Do You Have Great Safety Systems?

In my current role as an international TapRooT® root cause analysis and investigation process trainer, facilitator, and coach, I get the chance to work with over 500 safety professionals from 30 or more organizations every year. This level of exposure, coupled with my own personal experience in designing, implementing, and improving personal and food safety systems over 25 plus years, has taught me a lot about what it takes to achieve very low incident rates and to make the shift from a reactive safety focus to a proactive safety focus. One of my biggest learnings over this time is simple, but not practiced by that many organizations - each process owner (manager or supervisor) must demonstrate daily responsibility for the safety of their people. As with process improvement, quality, or team development, you can't expect a department (such as the HSE or Engineering group) to keep your customers happy or your people safe. It has to be a team effort - something that every leader is responsible, and held accountable, for on a daily basis.

How to Improve Your Safety System

Why do safety performance levels vary so much between organizations? Back to Top

As a trainer for the TapRooT® investigation and root cause analysis process, I get the opportunity to meet and talk with safety professionals from around the world. These people represent companies that are at different places on the safety performance spectrum. Some have gone months, if not years, without a lost time accident, and they rarely even have OSHA reportable incidents - others are still experiencing fatalities. As a performance improvement coach, the main question I continue to ask is “Why is there such a difference in safety performance across these companies?” You might think that the companies with the relatively poorer safety records work in more hazardous environments, but that is not always the case. Some of our TapRooT® customers work in very hazardous work environments, such as off shore oil rigs or deep tunnel mines, but their lost time and OSHA reportable rates are low, even in comparison to relatively safer industries. Why does this performance difference exist?

As a Plant Manager, Production Manager, Director of Quality, and Industrial Engineer, I have learned that a system gives you what it is designed to give you. These companies have great safety records because their safety systems are designed to help them achieve these numbers. The companies that are struggling to improve their safety records have weaker safety systems. They may preach safety, have a safety professional on staff, and conduct the required safety training each month, but they have key components missing from their safety system. Take a look at my "Top Ten" list of safety system weaknesses on the right - do any of them sound familiar to you? If so, how many of them might be holding back your efforts to pursue safety process excellence?

Why do I think that safety is one of the easiest performance areas to improve? Back to Top

Personally, I think safety is the easiest performance area to improve in (the others which I consider to be more challenging are cost, quality, and morale). In other words, if you are struggling to attain better than average safety numbers, you are also probably having trouble with the quality of your products or services, the morale of your people, and your profit margins. Why do I think safety is the easiest performance area to improve in? The answer is simple - you can more clearly see whether or not you have safety issues! Quality problems are typically tougher to spot, and morale challenges are even more difficult to identify.

By saying this, you might think that I mean you can see work area hazards, so you ought to be able to eliminate them. While this is true, I am speaking much more about unsafe acts than I am about unsafe conditions. Most safety professionals know that most accidents are a result of unsafe acts, as opposed to unsafe conditions. The great thing about safety is that we can also see unsafe acts, just as easily as we can see unsafe conditions. The problem is that we don’t have systematic approaches in place for (1) regularly identifying unsafe acts and (2) consistently addressing these unsafe acts when we see them IN AN EFFECTIVE MANNER. A sound near miss program or behavior based safety program is intended to do this, but far too few organizations have such approaches in place. When they do, these approaches are often poorly designed and even more poorly executed. The problems are still easier to spot however.

Who is responsible for improving your safety systems and performance? Back to Top

The biggest challenge I see facing those companies who are struggling to improve their safety records is simple as well. In these companies, safety improvement is seen as being the responsibility of the safety professional, the safety department, or someone else other than the front line supervisor (the process owner). In these organizations, EACH process leader (also known as a supervisor or manager) IS NOT required to identify and correct the safety concerns that exist in their area on a consistent basis - such work is left up to the safety professional. They might have safety measures in their performance expectations, but rarely are these supervisors expected to demonstrate HOW they changed the work systems they are responsible for in order to make improvements happen. They count on the safety people or the engineers (or threats and fear tactics) to make them look good at the annual review. This is not a sustainable, or recommended, approach by the way.

Sure, the need for safety improvement may show up as a sentence or two in their job description, but when you watch them work each day, look at how they spend their time, and listen to the types of things they say when they talk with their people - you just don’t see a safety focus. This is a cultural problem by the way, but it is also the leverage point for making significant safety gains. If you want real safety improvement to happen in a fast and sustainable manner, you have to (1) change the job descriptions of each process owner and (2) require them to PROVE HOW they have changed their work systems in order to obtain better safety results from both a lagging indicators and a leading indicator perspective..

Who’s responsible for your safety?

What does your safety culture look, sound, and feel like? Back to Top

Believe it or not, some companies have better safety records on paper than they have in real life. In other words, not that many accidents are making it onto the OSHA Form 300, but if you asked the people if their company is a safe employer or not, you would struggle to get a lot of positive responses. How can this be? Is it possible to have good safety numbers and not actually have a safe work environment?

Well, unfortunately it is. You may not be able to have superior safety numbers or sustain great safety results over time with an unsafe work environment, but you can be better than average. All you have to do is install a culture of fear - make people afraid to report an accident, unsafe condition, or unsafe work practice. Now, I don’t think that very many organizations would do this intentionally, but there are companies out there who definitely do it unintentionally.

What is your safety culture like? Do your people seek out and report unsafe conditions, or do they complain about them only to be told to focus on what they have been told to do? Do each of your people take action to address the unsafe act of a co-worker on the spot, or do your supervisors ignore unsafe acts if their people are not the ones committing them? Are individuals and teams recognized for their safety accomplishments, or is punishment the norm when it comes to safety? Is the phrase "Own the hazard" one that people take pride of in your company, or is it one that people make jokes about in the lunchroom?

Most organizations would say that they would like to have a safety-focused culture, but too few of them are willing to make the choices necessary to make such a culture a reality. In fact, if you get to the point where you actually have a sound safety culture in place, you will probably have one of the best safety records in your industry. How do you know if you have a great safety culture in place or not?

As an Examiner for the Baldrige National Quality Award, I have learned that there are three main ways to tell if a company is practicing what they preach or not - ask people questions, watch them work, and review their performance documentation. If the results you obtain from these three means of workplace assessment agree, it is likely that the company’s work culture is consistent with what the marketing brochures say it is. What are your formal and informal safety audits telling you?

What does a well rounded safety system consist of? Back to Top

This “Safety Star” contains five key components - measures, recognition, procedures, improvement processes, and workgroup meetings - that should be part of any well-rounded safety system. Some safety systems contain additional components, but if you can find a way to at least build the approaches that are shown here into your safety system over time, you will find that it will produce better, and more sustainable, results.

My experience has shown me that of the four areas, companies tend to be the weakest in the ‘Measures’, ‘Recognition’, and ‘Improvement Processes’ areas. In those cases where meetings and training regularly occur, these practices are often much less effective than they could be. Don’t just take my word for it though. Review the safety star yourself, and see where you currently have approaches in place that work well and where you don’t. How great is your safety system?

What steps can I take to improve my safety system? Back to Top

How can Great Systems help you improve your safety system? Back to Top

Personal Safety System Analysis and Design - I can work with your safety committee or management team to design and execute a comprehensive plan for developing safe work systems and minimizing the potential for on the job injuries. Typical system components include a monthly internal audit process, safety committee setup, an investigation process for near misses and reportable injuries, safety training curriculum and material design, a project management process, and monthly safety reporting tools. I can also help you set up a behavior based safety system and a scorecard of leading safety indicators that can be used to address potential safety problems before they become real ones.

Incident Investigation and Investigation Process Design - Some of my TapRooT® customers in particular enlist my services to help them analyze persistent problems that they can't seem to make go away on their own. By using a combination of onsite investigation interviews and facilitation, coupled with systems analysis, workplace observation, and online consultation, I can help you find the systemic causes of these problems. More importantly, I can help you identify effective corrective actions, (systems changes) that can be put in place to help minimize the likelihood that these problems will come back in the future. I can also help you improve your existing investigation process so that it routinely produces better results in less time.

TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis and Investigation Training - I have taught over 140 courses and helped more than 250 organizations as a certified international trainer and consultant for the TapRooT® root cause analysis process. I believe that this approach to root cause analysis far exceeds the more opinion-based approaches that have been used for years, such as fishbone diagrams, 5 Whys, and fault tree analysis. Additionally, the TapRooT® root cause tree represents a collection of 102 best practices for reducing human error and performance challenges, and in turn, can be used to error proof your work systems. If you want to reduce the potential for accidents, minimize significant amounts of waste, improve customer satisfaction levels, and grow your business, you need work systems that promote effective, daily human performance and minimize the potential for equipment breakdowns.

To learn more about this service that I can provide you with, I would be happy to provide you with additional details or a quote for an onsite 2 day or 5 day TapRooT® root cause analysis workshop. If you would like a quote, simply click on this link to request a quote via e-mail.

How can the performance of supervision be monitored to ensure they are effectively supporting the safety system? Back to Top

As with any type of supervision or process ownership, a balanced set of metrics and reporting should be used to track leadership behavior and task effectiveness.  A ‘bottom up’ Leadership Index should be provided to each supervisor by his direct reports at least once a year as a behavior effectiveness metric.  The process owner should also be held responsible for the safety, cost, quality, and people metrics that his or her processes produce over time (in the form of trend lines and a balanced scorecard) and for proving how he or she has changed work systems or develop their people to produce better results. A key mistake, which is made in most organizations, is related to expecting an external department, such as Safety, Quality, Engineering, or Human Resources, to manage the process results in these areas across multiple process groups.

As a plant manager, I expected each of my process owners (and myself) to provide the following each month – a key project list for their processes, a monthly summary of their key accomplishments and challenges, and a performance summary spreadsheet that shows DAILY process inputs and outputs.  Because I expected my supervisors to spend 30-60 minutes a day on these items and use a spreadsheet to compile and organize them, I could review their progress at any time by simply looking at the spreadsheet itself, the results trend lines posted in their process areas, and/or their hard copy monthly report (or intranet web page). My "Process Excellence From the Inside Out" workshop is specifically designed to help you install a similar process for your process owners in your organization.

Would you like to learn more about process excellence tools and concepts? Back to Top

Click on one of the following links to explore other ways you can accelerate the pursuit of process excellence in your organization:

	Process Excellence From the Inside Out Workshop
	Performance Improvement Articles
	Process Excellence Certificate Process
	Other Great Systems workshops
	Other Great Systems workbooks
	Great Systems! home page