By Chad Lilley
Over the past 15 years that I have been involved with behavioural safety, it has raised many issues and challenges.
Firstly, let’s look at why it came about.
Throughout the last 100 years of safety things have changed beyond any recognition. This evolution has been in three main eras:
The first is what I like to call ‘no formal interest. ’ This is not suggesting that people didn’t care for each other, they just didn’t know any better. A case in point would be chimney sweeps and the use of small children. Work was done on the premise that if you had a hammer and the hammer broke, you got a new hammer; if you had a man and he lost his life, you got a new man.
Fortunately, things changed and we entered the second era, the reactive/responsive era. This is when major accidents happened around the world where hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of people died. These accidents prompted the world to sit up and declare “We must do something different!”, which in turn prompted one of the biggest changes in the history of safety where the amount of fatalities was greatly reduced.
This then lead to the third era starting in the early seventies: the preventative era. This is when change has been driven by systems and processes, and again, considerable improvement has followed.
However, over the last twenty years, this progress has slowed to only a whimper, the time, energy, effort and financial investment has gone through the roof with the results showing only a marginal improvement. Now, at this point, I want to make it very clear, I am not saying anyone is wrong for this, as the intentions behind everything that has been done and achieved have been for the best – so much so in fact that we have become conditioned not to know anything different, and this is where the struggles come in implementing a new era.
People understand at an intellectual level that to get a different result, then without question you have to do something different, however, they don’t get this at an emotional level, and all behaviour is driven by emotions.
Time after time I have been faced by safety managers telling me that you have to have your KPI’s, method statements, risk assessments, investigations and punishment, and they are right… However, all of that alone will not create change, especially the way most of this is carried out.
For example, most trainings nowadays is carried out for certificates and not for competency. This point was compounded when I was talking to a woman from CSCS, I said I felt the whole process was just a money making scheme and she just laughed down the phone; or last year when I was discussing delivering a coaching qualification for the staff of a chartered professional’s he asked me for a price and I asked if he wanted the training for competency or certificates, his response was immediate: “Certificates! I didn’t do the training!”
What is needed is a new way of thinking. We need the leadership of safety. You cannot create a new era by creating more systems and processes that belong in the old era. Over all the years, safety has been working on what it wants to avoid, now it needs to set clear parameters on what it wants to achieve, you only get what you focus on, so why not focus on what you want?
Now: target zero; zero harm; no accidents, although they all look good on paper, they all focus on what you want to avoid. Imagine setting your business goals at the start of the year and presenting a goal of wanting to avoid any financial loss this coming year to the board. They would boot you straight out of the room! So, for what reason do we accept that with safety?
It’s better to set goals like:
How do we send people home healthier than when they came in?
How do you make someone feel valued, that their efforts are appreciated?
It is all about leadership, and creating a compelling vision that people don’t just believe, but gravitate towards.
I say: D.A.R.E to challenge safety.
The D stands for ‘desired outcome’. You need a vision. The moment a vision is lost people will revert to looking at the process, they will get overwhelmed and create all the excuses not to do something.
A is for Accurate thinking. Plan and coach for a new outcome,
R is for the results, with change going on, it is paramount that people remember the fundamentals of the business, it is great that people pay all this attention on making sure coffee cup lids are on and people hold the handrails, however, it is all a waste of time unless the tough conversations take place.
Is safety number one? Or would we be more honest saying we are in business to make money, without anyone getting hurt along the way?
Finally, the E is for execute, it is not about all the things that we do that will make a difference, it is who we are being when we are doing them.
All in all, in this commercially driven world, we have become a world of human doings instead of human beings.
Chad Lilley is a behavioural safety specialist and author for Chad Lilley International, which specialises in people and long-term behavioural results. Our focus and attention to detail is equally of the highest standard whether working with a private individual client or a corporate company. Our purpose is to assist and support the client in changing their behaviours that create life changing and empowering results.
Never been an admirer of BS in either form, but a well written and thought provoking article.
I agree with the article that leadership and direction from the top is key. Other management will get you so far along the line if they are good, but the extra push to get the full support of a workforce is the full support and action of the Directors.
It seems though as if the ISO standards are going to help with this as their new standards are much more leadership focused which could make it interesting for companies that are driven by middle management!
Excellent article Mr Lilley. I agree we need a shake-up in attitude and that this is well overdue now.
Glad to see you are not just accepting improvements already made, but pressing for the “jackpot”
Excellent article and I especially agree with the piece on training competence v certification. I am an advocate of Behavioural Safety as when an individual is engaged to do his/her work safely (being fully compliant to procedure and PPE requirement etc.) in the knowledge that it is for their benefit and that they wont be harmed or will harm others then we have cracked it. Finger wagging will only ever give us a thin layer of compliance with potential for harm lurking menacingly beneath the surface.