The Three Base Strategy
- By Robert Pater
- Aug 01, 2023
Persistence is a critical leadership attribute — but not when it comes to those nagging injuries that continue to drag down safety performance and culture and adversely impact workers and workloads. Even with leaders having tried things that didn’t much move the needle.
This is why we’ve been called on over 30 years to target certain tenacious injuries — and know these and others can be significantly reduced. And if other companies can make a sizable dent in their most difficult, ongoing injuries, then so can you.
Organizational solutions typically start with leadership. As in, the Senior Vice-President of Manufacturing of a Fortune 50 company telling me, “90 percent of the things we’ve done to improve safety are positive. But to get another 1 percent improvement now, it’s about us, our people and our culture.” Double-ditto for leaders, the “us” in his statement.
Significant gains with longstanding seemingly insolvable safety problems begin with leaders high-grading their mindset and vision. How decision-makers consider a problem will channel where they direct attention, planning, and resources.
Even in many safety-dedicated companies, why do some injuries just keep on keeping on? Though some are company-specific, we’ve seen how leadership’s mindset can be among the biggest obstacles in overcoming tenacious injuries. This stems from assumptions that these safety problems are:
A. “Inevitable (“What can we do? Our workforce is aging?”), which leads to “Why even bother trying anything else?”
B. “Faked” (“They’re trying to get a free ride. The work ethic has deteriorated.”) This inevitably leads to “clamp down,” “catch them,” “monitor them heavily,” or “motivate with a bigger stick.”
C. Blaming a deficient workforce (“We’re doing all we can, provided the tools and training. They’re just too stupid or ornery to do what they’re supposed to do.”) Leading to pointing critical fingers at those who hire or do onboarding, or to complaining about “the current generation,” etc.
D. Quick-fix mentality, looking for the “ultimate answer” either to “idiot-proof” work or to “force compliance.”
E. Doubling sown — doing more of the same or minor-variations-on-a-theme approaches, which may help to a degree but now gets diminishing returns (like putting in 2 scissors lifts in the same workstation when one only could be accessed).
This article originally appeared in the August 1, 2023 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.