Safety’s secret ingredient: The profound impact of caring for people
Whether we realize it, risk permeates almost every aspect of our daily lives. From the moment we turn on a kitchen oven or burner, use sharp objects or work at heights doing home projects, or get in a car or on public transport to go about our day: Our physical safety is at risk. And emotional safety is equally as important if we are to exercise the courage required to speak up to family or friends when something feels off in a conversation or situation. Similarly, safety is foundational in corporate environments, especially in manufacturing facilities. Truly, one of the most enduring and difficult challenges a business — and any leader — faces is how to make safety part of its cultural fabric and everyday operations to ensure employees get home safely every day. While there are countless systems, processes and tools to ensure safe manufacturing, the power of compassionate leaders who genuinely care about their people and invest in building a strong safety culture cannot be ignored.
Caring is the core of safety
The most dreaded call a leader in the manufacturing space can receive is that one of his or her employees has been injured — or, worse yet, killed — on the job. Every injury, in some way, is a failure on the part of leadership. And helping people get home safely requires a leadership component that is seldom talked about: Genuinely caring about others. Just as employees look forward to getting back home to their loved ones, they must also be led by a leader and a work on a team that cares about their well-being. This understanding then drives each individual to act in ways that protect their own and others’ health and safety on the job.
Caring and safety impact desirable business outcomes
As the CEO of Vibrantz Technologies, I remind our 4,000 employees often that if we are not world class in safety then we can never be our best as a company nor achieve our vision of becoming a world-class company. An organization led by managers who truly care and a workplace that takes safety seriously can positively impact key business outcomes. Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace Report shows employees who feel like someone cares for them are more likely to show care and respect for others, creating a safer work environment for the team. This is then a strong predictor of employee retention, safety, productivity, and financial performance. Gallup’s 2020 meta-analysis of its Q12 inventory shows that corporate cultures in the top quartile of their database have 64% fewer incidents versus those with lower scores.
Media coverage of refinery operation explosions over the last some decades demonstrates the connection between caring and safety. Often cited as a key contributor to these sad and disastrous occurrences are poor safety cultures that ignore warning signs, allow or enable deficient safety management programs and/or accept the use of obsolete equipment. This “check the boxes” sort of mentality is the opposite of the care managers and leaders must demonstrate daily. And sadly, they ended in employee deaths and cost companies billions.
Strong safety programs balance systems and culture
There is no “easy button” to push or single path to follow for a company to become world-class in safety. But leaders can increase the potential to positively impact safety performance by putting in place systems and driving a culture of caring and accountability for desired behaviors.
Systems: Safety systems can be implemented immediately to drive near-term improvement and include basics like the proper personal protective equipment required to do specific jobs, properly maintained capital equipment and tools, and agreed-upon safety rules the entire organization follows. Additionally, a focus on leading indicators like safety scorecards and spot audits by environmental health and safety leaders are powerful tools to help the organization identify and report potential hazards before they become an actual incident. This is where policy implementation can also play a key role. For example, when Vibrantz’s safety performance showed a majority of incidents over a period involved hand cuts and injuries, we implemented a cutting devices policy that helped us eliminate hand injuries caused by open blades for the remainder of the year. Throughout 2023, we invested over $3.7 million in 3,400 projects to improve machine guarding to make it that much harder for any employee to get injured.
The power of employee observations in daily work can also not be understated. Large, global manufacturing organizations in particular rely on employees to constantly be aware of work surroundings and notify managers of where improvements can be made. At Vibrantz, we have begun to share the positive impacts of employee observations in improving safety at our sites worldwide. One employee noticed condensation droplets falling from a cold-water pipe, creating a slip hazard, and informed management so the pipes could be insulated. Another employee worked with a supplier to adjust how high they were stacking pallets so unloading was less risky for people. We also saw employees going up and down a main, wide staircase without holding one of the left or right handrails so a center rail was installed to encourage its use. Water droplets, stacking containers and missing handrails seem small…until they result in injury.
Culture: Building a safety mindset from the inside out is long-game work but equally as important as systems. Ultimately, leaders must weave safety into the organization’s fabric such that it is a core value — in word and deed — and exhibited in a culture where employees speak up when they see something perceived as unsafe. This is where emotional safety becomes critical. Take the employee who may notice her friend at work who appears sleepy driving a forklift but chooses not to say anything to that friend or her supervisor. Often, this unwillingness to speak up is driven by an environment that has caused a perception that people will be punished or penalized if they say something.
Culture is also heavily impacted by seemingly simple actions like leaders making safety the first item on every morning’s agenda, walking around the shop floor each day to speak to employees and observe processes, and framing “speaking up” as the truest form of demonstrating care for one another. At Vibrantz, our employees often hear us say they have not only the right, but the responsibility, to stop work if they see something unsafe. We continue to communicate that nothing employees do each day is worth them getting hurt, even if that means stopping a production line or missing an order deadline to investigate further. Building this type of culture has also required the occasional but bold action to exit leaders who consistently failed to show accountability for his or her site’s safety systems and overall performance.
Safety really can work from the inside out
One of the most unexpected and memorable interactions I had in 2023 occurred shortly after Vibrantz implemented our cutting devices policy. While visiting one of our manufacturing sites, an employee shared that she had also encouraged her family to remove any unnecessary open blades at home where it made sense and gave opening packages in the mail as one example. That conversation is the epitome of what can happen when an organization commits to improving and leading safety through systems and culture in ways that also drive engagement, business results and accountability. The more our leaders care, the safer our companies can become, and the more parents, siblings and spouses get home to those who need them most.
