‘Safety must make leaders of us all’ – PPWD’s Paul Davison

Safety & Health Practitioner

Paul Davison, CEO and Founder at PPWD says that we should all strive to be safety leaders in our organisations.

Workplace safety is a wicked problem. It is elusive, it never goes away and it is never solved.

For anyone familiar with the work of Professor Keith Grint, this is a perspective that will be known to you. Grint developed the idea of ‘critical, tame and wicked’ as a way of understanding different types of problems.

Paul Davison, CEO and Founder, PPWD.

A tame problem is known and the solution is within existing expertise and know-how. Critical problems cause a crisis and draw in resources, and they need immediate action and decisive leadership. Wicked problems are complex and elusive, and their solutions require leadership that involves everyone.

Safety fits well and truly into that third category. With so many factors at play in a work environment, safety’s goalposts are forever moving from one day to the next. The answers to safety are not simply found, and adaptability is crucial. In an ever-changing situation such as this, the answers are to be discovered each day by the people most affected by the ‘wicked problem’. With safety, this group is your team or workforce.

For safety to be managed, in all its wickedness, a culture needs to exist that, to paraphrase Grint, ‘lets a hundred flowers bloom’. Learning from mistakes, from each other, rather than text books and ‘experts’, is the way forward. Responsibility and accountability is shared and collectively owned. Safety must make leaders of us all.

So, how do we achieve this? How do we create a culture in which everyone has a leadership role?

You may have already guessed where I’m going with this. To deal with workplace safety effectively, yes, we do need psychological safety. This is psychological safety with consequences, because with shared leadership comes shared accountability.

Our modern working environment so often wants instant answers. Instant answers, however, do not shape a strong culture of safety. Psychologically safe environments encourage empathy around vulnerability, and they give people the time they need to make meaningful contributions to an organisation’s safety journey.

To engender psychological safety, there has to be mutual respect and inclusivity. Whether you are a CEO or the latest person to be hired, you have a leadership role when it comes to the safety of your workplace and practices. A culture is then grown that engenders the types of conversation that move you through the levels of learning. Mistakes are seen as an unintended consequence. Learning becomes cultural. People can now speak up, offer ideas and contribute to a safe and healthy workplace.

I have seen it for myself when an organisation strikes that lovely balance between respect and permission, so people can open up and thrive and flourish and be their best person as a leader in safety.

To this point, in such organisations, I have seen the positive impact new hires can have when they enter a workplace. With fresh eyes and ears, they bring a new perspective that can revitalise your safety performance. Why can’t we recognise and reward this so our co-workers approach every day with a fresh outlook. In safety, after all, no two days are the same.

At EHS Congress London in December, I will explore what it takes to create a culture of work that creates safety leaders in us all. In the meantime, here are three tips I would offer to an SHP reader:

• The eight-minute rule – the renowned thought leader on the modern workplace, Simon Sinek, spoke this year about the ‘incredible power of the eight-minute catch-up’. From his own personal experience, he realised that you will only truly achieve the focus you need to make a meaningful connection with someone if you give them time. If someone at work is reaching out to you, then a quick chat won’t cut it. You need to find the time, eight minutes at least, for your co-worker to feel at ease to share their problems. When such a practice is embedded in a work culture, an employee with serious safety issues on their mind will know that they will be given time and the active listening ear of a co-worker or manager.
• Co-led team briefings – team briefings are a great opportunity to engender collection ownership of the flow of safety information. It is not just the team leader who briefs the team. The right question is how are we today going to co-create safety in this environment for this team. Everyone has an equal voice.
• Setting up a learning culture – at an organisational level, learning must become the default culture. Learning reviews must run through everything you do. Without such a focus, valuable safety lessons become lost opportunities. To continue the theme of Dee Arp’s SHP article last week, we need visible, felt leadership. Those with leadership job titles must role model safety leadership if their team are to share the safety leadership burden.

Safety may be a wicked problem, but it is not insoluble if it’s a problem shared and collectively owned.

Paul Davison will be speaking at EHS Congress London on 3-4 December 2024. Click here to register.

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