Can you achieve meaningful improvement to employee safety merely by considering Safety Culture?
In my opinion on Safety Culture may be a bit unorthodox. First, I think we should define culture. In organizations, culture is the relationships of people. It governs the way the business accomplishes its goals and objectives. It also involves communication within the organization. In my experience it is always present. One unique aspect of culture is it often resists change within an organization. If you ever want to test culture in an organization, make new changes in a work cell, machine center, or some procedure or policy and do not consult anyone on this change. Chances are you will find out about culture in a hurry!
When we talk about culture how do we define good and bad? What makes a good culture or a bad culture? There are many answers to these questions. My answer would be how well does the culture get the organization to reach its goals and objectives. Does the culture restrict or aid the ease of the organization reaching its goals and objectives? The answer to these questions I believe identifies the adjective that describes or defines a culture.
A natural definition to describe safety culture is how well a culture facilitates the goals and objectives concerning safety in an organization. In simple terms, how well does the culture keep employees safe? In most peoples’ opinion good cultures would do these things well, bad cultures would not.
I am a manufacturing guy! There are more aspects of a business than just safety. If there is such a thing as safety culture it is not in a vacuum. Each area also has a culture in this scenario. How do these cultures work for or against each other? Are they subsequently good or bad? Here is a good question, “Could an organization have a good Quality Culture and conversely a bad Safety Culture?” That is possible, but in my experience either your cultures are all bad or good. My experience also tells me that trying to build a good safety culture is impossible if the other cultures are working against you. Your chances of being successful are not good even it the other cultures are not supportive of what you are trying to do in safety. Therefore, a safety culture cannot be an island onto itself!
Do not think in terms of just a safety culture in an organization. Recognizing that the organization has an overall culture, I have found it best to use that to achieve safety improvement, rather than to just concentrate on safety culture. For overall culture improvement an all-encompassing leadership philosophy must be in place. I was lucky, in my organization we embraced Lean Manufacturing for the entire organization about 20 years ago. I admit at first, I did not like it. It seemed like another flavor of the month concept. It also sounded like World Class Manufacturing that we had tried since the 1980s, so I thought I had heard it all before. However, as I worked with Lean principles, I saw their applicability to safety as it started to change to the overall business.
I tried for years to get my safety culture to assist lowering metrics like our TIR rate. The tools I needed to do that were not in place in the organization to facilitate the safety culture we needed. When I embraced the Lean principles that the overall culture followed, we started to make huge improvements in safety.
Using the Lean Culture, we learned techniques in problem-solving, team building, employee engagement, communication, and overall continual improvement. What I called a World Class Safety Program became easier and easier as we made our overall Lean journey. As an example, when we needed to do an A3 (problem solving technique) because of an employee injury we used a team that used the same tools of teambuilding and problem solving as a Quality Team might use to address a customer Quality concern. Employees did not have to re-learn how we addressed issues, as the tools were the same in Lean no matter the project or problem and the discipline it was in.
An example of how this works is when a Manufacturing was implementing a new work cell. In the past Engineering would build a work cell with a little input from Manufacturing. Once the cell was complete Quality and OHS (Safety) would attempt to implement policies and procedures. This would force us to play catch up, and consequently we were always behind the 8-ball! However, with a total Lean Culture the Work Cell Team built safety into the cell from the beginning.
As an example, the Work Cell Team would have an appreciation of basic ergonomics. The team would use Ergonomic principles in the work design. The Work Cell Team members would also understand the requirements of machine guarding so would purchase the machines with the required guarding. The production date of the new work cell would not need to be delayed due to having to add guarding to machines just at the cell was about to begin. Basically, Safety was always just what we did in the design stage, it was automatic.
Employee engagement was also important in Lean. At Lean’s beginning we had one safety team of twelve employees or about 3% of our workforce. Our TIR rate at the time was 20 per 100 employees, awful. When we started using Lean principles in Safety our 1 Safety Team grew to 12 and they were targeting teams. Initially, as a couple examples of our teams, we had a Lockout Team and another called a Green Team (which was Haz-Com, Haz-Mat, and Environmental).
No longer did the plant have one Lockout resource (me) but now there were 15, with lockout experts on all 3 shifts. We had a huge problem with un-labeled secondary containers on the plant floor. With 15 people on our Green Team, they identified the root cause of the problem and solved the problem. Unlabeled Containers became exceedingly difficult to find!
When management identified a trend of injuries, we formed Safey Teams to address the problems. When we identified falls as a concern we formed a Slips, Trips, & Falls Team. They solved the problem of falls in the winter is our icy parking lot. They instituted a fix that addressed our parking lot winter falls from 6-8 to 0 annually. When Corporate mandated new Powered Industrial Truck policies more aggressive than OSHA we formed a PIT Team. They trained the 100 PIT operators in the new procedures and updated their 3-year training, all in one month. Made my job as the EHS Manager for the plant a snap!
Having a Safety Program that complimented our overall Lean Culture had dramatic results! In so doing in 3 years, we lowered out TIR rate from 20 to ZERO, for 2 out of the next 5 years a lowered our overall TIR for all 5 years to <1.0. This was not without cost. We had about 200 hours a month of indirect labor dedicated to the Safety Teams per month. In Human Resource terms this equates to about 1.25 Full-Time equivalent (FTEs). Although you learn in Lean the old Cost Accounting terms like indirect labor, direct labor, earned hours, and so forth, are just not as relevant. However, for these costs are injury costs (like Workers Compensation) dropped to near ZERO. We obtained Zero-Injuries in a dangerous work environment.
Lean is all about waste reduction and maximizing value to the customer. I was still busy as I found myself doing hours and hours of being the trainer for Lean tools like teambuilding, problem solving, and safety topics like hazard recognition, lockout, machine guarding, and many others. I also had to find other sources for training like Ergonomics. A dedication to Lean does not necessarily make your work easier. But it does make it much less about fighting fires or being reactive and much more about being proactive and happy.
At the same time our overall culture was building the business, surpassing the goals set before us through our corporate leadership, and providing great jobs for our community. That is why it is not my advice to be all about building a great Safety Culture, better yet, it is much better to work within and build a great Overall Culture!
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