Culture Eats Safety for Breakfast

Where your company culture goes, safety will follow

By Nathan Rasmussen

Meet them where they’re at.

That’s the key. That’s the difference maker. If you’re wanting to work on the culture surrounding safety in your organization, your efforts need to start with recognizing where the individuals who make up your organization are at, emotionally, with safety. Every suggestion on how to improve your safety culture that doesn’t also address the reality of the culture that exists inside your organization today is at least a little bit off base… writes the person about to make suggestions for how to improve your safety culture.

I recognize the irony, and so I will limit my thoughts to the process for identifying where to start identifying the challenges your unique culture faces the and choices some other excellent organizations have made to contribute positively to their culture.

Taiichi Ohno said, “Having no problems is the biggest problem of all.” This applies equally across all aspects and functional groups of your organization, including safety. You can expect to find opportunities for improvement in three phases of “safety,” and since everything starts with culture, let’s quickly discuss the other two – “Program” and “Program Execution” – and get them out of the way.

Your “Program” is the plan that you have for how to operate your processes safely. For this phase of safety to be successful, you need someone (or a team of someones) with enough technical knowledge to identify all of the hazards associated with how you do business and work with your operations team to come up with effective and practical ways to control those hazards.

The two most common challenge here are the need for practical solutions that work for production as well as controlling risk, along with finding a safety champion for your process with enough safety knowledge to guide the operations team to find hazards and controls. If you don’t have this expertise in-house, there are independent consultants and Industry Based Safety Programs (IBSP) available to support you, but make sure that you’re working with the right external expert. Not all consultants are experts in every aspect of safety and ensuring that you’ve done your due diligence before getting started is important. Your IBSP should be supporting you here, helping you find the right expert for the problem you have.

“Program Execution” is just that: is your team able to execute that safety program plan? You can have the best written program in the world, but if your team doesn’t have the hazard identification skills to identify issues when they come up, or the problem-solving skills to come up with effective root causes and corrective actions, you’re making an investment in safety that won’t give you a return.

A needs analysis is a tool for identifying the gap between current skills and desired skills and will help you create a training plan worth investing in. Feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or through the Made Safe website if you’d like to to chat with me directly about training plans and where to start. If not, but you still need help making sure your training program is getting you a return on your investment, Google “9 Essential Workplace Skills” to ensure your people have the capacity to take on new skills and then “needs assessment template” to help guide you through the process. The important thing to remember is that there isn’t really a shortcut to good training, but there are several shortcuts to bad training!

So, 500 words later we’ve arrived at “Culture,” and Taiichi Ohno had something to say about culture too: “Progress cannot be generated when we are satisfied with existing situations.” If you’re okay with where your culture is right now—if you believe that your team holds safety as a priority the way you want them to, then thanks for reading this far and I hope you have a fabulous day. 

However, if you’ve ever had a moment where you’ve thought to yourself some variation of, “what where they thinking?” then we’ve arrived back where we began. To influence behaviour, you’ve got to meet them where they’re at.

If we start from the premise that not a single one of your workers woke up this morning and thought to themselves, “I’m going to hurt myself at work today,” then we can make the easy jump to people being injured at work either don’t see the risk or believe that they are safe enough.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say that most safety programs go through three phases:

1. Doing safety to your people

2. Doing safety with your people

3. Providing the resources and support to your people while they drive the program forward.

When your team isn’t ready to take the reigns and move the program on their own, finding opportunities to develop culture will be important.

One incident – a machine break down – stands out for me as a turning point in my own career. The repair efforts were being rushed to try to save the production run, but in a way that created risk. As I stood there with the production manager, who was as new to the company as I was, talking through options for doing the repair work safely: Do we have a different maintenance process that we could use? Do we have different protective gear? What can we do?

We were both very uncomfortable but couldn’t come up with a solution. Here’s where the culture at that company came from. Our VP came up behind us and asked the situation. Hearing that we were coming up empty, the VP explained that the expectation was safe work. They asked about the production schedule for that day and the following day, then made the necessary decisions to shut down the repair process for the day, allow the hazard to dissipate, and pick up the repairs again in the morning. The simple act of a minor interruption to production in favour of safety sent a message to both the manager and me. An expectation had been set and culture built in that one moment; we had been shown where safety sat on the priority list. Actions spoke louder than any policy could have.

For your frontline teams, being deliberate about creating opportunities for culture development will be more impactful than waiting for the right moment. Here are some of the ideas that world class companies in your own backyard have come up with:

• Industry Based Safety Program Involvement – Whether it’s participating in the “edutainment” of the engaging On-Tour Trailer presentation or having one of the team members visit in-person to deliver custom presentations, Made Safe is working around the province during North American Safety Week (May 6-10, 2024).

• Many companies have sponsored and supported their staff in creating a walking team for the Threads of Life events. Threads of Life supports the families of victims of workplace fatalities with a large event every April coinciding with the National Day of Mourning.

• One of the Made Safe member companies held their own safety conference, bringing in speakers and hosting not only their own staff but invited their contractors, vendors, and other organizations from the community.

• Two large member companies have recently refreshed all of the supervisor and managers on their eight-hour supervisor training (delivered by the Made Safe team). Bringing together teams of your leaders to connect with the training material in a way more specific to your organization can work for team building and to create that common set of expectations.

• Creating a worker driven committee for planning your own Safety Week celebrations is not only an opportunity to create meaningful events and opportunities for relationship building throughout your organization, it’s also a development opportunity, giving that group an opportunity to try skills and work through challenges that develop skills they may not have otherwise had the opportunity to find that they have.

If your team isn’t ready to dive into a major training exercise or planning exercise, bringing in an outside consultant to support day to day safety activities such as inspections, or participating in a special interest group (such as can be found throughout the CME program) where your people can practise the skills they need with coaching or the support of more experienced personnel can make all the difference. 

Nathan Rasmussen is an Advisor with Made Safe. He’s part of a team that provides Manitoba manufacturers with a comprehensive suite of training and practical solutions for real world safety challenges. Visit http://www.madesafe.ca to learn more.