The Bully Is About To Be Bullied

So what do you think happens when a high-school bully enters the work world and has a bully for a boss? The bully learns how the business world works through the eyes of another bully. In fact, the bully becomes just like his boss - so much so that he becomes almost a mirror of his boss. So when it comes time for succession, guess who gets the nod? The guy just like the last guy.

The province of Ontario is set to pass a bill (Bill 168) making workplace harassment illegal. The new law will come into effect this month. It requires employers to develop and communicate workplace violence prevention policies, assess the risks of workplace violence, and take reasonable precautions to protect workers from domestic violence in the workplace. Ontario will be the third province to legislate against workplace violence and harassment, along with Quebec and Saskatchewan.

New research from Queen's University's School of Business indicates that workplace bullying can be more damaging than racial or gender harassment.

"While ethnic harassment and gender harassment can both be attributed to prejudice, general workplace harassment is a subtle form of mistreatment that masks underlying motives, and is not as easily attributed to bias," say report authors Jana Raver of Queen's School of Business and Lisa Nishii of Cornell University,

Caucasians reported higher levels of general workplace harassment than minorities, and women were not more likely than men to experience either gender harassment or general workplace harassment.

Raver and Nishii also found that general workplace harassment may be especially detrimental because unlike gender and ethnic harassment, it is not illegal in most of North America. A study released by Queen's University in 2008 also found workplace harassment to be more harmful than sexual harassment because of a lack of recourse for victims.

So, even if you're not in one of the three provinces affected by the new legislation, are you ahead of this or will you wait until the very last minute - until your legislated to do something about it? You can help your own Corporate Safety & Wellness Culture by being ahead of the legislation.

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Kevin Burns - Corporate Safety Attitude/Culture Strategist
www.safety.kevburns.com
Toll Free 1-877-287-6711
Creator of the 90-Day System To Improve Safety Culture!

Safety Supervisors Have The Toughest Job

The Safety Supervisor has the toughest job. The Safety Supervisor is responsible for upholding the safety procedures at every moment of every day. And the job can be thankless.

Not only is the Safety Supervisor in a leadership position, but he or she is being watched like a hawk – by the people whose responsibility it is for the Safety Supervisor to watch over. The Safety Supervisor is the ultimate example of leading by example because people are watching. And if the Safety Supervisor does it differently than how the manual reads, he or she has set a new rule and procedure on the job.

For example:

• If a Safety Supervisor exceeds the speed limit by just one mile per hour - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor talks on the cell phone while driving and doesn’t pull over - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor rolls through a stop sign and continues driving - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor steps over a hazard on a job site and doesn’t address it - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor forgets his or her safety glasses in the truck and enters the job site anyway - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor overlooks just one procedure - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor is not courteous in traffic - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor sees a worker without full PPE and turns the other way - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor’s paperwork isn’t meticulous - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor is hung over at work - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor overlooks just one worker’s safety (especially the guy that the Safety Supervisor doesn’t much care for personally) – new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor doesn’t pull his entire crew out of an unsafe job site - new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor doesn’t address a renegade worker’s challenge and remove him from the job site immediately – new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor doesn’t stand up to the job site bully – new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor doesn’t fire a worker who purposely created a hazard on the job site – new rule.
• If a Safety Supervisor has a bad day and takes it out on the crew – new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor doesn’t foster an Attitude of “watch each others’ backs” on the job site – new rule.
• If the Safety Supervisor leaves a job site before all safety concerns have been addressed – new rule and a new Safety Supervisor I would hope.

SAFETY ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: The job of the Safety Supervisor is not easy. In fact, out of all of the jobs in your organization, I would hazard a guess (pardon the pun there) that the job of the Safety Supervisor is the toughest, most thankless and most difficult of all of the jobs.

Being a company policeman is not easy. People don’t like to have their work inspected and worse yet; don’t like to be told that it’s not good enough. Workers don’t like to be told to put on their gloves – it makes some feel like they’re being treated like little kids.

But it can also be incredibly rewarding. Getting a crew to buy into a Safety Attitude and achieving “zero” as a result has got to be one of the best feelings in the world. But the job is still tough. Because while the full crew gets to share in the celebration of “zero,” anything less than “zero” the Safety Supervisor faces alone.

It’s a tough gig and it requires a lot of mental toughness. But then a Safety Attitude is important and not everyone has what it takes to be a Safety Supervisor.

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.