When it comes to safety, Robert Pater could be considered a culture warrior.

If that name seems familiar, it is probably because you have read his articles in Professional Safety magazine in recent months, or you have read my insightful summaries of his articles in this blog in the past. (Maybe I’m kidding about the insightful part.) I have written several blog posts here about some prior Pater articles, and you can see them here, here, here and of course here.

[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] Robert Pater has long advocated for a safety culture and has provided insights into hop to develop and improve such culture to a world-class level. Recently he wrote about what leadership means in a change of safety culture.

Mr. Pater has long been an advocate for safety as not just a program or protocol, but also a culture within the workplace. He has written several other articles that all have the theme of changing the safety culture and having the leadership to do so. His latest salvo in the ongoing safety culture war was in the September 2015 issue of PS, titled “Advanced Culture Change Leadership.” In it, he wants to highlight six perspectives  in favor of “upgrading” the safety culture that currently exists in a workplace.

Here is a brief snapshot of the six perspectives on effecting change in culture:

  1. Don’t give into simplistic solutions or platitudes. If changing culture were really as easy as some new product or a “hold everyone accountable” platitude, every company would have done it by now. For the sake of your company and its existing culture, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all, so you have to dig deeper than just the platitudes and get at the heart of your culture.
  2. Pick your battles. Many times, it’s about focus, and maybe you want to reach all levels of your company but you realistically can’t do it without diluting your message and its impact. Pater suggests in this case that you do what is called “scissors change,” which is to get C-suite buy-in of your message to establish tone for the company and provide leadership; and identify the change agents at the lower levels, the grassroots, to provide direct and instant feedback that can have a more direct change in culture.
  3. No cookie cutter or template solutions. This is unless you are a template or cookie-cutter business. We all claim our business is unique in the marketplace in one way or another, and so it would be foolish to think that whatever processes or culture that has worked for a competitor will automatically work for your business, so you try to copy or steal it. Every solution you may find needs to be customized to your unique culture and workforce. If you steal a concept from a competitor, make sure you steal one that will best fit your organization, not theirs.
  4. Find a balance. Those who are my-way-or-the-highway leaders are not the ones who generally generate change. At the same time, those who are too laissez-faire in their leadership may have no known direction by which the culture can move, so it wil float untethered in the deep ocean of uncertainty. And if managers have too much to think about, that won’t work either. Find something that is easy to implement to start with, then build up in stages, but make sure there is a direction and a goal that everyone  knows.
  5. Remodeling takes patience. But don’t be too patient. Changing culture is like remodeling a house rather than building new – you often have to work with what you have. A remodel has its obstacles and restrictions, and the same thing goes with culture; it’s often formed by the people in your company, and since you can’t hire the “ideal” workforce, you have to make do. But it doesn’t have to take a real;y long time, as long as you make positive, certain steps regularly.
  6. Eyes on the prize. This is not just the goal that is in mind for your company and its safety culture, but also keeping your eyes on the steps and actions that need to be taken to get to that goal. And as each worker is different, a blanket platitude or policy won’t work in general; you have to reach out to each worker individually and touch each of their concerns or values or beliefs in order to get full buy-in. Every worker has his or her own biases, and you need to know them to break down their barriers and resistance to change so they see the value in what you are trying to do.

Next time, I will look at the end of Pater’s article, when he writes about the three I’s that serve as tools to “upgrade” safety culture to a world-class level.