Changing a culture is never an easy process. Especially when thsoe who perpetuate the culture are still in their positions of influence.

But if you are one of those influencers and you are considering a change in culture, especially when it comes to worker safety, you could have a tremendous impact in accelerating the learning curve for everyone in the company.

[Image courtesy of The Natural Step Canada from Flickr via a Creative Commons license] Now that we are listing the leading indicators for your safety program, you might not have to see this photo again for a while.

[Image courtesy of The Natural Step Canada from Flickr via a Creative Commons license] Safety is not just about leadership within the curent culture. If there is a need for a culture change, leadership is taking the baton of change, sharing that passion with others and leading them into a change by involving and engaging workers and the C-suite. The tools are available to do this.

Let’s face it, very few of us like change. It’s hard for Americans to change presidents. It’s certainly hard for them to change senators and congressmen, even when they are incompetent. Change is always difficult. Even if we hate our cable television or satellite provider, or even our cellular company, it is always hard to change.

Incumbency matters in some respects. But if one of those incumbents is actually open to a change, that could provide the necessary crack in the foundation that could elicit change in the company, and certainly could do it much more quickly than just letting change happen on its own over time as personnel turns over.

While you may have the fire in your belly to commit to some serious culture change, it won’t happen within your personal vacuum. You have to take that fire and share it with others, including your supervisors, workers and on up to the C-suite. While you can share your energy with others, you can’t make them take the baton. You have to convince them to offer to take the baton. But how to do that?

In my last post, I wrote about Robert Pater’s article in the September issue of Professional Safety magazine, which discussed six ways in which you could direct and command change in your safety culture. At the end of that article, Pater took a few minutes to write about three tools that you could use to share that fire for change and encourage others in your company to join you in spreading the word and implementing the necessary changes. Pater calls these tools the Three I’s, for pretty obvious reasons as you will see:

  1. Inspire. Literally, inspiration means breathing, or having new life. One of the way to inspire workers into culture change is to breathe new life and activity into safety. Don’t make it about boring safety meetings where workers sit there passively. Engage them, encourage them and give them fresh new perspectives that will mentally challenge them without stumping them.
  2. Involve. This is the next step after you inspire people. It’s about getting them and keeping them involved without making it required. This is about getting direct feedback from the floor, answering questions, and otherwise engaging everyone interactively, engaging as many senses as possible. From touching new equipment to seeing how it works to smelling what a hazardous material is, can all go a long way toward keeping workers involved and engaged in their own safety.
  3. Internalize. Once you get them inspired and involved, you can then get them all to take what they learn and put it inside themselves – to develop their own fire for safety and express it by taking personal responsibility for themselves and their safety. And as a leader, you don’t have to get int a blame game, but rather express your own personal responsibility not only for yourself, but also accept accountability to ensure that the worksite is as safe as you can make it on behalf of those your lead and/or supervise.

Any kind of change is difficult, but especially changing a culture which has been likely embedded through multiple generations of workers and managers. But all it takes is one change agent and a willingness to spread that fire to the right people, that a change in culture can happen, and quicker than it might take with reliance on the natural turnover of a company. Maybe your company can’t afford to wait that long. Or maybe you can’t afford to wait for more safety-conscious workers to come online.

Sometimes, change needs a catalyst. You can be that catalyst. Right now.