When I began my management career many years ago, I remember hearing that my organization had a safety team. At the time, I remember thinking that having such a team just seemed logical and important, especially if employee safety was important, as I was told at the time it was. Over the many succeeding years I found myself sitting in many a safety team meeting. Over the last twenty years, I found myself as the leader of many safety teams.
For a good half of my manufacturing career of over forty years, I found myself in a few good safety team meetings, but by in large, they mostly seemed like we were just going through the motions. I do not want to say the time spent in these meetings was wasted, but it sure was not what I would call “Value Added” time spent either! Over the years, I have learned to spot an effective safety team from a lackluster one. In my opinion, below are ten signs your safety team is not effective, mundane, lackluster, boring, and/or just plain boring:
- Often you tell yourself, “Darn, I wish this meeting was not today!” We always have lots to do. There never seems to be enough time to get it all done. Sometimes certain things are important, and at other times these same things are not! However, if you are telling yourself the above statement often, you have already decided for yourself that the safety team is a waste of time. If you are in the leadership role for the team this a particularly telling sign.
- Planning your safety team meeting you struggle with this question, “What are we going to talk about today?” This indicates that your team does not have a genuine inspiring purpose. If your team did have such a purpose you would not have to struggle with the answer to this question. If your safety team is dynamic and purposeful, the answer to the above question would be always evident. Your present team does not have a stimulating goal.
- When you begin your safety meetings, many members are tardy or do not show up at all. If you safety team meetings are poorly attended that again indicates indifference for safety and the team. It indicates that within the organization safety is given not given a priority. Within the framework of safety culture, poor attendance indicates safety is not valued. It also indicates poor management support. In a supported safety culture, safety team participation is expected.
- You find you are doing all the talking at the meeting. Anyone else in the meeting just sits. This reflects that you do not have a participative team. Employees that are engaged do not need to be encouraged to speak.
- Along the same lines, you find yourself doing all the work! You cannot get anyone to volunteer for assignments or tasks. In a truly engaged safety culture this is not a problem, as employees will eagerly volunteer and look for opportunities to improve the organization.
- No one finishes anything. If this condition exists you cannot get anything done. Projects and assignments may be started but not completed. Again, this shows that other priorities are getting in the way, and safety is delegated to lower priorities.
- Injuries and other lagging metrics are up and/or proactive or leading metrics are down or not existent. This is probably an intuitive conclusion. One of the major reasons you have a safety team is to lower the chances of your employees getting injured. However, if you are having a hard time getting proactive metrics, like safety suggestions and near miss reports, your teams and probably culture do not engage your employees.
- You have a hard time getting safety improvements and projects approved by management. Safety improvements can be expensive. They also are difficult to prove return on investments on to financial and accounting managers, who are looking for the investments to prove themselves. Many times, an addition of a $20,000 guarding system is the thing to do, but impossible to prove a definitive financial gain. A World Class Safety Culture can easily make the decision to approve the guarding system, and Apathetic Safety Culture, not so much.
- Same people are on the team, year after year. Simply put, a poor performing, low activity, ineffective team will not attract people to join and become active within that team. Teams that are dynamic, robust, and exciting have a much better chance attracting members and being effective.
- Difficulty finding a meeting time all members can and will attend! If people are often calling you or sending you emails that they cannot make meetings people are telling you that they have higher priorities. I do not like to say, “Safety is number 1.” However, I can say. “Nothing is more important than Safety!”
If you notice that one or two of the above are true, it may not be that your team is completely ineffective, maybe you are just in the doldrums. Every great team have their high and low times. Maybe you can just “juice” things up some to get things back on track. The severity and degree of these instances may also help to drive the point home that is time for a change. If several of these examples are evident it is probably more than likely time for a extensive change. Exactly, what these changes should be will depend on several factors which will be described in succeeding articles.