Show me the MONEY: Having Safety Values

“Would you give $5 to guarantee that when you go home after your shift, you will be in the same physical condition as you came in to work today?”

The answer is usually a “yup”. But then I ask, “would you give another $5 to assure that someone else in the facility gets to go home in the same condition as they came?”

“Yup” without hesitation.

“But I get to choose, and it may be that guy who dented your car but won’t pay up.”

The usual reply: “of course”.

We hear a lot about Safety Values. Many folks say that we all have to value safety to create a safety culture that will keep incidents down. When pressed on what a “value” is you usually hear something about a feeling, deep down, where “safety is first,” or “caring is a way of life”. I get that and agree… but as someone who trumpets Behavioral Safety I want something more tangible…something I can see… a behavior I can teach and reinforce.

So follow this line of questioning: “How do you know I value my car?”

An answer: “because you use it”.

Yes, I value things that are of use to me. “What else?”

Another Answer: “because it reflects who you are.”

Squishy answer – its not a psychoanalytic mirror fella. “What else, more obvious?”

Final answer: “because you paid money for it”. Right on the…um…money. Something has value because I’m willing to pay for it. Economics 101. Thus, Sherlock, valuing safety means you're willing to pay for it.

Indeed, at the management level this is where the…um…money ends up near the mouth. Are managers willing to spend money on safety? Not just spend money when they have to in order to cut down on the costs of injuries but to really invest in safety… because it’s useful to them…safety is of value to them.

A couple years ago I was on the phone with an executive vice president of a multinational manufacturing company in the auto industry. His business unit was operating in Brazil. I asked him for evidence that he valued safety. He told me a remarkable story. He told me that his business unit had been successful and the company was going to increase his volume by 50%. He could have incorporated the volume into his existing plant but his safety professional estimated an increase in incidents because of cramped conditions and added bodies. So, he chose to tell his CEO, who I met and can tell you he was a very “bottom line” kind of executive, that he chose to spend an extra $50 million US dollars to build a new plant to avoid the negative safety outcome. He did, the plant was built, his incident rate dropped substantially and, here’s the kicker, they were so successful that the volume kept increasing and he already had the facility in place to accept the challenge. The safe choice turned out to be the best for production. I checked this story out… he was a legend in the company’s safety community.

A little closer to home, literally 45 minutes from my home, I’ve made a great association with the VP of operations at a grocery distribution company. He had been helping me with my research and student practicum projects. One project he got me in on was the implementation of VIOCE technology for product selection. Workers wear headsets connected to the site computer via RF signals. The computer would “say” to them, in a male or female simulated voice, the next product to be picked, where it is, and how many to get. Such a technology would decrease picking errors below one in every 2000 items selected and would boost production (tons per hour) by 30%. This promised to save the operation $1.5 million a year. His underlings were very fired up about the implementation and fell over themselves to show the VP that they were planning a quick adoption of the technology. But the VP stopped them in their tracks at a meeting I was at. He asked, “If our selectors (who drove hand trucks around the warehouse) have these headsets on, how will they hear other traffic and pedestrians in their path?” He asked the safety question. He was willing to delay the implementation of this technology, losing the immediate savings, until the safety questions were addressed. They did address safety and, in the mean time, found some excellent functionality in the technology to allow them to address other communication and quality issues while doing so.

These were both investments in safety. If you look in Strategic Plans at companies’ “Value” statements (part of their mission document). You’ll see things like “shareholder value”, “customer value”, “growth”, “squeaky clean image”, “profitability” and the like. These values drive decisions to invest resources that turn into actions that, hopefully, produce results. Results are measured and if they fall short, necessitate different decisions or better actions. Too often, Safety isn’t part of the value system of a company. Therefore, real actions around safety occur only after a bad result happens. Someone gets hurt, bad. A disaster happens. Only then does money (“value”) seem to flow into actions to REactively change things.

In both of the companies above, SAFETY was a value statement. This meant that decisions were made with safety in mind which drove investment decisions, actions, and successful safety results.

By now you're pressing me arguing that “values” go beyond money. OK, I’ll bite. Lets take the old management adage “Time is Money”. If this is true then another objective, tangible set of behaviors too reinforce is spending TIME on safety (which, I would argue, is still money because you're paying those who spend time on safety).

Do important business meetings, where high salaried individuals are flown in, have safety as an agenda item? Do plant operations meetings go beyond the droll “safety moment” startups where someone simply states safety stats? Do they attack safety issue with as much time as needed? Does safety training account for the time it deserves among new and old workers paid by the hour?

More importantly, does your company allow time for employees and supervisors to team up monthly to review observation and open-reporting (close calls & minor injury) data to trend and intervene?

Most importantly, does your company allow time for employees to observe each other in earnest and have real on-the-moment safety conversations that they can then share with the team later?

There is a final piece of the “value” puzzle. It’s also a behavior I can see and reinforce. Are you willing to put your reputation on the line for safety?

Heck, that’s what we are asking our people to do right? We’re asking the executive to go to the boardroom and ask the safety question. We are asking the VP and managers to pause their impressing production efforts to ask the safety question. Mostly most importantly we are asking the worker to pause… go up to another worker and show the courage to actively ask the safety question crucial for that situation.

Do you value safety? Prove it with TIME and MONEY. Put your reputation on the line. Then you will show results.