Safety is about the most important thing for any business or organization. And while human nature is to rebel against structure that is too strict, the best safety programs are ones that have an inherent rate of discipline among workers.

Discipline comes in many difeerent forms, and no organization or company should ever have just one form available to it. Christopher Goulart wrote an article in a recent issue of Professional Safety magazine that goes into this very point – having a toolbox full of ways to address real-time at-risk behavior on the worksite, and using the right tool at the right time, can go a long way toward embracing sound discipline without corroding morale or respect among workers and supervisors.

The Balancing Act

It is tough to come up with the right tool in a situation that will drive home the effective point you want to make and provide good accountability to those involved without getting into judging a worker’s overall ability to stay safe and also not going so easy on them that they think that you don’t care if they cut a corner or two.

It is important to drive home safety rules, protocols and acitivities and get buy-in from the workers to forward the culture, but you don’t want to alienate people by being too tough on minor infractions, too lenient on more egregious things., or being inconsistent across the board on the same issues depending on the person doing it or the department.

The Toolbox

Effective managers, whether in safety specifically or in any operational capacity in he company, often have to choose several ways to address the variosu situations that may come up. Too many in some ways tend to take on just one or two of the tools at all times, when every nail is not for the hammer you’re holding.

Here are some tools that are utilized, and that every manager should be willing to use at any time:

  1. Feedback. This is about making comments in the form of constructive criticism about a task or behavior.
  2. Accountability. A person has a job to do, and a manager puts the onus of that task or behavior on that worker to do it with no excuses, no blame going elsewhere. Either it’s done, or it’s not.
  3. Discipline. This is about establishing control, with punishment only one part of it. This can also be reinforcement and education to help keep workers on their tasks in a safe way.
  4. Coaching. This is education, showing workers how to do something or how to behave, and then watching and guiding them as they try to imitate what you did.
  5. Punishment. This is generally supposed to be a last resort, if all of the above four tools are used in different areas and workers repeatedly disregard the information or are egregiously dangerous to themselves or others.

Versatility

There are reasons that managers should have all the tools available and be able to use them all with a certain comfort level, simply because not every situation fits neatly for one tool. While pieces of wood may be fastened, you don’t use a hammer for a screw or a screwdriver for staples.

In other words, every situation is different, even if it is to get the same outcome. And the situation is not just different in its facts, but also the context of the workplace environment.

For example, managers and safety officers have to weigh the efficacy of each tool in each dynamic situation and context. If you decide to punish rather than coach or give feedback, for instance, that could lead to poor morale, hostility and even workers refusing to have safe practices or behaviors that they know (conscientious resistance).

In another context, a manager should not dole out punishment in every context no matter the variables. A worker should not get punished if something out of their control contributed to their unsafe action or behavior. Not understanding the details of each incident can undermine respect and credibility, which can cause its own share of problems in the workplace.

What are Your Real Goals?

The tools you use in these situations will depend on the type of goal you want to achieve. Believe it or not, there are two sets of goals, and they aren’t necessarily mutual. And knowing what your actual goals are will help guide the right use of the right tool at the right time to optimize the odds of achieving the dsired goal.

Yes, there are two type of goals that are actually more in conflict that you realize, and the next post will go into this a little more. specifically. For now though, you need to know about proximal and absolute goals.

Proximal goals have to do with changing behavior or prevent violations of work practices. Absolute goals in safety are to reduce risk, make work more efficient and lower the rates of incidents on the job.  On the face, they seem very similar, but the tools you use in certain situations can affect which goals you achieve – and one set won’t necessarily marry neatly into the other. It will be important to understand exactly what you are looking to achieve, which can then define the tools you use and when.