Selling Safety, Revisited

Safety must distinguish discretionary spending from non-discretionary spending and be prepared to explain why a safety initiative must be implemented immediately instead of waiting for a better business climate.

Almost three years ago I introduced the concept of Selling Safety in Tough Times at the National Safety Council conference in Orlando, FL. This speech seemed to resonate with people. In fact, the broad media coverage that followed it clearly struck a nerve. But despite all of that initial excitement – along with the high-profile workplace fatalities in mining, oil and gas, transportation and manufacturing that have happened since – not much actual change has occurred in the collective consciousness with regard to how organizations view and manage the safety of their workers.

The heart of the problem is the prevalent belief by Safety personnel that Operations leadership is, at best, indifferent to safety and, at worst, antagonistic to it, neither knowing nor caring what world-class safety looks like. Beyond that, Safety contends with plenty of challenges within its own organizations. For example, a growing rift exists between those in environmental hygiene who view themselves as traditional scientists versus those who see workplace safety with more of a behavioral scientist/psychological bent and embrace Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) as their philosophic guide.

The bottom line solution to all of this remains the same – Safety must meet the needs of the company leadership and show them how applied safety practices fit them within the organization’s goals and success. With this in mind, let’s revisit how to sell safety in your organization.

PARTNER WITH OPERATIONS TO INCREASE WORKPLACE PRODUCTIVITY
Nobody wants to see workers injured and nobody wants to get hurt, so safety professionals must get more involved with the day-to-day business team and ultimately become indispensable to Operations. This process begins by recognizing that production is how manufacturers make money. The bottom line for Safety, then, is to communicate to the Production side how injuries cost money, waste valuable resources and tie up cash in a tight money market.

If Safety can help Operations to safely increase production, then everyone wins. For this to happen, Safety must take a leadership role in process improvement, instead of being relegated to simply shooting down other peoples’ ideas as unsafe.

TEACH OPERATIONS WHAT “GOOD” LOOKS LIKE
Operations leaders do not have time or inclination to listen to a complex model or a lot of safety jargon. When they say “tell us what to do,” they are not copping out or abdicating their responsibility for worker safety. Rather, they are asking for help in operationally defining what real safety looks like. Safety isn’t the absence of injuries; it is the reduction of risk.

Help Operations to understand probability. This includes teaching them that, while there is no such thing as a completely safe work environment, one can greatly reduce the risk of injuries and the severity of those injuries that do occur. It is one thing to talk about leading and lagging indicators, but the real need on the floor is to interpret raw safety data and provide Operations with actual information that they can turn into action. Data without analysis is just numbers.

COMMUNICATE
While speaking the language of production is critical to selling safety, it is not enough. Everyone in the organization needs to completely understand how the organization makes money. The role of communication is to continually perpetuate and transcend this function in a concise, clear, and simple manner.

For example, I recently met with an Operations Vice President who spent many years as a consultant and talked about pitching solutions to clients. “Years ago I learned something in sales training,” he recalled. “Keep your answers short and simple. The reason for this is that the longer the answer, the more the person you are trying to convince starts to doubt whether or not he has enough information to make a good decision.” This dynamic lies at the crux of disconnect between Safety and Operations.

Safety personnel get frustrated because their ideas are rejected out of hand. Operations, in turn, is discouraged by Safety technicians that develop “unworkable solutions.”  The actual problem is often not the solution per se, but how poorly the solution is being communicated. Both parties are to blame for this communication breakdown. Operations must take more of a role in making the decision, and Safety must do a better job of articulating the costs, risks, and benefits of the changes it is advocating.

RUN SAFETY LIKE A BUSINESS
One thing that hasn’t changed in the three years that I have been preaching this doctrine is that safety professionals must run the Safety department like a business. What has changed dramatically, however, is how businesses in general are run. In boom times calculating a realistic return on investment (ROI) is important. In tough times it can mean the difference between life and death of an organization. Unless you know how much a problem is truly costing you, you cannot do anything realistically about ROI. Safety must spend some time finding out by talking to Operations about how much the problem costs – just asking that question boosts the credibility.

The business climate is improving, but Safety should not only run the safety department like a business, it must run it like a turnaround business. In other words, Safety must distinguish discretionary spending from non-discretionary spending and be prepared to explain why a safety initiative must be implemented immediately instead of waiting for a better business climate.

Another element of running Safety like a business is to look for and present other, lower cost options. Government money to help struggling manufacturers is more and more scarce, but there still are some training or safety grants to offset the costs of regulatory training.

The economy is not to blame it for your company’s lack of a viable safety model, nor is it responsible for Operations’ lack of interest in cost avoidance instead of cost reductions. A tough economy can actually present an opportunity for a manufacturer to view safety in a new light. We have a huge opportunity to change not only the safety culture of our organizations, but to change forever how our Operations and Safety work together to make the workplace safer.