Safety Culture Excellence®

Measuring Safety Culture Maturity: A Better Way

Forget the old ways of measuring safety culture maturity. There is a new, more effective way to measure cultural maturity and it starts with looking at the chemistry.

Just as a growing plant needs the right elements in the soil for maximum growth, a safety culture needs the right elements in the organization to maximize its true potential for excellence.  Safety culture is much more organic than most of the models recognize and the formation of a safety culture is more akin to growing a plant than to drawing an organizational chart.  If you plant the right seeds of capability and control the climate and chemistry, you will grow a safety culture toward excellence.  Once it is growing, you can shape it and further adjust the climate and chemistry to maximize its potential. – An excerpt from STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence (2013, Mathis and Galloway)

In consulting globally with many of the best in safety performance and culture, nine elements (see the picture with this post) have been identified as most important foci to establish the chemistry which facilitates the necessary climate for a culture of safety excellence to grow. Through consulting engagements and workshops, these nine elements have been successfully leveraged and measured to help organizations identify both their starting point baseline, and also to strategically prioritize which elements to focus on to advance the capabilities of their safety culture.

A simple exercise to facilitate answering these questions is to lead a group discussion on these nine elements to measure your current cultural maturity around safety. Putting this into practice, every workshop has resulted in very insightful conversations that identify the precise actions that need to be taken to enhance the existing culture of safety. To lead this discussion, a conversation framework is needed, thus the purpose of this article.

If you have read my work, participated in any of my workshops or keynote presentations or worked with me directly, you will know I work hard to always provide more take-away tools than motivational fluff. If I was able to provide the framework to facilitate the internal dialogue in article format, I would.

To assist you on your journey to safety excellence, I would like to share this tool with you. To obtain a copy for your internal use, send an email to info@proactsafety.com with the subject of Please Send Chemistry of SCE and our staff will respond at our earliest opportunity.

Cultures will always influence the beliefs and behaviors of employees and contractors as they join the group. You can either manage the chemistry, climate and culture, or the results in any area of operational performance will be managed by them. I invite you to start the conversation to strategically enhance the safety aspect of your company culture and measure your progress by contributed value, not just the lowering of injury rates.

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Shawn M. Galloway is the President and COO of ProAct Safety. He writes (and tweets:@safetyculture) about his work helping organizations in all industries to achieve and sustain excellence in their culture and performance. He resides near Houston, Texas with his wife and three children.

Blue Ocean or Bomb the Island: Innovation vs. Provocation

A controversy has almost always attracted attention. That is why some constantly try to provoke an argument about some aspect of a practice.  The idea of questioning the status quo is a legitimate issue, but simply challenging the establishment does not advance the cause.  True advancement comes from trying the new, not from simply attacking the old.  

There is a parallel between the provocateur and the old dichotomous thinking expressed in the saying, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!”  The idea that everything fits into either the fixed or broken category is limited, two-dimensional thinking at best.  The innovative approach does not categorize ideas or practices, but seeks to advance them.  In true innovation, there are not even “best practices” because such thinking might stop future progress.  There are better practices that will be replaced by even better practices as our wits sharpen and our organizations embrace transformational thinking.  

Blue ocean thinking opens whole new avenues of opportunity for the landlocked.  Provocation tends to bomb the island on which we live without discovering a new one.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

How Do You Define Production?

If you define production as products or services delivered and do not include safety in that definition, you are creating a dichotomy that will damage both production and safety.  Production that injures those who produce it is most likely not the kind of production your organization wants.  An accident (incident, injury – pick your preferred term) is a defect in your production process just as surely as a quality issue.  If you develop a tolerance for poor quality or poor safety, you have developed a tolerance for poor production.

Organizations who achieve safety excellence do not make this distinction.  They define production as safe and high quality products or services delivered.  They manage safety and quality as a part of production rather than separate priorities.  Workers who compromise any aspect of safety or quality have compromised production.  The old ideas of production at any cost and sacrificing your body for the team are antiquated and counterproductive.  If you still have these dichotomies in your organization, begin to improve by redefining what production is and what you expect from production workers.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Safety Overtraining

The medical profession is concerned that the overuse of antibiotics is causing strains of bacteria to become resistant and patients to be less receptive to the most-used medications.  The same thing can happen to safety when training is overused or misused.  Workers can tune it out and workplace accidents can become resistant to it.  

Regulatory mandates require a quantity and content of safety training, but more or less neglect the quality of that training.  This has resulted in some of the dullest, most monotonous and least-effective safety training that the world has ever seen.  The use of Computer-Based Training (CBT) has further aggravated the problem.  Required safety training in many organizations is viewed at best as a necessary evil by any worker who has taken it more than two times.  When safety training quits being an asset to the organization, it can damage the effectiveness of other safety-improvement efforts as well.

If this state of safety training were not bad enough, some organizations actually use training or re-training as a punishment.  When a worker is injured or is caught failing to follow a safety rule, they can be sent back to training.  The assumption that the training did not impact worker behavior is valid enough, but the assumption that more of the same, ineffective training will magically work the second time is borderline absurd.  Also, if safety re-training is viewed as a form of punishment, how will that impact the overall perception of the value of safety training?

Organizations need to view safety training as a tool to meet worker needs rather than a painful requirement that can be re-used as punishment.  The opportunities for good quality safety to improve safety performance has been demonstrated.  It is time to use it to its full potential instead of going through the motions!
-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Results and Excellence

A famous business leader once said there are two kinds of people in business:  those who make results and those who make excuses.  He called these first types of people, “results-oriented.”  I would like to suggest another type.  These are people who very much seek results and do not accept excuses but care deeply how those results are created.  They care about the “how” for two reasons: 1. They want to create ability in their organization as well as results and 2. They want to deeply understand how results are created and how to repeat them.  I call these people “excellence-oriented.” 

Excellence-oriented is a step above results-oriented.  It is based on longer-term thinking and the seeking of what Deming called “profound knowledge.”  Excellent results can be the product of luck in the short term and excellence-oriented people understand this.  That is why “zero accidents” or “zero defects” can only be goal and not a strategy for them.  They understand that excellence is more than a flash in the pan or five minutes of glory.  Excellence is the ability to control results over the long term and this ability is one of the most valuable commodities an organization can have in this age of global competition.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Who is Driving Safety?

The leaders of an organization who were asking for my help to improve their safety efforts told me that they were all pushing safety as hard as they could.  I asked them who was driving safety and how long it had been stalled and needing to be pushed.   Almost every leadership team is either neglecting, pushing or driving safety.  Neglect brings on disaster.  The need for pushing often results from previous neglect.  Driving safety almost always results in progress and improvement.

Just as the term implies, driving is giving direction, speed and stability to the safety effort.  Stalled efforts may require some pushing, but well-running efforts simply need drivers.  The most recognized drivers of safety are leadership, supervision, guidelines, and training.  Leaders need to give safety strategic direction.  Supervisors need to steer and correct the daily efforts.  Guidelines, such as rules, procedures, and P.P.E. requirements should provide a road map for the workplace decisions that impact safety.  Training should ensure that everyone knows the guidelines and can also recognize and manage the risks in the workplace that may not be fully covered by the guidelines.

Safety efforts that are strategically driven shape the perceptions and culture of the safety efforts.  The perceptions and culture combine with the training to shape the daily performance.  Supervision keeps the daily performance on track.  The daily performance produces the results that are measured by the lagging indicators of safety.  If your lagging indicators indicate you are not at your desired destination, ask yourself “who is driving?”

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Success vs. Vulnerability

The only problem with a successful safety effort is success.  Success can seriously damage the organizational and individual sense of vulnerability necessary for future success.  When no accidents happen for a long enough period of time, people can drop their guard.  Celebrations of success that don’t include admonishments for renewed effort can lead to workers who are too busy patting themselves on the back to be safe.  The age old, “it isn’t going to happen to me” mentality begins to grow and minds start to think their bodies are bulletproof.

Some of the best-performing organizations in safety are the ones where workers come to work each day with a full realization that accidents are possible and waiting.  No one lowers their guard because they know the dangers are still there.  There is a healthy respect for the possibility of a tragedy and everyone is standing guard to prevent it. 

Vulnerability need not reach the panic level, but also cannot be allowed to go completely away, even for moments.  Just like disease, accidents are best addressed through early detection and management of risk factors; not through reactive measures to control the damage.  Can your organization celebrate success without losing its healthy sense of vulnerability?

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

The Danger of Same Old Same Old

Anything that becomes too routine quits grabbing our attention.  If we follow routines we can form habits and make certain behaviors more or less automatic, but appealing to the automatic does not trigger further improvement.  So what happens when safety meetings and safety communication become too routine?  Workers tend to tune them out and go about their business.  Safety doesn’t necessarily get any worse, but it also does not get better.

Almost every organization either sets goals, starts new initiatives, or just wishes real hard to make safety results better this year than last year.  But the same old routine will not make it happen.  All safety meetings and communication should avoid routine like the plague.  Everything about safety needs to be focused on improvement targets and reporting progress toward goals.  Even accident reports should be compared and contrasted to targeted improvements to align effort with desired results.

When safety is current and meaningful, the same old same old disappears and bright targets take its place.  Workers see the light at the end of the tunnel and develop a sense of direction.  Progress motivates more progress and true improvement becomes possible. 

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Starting vs. Stopping

Is safety excellence a matter of stopping risks or starting precautions?  Should we focus on the “thou shalt nots” of safety, or encourage positive action?  This topic directly impacts the question we have discussed before, “Is safety excellence a matter of achieving success or avoiding failure?”  But beyond that philosophical point, let’s discuss the tools used for starting and stopping human behavior and their side effects.

The ultimate behavioral stopping tool is punishment.  In the behavioral sciences, anything that tends to stop behavior is consider punishment and what makes it effective is the timing and probability.  Negative consequences for behavior that are certain and timely tend to stop, or “extinguish” the behavior.  But punishment does not automatically start another behavior in its place.  Artificially-imposed punishment can also damage relationships and culture.  It can be important to stop certain behaviors that present unacceptable risks or damage safety culture, and punishment might be the right tool for that job.

Starting tools for behavior include positive reinforcement and motivation.  If the safety challenge is getting workers to identify risks, take precautions or participate in safety activities, these starting tools can be invaluable.  Starting tools also are relationship and culture builders.  Workers who help each other start better practices and improve performance tend to strengthen the bonds between themselves. 

Determining the right tools for safety excellence involves accurately identifying exactly what behaviors need to be stopped or started.  An effective safety strategy should include these distinctions.

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

The Timing and Frequency of Measurement

Safety professionals seem to be on a desperate search for “leading indicators.”  This is a reaction to a reaction.  We have managed safety reactively through injury, incident and near-miss data and are seeking to become more proactive by measuring upstream.  This is generally a good trend in thinking that I believe will ultimately look more like a balanced scorecard than simply a dashboard.

However, one topic that is critical but not being discussed is the timing and frequency of measurement.  Good metrics help to understand and focus as well as measure performance.  If the measurement (or communication of the measurement) is too infrequent or if there is too much time between, the metrics fail to maintain focus.  Focus can become habit if reinforced at the right intervals.  Some aspects of safety ought to become habitual.  The right metrics can aid in the formation of such habits as well as measure the progress toward them.

Certainly there are some aspects of safety that should not become simple habit since they require meticulous planning and execution.  But, even these can become common practice with aid of the right metrics and with the right timing and frequency.  Metrics that are communicated in a timely and regular basis establish a level of expectation and provide meaningful feedback to maintain and improve performance.  Visible progress is also a powerful motivator and can come from well-timed and spaced metrics more naturally, than from artificial incentive and reward systems.  When you explore upstream and ask what leading indicators you should measure, also ask how often and regularly you should measure them.

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.