Back in 1996, Donald J Eckenfelder wrote in Values-Driven Safety,  that the American safety body, OSHA, mostly works through fear.  It’s regulation based and requires compliance or else sanctions are applied.

He stated that regulatory leadership is based on compliance statistics, not performance improvement.  These statistics measure safety after the fact and are not a true representation of how companies are performing on safety in real time.  Audits simply measure the regulatory process and are largely obsolete.  Lawyers and other regulatory bodies mask the real problems.  Often subverting serious prevention efforts by overwhelming everyone with largely irrelevant information.

Recently, in 2012, the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, proclaimed in an article in The London Evening Standard that “Every day they (small businesses) battle against a tide of risk assessment forms and face the fear of being sued for massive sums.  The financial cost of this culture runs into the billions each year. Harder to calculate is the cost in terms of attitude: the way it saps personal responsibility and drains enterprise.  Building our economy up to strength requires a real pioneering, risk-taking spirit – and today we are smothering it in bubble wrap and red tape. This must stop.”

And he’s right (sort of).

World over, the safety compliance system isn’t working.  And one of the main reasons is that regulatory bodies focus on the problems (and ruling by fear) when they need to focus on the solutions.

In the book, Persuasion by Robert Cialdini,  he  mentioned that social scientists have discovered that we accept inner responsibility for a behaviour when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures.

Giving people a bribe (or reward) or making a threat to get the desired behaviour accomplished only provides temporary compliance.

To get people to really do what we want, then we want them to do the task when we’re not around.  You need to get people to take personal responsibility for their choice to do the desired thing.

Tell them it’s wrong to do something, but avoid making threats.

Safety compliance forces companies to waste a lot of time on forms and admin, when this time could be spent on improving safety performance.  Instead, improving safety should be seen as important task that is part of improving business performance (like doing a budget) across the board, rather than a grudge task that you have to do or be fined.   Great companies that do well in safety, do not focus on the numbers required by regulatory authorities, instead they focus on what they need to do to keep their workforce safe and as a natural by-product the compliance statistics always look good.

Motivation Upgrade

in the book, Drive by Daniel Pink, he argues that motivating humans has evolved from the drive to survive in pre-historic times (or operating system Motivation 1.0) where humans acted liked monkeys and other animals, to the upgraded Motivation 2.0 where humans were no longer the sum of their biological urges.  During the industrial revolution, human drive was based on reward and punishment.

Motivation 2.0 has endured for a long time, it’s become such a part of our lives that we scarcely know it exists.  But there’s been an awakening.  It’s slowly being upgraded to Motivation 3.0.  That is that humans have a drive to learn, to create and make the world a better place.

Reward and punishment used to work for humans.  But it doesn’t anymore.  We’re a lot more sophisticated than that.  Now, it’s time to trust humans to look at ways to improve safety and reduce the punishment/compliance mindset.

Safety Culture

The best way to developing a safe workplace is to create the right safety culture that is formed by using values.

Donald J Eckenfelder wrote that loss prevention needs to be based on a set of values that creates a culture that honors individuality.  No one feels manipulated because they understand the basis for everything that is being done.  Those who don’t share the beliefs and who prefer to take their chances and get injured will feel better working elsewhere.

By focusing on what is important to a company (eg: protecting people, making great stuff etc), companies need to work out the values from these beliefs of what’s important.  Then, it starts to become clear on what the company needs to do to keep people safe and in what order.  Leading by values empowers staff to do the right thing.

Th current paradigm is inspection and reaction.

Safety performance needs to be measured on organisational values, culture, attitudes and behaviours rather than end results like incident rates and worker’s compensation costs.  Great companies will benchmark themselves against other companies whose organisational values correlate with accident free performance.

Regulatory authorities need to work with companies who do not have a safety culture.  These companies need to be taught that a safe company is a profitable company and that staff are important.   Companies need to be encouraged to work out their values and develop a safety culture that enables staff members to make decisions based on the company values.  So if the production managers notices that the slicing machine barrier is too easy to move, he can refer to the company value that says safety is important above all else and then easily get the funding for a barrier.

War Against Safety Culture

David Cameron is right to want to reduce compliance, but he’s wrong to want to wage war on excessive safety culture.

One of his parties resolutions is “to kill off the health and safety culture for good’.

There are two reasons why this is inappropriate:

1. Focusing on fighting something, only exacerbates it and it’s what regulatory authorities like to do.  Focus on the solution.  (see How Finding Company Bright Spots brings Success).

2. A great safety culture in a company will ensure workers are safe and reduce the need for red tape.  Safety is another important company task that needs to be part of company strategy, rather than a burdensome one that takes up unnecessary time and costs.  It’s not the safety culture that’s at fault, but how safety is controlled by regulators who are still working on the old paradigm of punishment and compliance.

Now is the time for us to work towards a new way of developing and reinforcing a safety culture around the world that makes safety performance an enjoyable indicator to improve, rather than a burden.  Let’s work towards a society where everyone does what they can to be safe, and those around them, even when no-one is looking.