involvement for hourly and salaried personnel, training, engagement, near miss, etc. ad infinitum. But which one(s) do you lead with? There is just too much to do with not sufficient resources, and everything needs to be done now.

There is the additional complication that over the years a weak culture seems to reward poor performing salaried employees by not requiring much in the way of anything which even remotely approaches excellence. As a result, the status quo momentum of “good enough” drags down one part of the organization after another. This type of vicious negative cycle is especially true in a company like the one where Aaron works. Aaron faces daily frustrations as ER (Employee Relations department) sets hurdles that take forever for Aaron to overcome as he tries to resolve the poor performance of the few bad apples who drag down the overall performance of the entire group. So where to start? Aaron decides to take on a challenge required for his success. With this decision he commits himself to successfully navigating all the ER and interpersonal challenges required to shed himself of his worst bad apple person. If the safety department is to move forward this is Aaron's personal “must solve” challenge.