Exposing Reality

Today, many organizations are interested in improving safety performance.  It has become common knowledge that traditional regulatory compliance-based "safety programs" simply will not produce results of excellence. To achieve world-class performance in safety, organizations must integrate safety into the work process through the development and nurturing of a proactive safety culture.

To get different results, we have to do things differently. As Einstein once said, "There is no more sure sign of insanity than doing the same things over and over and expecting different results". Unfortunately, too many organizations try to improve safety performance by simply doing more inspections, more training, and more investigations. This also holds true in the way that safety gets measured.  It is truly amazing how even forward-thinking organizations who strive to build proactive safety cultures tend to continue measuring safety effectiveness by the use of lagging indicators.

Downstream or lagging indicators usually consist of OSHA Recordable Incidence Rates, Lost Workday Case Rates, Cost Per Work-hour, etc. In reality, these are merely measures of an organization's safety failures. It is important to understand that no one achieves excellence by measuring failures. As the great researcher and author Dan Petersen states, Measuring the effectiveness of safety programs usually becomes an assessment of accident statistics. This is basically an exercise in measuring luck".

To these organizations, I can only say, GET REAL !!!!!!!

If one assumes that culture building is key to improving safety performance, it follows that one must measure the things that drive and strengthen a safety culture rather than process failures.

For those who are interested in developing safety cultures, it must be understood that making significant changes in any organization is not possible unless reality is exposed. Unfortunately, too many organizations operate under false assumptions, particularly in regards to their own safety process. In the book, Leadership is an Art, the author, Max DePree states, "The first job of the leader is to define reality".

The fact of the matter is, when it comes to safety, --- Perception Is Reality. To perceive is to sense and organize our thoughts around messages and information so as to understand. In other words, perceptions are the way we interpret the messages we receive. They are important because what people believe their superiors truly want from them is what they will deliver. Supervisors may often hear from senior managers that safety is important, but are in reality being measured and rewarded on other performance metrics. Employees may sit through safety meetings or training sessions, but what is the reality when they get back on the production room floor or to the jobsite? What is the ratio of production and schedule messages to safety received by employees on a daily basis?

Employee perceptions help shape the organizational culture, which in turn tends to shape the behaviors of people in the organization. The real question is what do your employees perceive you want from them? If employees perceive the company is simply paying lip service to safety, they will not value safety to a significant degree. On the other hand, if employees perceive that safety is a truly a core value held by the organization, they will place appropriate attention and importance on safe work practices.

In any culture change initiative, the first step is to assess the current culture. In order to plot a course for improvement, one must know what the existing culture looks like.  A major component of any quality safety culture assessment is a well-structured and properly administered employee perception survey. The use of safety perception surveys provides a means to measure the leading indicators of safety performance by providing a snapshot of the current safety culture through the lens of the cultural climate.  The safety climate of an organization consists of employee perceptions regarding the expectations of management in relation to safety performance. As such, safety climate is a vital factor in the overall safety culture. While other factors such as systems, structure, resources, leadership, lessons learned and safety metrics all play a part in shaping culture, ultimately it is the perceptions of employees and managers that define "what is really important" in the organization.

These instruments can be invaluable in identifying and analyzing perception gaps in relation to an optimal safety culture. Properly designed surveys will also provide for a disparity gap analysis between employees and management. In other words, how do employees view things versus how management views them. Another strong benefit of conducting such surveys as part of an assessment is that they provide measurable baseline data against which future improvements can be measured.

To be effective in safety culture analysis, surveys must be structured to measure the right parameters. Too often, perception surveys are self-developed "in-house" by companies to measure what employees think about the safety program. While these opinions may be interesting, they are of limited value in culture analysis. What employees think of the safety program is not nearly as important as what they think about the things that drive the safety process. It has been well documented by many notable researchers that safety performance is driven by leadership through the establishment of values, behavioral reinforcement, communication, accountability, and management credibility just to name a few. Measuring perceptions in relation to key safety process drivers is critical to establishing the type of data needed for improving culture.

While perception surveys are a very useful tool, they do have a number of potential weaknesses. If not carefully considered, these can lead to inaccurate or minimally useful results. First and foremost, questions must be structured so as not to lead respondents in their answers. They must also be designed to properly correlate questions to the drivers being measured. Statistical correlation coefficient formulas should be used to verify that questions are properly structured and to validate accuracy and confidence levels. One consideration that is absolutely vital to survey accuracy is the confidentiality factor. If respondents suspect that they can be identified, or that the data may be used in a punitive manner, they will tend to tell management what they want to hear, rather than the way it really is. This obviously defeats the purpose of conducting the surveys. Unless there is a very high degree of trust in the organization being surveyed, it is recommended that a third party conduct the surveys to instill confidence that the identity of respondents will be protected.

Survey responses can also be negatively affected by such factors as poor labor relations, low trust levels, labor unrest (strikes), a recent fatality or a serious accident, or even the presence of superiors (managers) in the room with respondents during the survey process. In a recent battery of surveys conducted by our firm, the presence of the safety director during a survey session caused the results to be skewed to the positive. As it turns out, the safety director was such a likeable individual that the respondents wanted to make sure she was not somehow "being made to look bad". As a result, they rated all responses very high.

Diagnosing organizational health in relation to the safety process is similar to what physicians do in diagnosing human health. Just as a physician never relies on any singular measurement, neither should the culture analyst. Physicians measure several parameters, interview the patient, look at the health history, then base the diagnosis on the "whole" patient. Similarly, this is also how organizations must be analyzed.

While surveys are great for providing measurable data, they do not tell the whole story. An accurate safety climate assessment should also include focus group interviews with employees and interviews with management. Properly facilitated, such interviews provide critical information and suggestions from the grassroots population about what needs to change. Information from interviews is also useful for comparison against survey data to ensure that accurate scores are being obtained. In other words, if a particular key driver score is low on the surveys, and the people in the organization are also talking about (and verifying) problems in those areas, you can be relatively sure you have accurate survey scores.

Once all of the information is obtained, an accurate assessment of the current safety climate can be developed. Combined with a proper analysis of supporting systems and structures, the end result is a snapshot of the strengths and weaknesses of the current safety culture with suggestions for improvement, and statistical baseline data. On conclusion of the assessment, a strategic plan for improvement can be developed. Other meaningful process measures can then be developed to carry the plan forward to fruition. This approach is much more useful in moving an organization upstream to a proactive mode, than inspection activity and the traditional downstream lagging indicators used by far too many safety professionals.

However, exposing reality does not end with culture and climate assessments. Reality must also be exposed at various levels on a day-to-day basis as an integral part of continuous safety culture improvement. When a safety process is not functioning properly there are signs and symptoms that serve as red flags. Unsafe conditions, at-risk behaviors, near misses, and accidents can usually be traced back to deficiencies in the safety management system. It is especially important for people in leadership positions to understand how their personal actions or lack thereof ultimately lead to incidents.

For these individuals, reality must be exposed on a personal level. One of our clients describes it like this: When we have serious safety problems in one of our plants, we sit down and have a counseling session with the plant leader. We view it as similar to counseling an alcoholic. They must understand how their actions and decisions affect the safety of their people. What we are seeking is transformation. If the leader agrees to make the necessary changes in his or her behavior, we allow them to complete a personal performance plan. We then measure their performance against that plan for the next six months to a year. If they do not achieve the necessary transformation or if they refuse, we remove them from a leadership position. We don't want to have to do that, but we will not tolerate leaders who will not live up to their safety responsibilities. It's all part of holding everyone accountable for safety performance".

In summary, many organizations today want to move beyond the traditional safety program approach to developing a culture of safety excellence. Traditional programs and the accompanying lagging indicators used to measure them have been proven to be relatively ineffective. To improve culture, it is imperative to expose organizational reality and in regards to safety, perception is reality. An effective safety culture assessment will include a well-structured perception survey, focus group and management interviews, and will analyze and apply all of the information holistically to the organization. It is also necessary to expose reality on an on-going basis when it becomes clear that leaders are not leading the safety effort. Only by dealing with reality can organizations truly rise to greatness.  

Mike McCarroll, CSP

President & CEO

PROSAFE Solutions, Inc.