How many safety inspections does your company organise, and how efficient are they? Do they bring to light the real bottlenecks, or do you notice that the same rules are repeatedly broken? Do the inspections help to reduce violations and incidents in the long term? And does the collected data lead to action plans that have an impact on the employees?
A tour can be carried out completely by the book, and yet not lead to sustainable improvement. This has partly to do with the human factor. People know what they need to do to work safely. But they get used to the dangers to which they are exposed. Or the high work pressure forces them to work more carelessly. A purely controlling inspection in which risk points are ticked off has no added value or meaning for them. What’s more, it evokes resistance because the observation seems focused on trying to ‘catch’ them.
One-way communication
This immediately touches on a thorny issue. Security patrols are still too often used as a control instrument imposed from above. The focus is on the number of observations, not on their quality. The supervisor walks past the work stations, checks off what is going wrong and slaps people on the wrist if they are not wearing protective goggles or their safety harness has expired. But that is as far as it goes. There is no real dialogue, no questions are asked about the reason for the behaviour. This negative and sanctioning approach can result in people being less likely to report irregularities, or only following safety instructions ‘when the boss is watching’.
The expertise of the observer
Sometimes the person evaluating has too little connection with the practical side of things: how are activities carried out on the work floor, how do machines work, and where can the greatest risks occur? The observer does not necessarily have to be an expert in the work that is carried out, but a basic knowledge is necessary.
Empty statistics? Choose the right KPIs
KPIs are usually reactive because they are based on past events. Or they are mainly based on technical and business criteria: damage to machinery, productivity, frequency of incidents. This produces nice statistics, but no innovative insights or impact on the intrinsic motivation of the employee. All action plans based on this will therefore have hardly any lasting effect.’
So it is better to choose KPIs that focus on the quality of the inspection rather than on the quantity.
The time between a report and an action plan or solution can, for example, give you a good idea of the follow-up to the pain points. Or carry out spot checks on the quality of a safety inspection. In some companies these are planned, sometimes even with several people together.
Observation rounds integrated into policy
There is another way. With an approach that fully commits to dialogue with the shop floor and a bottom-up commitment to crucial safety behaviour. This turns the safety inspection into a platform for improvement: a useful policy tool to promote safety, make employees more aware and gain better insight into the real bottlenecks and their impact on the shop floor.
In the tour systems, Samurai at Work emphasises the company-wide vision and the mutual involvement of management and shop floor.
‘As an organisation, you should not only know what you are going to evaluate with a safety tour and how you are going to do it. You should also reflect on the purpose of the tours. What do you hope to achieve? Are the tours integrated into the overall policy? And what do you want your employees to be aware of?
From inspection to supported policy
Does a tour really want to have an impact on the behaviour and mentality of employees? If so, it is best for a company to first develop a vision: what is the crucial safety behaviour they want to achieve, where do the priorities lie?
To determine this, managers and employees on the work floor should be involved in the thought process. After all, they know what the reality on the work floor is and how people deal with safety and want to deal with it. They can also contribute ideas about how this crucial safety behaviour should be evaluated with assessment criteria that go beyond the technical safety parameters.
Dialogue is paramount
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry summarises this beautifully: ‘If you want to build a ship, don’t gather people together to drag wood and divide tasks, but first teach the people to long for the endless sea’.
One of the ways to achieve this is for managers, supervisors and employees to enter into and maintain a dialogue about safety in and around their own workplace. When setting up the tour systems. And especially during the tours. By addressing people on the work floor and delving deeper into the reasons for unsafe behaviour, an observer gains more insight into possible improvement actions and ensures that employees themselves come to safety insights.
Addressing people about their behaviour is not easy, the social barrier is often too high. Telling your daughter she can’t go outside without a coat when it’s freezing is one thing. But how do you tell a friend or a stranger that he’d better not double-park his car, for the safety of cyclists? Yet companies expect their foremen and employees to question their colleagues during a tour. But how do you do that without creating resistance?
Safety-promoting dialogue
The key to a positive tour dialogue is an open mind and an attitude of wonder. An observer focuses less on what he has seen, but rather on what he has learned. With this non-judgmental, curious approach, you will automatically ask questions that lead to real insights.
A good way to initiate a fruitful dialogue is a natural, informative work meeting. By focussing your attention on an employee, you will have a more constructive conversation that has more impact. Ask why questions about his behaviour, ask him what is going well and how some things could be improved. People are open to feedback, provided you adopt a positive attitude and, in addition to making adjustments, also mention what is going well and thank them for their efforts.
Clear communication to the shop floor is also important. If the tour is clearly linked to the people-oriented vision behind it, employees can identify with it more easily. Did actions produce good results – even if they were quick wins? Then positive communication about them also rewards people for their efforts and ensures greater involvement and goodwill.
In order to fully understand what an employee wants to say, it is at least as important to be able to detect how they feel and what they actually mean.
Tips for addressing people’s behaviour
- Adopt an attitude of curiosity. If you are walking around and see an employee doing something you do not understand, or that is not according to the rules, do not reprimand him or her. Ask questions without judging. This will give you answers from which you can learn a lot and which will help you to do your job better.
- Have a natural conversation. During a tour, have a chat with people on the floor. It can be about a technical problem, work or just how the weekend was. Good contact makes it easier to discuss things and creates goodwill. And that is more important than finishing your list and listing guidelines that are not being followed.
- Focus on the positive. Managers should also teach their employees to ‘catch’ them doing something positive. Compliment them on something that went well, even if the result is not 100%. Or use the 3/1 rule during an evaluation interview. Show your appreciation and/or understanding three times, or thank your employees for the (extra) effort they make. Make one corrective comment.
- Set a good example yourself. It may seem obvious, but it is a pitfall in many companies. If managers or foremen do not follow the safety rules themselves, then employees on the work floor will not follow them either, no matter how many times you repeat the rules. Words are not enough, set an example.
