All others bring data.”
Training is best looked upon as an investment of time and resources. Effective training can produce a significant return; what return is more important than better safety performance?
Still, industrial leaders are some of the busiest people on the planet, so it’s always with a touch of guilt that we take them away from their jobs and sit them down in a classroom to teach them how to lead and manage safety performance. When they’re sitting in a classroom, the things that aren’t going on is known as Opportunity Cost.
As to the things that are going on with the leaders away, that’s known as reality.
Among the benefits of studying the practice of safety leadership is that it gives leaders time to reflect on their reality. A “time out” might be a better characterization. We always begin every engagement by asking what’s standing in the way of goal zero: “What are the toughest safety challenges you face as a leader – every day?”
Every leader knows the answer.
Let me amend that sentence. Pose that question to executives, their list of challenges is often a lot shorter than their counterparts out on the shop floor. Some prompting is usually required: “What about compliance? Complacency? Change? Communication? Consistency? Contractors?……”
An executive once said thanks…“for reminding me what I know – but forgot” A CEO running a publicly traded company who’d started life as an Electrical Engineer in a paper mill, it wasn’t like he didn’t know reality. So, maybe “Remembering that..” should be added to the list of tough challenges.
Guaranteed to show up on the list is “New people.” Plus the collateral issues new folks bring along with them: lack of knowledge, lack of understanding, lack of experience, the impetuosity of youth, and the feeling of invincibility. Undoubtedly you are well acquainted with the challenge.
I am. Two weeks removed from graduating high school, I was the new guy. Working as a General Helper on midnight shift in a chemical plant, I got hurt twice in the first two weeks. In exactly the same way: craft knife in my right hand, laceration to my left hand.
But that was a long, long time ago. And it was me.
Really now: is the challenge of new people as big as leaders think it is?
Bringing The Data
A few years ago an influx of injury reports raised the issue within the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) set about investigating the “new people” challenge. “New people getting hurt at a higher rate makes perfect sense” explained Launa Mallett, one member of the NIOSH team.
As to the data, “…we’ve found there is a lot more to the story.” I’m sure Dr. Deming would nod in agreement. As it turns out, there is a lot more to this story!
MSHA only knew of the injury cases filed with the agency, and the total number of workers within the industry across the various commodities the industry produces. In 2018 NIOSH had commissioned a census of the US mining industry, creating population distribution estimates that allowed them to measure injury rates by levels of experience, from new hires to the most senior people in the industry.
Combining MSHA’s Non-Fatal Days Lost injury reports with NIOSH survey data made estimating injury rates by years of experience a small step – for them.
And a giant leap for the rest of us! Imagine the possibilities.
Another of the NIOSH researchers, Cassandra Hoebbel is careful to point out their rates are based on population estimates and headcount – not hours worked – and are specific to the US mining industry. But in my book, they’ve created an experience safety benchmark that readily translates to all injuries and all industries. That’s a huge development.
As to their findings – the data – those with less than one year’s service were estimated to be six times more likely to suffer a lost workday injury than their more senior counterparts.
Six times higher!
“We expected it to be high but were surprised at the magnitude of difference in risk” noted Hoebbel. How many other tough safety challenges or critical safety factors are there that, if measured, would be that statistically significant?
Smart leader that you are, you probably jumped ahead, figuring this challenge is also six times easier to solve: let somebody else hire those exuberant eighteen-year-olds straight out of high school. Bring in experienced industry veterans who learned the hard way on somebody else’s crew.
Seems like a good theory.
As to practice, the data is even more shocking. The injury rate for experienced new hires in their first year at a new jobsite is 11% higher than new hires with less than a year’s experience!
That means the problem isn’t being inexperienced, it’s being new. There is no escaping the new people challenge.
Problem and Solution
As Charles Kettering saw it, “A problem well defined is a problem half solved.” For years leaders have seen how new people act. That’s behavior. By virtue of a much larger sample size, MSHA saw the numbers of serious injuries. That’s information. Now, Drs. Hoebbel and Mallett have estimated the “experience curve” defining the size and breadth of the challenge new people present.
Having that data puts the ball back squarely in the court of the leader; the new people challenge is yours to solve. New people are not going to spontaneously start working safely on their own. Leadership is required.
So, how do you do that?
By beginning at the beginning, of course. On Day One, when every new person goes through their New Hire Safety Orientation. In real life, that innocuous looking training class turns out to be a huge Moment of High Influence – in the mind’s eye of those sitting in the chairs.
Seize the moment!
That answers when. As to how, it certainly would help the cause were every person new to the site – no matter their level of experience – to understand that, as they’re embarking on what will be a very exciting part of their career, research shows the start to also be a time of high vulnerability to getting hurt. Spread the word, far and wide. Take all the help you can get. Tell those who will be colleagues of the new people what the data suggests.
If that telling sounds a bit like a Stump Speech, it’s no coincidence. Advice, philosophy, expectations, values – in this case specifically about being new and being safe – is the essence of the Stump Speech. “As the statistics suggest you’re six times more likely to get hurt than you’re experienced peers. So,……”
Asking a Darn Good Question is another useful leadership practice. Instead of telling, you might try asking, “Why do you think the injury rates for new people might run six times higher than those who’ve been working here for a year or longer?” Let the new people tell you their answer – not the other way around.
Ultimately this is about their Case for Safety, isn’t it?
Those are words; what about action? Come time to head out to the shop floor, knowing that your new people are at significantly higher risk of injury, make them a target for your attention. You know that as the calculation step in Managing By Walking Around.
When you show up, make a point of giving the new people specific feedback on their behavior. New to the job, your observations will have outsized influence.
Information and Data
While leaders have been saying for years they see the problem, most sites don’t have that many new people each year and injury rates are relatively low. So it’s easy to see how the new people problem wouldn’t show up in the safety metrics. MSHA and NIOSH have the advange of scale to produce useful data, in this case, injury rates.
But this effort began with information: individual injury reports. In understanding safety performance and processes, information can be highly useful. Information can be hard – an investigation report – and information can be soft – observations made by supervisors about the behavior of new people.
Understaning that gives you one more darn good reason to be looking farther and wider at both data and information to give you a better appreciation for what’s really going on in your operation.
In Dr. Deming’s terms, that would be measuring the process, and not just the outcome.
A darn good idea.
March 2024
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