Great leaders know how to attack a dilemma.
Many of them know that certain dilemmas don’t have to have just the two options, either this or that.
Sometimes, a good leader can spot a both/and opportunity, or even a neither/nor.
And there comes a time when every business faces a dilemma like this in the area of workplace safety – and it usually happens after a major incident occurred that resulted in significant injury, multiple injuries, or deaths.
When an incident happens, usually a company would circle the wagons and start developing assessments of the mechanics of what happened and look to find ways to improve going forward.
[Image courtesy of Flickr user the_moment via a Creative Commons license]Dilemmas are common in business, in virtually every aspect of work. But does a great leader handle them? When it comes to safety, it is possible to turn an apparent either/or dilemma into a both/and. Robert Pater provides some strategies on how to do this.
The dilemma? Taking care of accident prevention, or improving the culture of safety in the workplace.
Why does it seem like an either/or proposition? Because many businesses have limited resources, but they know that the most effective way to get things done is through concentrated focus of rescources. But if you try to do two things at once, you are not focused; you spread your rescurces and assets too thin, and thus things don’t get done as effectively as needed.
Pater gave the analogy of figuring out how to shoot at two targets with one arrow. I took the concepts aand looked at it on a road map. Preventing injuries is a short-term initiative, one that could be addressed in the present (today) by making corrections in safety protocols and conducting re-training of workers. Changing the cultue of safety is more of a long-term initiative so that no matter the turnover with the workforce or the changes with the business, safety will still be promoted as high priority among everyone from the C-suite on down.
As I wrote before, which is more efficient? Making one trip to buy things around town before driving 1,000 miles to Grandma’s house? Or, mkaing the trip to Grandma’s house and stopping along the way to pick up the things you need for the visit?
This is what Pater is shooting for in his article. After introducing the dilemma and concept of blending the two into a single campaign, here is a synopsis of Pater’s Five Strategies for Superior Safety Performance and Culture:
1. Ask the Right Questions. As Pater puts it, “achieve multilevel results.” So do you ask the right questions to do this? Great leaders do not get in the weeds of solution but ask the questions that will get them the right solutions more quickly. In the case of multilevel results, it’s about asking a question that incorporates the present injury-prevention attention and the long-term culture change. One example question Pater poses is, “How can we reduce soft-tissue injuries (present, or short-term) in ways that also elevate our culture (future, or long-term)?”
2. Self-monitoring. Pater’s article tends to focus on accumulated tension and force on soft tissue such as lower back muscles as an example. By self-monitoring, he means that workers can learn to detect accumulating tension and stress on their muscles, and make adjustments in positioning, movements or breathing to alleviate the tensions and stresses during each work shift. This would allow workers to have more stamina and strength to work more physically demanding shifts.
3. Encourage Personal Responsibility. This is not just talk. Injuries aren’t prevented, and culture doesn’t change, merely by memos sent from executives or managers down to the workers. This goes beyond talk and goes to every level of the company taking responsibility for his or her own safety – even those who write the memos. If you arent going to back up words with actions, don’t use the words. This is about trust – if you can’t be trusted with your wrods, then the whole safety culture comes apart.
4. Don’t Leave Work at Work. What you do at the office to mitigate injuries can and should be applied at home as well. The mechanical techniques can be adapte to fit everyday personal life, but it’s also the mindset of being safe at home that contributes to the culture in the office. Create and practice good habits all the time and they will become part of your routine thought process every day.
5. Deputies. Safety does not always have to come from above. Often, skills, methods and techiques for improvement are understood better whe they come from a peer mentor, so the goal should be to identify people on the line or at the supervisor level who can coach, mentor and reinforce safety skills and techniques among their peers in a particular department. The closer these reminders and coaching is to the work floor, the better the culutre will be because it will have more immediate feedback and effect at the foundation of a company.