Читать книгу Delivering Safety Excellence - Michael M. Williamsen - Страница 17

The week after the funeral Aaron tries to de‐stress by going out to dinner with his wife. As he sits down the images of the funeral, the fellow workers, the widow… flood into his mind. As he crumples into the chair, internal emotion erupts and he bangs his head repeatedly on the table. Finally, he gets back into some small level of mental control, but couldn't eat. They apologize to the waiter, and Aaron's wife drives toward home as he struggles with the impossible task staring him in the face: neither management nor labor is willing to do anything to improve their miserable safety record. Sure, there is no lack of talking heads and condemnation on both sides. However, a decade of complaining without any substantial actions has delivered absolutely nothing (no improvement) to any real safety culture or employee injury reduction.

Back at work, Aaron chairs this month's joint safety committee meeting. As ever, the union and management safety leadership sit on opposite sides of the table and the joint safety meeting becomes a classic grievance meeting. The union vice president pulls out a three‐page typewritten list of complaints that has not changed substantially from last month's list, or the many similar ones from months before. Two hours later the bickering comes to an end as the lunch hour signals the end of another worthless union‐management monthly joint safety battle. Aaron looks over the latest union three‐page condemnation of management inaction. He cannot blame the union for continually bringing up the lack of any action on numerous small and large types of items such as a lack of adequate lighting, or no training of emergency crews who participate in emergencies, or, or, ad infinitum. The union leadership rightfully believes this lackadaisical, no action management culture to be the precursor to injuries and near misses/close calls which continue to occur. Aaron mentally reviews the OSHA 300 log and sees numerous repetitive injuries which could have been prevented if they would have spent some discretionary dollars on simple things such as lighting, barricades, and correct boom tool attachment.

In truth, management wages a constant battle for any safety spending to support this 1000+ employee company. In their view safety is a cost center which lacks any Return On Investment (ROI). Aaron replays the management diatribe in his mind: “We just pour dollars in while counting injuries, Workers Compensation (WC) costs, and payroll costs.” He knows that WC costs have averaged up to and beyond a million dollars/year for more than a decade. Why cannot management understand that fixing these small and large problems would save an incredible amount of money and improve net profit? These fixes would also eliminate the intense amount of pain experienced by frontline workforce employees as a result of last year's 39 lost time injuries. Additionally, these fixes that result in many fewer injuries would also greatly improve employee morale. Why cannot the union leadership pitch in and fix some of the issues that face them every day, instead of making up next month's “no‐action list” and rubbing it in the face of their opponents? Aaron begins to realize a sports analogy: there is an intense offense and an intense defense, but no team work. Consequently there are no victories to celebrate because status quo is all that is expected. The organization continually lives a WYSIWYG culture (what you see is what you get) as the two dysfunctional organizations routinely lock horns in an ongoing rutting contest, which just keeps rolling on at a miserable Recordable Injury Frequency (RIF) of 10+.

Aaron decides he must do something different to get out of the culture of insanity, but what is it? They follow the OSHA rules and guidelines, yet the painful RIF plateau of 10+ never gets better. Out of frustration Aaron reaches in and pulls out the Doc's business card which has collected dust for a number of months in the dark inner reaches of his desk. He hears himself mumble “But what use is this? I don't have any dollars I can spend on this kind of help.” “Never give up, or ugly tomorrow? What have I got to lose?” as he dials the Doc's number.

It is a long and intense phone conversation between Aaron and Doc. As it ends, Aaron comes away with some personal revelations and a simple model that should help him begin the teamwork necessary to deliver real solutions to the monthly inaction list. Aaron looks at the notes he took during the call. He scratches out “notes” and gives the list a new title, “Revelations”:

 People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. That said, management does not need to be the smartest people in the room. We need to use everyone's abilities if we are going to have any chance of being a team.

 Culture trumps process. It costs nothing to show genuine appreciation for the good things people do every day. When a person is asked to look into an issue, their actions need to be followed up with genuine appreciation and reinforcement of their doing the right actions which move toward a solution. This kind of positive feedback helps reinforce a new culture of action; one of complaint equals goal, which is far different from the current culture of complaint equals BMW (Bellyache Moan and Whine).

 Act on employee concerns. Acting on the many small issues which crop up over a month does not really cost enough to affect the monthly bottom line accounting numbers. However, this kind of frequent action of fixing what is bothering your people does genuinely affect your employees' attitudes and behaviors. There is a simple tool, an Action Item Matrix (AIM, Chapter 13), which easily and effectively helps people track what needs to be worked on and what has been accomplished. The first AIM needs to go to the maintenance team union employees with a monthly bogie of required hours to be spent on safety items. Look at the safety back log and pick a number of hours we can begin with: more than 10 and less than 100 is a good guideline for the launch of this initiative.Figure 2.1 Action item matrix.

 Trust and credibility are mission critical; there are no secrets in any organization.Your employees at all levels know what the truth is and that affects their performanceWhen your employees feel empowered, they do not want to let you downWhen you do what is right, your employees will do what they can to do what is right in return for your effortsIf you do not fix what is needed, they will provide no help in return for your lack of efforts, and the organization becomes one of RIP (Retired In Place). This kind of culture acts like one that does not really care, and that kind of attitude is the death knell to any kind of improvement possibility

Aaron looks at the list and the Action Item Matrix (Figure 2.1a and b) the Doc emailed during the conversation. After a few minutes of additional conversation, he mentally begins to fill in action items he knows they can complete. And then he stops, prints some copies of the draft AIM and goes out to talk to the employees he knows who are willing to participate in the required teamwork. Without exception, those who are willing to engage give him items which are sticking in their craw. Some are difficult, like changing the tooling on the bucket truck booms and some are so simple, like additional lighting. He remembers another comment the Doc made; “The minimum level of expectation becomes the maximum level of performance.” Aaron realizes all that was needed was his proactive leadership. Aaron and the Doc started the AIM (Figure 2.1a and b). There will be many more items added as the “Find it, Fix it, Move on” initiative progresses. As Aaron drives home he is looking forward to taking his wife out to a dinner. While in the background he considers the beginning of a plan to improve the safety culture and stop the inexcusable injuries.