A culture phenomenon

Tim Marsh | Feature | IIRSM Newsletter
23.01.2008

Difficulty in estimating how contrary people can be is a key learning point. Telling them to adjust is almost the worst way to make change happen. However, if people decide themselves to adapt, the outcome can be vastly different.

Discovered learning techniques focus squarely on this phenomenon and underpin much of the people-focused training required for a move to a proactive safety culture.

In a popular novel, English writer Nick Hornby describes a phenomenon about Scottish football fans. The question arises - why do Scottish fans behave so well abroad when they didn't before (think Wembley!) and don't necessarily behave as such in Glasgow now after a club game?

At a World Cup some time ago, the Scottish team was knocked out by the odd goal in a great game against the favourites - Brazil. Honour was satisfied and the next day papers were full of pictures of men in kilts dancing good naturedly in fountains with pretty Brazilian women. The headlines were broadly, 'Scots party after heroic exit ... few arrests ... what a contrast with the English!' Ever since, Scottish football fans have made an effort to behave well while abroad in order to show up the English!

In my experience, that's how a lot of companies react - specifically companies that need to focus on people because all the physical and system issues have already been tackled.

Safety culture

Many organisations look to improve safety performance by addressing human factor issues and find they are squarely at the 'calculative' stage of safety culture, described by Parker and Hudson, academics who have written extensively on the subject. To simplify the middle three of five bands, they describe proactive, compliant/effective systems, and reactive.

That is, the companies have moved beyond 'reactive' and have good systems, procedures, training and inductions in place, and have a set of files guaranteed to deliver a certificate or two for the wall in reception.

Despite this baseline achievement, they know the neat files can differ from the reality during a busy shift. Furthermore, they know the broader truth - their safety performance has hit a plateau.

Headline scores are typically waving around slightly as if in a narrow horizontal corridor of best and worst performance - known widely as the infamous 'safety wave'. My experience is that the companies in question can easily identify the need to 'do something' about the fact that 90 per cent or more of accidents have a key human element. It's deciding how to push through the plateau that's hard.

Sadly, there isn't a magic bullet, and though inspirational talks certainly help, it's usually only short term, because increased effort and attention only takes you so far. However, the willingness of people to change their attitude has to come into play - changing underlying attitudes and values is very difficult as anyone who has ever debated politics, sport or religion in the pub knows.

Returning to Parker and Hudson, the good news is the behaviours that characterise proactive companies are all easy to do in theory at least The behaviours are also the characteristic of companies which enjoy high levels of product quality, industrial relations, low stress and profitability. Therefore, though considerable effort is required, the 'win-win' sell to line management isn't impossible.

A final story illustrates this. A manager asked me once if we could delay a site tour for an hour while a certain job was completed. He said: "The thing is, Tim, I know very well what they're doing, but if I go out and see them, I'm really going to have to do something ... and it's already behind."  He managed to get through the day unscathed - as in the vast majority of cases - no one got hurt. But it's not exactly world-class proactive safety, is it?

Because they're human

The best companies are proactively addressing daily behavioural issues by training front-line supervisors in practical people skills and getting the workforce actively involved in the day-to-day management of safety.

The training courses are not dryly addressing compliance issues, but are lively laughter-filled events covering analysis and communication skills seeking to win the hearts and minds of the proactive companies that understand people don't put themselves at risk because they are inherently lazy or stupid - but because they are human.

Six sets of daily proactive behaviours

Lead indicators

The use of lead indicators, so long as a good sample is used, deliver the benefits of 'what gets measured gets done', regardless of the quality of the data. In addition, the use of accurate lead indicators will also deliver the benefit of "if we can measure it, we can manage it".

It must be stressed though that, at the very least, companies need to implement a process to actively monitor behaviours with a good sample strategy to achieve the benefit of either, and developing accurate percentage measures takes work - using techniques similar to those used to check product quality. Like quality assurance, this is hard work, but achievable.

A common problem is companies collecting data from badly defined items with no proactive sample strategy to ensure a site is scored while it's busy and dangerous. Some companies simply end up analysing embellished pie charts inaccurately displaying how safe the organisation is when it's nice and quiet.

Ownership

This behaviour describes the high levels of ownership of the safety process by the people who are most at risk, ie the workers on the shop floor. After all, they nearly always know exactly what happens in the middle of busy shift, why it happens and what needs to be done to stop it.

Ownership is about actively making choices - which is where the story of the Scottish football fans comes in. It isn't just about a quick consultation of a pre-made decision with the usual suspects. In many respects, ownership and consultation look similar, but they deliver vastly different results in practice.

Communication

All companies communicate about safety, but the quality and frequency of such make all the difference. All behavioural models will stress that good communications involve high levels of praise, and "catching people doing something right" is the expression used by the famous 'one-minute manager'.

However, it also includes areas such as well-delivered and high-impact weekly briefs and toolbox talks, as well as an expectation in the workforce that communications on their part will be taken seriously and acted upon - not just filed in a drawer. To help achieve this, many companies have started to train all managers and supervisors in presentation, active listening, feedback and coaching skills.

A problem needing attention is that organisations have simply never addressed the communication or feedback skills of perhaps the most important people in the organisation - front line supervision. Another interesting finding is the frequency with which supervisors attending courses of this ilk genuinely ask: "my manager is going to go on this too aren't they?" or "only he/she needs it as much as I do..."

Analysis before blame

Perhaps the key element is that an unsafe act needs to be properly analysed for its root cause before any blame is apportioned. This is because, more often than not, the safe way will prove to be slow, uncomfortable or inconvenient in some way, and the classic 'antecedent; behaviour; consequence' (the ABC model) needs to be applied.

Modelling safety and challenging unsafe acts

The best companies understand that if a safety leader fails to challenge an unsafe act, he or she condones it, and that if one is ever seen to act unsafely, one undermines the whole process.

There simply isn't room in a proactive culture for managers to take the odd shortcut and turn the occasional blind eye. This is a challenge most businesses face. To address this, companies develop checksheets and hazard-spotting DVDs to remind their supervisors of the everyday behaviours causing the majority of accidents.

(For example, on an oil platform, 50 per cent of all lost-time injuries are caused by failing to hold the handrail and slipping on stairs.) The best companies also give training in areas such as assertion, ice-breaking and coaching techniques so that managers have the confidence to effectively challenge, while minimising resentment and conflict.