Dr. Kello presents an interesting discussion about the power of Positive Psychology and its focus on positive emotions.  Positive emotions such as joy, satisfaction, gratitude, enthusiasm, and the like are far more helpful in today’s world than those of fear and anger. 

Further, those of us involved with adult education and training understand barriers to learning.  Though negative emotions can be helpful by narrowing the thought process, they can also be counter-productive.  This narrowing and focusing of the thought process in the extreme can lead to tunnel vision and filter out important information, creating barriers to learning.

“When participants in studies are put into situations that trigger a more positive emotional state, they show a broadening and expansion of their focus.”  This results in helping learners to think more objectively, and to interpret the information more clearly as it applies to them and their surroundings. 

As the article discusses, in the safety arena it is easy to lapse into the negative.  Safety, loss control, hazard avoidance, etc., by nature are negative.  In training we are trying to help people avoid injury by something their human nature wants to deny.  Humans want to be positive and think about possibilities.  Negative thinking, like safety can ”feel” constricting.

Help your employees learn by creating an open and engaging learning environment.  Place the subject matter in a positive context, like “helping you to outperform and improve your abilities”, “increasing your understanding and value” and the like.  Then provide active learning experiences.  Don’t expect much learning to occur from sitting at a computer or watching videos.  Get learners involved by demonstrating, practicing, evaluating and showing others.  Build in stories, make it a contest, or create team activities.  Having fun as they learn will prove beneficial.

Be sure to provide praise and help everyone feel positive about the experience.  Give it a try.  Throw away the negative examples and the “if you don’t do this, then that will happen.”  You’ll be amazed at how being positive and helping the learners feel positive about themselves with enhance learning.

Great Message on Motivation Using Incentives

Some of you know that Rob Chvatal is a guest on my blog from time to time.   Rob’s a great guy and professional trainer, specializing in behavioral change.   Today, he copied me on an email that had a link that you have to see.

But before you go there, think about how you and your company incentivize performance.  Do you have bonuses tied to performance?  Are there incentive programs for meeting certain goals, or creating special outcomes?  “If you do this, I’ll give you that.” 

This fun and fast web clip just may turn your thinking on how to motivate for performance.  But that’s not the wow part of this post.  Just wait until you see how the message is presented.  I hope you enjoy the link below.

  http://www.wimp.com/surprisingmotivation/

Worker Literacy Affects Safety

The question of literacy is a much bigger problem that we may think.  Recently I came across 2 separate articles that address the subject, both referencing a new study by the Conference Board of Canada, “What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You:  Literacy’s Impact on Workplace Health and Safety”. This research report outlines the value—including direct and indirect benefits—of investing in literacy with the expected outcome of achieving higher levels of health and safety in the workplace.

Using an online survey, a broad cross-section of the workplace was questioned.  From management to workers, service providers to union reps, aboriginal people to recent immigrants, 319 surveys were returned and analyzed.

So What Does This Mean For You?

Establishing written safety policies and procedures, and then training accordingly should and often does improve safety.  However, the Conference Board study showed that the level of confidence in being able to actually perform according to the procedures is suspect.  At least those who would be expected to follow the procedures, the workers, felt that they needed more hands-on instruction.   The flaw in the logic is that when health and safety practices are communicated in written format, a disconnect occurs if workers’ literacy skills are too low for them to read or comprehend the manual.

1. Assume that your class has participants who have difficulty reading and comprehending the training content.  Provide ample opportunity for everyone to talk about the issue, procedure, situation and its importance.
2. If there are language barriers, make sure to provide adequate translation assistance.
3. Ask checking questions and make sure that you allow group discussion to determine the level of understanding by all.
4. Practice, observe, comment, and ask participants to explain why they are doing the procedure or skill in a certain manner. (This method has proven quite successful with driver safety).
5. Provide follow up discussion after the training is completed.  Ask supervisors to talk with their workers about the subject and to make sure there is understanding.

Done with care, training can be successful and we can be assured that all employees understand what is expected of them.  The literacy problem isn’t going away any time soon, so assume that you have a communication and understanding problem and plan accordingly.

Here are several definitions that my search on Google uncovered.

#1 – Society of Manufacturing Engineers: 

Safety Ratio:  A figure that establishes the relationship between the burst pressure and working pressure. A component with a safety ratio of 4-to-1 will likely fail if the operating pressure reaches a level 4 times the normal level.

#2 – General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)

Margin of Safety Ratio (MOSR): The excess of budgeted or actual sales over the break even volume of sales. It stats the amount by which sales can drop before losses begin to be incurred. The higher the margin of safety is, the lower the risk of not breaking even will be.

It means that at the current level of sales and with the company’s current prices and cost structure, a reduction in sales of $12,500, or 12.5%, would result in just breaking even. In a single product firm, the margin of safety can also be expressed in terms of the number of units sold by dividing the margin of safety in dollars by the selling price per unit. In this case, the margin of safety is 50 units ($12,500 ÷ $ 250 units = 50 units).

#3 – Wikipedia: Risk of Investment Loss When Selecting One Portfolio over
Another

Safety-first Ratio:  It is the comparison of portfolio returns over time based on the (Expected ROI – Actual ROI) / the Standard Deviation over time.

There are many other “safety ratios” to be found, including one that applies to drugs and vaccines, one for the number of nurses needed for a number of patient, another for implantable medical devices, and still another that applies to the number of safety professionals needed based on the number of workers.  WOW! 

However, none of the definitions that I found had anything to do with work place safety.

What’s the Point? 

First, that the terms “safety” and “safety ratio” have many definitions.  Second, I heard about a company using a safety ratio to measure it’s safety performance, so I decided to Google it to find out more.  What I found was nothing!!!

A “Real World” Situation

In talking with a safety professional working for an insurance company, she shared that one of her clients is trying something that is unique.

The client operates a pork processing plant.  Management genuinely cares about workplace safety and demonstrates their leadership.  The associates speak many languages and are from various world cultures.  The company uses “coaches” who speak native languages to train new people and to communicate regularly about safety.  There is a active safety committee.  They have a good system for communicating the need for and importance of early reporting of injuries like strains or small lacerations.  They even have a good return-to-work program.  And to top it off, they just won the Governor’s Safety Award for top safety performance in the state.

However, they recognized that they needed to change something; their safety awards system.  You see, it rewarded based on not having a visit to the doctor for an injury.  Even though they stress the importance of early injury reporting, because of the multi-cultural environment and probable fear of individual attention the company recognizes that some physical problems -injuries - go unreported.

A ”Safety Ratio” We Can Use

The company safety director had recently attended a seminar that discussed the effective use of Near-Miss Reporting.  Though they have good communication and safety record, the safety director felt they could do better.  If employees would begin to report unsafe situation/conditions/and near-miss incidents and see improvements from this reporting, that trust could be built and some fear dissipated.

Here’s where the “Safety Ratio” comes into play.  They are starting to keep track of leading indicators, including: Near-Miss reports filed and closed, training attendance, safety committee participation, inspections completed, etc.  Each item receives a point and becomes the numerator in the equation.  Then, to dissuade under reporting of injuries, 10 points are subtracted each late report.  They then use the number of lost time injuries as the denominator to get the safety ratio – SR

Safety Activities – (10 x Late Injury Reports) ÷ Lost-Time Injuries = SR

The new safety awards program pays off when the safety ratio number grows, weekly/monthly/and annually.  This is a real Win-Win for everyone.

The employees are going to love the Near-Miss Reporting program.  Not only will they see their increased involvement pay off in better working conditions and work practices, but the numerator will grow and so will the Safety Ratio!  They will be personally rewarded for their active participation in the safety program. 

Obviously, the company wins as well.  This is a good example of an organization that could have stayed as it was, but decided to continue to improve.  They also recognized that they were rewarding for the wrong reasons and found a creative alternative that will drive even more improvements.  Imagine how they will feel when the find out the real  power of  Near-Miss Reporting!

Guest Contributor:    Rob Chvatal

It’s amazing how much focus and energy is committed to safety after a serious injury or other incident.  All hands on board, clear action plans, accountability and even innovative solutions are commonplace.  Unfortunately, this is not always the case when we don’t have the urgency of an incident.

A senior leader told me the other day that he was trying to use old incidents to spark intensity toward prevention in the present.  He described that he was asking employees what they \ we would do in response to this incident (one from a few years ago) happened today.  In other words, to effectively prevent the next incident, we need to have the same focus, intensity, ownership and follow-up around possible risks that we have when we are responding to an actual incident!

This really made me think. I work with a lot of companies who are experiencing improved safety performance after years of effort.  I was part of a leadership team as an internal resource that experienced significant improvement over time.  No doubt, it’s hard to maintain the level of urgency over time as incidents become few and far in-between.  Even effective near- miss reporting efforts sometimes fail to maintain the edge required to sustain a high level of preventative energy.

Think About How You Respond To An Incident

I know we can’t “pretend” there was an incident every day.  We would all become immune to that approach in time.  But I do believe it’s worth considering the ways we behave in response to an incident as examples of the approach we need to take to prevent our next incident.

Real prevention takes focus and energy.  Post incident responses provide an excellent example of the level of both we need to target each and every day.

Contributed by:  Rob Chvatal          Rob is the President and Organizational Consultant  with Catalyst For Change, Inc., Minneapolis, MN.  He works with organizations to improve communication, establish behavioral norms and drive cultural change.  He email is linked here:  Rob Chvatal

Over the years I’ve created 100’s of training videos/DVD’s, and with each and every one of them I included an instructor’s guide.  I learned early on that too many “trainers” don’t know how to train and often plug-and-play, hoping that the video will do the training for them.  By including the instructors guide I provide a set of instructions on how best to teach the subject at hand.  I try to help them avoid some of the common mistakes, and build a class that will achieve real objectives.

Common Mistakes When Using Videos

When conducting train-the-trainer classes and discuss the use of videos, there are a set of “do’s and do not’s” that we discuss.  I cover the mistakes trainers make part first to help the trainers recognize some of their short comings.  These include:

• Failure to set up the video with an introduction to the topic and why is is important.
• Failure to point out or comment on specific information or key points that will be convered in the video.
• Failure to establish each individual’s responsibilities to learn the information in the video and be able to demonstrate or discuss key points from the video and related materials.
• Reliance on the video to do all the teaching.
• Failure to provide discussion time round the key points and how they relate to the work of the group.
• Failure to summarize the informaitn in the video, provide discussion, or to disccuss related information that’s not covered in the video.

Plan For Success

Most experienced trainers will tell you that the secret to success is good pre-planning.  Whether you decide to use video or not, it starts with a clear understanding of the learning or behavioral objectives of the class.  Based on what you want to accomplish, choose the method(s) of instruction for those you plan to instruct.

When using video as part of the instruction process it is important to recognize it’s limitations.  Study after study tells us that there will be little long-term retention of the video content unless it is part of an ongoing process of education. 

Think about the comon mistakes when using videos listed above.  Following ANSI/ASSE Z490.1-2009, here are some tips to help steer you clear of trouble, and to create that ongoing process of education:

• Consider the reasons for conducting the training and set goals.  What are the specific learning objectives?   How will you verify achievement of the objectives?  Are there observable behaviors?  What are they?
• Create a short written outline for your class that addresses each of the key points you need to cover to achieve the objectives.  Try to envision the class.  How do you plan to begin?  How will you engage each individual?  Will you use any games or competition to add excitement?  Are there specific examples for the work area that you can reference?  Will you try to use the experience of the class to cover some of the information?
• Structure the class so there is a defined beginning, middle and end.  At the beginning you should set up the topic; why it is important, how it relates to each individual, and what they will be expected to learn or demonstrate.  The middle is where you teach, show video, discuss, demonstrate, etc.  The ending is where you review, ask for any comments or questions, conduct a quiz or learning exercise, and remind everyone of the objectives one more time.
• Sustain the learning by creating specific follow up activities or discussion at the individual work areas.  Include the supervisors, or better yet have the supervisors conduct the  follow up in short tool-box-talks.
• Include observations as part of the ongoing learning process.  Observations allow for reinforcement of proper technique or avoidance of any at risk behaviors.  They also allow for coaching when at-risk- behaviors are observed. 
• Have fun!  Recent studies by psychologists show a strong correlation between having fun and learning retention.  Amazing as it may sound but, when we are happy the learning sticks through association with the positive feelings created.

Training can be very rewarding when trainers are prepared and plan.  Your class participants will appreciate the effort and better relate to the content.   My best to you as you plan your next class.  Have fun.

Guest Contributor:    Rob Chvatal

At the end of the day, achieving outstanding safety performance requires employees who are willing to do the “right thing”.  The “right thing” could look like: taking the time to get the proper tool, wearing those uncomfortable goggles, asking for help or helping others we don’t get along with, or taking the time to plan or explain something.  Unfortunately, this is not always the way we choose to do things.

In my training, I talk about the attitudes and beliefs required to perform safely.  Recently, it seems that more and more employees are telling me that they understand the need for a positive attitude about doing the right thing.  They also admit that at times there are barriers to doing what they know they “should” do.  Barriers, or barrier thinking, like “I am in a hurry”, “it’s the way we have always done it”, “he wouldn’t help me”, etc., etc.

Recently, I had an employee say that he felt he needed to help others be safe NO MATTER WHAT.  He worked among a very diverse workforce with a lot of history together, and much of it not very constructive.  There were many individuals and groups that did not get along.  It was an atmosphere where shortcuts and animosity were common.  And now here is this employee standing up in class and expressed that there is way too much at stake not to do the right thing when it came to safety.  Everyone in the room knew what the right thing was – and he was challenging himself and others to do it!

“Someone asks for help, I help them – no matter what.  I need a tool that is at the other side of the plant, I go get it – no matter what.  I am not exactly clear how to do a task safely, I ask for guidance from someone else – no matter what.  I just experienced a severe near miss, I share the situation with others so we can all learn from it – no matter what.  Regardless of who is involved, what time of day it is, the amount of extra work involved, what supervisor asked me to do it, etc. – I need to do it safety NO MATTER WHAT.

It’s not easy to perform in a no matter what manner, so much is in the way just urging us to take the quicker, easier, more comfortable route.  But I believe if we started to make no matter what our mantra, at work and at home, significant and sustainable safety performance would be made.

Moment to moment safety performance is rooted in our attitude – no matter what is an important habitual thought pattern to engrain into our way of thinking.   Do you have it?  How can you drive it into you and others?

Rob Chvatal is the President and Organizational Consultant  with Catalyst For Change, Inc., Minneapolis, MN.  He works with organizations to improve communication, establish behavioral norms and drive cultural change.  He email is linked here:  Rob Chvatal

Experts are telling us that with the economic recovery underway, employers are being very conservative with capital equipment purchases, inventory levels, and new hiring.  These moves are intended to limit debt, preserve cash and drive near-term profit.  Given all the red ink these past 2 years who can blame managers for keeping costs down.

However, with the upswing in economy and the push to produce the lag on hiring is causing problems for safety.  Not only are people doing more and working overtime, but I’ve heard stories of safety training being suspended or canceled outright.  That’s not good news.

Creativity To The Rescue

Last week I was talking with a Loss Control Manager I know.  She told me that she has run into this lack of training time problem twice this past month.  Both times her clients came up with creative and fun ways to get the training message out to the employees.

Idea #1  – One employer is a  manufacturer of promotional items.  They had begun ergonomics training last month when the word came down that workers needed to stay focused on production only.  Although this suspended training, the client and the Loss Control Manager devised a system to keep the training alive. 

They created short messages with graphics about the principles of lifting, product storage, use of lifting devices, and others.  Then using the “safety” section of plant bulletin boards they posted a new message each week.  In the monthly newsletter there was also an article, summarizing the information. 

The really creative part though was the way they gained employee interest and assured learning.  In the weekly pay envelope each employee received a question on the topic of ergonomics.  With the question they were directed to return the completed card with an answer to their supervisor.   If they answered the question correctly they were entered into a drawing for to $25 certificates to Target.  Not only did this method keep people interested, but is got them talking among themselves about ergonomics .

Idea #2 – The next employer manufactures stadium seating and wanted to keep their PPE and slip, trip and fall messages alive.  They used the beginning of each shift to have the supervisor or leadperson call out the thought on safety for the day.  These safety thoughts, createded by the Loss Control Manager, were also posted near the time clock.

Next, they used a creative twist that really got people talking.  They posted the messages on the inside of the toilet stall doors and above the urinals.  Now this might sound a bit off track, but it got people talking and laughing.  And more important, paying attention to safety when “real” training couldn’t be held.  They also used an incentive to increase attention and retention;  giving out Starbucks coupons when questions were answered correctly.

There are probably thousands of quick little ideas out there like these.  If you have any you’d like to share, please comment and I’ll be sure to use them in a future blog post.

What a wonderful day!  Today I had two important pieces of information come my way.  One was from my friend, Ron Tolsma who is the safety director for the Schwan Food Company, and the other was from an article in the Minneapolis newspaper by Harvey MacKay, successful business owner, author and noted motivational speaker.

Ron and I were discussing a project that I’m working on related to automated onboard sensing devices in vehicles and how they can be utilized more effectively.  He needed to weigh in on that!

He said, “The overriding issue here is that there are still Safety Professionals out there who are looking for the allusive “silver bullet”. My fear is that others (peers and clients) will be so impressed by the technology that they’ll forget that leadership is getting elbow deep in the human condition.  It’s not the technology alone that’s the issue.  It’s the “fire and forget” mentality.  We are the microwave popcorn generation.  We want to put it in, punch a few buttons and let the technology give us the results.  Doesn’t work that way in my opinion.

Principles of Human Performance

If you accept a Human Performance Improvement approach to safety execution, the technology of these onboard devices is only one piece of one “slice of cheese”.  Ron felt that if more managers understood and practiced the Principles of Human Performance, the likelihood of success would be far greater.  Thank you Ron for sharing theses principles from the DOE.

1. People are fallible, and even the best people make mistakes.
2. Error-likely situations are predictable, manageable, and preventable.
3. Individual behavior is influenced by organizational processes and values.
4. People achieve high levels of performance because of the encouragement and reinforcement received from leaders, peers, and subordinates.
5. Events can be avoided through an  understanding of the reasons mistakes occur and application of the lessons learned from pst events (or errors).

Reinforce Workers’ Success

Then there was the article by Mr. MacKay.  He offered 10 pointers for the boss, provided by their employees.  I only want to share two:

1. Offer Feedback.  It’s a gift, a timesaver, a clarifier, a compliment, a motivator and a course correction.
2. Trust your employees.  Trust that your workers are honest and will do good work when given positive feedback.  Bosses who  response will not be successful.  Ken Blanchard and other professionals in the field say that much better results come from finding the good.

Great information that really made my day.  I appreciate good thinkers who care.  I hope you can use this information and put it to “good” work!

Like many safety professionals I know, I wasn’t a big fan of Behavior Based Safety – BBS when it first came on the scene in the ’80s.  It seemed that focusing on at-risk-behaviors with peer observations and coaching flew in the face of the more comprehensive teachings of Dan Peterson. 

As a safety professional, I understood the value of identifying those risky behaviors that may increase the likelihood of injury.  I also agreed that employees should be taught the correct and safe job procedures, and encouraged to look out for each other.  Where I had, and still have a problem with BBS is with those employers that were/are making a loud statement that the employees are the problem.  The old “we provide training and tell them to be safe, but they’re always taking short cuts”.   So why are they taking these short cuts anyway?

Culture Drives Behavioral Choices

Over time we’ve learned that the culture of an organization drives behavior as much, if not more than the individual choices of workers.  Dr. Peterson taught us that “incidents and resulting injuries are due to failures of management and management systems.”   Thus the question, how could the employees and their chosen at risk behaviors be the problem when they are working in systems created and directed by management?  How management directs work and the focus of performance management are more likely drivers of safe or unsafe work habits.

In all fairness some employees can be trouble.  They probably shouldn’t have been hired in the first place and really don’t want to help the organization succeed.  It seems like every company has a bad apple or two.  These aren’t the employees I’m referring to here.  I’m talking the average, everyday employees who cares about their job and the company, and want to perform their work to the best of their ability.  These are the employees for whom the systems were designed, not those who will take short-cuts.

The Focus Has Shifted

Over the years I have learned that BBS has a place in the management system.  It shouldn’t be the centerpiece though.  Recently, I read an article by Mike Williamson, PhD. and a performance consultant with Core Media.  He was making the point that many safety professionals self-limit themselves by focusing on regulatory compliance and safe work practices (behaviors), when they should be aligning safety with overall work performance.

When first implemented, BBS interventions can produce positive results.  Usually there’s low hanging fruit that is easy to pick.  With a clear focus on the more hazardous jobs and specific at-risk-behaviors, creating a peer-to-peer observation, coaching, reporting and tracking system will increase safety awareness and often reduce reported incidents.  The problem that I see is that BBS doesn’t encourage the identification of the cultural factors that may be enabling or driving the unsafe or at-risk-behaviors.  Over time workers get tired of the BBS process and the effectiveness dwindles.  That’s really too bad, given all the time and resources that have been invested with good intentions.

Creating A Learning Organization

I’m a fan of “fixing problems” versus “placing blame”.  In some of my previous posts I’ve discussed the importance of learning through near-miss incident reporting, and how a culture rich in finger pointing cuts off all learning.

For safety performance and overall work performance to excel, employees at all levels need to engage.  Engagement creates ownership and self-responsibility.  We need to allow our people to lead.

Focus On Positive Recognition

First, we must recognize that our employees are adults.  They want to be treated with respect and trust.  When we talk with them about safety, respect their experience, discuss safety openly and honestly, and encourage feedback.  If they feel that the discussion is genuine and there is trust and respect, there will likely be a higher level of interest and cooperation.  

Trust can take safety performance to new levels of excellence, and will encourage discussion of  both obstacles and opportunities for improvement.  Through this discussion issues may be brought to light that may have been missed otherwise.  Then trust builds as the workers see management taking corrective action to correct unsafe situations, practices, or processes.

Though I know it’s not the intention, most of the BBS focus in on identifying and correcting what is wrong and too little time on what’s right.  Achieving safety excellence requires a shift to the positive, and a focus on the culture and systems under which work is performed.  Taking the spotlight off the workers and their at-risk-behaviors and re-focusing on the process in which work is performed will produce better results.  

A good way to start this shift is to conduct perception surveys.  These surveys can be helpful, iidentifying gaps in beliefs between line employees and management.  Defining this misalignment helps in targeting barriers that can impede safe work performance and areas where improvements can be made. 

Another starting point might is to focus on the incident investigation process.  Conduct more detailed investigations, looking for more than who or what was at fault.   Analyze the information and try to identify those contributing organizational factors.  What are the underlying system or root cause.  Once identified, work methods or systems can be altered to improve safety.

There’s no doubt that safety involves individual habits, choices, actions, results and consequences.  Safety is also a subset of overall performance.  To a greater extent it also involves the situations and environments in which choices are made, habits develop and performance good or bad ensues. 

We need to be purposeful in learning about our organizational culture and “how things are done here and why”.  Most of all, we need to stop telling employees to be safe.  Everyone needs to feel a part of the team;  trusted, respected, valued and encouraged to lead!