Is safety “Help” Helpful?
- By Robert Pater
- Aug 01, 2024
Leaders are typically focused on making things happen. I’ve found almost all safety leaders to be well-meaning, desirous and dedicated to preventing bad things from occurring to others. But good intentions don’t always pave the way to change-effective plans and actions.
It’s good to reflect, “Is what I’m doing actually moving us to where we should be going?” Also, “To what degree have we been successful because of what and how we’ve done things versus in spite of our decisions and actions?”
This reminds me of “Is Help Helpful?” a short essay by Jack Gibb, one of my organizational leadership heroes (Google him to learn more). Jack was a consistent proponent for relationships having to be built on a foundation of honesty and trust in order to successfully foster higher-level individual and organizational results.
Embedded in his beliefs was that no single leader was the star and all others merely bit players. Rather, essential leadership functions were too numerous to be invested in any one person or even in a very small group, and the numerous elements necessary for shaping high performance had to be shared and spread amongst as many as possible.
I’ve found this to be spot on; so much so it’s built into our global work that weaves a “scissors” cultural upgrade approach (both top-down management and grassroots-up change) to propel and sustain significant reductions in injuries. Why we prepare selected workers to first share new performance methods and strategies with their peers, following up actively conversing with co-workers in informal moments and then crafting ongoing reinforcements.
In his essay, Jack wrote, “People in the service professions often see themselves as primarily engaged in the job of helping others. Help, however, is not always helpful. The recipient of the proffered help might not see it as useful. The offering might not lead to greater satisfaction or to better performance.”
Though written decades ago, this is still highly relevant. Look at any of the recent “trust” indicators to starkly see that faith in management’s intent or abilities has been plummeting. For example, a recent annual Edelman’s Trust Barometer, was titled, “Failure of Leadership Makes Distrust the Default.”
So, I suggest it can benefit our mission to consider, “To what degree is our safety ‘help’ actually helpful?” High-mindedly, the answer might appear to be yes, but how is it actually received and responded to? Has what we’ve been implementing tangibly improved incidence and severity, or have we merely maintained a status that really isn’t “quo?” Do our plans and actions energize and sustain step-ups in the ways people more safely and effectively assess, decide and do tasks at work and at home?
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.