It is said that the only thing that is constant is change.
And in many ways it’s true. We often change our clothes, change the day of the week, change our hair, change our jobs, change our family, and the list goes on and on.
Many of us can often answer “what?” about change. We can often say what we are changing from day to day, week to week, month to month or year to year. Change will always happen, and so the “what” is often the easiest question to answer.
The hardest question, or at least the more important question about change, is “why?”
What makes the why so important is that it is usually the “why” that makes that change temporary or permanent. If you make a change “just because,” that is not nearly as compelling as “because I want to have more efficiency in my life so I have more time to spend with my family.”
And when it comes to making changes in your business that reflect more of the safety culture you want, the “why” has to be deeply felt – and it certainly cannot be, and should not be, only the reasons that you find compelling or worthwhile.
Last year, David Dye wrote an article for Professional Safety magazine that touched on how to create real change in your workplace in just a few minutes each month. But of course you have to be careful about “why” you are doing it; in the case of this article, it has to do with the work that the workers are doing. Do you workers know or understand their purpose, their “why,” for doing the work they do?
Do you sense, or know, that your workers feel like they are “going through the motions” of their work, like they seem to not have a passion or an understanding of the deep-seated purpose of the work? There are one of two reasons for this, Dye writes:
- They don’t understand the why, or
- There is no why. It’s “just because.”
If either one of these reasons is apparent with any of your workers and the work they do, it might be time for an intervention. Dye suggests taking five minutes each month with your team or a particular department and having a conversation about their tasks and asking them, ” why do we do these things?” and have them communicate their thoughts or inspirations. This is not about getting at a right answer; thre is no right answer, other than having an understanding that each worker’s “why” is compelling, genuine and sincere, instead of being shallow and unemotional.
And yes, you will have to have openness in the discussion and perhaps deal with some harsh realities, that there will be some workers who may not be able to answer that “why” the way you would hope or expect. But knowing where the workers stand emotionally and mentally can help you honestly examine what your workers are doing, and either you can help them find their compelling “why,” or you can be honest and courageous enough to understand that perhaps the task that is being done is actually none necessary or not worthwhile – it is a task that actually breaks a worker’s spirit, whether intentionally or not.
Having regular engagement with your workers and understanding how they perceive the work they are doing and helping them understand their value and purpose in the business can go a long way toward not only adding efficiency to your business, but adding real passion to your mission as a business.