Featured Expert in Safe Supervisor Magazine

Safe Supervisor magazine is a monthly publication dedicated to helping Occupational Health & Safety managers, supervisors and foremen become more effective in their jobs.

Last week, Dave Duncan of Safe Supervisor, interviewed me on a host of topics related to safety in the workplace. Primarily, our discussion centered around how to get non-complying workers to come around and to embrace the on-the-job safety procedures.

Safety Naggers Need a Bag of New Tricks
This is a two-part series on how supervisors can deal with workers who have an “attitude” and resist working safely. The first segment will look at how supervisors can approach such workers in a manner that doesn’t involve nagging. Part two will examine what supervisors can do to rein in workplace “cowboys” and what can be done when words aren’t enough to budge a bad safety attitude.

The interview is a two-part series that will be published in both the February and March 2009 editions of Safety Supervisor.

Safety IS an Attitude!

Bringing Outsiders In

You are, no doubt, familiar with the “swear jar:” putting money in a jar for every time you use a curse word? Rarely does anyone voluntarily contribute to the jar without being caught uttering a profanity. It requires a witness to make the other party cough up the cash. A contribution to the jar usually requires a little teasing or at least some chiding before the guilty party will ‘fess up. Once admitted, the realization is usually followed by another curse word at being caught and a double fine is issued.

When my daughter was growing up we had a jar in the house called the “I can’t” jar. Every time she uttered the words “I can’t,” she would contribute to the jar. I wanted to instill the lesson that she can - whatever she wanted to do she could do. The jar didn’t last long.

I was asked this week, while being interviewed for an article in Safe Supervisor magazine, how to bring “safety cowboys,” those who won’t get with the program by ignoring safety procedures, not wearing their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or doing things they way they’ve always done them because they haven’t been hurt yet, into the fold and getting with the program. My answer was based on the “swear jar” concept.

Instilling a peer-patrolled, PPE-Check program that allows members of the work-site crew to monitor each other would be more beneficial than a top-down, supervisor-led program. Any member of the crew flagrantly flaunting the safety procedures could be assessed a fine of either a fixed cost (for example $20) or have the offender immediately jump into a vehicle and run to purchase a round of coffees for the rest of the crew at the offenders cost.

Currently, many job sites workers watch for the supervisor’s vehicle to approach and yell out a warning to the workers to “safety up” because the supervisor is on the way. This, unfortunately, makes the one person responsible for the safety of the crew the bad guy (Is the one person who actually cares that everyone goes home safely really the bad guy?). Whereas, the peer-patrolled program ensures that the workers are abiding by the rules at all times by being able to issue a fine to their fellow workers without the need for a supervisor to issue a warning or consequence.

The workers become judge-and-jury and majority rules in the assessment of a fine. Instantaneous gratification to those abiding by the rules at the expense of those who break the rules forces those who wish to operate outside of the rules to get in line or pay up.

The threat of teasing or chiding by one’s peers is a far more powerful compliance tool than the top-down philosophy in place in most workplaces. This same program could be applied outside of safety to issues like workplace tardiness, lack of customer service procedures (for example, customers not being acknowledged within a specific timeframe), missed deadlines that may hold up the progress of fellow workers or even an open display of disrespect for the workplace, the employer or one’s fellow workers.

SAFETY ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Negativity, flaunting of the rules, not complying with procedures and grumbling are only allowed to foster in the workplace because there is no immediate consequence to the offender – and more importantly, there is no benefit for following procedures. So switch it up. Let managers manage and let the staff, the people who do the job everyday, police themselves. Empowering your people to improve workplace culture themselves encourages people to take ownership of what they do. People engage better when they have some control over what they do and how they do it. Call a brainstorming meeting and throw out an idea like this. Let your people take the idea, develop the mechanics and institute it themselves. You might be able to hide from the boss but it’s pretty tough to hide from your co-workers. And if you’re one of those on the outside refusing to get with the program, well, step up or pay up. If your workplace is fraught with whiners but you’re not one of them, you may never have to buy yourself another coffee ever again.

Cheap Or Safe? You Choose.

Last December, the government of the Province of Quebec passed legislation requiring all drivers in the province to have winter tires on their vehicles or face a fine equivalent to a new set of winter tires. It turns out that 38% of the accidents during winter months in Quebec are caused by the ten percent of the drivers who choose to drive all year on all-season tires. Quebec made the case, based simply on numbers, that in order to lower the number of collisions, lower insurance claims and lower numbers of injuries simply required a conscious decision to prepare oneself for less than optimum driving conditions. If the general public wouldn’t do it voluntarily, then in order to lower those numbers it would have to be mandated.

I made the switch to winter tires about four years ago and swear I will never attempt to drive in winter conditions on all-season tires again. There is a huge difference. In discussions with tire technicians over the years, I learned that all-season tires start to lose their grip at temperatures below 7 degrees Celsius (44 degrees Fahrenheit). Even with seemingly good driving conditions, a thin layer of frost on a road can cause you to lose your road grip and can cause you slide into another vehicle. If you live in any of the Canadian provinces or any of the Northern States, snow, ice and frost is a reality in the winter. Any barrier that comes between the rubber tread on the tire and dry pavement forces a driver to question him or herself while on the road. Any question, even a split-second of insecurity, makes you a worse driver than you would be in ideal driving conditions.

Drivers across Canada, however, are faced with a lack of selection of winter tires this year, some would say due to the new legislation in Quebec. Tires stores across the country are sold out of popular sizes (especially the less expensive tires) but if you look around, you can still find tires in your required size. You may just have to pay a little more.

Do you carry precious cargo in your vehicle (family, kids, etc)? Do you consider yourself to be valuable enough to your company and family to keep yourself safe? Do you possess a little courtesy when it comes to sharing the road with other drivers? How would you feel if your vehicle was damaged and you were hospitalized due to another driver’s decision to forego winter tires when those winter tires could have clearly helped avoid an accident with you? How would you feel if you took the life of someone else by simply trying to save a few bucks?

SAFETY ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Safety is an attitude. You either have the attitude or you don’t. There is no “sort-of” safety attitude. Far too many drivers choose to “cheap-out” when it comes to tires. The fact is that the average passenger car can be outfitted with winter tires for about $100 or less per tire. Let’s work that out. There are about one hundred and fifty days where snow, ice, slush or frost can come into play during the average Canadian winter. That works out to a daily cost of winter tires of about two and a half dollars per day for a set of four tires. Spread that figure over four winter seasons and the cost is just over sixty cents per day. What do you spend daily at Starbucks or Tim Horton’s each day? The truth is, you will have to replace your current tires at some point – especially if you drive all-season tires in the winter as the tread wears faster in colder conditions. But by driving on winter tires in the winter, you extend the life of your summer tires. If your tires are rated for 100,000 kilometers lifetime, then for every mile you drive on winter tires, you extend the life of your summer tires. Do the right thing and save your own life and perhaps the lives of others. Stop being cheap and start being safe.