They say that the definition of integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.
And if you are a lone worker in the field, the integrity of the workplace safety protocol can very much be challenged.
Lone workers are increasing in number these days, as more and more companies go to more automation for some tasks, which eliminates some human members of teams – but that also applies in other areas, where workers are alone quite often, such as those who work on power lines or do some roof repair or plumbing work.
In any industry where your rank-and-file workers are spending their entire shifts working alone with no supervisors or other workers in close proximity, there is a definite need for workers who have that integrity to follow through on whatever policies and safety protocols you have in place while they are by themselves, on an proverbial island.
Island Living, and Working
Those islands can be lonely places, but while they give the perception that you can do anything you want, the reality is that if you do something wrong that causes you injury (or worse), you could be at even greater risk of bigger problems because you don’t have that co-worker or supervisor on hand to provide you the assistance you need.
Judy Agnew, Cloyd Hyten and Bart Sevin combined for a recent Professional Safety magazine article about the concept of self-management when it comes to lone workers and enforcing safety. The trio wrote an article about the challenges facing pthe promotion of safety among lone workers and how to best implement a safety protocol that will actually have integrity.
Yep, there’s the keyword.
Is It About Trust, or Control?
The next couple of posts will dig into this article and address the major challenges of “island laborers,” as I call them. As a safety professional, I admit that when I am implementing a safety protocol or culture in my workplace, I like to be able to see all the workers and observe them doing what I ask them to do, until such time as they are doing it so well and so frequently that I can trust them and not observe them quite so often
We can all claim until we’re blue in the face that we are not micromanagers and don’t want to be, but if we are overseeing safety, sometimes we just can’t help it – we are micromanagers, at least to a point. So just imagine our chagrin when we have to send these island laborers out into the field and we have to trust them to do the right and safe thing. If you say “I am fine with it,” you might be lying yto yourself while your stomach is in knots.
The True Challenge
The big problem for us, honestly, isn’t so much being in control of our workers; of course we want to trust them, and for the most part we have reason to trust them, because most of them care about their jobs and want the dignity of work. They don’t want to make stupid or careless mistakes that knocks them out of work for a period of time. The challenge isn’t really about control or trust, it’s about making sure that workers have safety integrity truly in mind when they go out to their islands.
As the authors of this article state, the real challenge is the accountability factor. Much safety is behavior-based, and part of having that safety take hold is to have real-time, peer-to-peer feedback and regular observations to note that safe behaviors are being followed and are part of the regular daily work routine, and providing instant feedback and correctives when needed.
And when there is an observation in the field, it’s so infrequent that the worker may not do everything he or she normally does;he or she may do everything just right and be on his or her “best behavior” because having anyone around while working is an unusual event. Even if the observation was unplanned and unannounced, workers will often adjust what they do normally to put on a “good face” for the observer.
With that as our backdrop, the next post will take a look at the concept of self-management and unpack some of the research that has been done and what what it might mean for your workers and safety.