Becoming a Benchmark: A Case Study in Safety Performance Transformation

The journey to safety culture excellence is long and fraught with challenges (most of which are individual people), but resistances to change and the difficulties people have adjusting their beliefs and behaviors are normal, natural and to be expected. That’s because sustainable culture change involves shifting organizational norms that have been established and reinforced over time.

This presenter was a safety manager whose perspective on safety management had to be transformed in order for his organization to reach the next level of performance. Once he realized that the “safety cop” mentality and valuing compliance over culture was keeping the organization from evolving, he became a champion for the only formula that delivers sustainable safety culture improvement: committed and visible safety leadership, effective accountability systems, and the involvement of frontline employees.

With those three cornerstones in place, an energized workforce eager for ownership in safety completely changed the way their heavy manufacturing facility in North Little Rock, Arkansas, does business. The improved safety culture paved the way for the following successes:

• Broadened perspective of the Safety Manager and safety professionals from compliance cops to trusted advisors
• Use of a cultural assessment tool to focus improvement efforts on issues important to employees
• Improved upper management understanding of how communication style impacts employee perceptions and actions
• Leveraging the skills and experiences of craft employees to build proactive safety processes
• Implementation of metrics around activities that reflect the presence of safety instead of injury statistics
• Increased employee engagement and workplace positivity through effective recognition