Unleashing Safety Energy
- By Robert Pater
- Dec 01, 2022
Safety leadership has energy problems, either of the “not enough” or “way too much” or "ineffectively directed" kinds. The same messages repeated the same old ways with minor variations on one hand, trying to stimulate enthusiasm for getting people to not be complacent or, on the opposite pole, super-positively thinking/talking/reinforcing to try to spark and ignite the flame of safety first when the tinder of worker receptivity is either sparse or dampened.
Everything comes down to energy, which can’t be created or destroyed, only changed, transmuted, reconfigured and recast. What appears to be solid matter is in fact electrons orbiting so quickly around atomic nuclei that they appear solid when, in fact, they’re almost entirely space. Empty. Einstein: “Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses.”
In nature, energy is essential for catalyzing change in all chemical reactions such as transforming two disparate elements into another with vastly different qualities, such as combining highly caustic sodium with poisonous chlorine into a mostly inert life-preserving salt. It’s similarly essential to transform the “chemistry” that ignites interest, motivation and movement within individuals and in organizations to change ingrained unsafe habits into vastly safer ones or significantly step up a long-plateaued safety culture.
This begs some questions: Is a leader’s passion to pressure then enforce or to inspire and offer? Do they set the bar so high that even they themselves can’t fully do what they’re expecting or demanding of others?
Ironically both spectrums of these leadership approaches accept energizing as critical—and that the way to accomplish this is for leaders to push it onto workers, either with a stick or a fine chocolate bar.
Too much or too little in pretty much anything—whether in diet, exercise, communications or motivation—unbalances. As important, energy’s direction—externally or from within. Call-out communications—whether “concerned interventions” or rev-up “you can do it!” kind—often result in pushback, rarely the positive changes the speaker hoped for. And even positive responses to injected energy typically fade within a brief time.
This article originally appeared in the December 1, 2022 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.