What separates ‘great’ safety performance from ‘world-class’ safety performance?

Mike Goddu, Co-Founder and Managing Director, spills the beans on what the world’s best-performing organizations have in common.

In recent decades, we’ve seen a large reduction in workplace injuries and fatalities in many areas of the world. In western countries, a combination of increased regulation, changing attitudes and new technologies makes it hard to imagine a time when keeping people safe wasn’t a priority, or better yet, a value. As a result, workplace safety has improved across the board.

It’s great to see so many organizations with a strong safety culture. However, in every industry there are a few companies who consistently demonstrate an exceptional level of safety performance. Have you ever wondered what their secret is?

The attributes of world class safety organizations

Based on JMJ data and our experiences with clients, we have identified a set of companies whose safety performance sets the benchmark for their industry. These include traditional manufacturing, transportation, construction, energy and chemical firms. Our analysis shows that, all these companies do the standard and required actions to keep their people safe. What makes the difference is that they go well beyond compliance in certain areas:  

1. Safety is built into their DNA. These organizations take a stand that if you get safety right, everything else follows. Consequently, leaders are incessantly focused on safety.
2. Visible and felt leadership. Leaders in amazingly safe organizations spend time with their employees. They show up at all hours. They build relationships and have meaningful conversations. A profound caring for their people and an environment of trust underpins everything they do.
3. Clearly defined budgeting process. Organizations make investment decisions that consider safety. Leaders may ask questions about how more investment would make a process safer. The organization knows that it’s okay to ask for more money if it means their employees will be safer. It’s not unlimited funding, but it is expected that leaders understand that safety is worth additional investments.
4. Contractor management. The safest organizations are partners with their contractors. They don’t simply ‘outsource risk.’ Contractors and contracting companies work together to set expectations and understand how to reduce operational risks. They jointly review performance and continuously strive for improved safety performance.  All these activities are guided by a Contractor Management Safety Program.
5. Advanced safety metrics. Leading and lagging indicators are commonplace for safety. The world’s safest firms also adopt strategic and predictive metrics. Strategic metrics measure how their organizations are implementing critical programs and initiatives. Predictive metrics strive to understand where the next incident will take place using disparate sets of data.
6. Barrier management. The safest companies adopt a philosophy of ‘barrier management’. This means they think about hazards and put layers of protection in place to prevent them from occurring. They are obsessive about identifying hazards and operating with physical barriers that are fast enough, strong enough, and resilient enough to prevent incidents.
7. Chronic unease. These companies have a mantra of ‘my assets are safe, and I can show it.’ They believe risk must be continuously reduced and are never satisfied that hazards are truly eliminated. They operate in a state of constant vigilance against safety incidents.
8. Just culture and human factors. This starts with a belief that people are the solution and not the problem. It’s an understanding that people are trying to do the right thing. Rather than instill blame, employees are trusted and encouraged to report unsafe conditions and actions.

Many of these ‘above and beyond’ attributes are rooted in a successful safety culture. Taking your current culture to the next level requires an authentic commitment from leaders.

  “Leaders drive culture, culture drives people, and the people drive business.”

Jim Bryson, former chair of 20|20 research

In other words, if you want to elevate your safety performance to world leading, you need to create a safety culture to match. You’ll need patience, great communication, commitment and clear goals. But you will also need the full support of every employee and contractor in your infrastructure, from your highest-paid executives to the newest recruit on site. You won’t succeed without this.

A great starting point is a set of cultural analytics diagnostics which provide data on alignment, perspectives and sentiment. These can be used to set milestones and goals and to measure progress as you shift towards your desired safety culture.

JMJ has been helping organizations transform their safety culture for over 35 years. JMJ’s Transformation Cloud™ technology platform, in combination with the deep experience of our consultants, can help you learn how to become a world-class safety organization, and stay that way. Contact us.