August 2016, Vol. 71 No. 8
Features
Building A Culture Of Safety
Third In A Series
Construction organizations with positive safety records establish and implement programs designed to eliminate job-site injuries.
However, there is another element that appears to set the most safety-conscious companies apart – a culture of safety that permeates the organization from the top down through every employee at every level.
This is the third article in a series from Underground Construction discussing how utility and pipeline contractors define their safety culture and how they sustain it. Executives from Michels Communications and Mears Group discuss their viewpoints in this article.
How do you define “safety culture” as it applies to your organization?
Jerrod Henschel, vice president, Michels Communications – For us, it’s an environment where all employees, from entry level all the way to senior management, are taking responsibility for the safety of themselves and those around them. This culture extends from their personal beliefs to how safety issues and unsafe behaviors are identified and mitigated in the field. While we do employ many safety professionals, we want each employee to view safety as his or her own personal responsibility, it’s not the job of the “safety guy.”
Kevin Parker, vice president, safety and training, Mears Group and Environment, Infrasource and H.L. Chapman – We have a positive safety culture where our operations team works to promote employees to be safe 24 hours a day, seven days per week. Our leadership actively promotes safety on and off the job. It’s easy to define a safety culture as “what our employees do when no one is looking,” but it’s more than that. It’s actively participating in safety planning, encouraging employees to speak up and discuss safety, feeling comfortable pausing work if an unsafe condition exists, and being concerned about our brothers and sisters at work both on the job and at home. We strive for a positive safety culture where it’s a win-win situation for all and not a blame culture.
What is the first step in creating such a culture?
Henschel – It all starts by driving awareness through various forms of education. The main focus should be to ensure that your organization’s culture fosters communication. This happens by establishing guidelines in a formal safety program, developing and delivering formal training programs, as well as encouraging regular reviews of training materials through weekly tailgate meetings and daily JSA (jobsite safety analysis).
Parker – Every company has a safety culture; it just depends on if it’s a good one or bad one. Because the culture is there it must be guided and molded into a positive safety culture, where everyone owns the safety program and lives it 24/7. The first step is a candid evaluation of where the culture stands. Is it a reactive culture? Compliance culture? Proactive culture? Once we know where we stand, we draft a plan with input from company leadership and employees on their vision about where we go and how we get there. The safety department’s role should be providing support to leadership and employees to achieve their goals. Sometimes leaders may not know the best path to take to get to a positive safety culture, so the safety team may need to help lead or steer them with a road map on how to get there. We’ve been fortunate to have leadership buy in from the top from day one, which allows us to make great progress on our journey.
Can a small- or medium-sized organization create and implement a safety program, or do outside experts need to be involved?
Henschel – I think it really depends on the background of those responsible for implementing the program. In most cases, it would likely be far more effective to call in outside help to get the program started.
Parker – To repeat, all companies have safety cultures and in many ways, safety programs. Some small companies may not have a formal written program, but that doesn’t mean they have a bad safety culture or poor safety statistics. It really boils down to the leadership and the culture fostered over the years. So the size of the company doesn’t matter when it comes to safety programs or culture. Sometimes there is a benefit of bringing in an outside expert to help with developing a formal safety program, and building a positive safety culture. It may be of benefit to bring someone in for an impartial review of the safety program and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses as compared to our industry peers. We hired an outside consultant to do a safety culture perception survey several years ago and found the information very useful.
It helped us confidentially gather the perception of everyone on our team, from laborer to leader.
How does a formalized safety program fit into building a safety culture?
Henschel – The formal program serves as a guideline that sets the expectations for training, compliance and performance for all levels of the organization, including management. This helps to ensure adequate training is developed and helps to drive accountability.
Parker – A safety program is compliance-based and can get a company part of the way to a positive safety culture, but not to a world-class safety culture. One has to build onto the compliance portion of a program to focus on behavior, solid root cause analysis and investigation programs that identify gaps in the system. A major component of the program should identify that the focus is not on blaming employees for incidents, but encourages employees to speak up and actively participate in the safety planning for projects and much more. For our company, we’ve moved beyond the standard safety program version 1.0 and moved to Safety 2.0, where we are building and developing our positive culture.
What part does training play? How important is continuous, regular training?
Henschel – Effective training gives employees the skills they need to identify unsafe conditions; it’s absolutely vital to establishing a safety culture. Our programs include:
- On-board training, conducted for newly hired employees.
- Annual safety training, tailored to satisfy the needs of each work group.
- Weekly tailgate safety training to review training materials on topics that are relevant to the current job site.
- JSA meetings are held at least daily to discuss job site specific hazards. This helps to drive awareness among all crew members, and may be conducted by anyone on the crew.
Parker – In our organization, there are two parts to safety training: safety culture and compliance. Compliance training ensures we meet all of our client’s requirements, as well as those of the regulatory agencies overseeing the work. Training begins with new hire orientation and continues throughout the careers of our employees. We offer refresher compliance training on an annual, or as-needed, basis. The safety culture training is much different. It starts as a separate discussion that our leadership has with our newly hired employees, and continues from that day forward. We then have leadership courses including the OSHA 20 Hour Leadership program, and an in-house developed program called Stepping Up To Supervision. In 2015, we added the Caterpillar Pipeline Safety Leadership training program to our curriculum.
How does management “sell” safety to its employees?
Henschel – Through education and leadership. Safety training for crew foremen and leadership should include components on how to effectively coach their employees. Managers must constantly encourage open communication, make safety a priority and lead by example. This includes coaching crew foremen on how to mentor and train their crew members to work safely.
Parker – Management sells safety in many ways. First, leading by example. Are they visiting job sites and wearing appropriate PPE, participating in the morning JSAs, and focusing on safety as much as they do production or quality? Are they asking safety-related questions of everyone on the project, from project manager to laborer? Words spoken by management are a critical part of selling safety, and not just during the weekly safety calls or during a company stand down. Everything from management has to have a safety component, and not the standard question of “how’s our schedule looking?” Management sells safety by holding employees accountable, both positive and negative accountability; recognizing employees when they go above and beyond normal safety responsibilities; rewarding the team for safe observations and pausing work when unsafe conditions are observed. All of this goes a long way to selling safety to employees – they see it in action, not just hear the talk.
Does recognition of safety achievements encourage safety?
Henschel – Recognition of a job well done always is appropriate. However, it’s important to note that reward programs (incentives) can actually have the opposite effect if not properly administered. A good reward system is based on recognition of positive behavior, such as identifying and correcting unsafe behaviors, unsafe conditions and reporting near misses to prevent others from making the same mistakes. This helps to drive awareness and fosters more open communication.
Conversely, rewarding or providing incentives for reaching a goal can sometimes result in employees refusing to report an incident in order to achieve the goal. This type of reward system can break down the lines of communication, making management less aware of job site conditions.
Parker – To some degree it does as pipeliners are competitive by nature. It’s in our DNA to be first and the best. Friendly competition with not having any incidents can help, but it also can hinder the culture we are trying to build. It’s a double-edged sword. We don’t want incidents to be swept under the carpet due to competition as we’ll lose the opportunity to learn from them. So it can help and it can hurt; it depends upon how management portrays the incident. In a positive safety culture, the incidents will be reported and recognized through sharing and learning from incidents or near misses. It’s all in how things are spun by our leadership. We prefer to recognize safe behaviors or observations and active safety participation during planning, morning JSAs, and helping others be safe. We also have a more formalized recognition program, the Safety Commitment Coin, when someone goes above and beyond normal safety responsibilities. The Coin recognition comes directly from the president or senior leadership in a special setting, and is later broadcast to everyone in the company in a quarterly newsletter.
How can employees at every level be encouraged to be responsible for safety?
Henschel – I think this is the most challenging aspect of developing a safety culture. I believe it starts on day one with employees being told that they have “Stop Work Authority.” If they feel that a task they or others are being asked to do is unsafe, or they haven’t been properly trained for the task, we expect them to speak up to the leadership on site before continuing, and escalating the matter further if necessary.
We continue to encourage personal responsibility through all manners of education, both formal classroom training and informal on-the-job training, which helps to keep safety at the forefront of daily work lives. Any employee may be called upon during daily JSA or weekly tailgate meetings to assist in leading the meeting, or to assist in identifying hazards on the job site. Management must stay actively engaged in the process.
Parker – The key is making it personal at every level. When everyone on the team believes that management cares about safety for personal reasons and not the bottom line, then people start to believe. We want everyone to understand that incidents can occur in a split second, and that everyone needs to analyze the hazards and risks for the tasks at hand so that everyone goes home to friends and families each day. We want everyone to be part of the solution to preventing an incident in the future. Some incidents can have life-altering results – loss of sight or limb, or even a fatality. But if everyone is working together and as “my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper,” everyone goes home safely.
How can a safety program evolve with changing needs?
Henschel – Although government regulations and client requirements are a driving force behind a safety program’s evolution, companies must also consistently review their programs to ensure proper fit for specific work activities and regulations. Joining industry organizations and attending conferences can be a great source of information. As needed, reaching out to industry experts or third-party auditors to review existing programs could also be helpful.
Parker – Our work environment and workforce are constantly changing, and our safety programs need to change with them. Our younger workforce is much more in tune with computer training, use of electronic devices, apps and ever-changing technology. Safety programs also have to change with what we are seeing in our data and incident trends. Our Near Miss Program has gone a long way in helping us change how and what we are training everyone in. Several years ago, we also started tracking and trending high-potential incidents and near misses to help us try and prevent significant incidents from occurring.
What are the most common mistakes management makes in attempting to develop a culture of safety?
Henschel – Failing to stay engaged in the process. Simply developing a safety program and delivering training once a year is not enough. Implementing policies that encourage reprimanding over behavior correction can be harmful. While disciplinary action can be an important tool for repeat offenders, educating and establishing a culture that focuses on accountability should be the preferred method.
Parker – A common mistake would be a firm belief that the existing culture is far more developed or even positive than it actually is. One needs to be realistic and evaluate the perceptions of employees towards safety, and see if they are in alignment. Having over -confidence of where the culture stands on the journey to safety excellence can have some poor consequences. A second mistake is maybe not realizing how much of an impact what they say and do as leaders has on the safety culture.
How would you describe your organization’s safety culture? How is it being sustained?
Henschel – Michels safety culture takes root in our long-held belief that our employees are our most valuable asset. Consistently, our Core Values embody our commitment to safety. Our first Core Value says it all: “We take pride in our reputation for quality work performed safely and with care for our environment.”
Fostering a healthy safety culture takes continuous effort from all levels of the organization. To sustain the culture, it takes an unqualified commitment to safety. Then you have to hire the most talented people, provide meaningful safety training, clearly communicate expectations, encourage experienced employees to provide mentoring to new folks on the jobsite, and empower all of our employees to safely complete their tasks every day with no exceptions.
Parker – To get to safety excellence is a long journey that one never really completes. This journey has constantly changing events and paths forward, and just when you think you are getting there, you find out you still have a way to go. I think our culture is pretty mature and positive in most ways. But there is always room for improvement.
Culture of Safety, Part 1
Culture of Safety, Part 2
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Michels Corporation, (920) 924-4300, www.michels.us
Mears Group Inc., (281) 448-2488, www.mears.net
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