RIO Tinto Loss - “Please be safe in all you do?”

It is very sad to hear of another death in the mining industry in Australia. It is of great concern that we keep having fatalities, yet we keep doing the same of the same with our legislation and the way we manage risk with systems. With the greatest intentions Rio Tinto’s last comment in their statement was “please be safe in all you do”, as well as, “they are trying their best to eliminate fatalities”.

When are we going to stop doing the same of the same and start looking outside the box? I remember my first thoughts when I entered the workforce as a young fellow, there were many procedures rules and regulations, but not all were easy to remember, follow or even make sense of. When the procedures were made there was minimal consultation with what should be included in the SWIMS / Procedures. We are all human and we are all fallible, we interpret the world differently to one another and many times don’t even realise it, our personalities, biases, heuristics, social arrangements and automaticity have a massive impact on how we make sense of risk and how we make decisions. So if we think that behaviorism programs and systems are going to prevent fatalities and injuries, we sure have a lot more to learn.

I had an opportunity to experience yet again another business who  thought they needed a “Risk Specialist” to manage a large number of people and sites across the country and overseas, it was sounding like they were looking for a “Safety Superhero”. How do we really think that one person in a company or safety systems are going to control and manage risk? I asked what about the managers, do they take responsibility for safety? The response was no that’s the risk specialist job! Businesses are still expecting one person to be responsible for the whole company’s risk and across multiple sites without empowering their leaders and people to take ownership. How do businesses expect their risk management to be managed if the only ‘Risk Specialist’ is in Darwin and there is a high risk activity happening in Hobart?

Risk is uncertainty, not numbers and graphs. We can talk about risk and still not know what the outcomes are going to be until we do the task and see the results. When are we going to realise that safety management systems don’t control people’s decisions, it’s actually the people who interpret and make sense of the systems and the outcomes. To become more resilient to risk, we need to better understand what makes people tick, understand their “Y” (personalities) and how social arrangements, and business culture impacts decision making with managing and working with risk.

Other than the old traditional ways of doing safety, what methods are you and your business doing to  better understand decision making with risk?

Is your business utilizing collective mindfulness, sense-making and social psychological fundamentals to empower your people to be more open, communicative, and voicing their opinion when managing risk?

Is your business overwhelming employees with documents to the point they are silently adding no value, therefore employees are of the ‘tick and flick’ mentality rather than genuinely identifying and managing risk?

What tools and training is there to help better educate our staff and ourselves of risk management, rather than the same old tools that are giving us the same old results? How are we making sense of risk?

Even though it is not fully understood what the causation of this latest fatality was for Rio Tinto, I think it is vital we start with the basics of “know yourself and know your team collectively”. Better understanding people and what makes us tick, will ensure we have better systems that will actually add value rather than just gain compliance, it will go back to the basics of knowing the importance of every person’s views matter. Let’s hope our industries realise that the new trainings available will influence true culture change before it is too late.

Our sincerest thoughts go out to the family and friends of the worker who passed.

Honey they get me! They get me at work!

Wouldn’t it be great if our employees all felt they were understood in our business? I often hear business managers/owners saying how frustrated they are to have their staff not following procedures, making mistakes, being injured or their plans not going to plan.

                                                             

If you don’t know your own or your teams “individual code” (Their “Y”) it makes it near impossible to get to where you want to go smoothly. The old Peter Drucker statement “Culture eats Strategies for Breakfast”, hits home about the reality of our business culture’s impact on the direction of where our business is going. We all see, hear and interpret the world differently, so why is that? We are hard wired at birth with a personality, which is then influenced a lot by our social arrangements that affect what we believe and how we go about our business such as: family beliefs, school, sports, religion, money and many more.

When we look at the four key temperaments of personality it gives us an indication on how really different we are. So let’s look at four samples and then imagine how they may affect the workplace.

The Four Temperaments:

Guardian: They are certain and organised, tend to love schedules. They seek security and belonging, they are concerned with responsibility and duty. They excel at organizing, facilitating, checklists and supporting.

Rational: They are abstract and objective. They tend to seek mastery and self-control, they are concerned with their own knowledge and competence. They excel in any kind of logical investigation such as engineering, conceptualizing, theorizing, and coordinating they are great strategists.

Idealist: They are abstract and compassionate. They seek meaning and significance, they are concerned with personal growth and finding their own unique identity. They excel at clarifying, individualizing, unifying, and inspiring.

Artisan: They are concrete and adaptable. They tend to seek stimulation and craftsmanship; they are concerned with making an impact. They excel at troubleshooting, responsiveness, and the creative handling of tools, instruments, and equipment.

The above four are just samples to what types of people we may have in our business and how they see and value the world.

       

                                                              

There are 16 different types of “Y’s” to understand. Carl Jung’s model includes 4 ways to collect data (Perception) and 4 ways to organise information and make decisions (Judgment). We all have the ability to collect data in all 4 ways, but we only have preference to use one of these functions.

An example is catching a cricket ball.

•          Extraverted Sensing (Se): How and where to catch a ball.

•          Introverted Sensing (Si): Know where to run from past experience.

•          Extraverted Intuition (Ne): Estimate where the ball could end up.

•         Introverted Intuition (Ni): Picture the ball from several ways and estimate where you could catch it.

If we don’t all process how to catch a ball the same way, then how do groups of employees make sense of risks and company procedures? We need to understand how to have the right discussions and “listen” carefully to one another and be mindful of our team’s collective views.

We also need to consider how we use our own individual persona to perhaps guard our weaknesses or to influence how others perceive us. This may hide our true strengths from flourishing to the forefront. Then to put a spin on things we have the environments we live/grew up in (mum, dad, teachers, coaches) who also influence our biases and the development of our rules of thumb (Heuristics). So when we start to understand these critical points, we start to see how our culture is influenced and impacts our business’s trajectories.

Are we as business owners, managers, supervisors, using the best language to communicate affectively to our teams “Y”, to ensure we are all in the same direction to our business’s end goals? Or are we not understanding how critical it is to understand personalities and language when listening and communicating, instead we are all unintentionally heading in different directions? 

Imagine if we cohesively put together the three critical elements in our business!

1.     Safety & management systems.

2.     Individual culture, biases, heuristics, “Y” (Personality).

3.     Group Cultural influences, language, biases, “Y” (Personalities).

In business we have our systems, tools and equipment as our foundations, however we need to understand each other and how the impact us on a day to day basis. We also need to consider group influences and how language and world views influences the decision making of groups and individuals. To put it simply, if we know how to listen to and untangle the language of an individual as well as considering our own biases/beliefs, perhaps then and only then we can really connect and understand how we all see risk differently. This actually means “common sense” is not common, but only common to individuals in their closest social arrangements.

When we really want employee dedication and commitment towards work, then we need to consider empowering them by understanding and listening to their point of views. I remember working for a company who showed they wanted to listen, took on our views and encouraged input to the direction of the business. This empowered us, employee morale was high, absenteeism was low, safety and quality efficiencies were at their best and the bottom line of the business was highly profitable.

Safe Work Australia have been working to understand why workplaces are still having injuries and fatalities even though the legislation changed to harmonisation laws. Why are company procedures and policies not working? To be successful with risk management there are more concepts to understand and apply than just complying with laws. Going back to basics means we will actually need to consider the valuable knowledge, experience and decision making of employees and how they view the world. This will help businesses to become more resilient with risk and safety.

We believe in helping businesses get to know their people better and empower their people to better manage risk, call us if you are ready to turn your business around in 2016. 

Lost money in safety?

I read a 2010 article by Peter Wagner & Associates which was headed “Safety – A Wicked Problem”. Leading CEO’s discussed their views on OHS transformation in Australia, and came up with key insights on what they felt could change and develop better business safety. Peter Wagner & Associates carried out the interviewed-based qualitative research with a selection of chief and senior executives of large Australian companies. Here we are six years later confronting the same issues and still injuring people, where to from here?

In 2016 we are faced with many of the same issues that were raised in the research and it seems we still need to understand how to:

·      Try to get people to be aware of and understand risk relevant to their work activities.

·      Employees having the confidence and trust to raise issues at higher managerial levels.

·      Understanding how and why people take perceived short cuts and finding ways to educate them on such matters as BST doesn’t seem to cut it?

·      Dealing with conflict resolutions during times of disagreement in the workplace.

·      Being over-confident that workers think they can control risk factors when taking minor short cuts. 

·      Better understand what systems are really needed in legal compliance.

The above only mentions a few of the concerns that are in businesses today. Recently meeting with a group of long term business minded people and discussing the HSE situation, really highlighted some gaps in the ways we aim for safety compliance.  Many interesting questions were floated in the air for discussion. Are we in some ways gathering evidence for our own prosecution by trying too hard to ass cover? Do we really need all the checklists and procedures that most of us currently have in business? Are our management systems actually driving a hidden culture of tick and flick and disregard for safety? When these questions are raised by business people, it is easier to see how safety becomes what Peter Wagner and Associates call “A wicked problem” (unsolvable).

Knowing too well we still have these burdens hanging over us, it spells out there is no silver bullet to resolve the current issues. What is the next transformational stage of OHS? Do we want Zero harm as our goal or is it much broader? Is safety an outcome and not a thing? Does it stem back to the broader business strategies, plans and culture, equating to safety outcomes?  What are the ways we can learn new technologies in communication, conversations and engagement when managing risk, if behavioural safety is not as effective as we hoped? Is it lead indicators data that we need more of, or is it more understanding of the unknown ways we humans work together and view risk? What have we achieved with our current safety processes and was it what we expected? In order to take the next big steps in learning new innovative ways, we need to ask the tough questions in ways we are currently doing things and be open to new ways. Safe Work Australia are also trying hard to research better ways and have produced a report called “Mindfulness, is this the start to our new ways to manage strategic business outcomes (safety)?

Getting back to basics is possibly a good place to start. Is there too much fear of taking steps into uncharted waters? Many companies perhaps fear what may go wrong if they go back to basics. Lang O’Rourke have courageously started to take the big steps forward; they have done away with the traditional ways of safety and have removed Zero Harm from their Business. Lang O’Rourke’s General Manager HSE Tim Fleming has said they were a little restless in what the future holds, if we keep doing the same and getting the same results. Lang O’Rourke are somewhat getting back to basics by empowering and entrusting their people to create resilience and help overall business culture.

Many Businesses are tired of injecting money into safety and getting the same results and perhaps, rightly so! Should we be reflecting on our own businesses and asking ‘if we keep doing the same thing year in year out and as our competitors and still have the same outcomes is it not time for change?’. Shouldn’t we be injecting money into business strategies and culture which in turn may give us greater efficiencies with production, quality and safety? Is spending money on outcomes like workers compensation reactive and does that really tackle the causations of risk outcomes? Many businesses are injecting funds into BST (Behavioural Safety) which is another reactive band aid and doesn’t tackle the fundamental causations in a business.

I’d love your feedback on whether you feel there is money lost in reactive safety?