By Nick Wharton
As H&S professionals or even as general managers with a genuine interest in safety and health, what is our main objective? I guess most people would agree that it is to prevent harm: injury, pain, suffering, illness, disability, death, damage, disruption. Let’s face it this should be a really easy job! On the face of it we should have no problem getting everyone on board. It is an easy message to sell. Ask any employee at any level in any organisation whether or not they want to get hurt or see anyone else get hurt. Obviously, they will all say no. It is one aspect of work that we can get everyone to agree about. So why does it prove so difficult? Why does that improved safety performance that we all seek turn out to be so elusive?
The answer may well, at least in part, lie in how we go about trying to achieve our goals. I would like to suggest that there is too much emphasis on safety management and a significant lack of safety leadership. Safety management is important: policies, procedures, rules, risk assessments, inspections and audits. These all form a solid foundation and without them securely in place any successful performance is on shaky ground and prone to failure. The problem comes when we fail to go beyond these basic building blocks, when we fail to add the essential elements of safety leadership: engagement, feedback, encouragement, recognition, support, involvement, listening, motivation, vision and direction. If we rely purely on safety management we may well get people choosing the right behaviour – because it is expected of them, the system tells them to do it that way, they know they may get in trouble if they don’t do it the right way. What safety leadership will give you is a workforce choosing the right behaviour because they believe it is the right thing to do; they do it because they want to.
Back to our original purpose – to prevent incidents that could have a wide range of implications. Pretty much all of these incidents are caused by somebody’s behaviour; behaviours result from the prevailing culture; culture is inextricably linked to leadership. So why don’t we tackle the root cause? I say again, there is too much focus on systems and insufficient, genuine interest in people.
Let’s be honest, the traditional impression of H&S in the workplace is one of rules and regulations, checklists and clipboards. It is all a bit negative and a bit miserable. Not many people look forward with enthusiasm to the next H&S briefing or training day, despite it being the one thing that we all agree upon. The profession can wring its hands and complain that it is all so unfair and difficult to get people on board or we could ask the more challenging question: “what is our part to play in these perceptions?” I would suggest that at least part of the answer is that the profession is too comfortable focussing on the systems and safety management whilst there is not enough understanding of, or willingness to embrace, the importance of behaviours, culture and leadership. If we are to move forward either as individuals, within organisations or as a profession there must be a willingness to take head-on the more difficult, ethereal and less concrete issues. It might not be easy to give up the comfort blanket of our systems but it is time to grow-up and look elsewhere. Ultimately this will help us to achieve what we are all working towards.
Nick trained as an environmental health officer, which resulted in an H&S enforcement role with a Local Authority, to which he later added the safety officer role. This in turn led to full-time HSE Management roles in industry. During this time Nick developed his own highly successful approach to behavioural safety. For the past 10 years he has worked with JOMC delivering Culture Change consultancy to a wide range of clients.
