Influencing Safety Performance

Here’s today’s opinion poll: Who has the greater influence on safety performance?
 

• The Top Executive: the one responsible for setting the safety goals and determining the strategy to meet them.

Or…

• The Front-Line Supervisors: the ones responsible for leading and managing their crews.

 
As to your opinion, is this the biggest no-brainer on the planet? Or a case of, “Let me get back to you, because you’ve really started me thinking”?
 
In either case, it’s a question worth giving some thought.
 
Back In Time
 
Upwards of a half a century removed from the occasion, I still vividly recall my first close encounter with a CEO. He was running one of the biggest companies in the world, employing 125,000 people. Sat right next to him, dining on Oysters Rockefeller and turtle soup at one of New Orleans’ best restaurants. 
 
Talk about a huge Moment of High Influence!
 
Two years earlier, I’d accepted the job offer of a lifetime: hired in as an individual contributor at a brand spanking new chemical plant on the banks of the Mississippi River. 
 
Of course I was just one of several thousand people working there. But in retrospect the job delivered exactly as promised. I had the privilege of working at one of the safest operations in the business, being part of a great safety culture, and to be managed by some of the best leaders in the business.
 
Great leaders, great culture, great safety: no coincidence there. 
 
The influence those leaders had on us followers was enormous. To my credit, I did pay close and careful attention. Five decades later, what you regularly read from me was largely formed by their practice of safety leadership. The fundamentals never change: people are, and will always be, people, and there will always be plenty of hazards to be found in the workplace perfectly capable of producing harm.
 
The next time you read about the next big thing in safety, keep that thought in mind.
 
No sooner had I hired in than I first heard the name of our CEO: F. Perry Wilson. The perfect name for the top executive in the bluest of blue-chip companies, with its headquarters building on Park Avenue in New York City sitting atop a rail line built by none other than the first American industrialist, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Growing up in the shadows of The City, I’d taken that train, and walked up that street from Grand Central Terminal. These were exciting times. 
 
Well, it was for me. I never got to meet Mr. Wilson. A year later, business took a turn for the worse, and he was retired. I’m sure you are familiar with the process. The company’s CFO was moved up to the corner office with the expensive mahogany desk and the fabulous view of the Manhattan skyline.
 
A few months after the change of command our new CEO made the rounds; that included a visit to our site, where a capital project of epic proportions was underway.
 
Looking back with what I’ve learned about running a business, this was simply making a statement: “Let me remind you that I’m paying attention to where all our money is going.” Fair enough. The site visit included dinner with the entire site leadership team. 
 
By then, I’d gotten my first promotion, meaning I was invited to join him for dinner, along with the other forty managers at the site. 
 
Big company, big business. 

Meeting Mr. Sneath
 
After work, we’d all met up downtown for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at a restaurant appropriately named The Commander’s Palace. Came time to take our seats at the big table – laid out in white linen, bouquets of flowers and fine silverware – I figured if I played my cards right, the big bosses would take their seats to the right and left of our CEO, the rest would fill in, and with that settled, I would quietly creep in the direction of the chair farthest away from the action.
 
Still in the observation stage of my career, it seemed a wonderful opportunity to do exactly that: see how these business dinners with the top brass go down. Observe, yes, but no sense risking ruining what I hoped might turn out to be a promising future by unwittingly saying the wrong thing. Hence the strategy of watching from a distant and safe seat. 
 
As they say in the military, no plan survives contact with the enemy. By the time I timidly made my way forward, there was only one seat left at the huge table. You guessed it: at the right hand of the father. There were no other options.
 
Seated on my immediate left: Mr. William Sneath, CEO. A little older than my father. “Good evening, Mr. Sneath. Pleasure to meet you, sir.” 
 
For some reason, he actually looked me in the eye, and it seemed as though he was genuinely happy to have me sitting right next to him. He succeeded in getting me to ask him a question. “So, Mr. Sneath, what are the challenges you face running a global business like ours?” 
 
Don’t be too critical. I was totally unprepared; this was the best I could muster up in that moment. That Moment! 
 
Dinner finished, table cleared, Mr. Sneath stood up, and thanked us all “…for inviting me to join your Wednesday overtime meal.” 
 
Now, all this happened in a time and place long before CEOs became rock stars. No hoody or black tee shirt for Mr. Sneath; no funky hairdo; no stage, no hard-to-see headset. Stage presence was not part of his leadership process.
 
Dressed conservatively, speaking in an understated way, Mr. Sneath succeeded in leaving a huge and lasting impression on me. “So, that’s how you act as CEO when you take your job seriously.”  Another forty-seven years of data has not changed my view.
 
So, yes, a CEO can have a huge influence. Everyone knows that. But what about influencing somebody to go back to the locker or truck to get the coverall goggles needed to perform their job safely?
 
Safely Doing the Job
 
If you were to break down “safely doing the job” into its component elements – which is not a bad way to look at safety – you would start with the condition of the tools and equipment involved in the job; next the methods and procedures to follow to perform the work; followed by the skills and knowledge necessary to perform the work properly; and finally to the actual physical performance by the person when doing the job. 
 
A process that is simple, logical, but breathtaking in scope. If you were to perform that analysis, how many elements would fall outside the sphere of influence of the front-line supervisor? 
 
You would be hard pressed to find one significant to safety. 
 
So, if you needed any proof as to the correct answer to our poll question, there it is: the role of the front-line leader is that critical to safety performance. 
 
I doubt any CEO would argue otherwise. 
 
Preparing Supervisors To Lead
 
Here’s the thing: everyone might know that, but if everyone acted on that knowledge, things would look a lot different. Starting with the offer of promotion to any individual contributor, like I once was.
 
“You’ve just been offered the most important position in the business as it concerns sending everyone home, alive and well at the end of the day. We are going to outfit you with the practical tools to lead and manage safely up to the standards we expect you to meet.”
 
Training would commence the next morning.
 
Providing knowledge and skills to match expectations and responsibilities may make perfect sense, but it is far from common practice. As good as I had it back in the day, I received nothing of practical value to perform the most fundamentally important safety leadership duties that came with my job: how to run a safety meeting, how to communicate a change in procedure, how to manage a safety suggestion, how to observe work as it is being performed, how to coach up someone who’s not working safely, how to give praise for working safely, and how to set expectations.
 
Aka, the fundamentals. 
 
As for you, if, at the point you first were promoted into a leadership position, you received the kind of practical training that helped you succeed in managing safety performance – doing tasks like these well – somebody needs to be thanked. Might be your predecessor. Might be someone up in the chain of command, who not only recognized the need, but also delivered the goods.
 
Impressive stuff, isn’t it?
 
Suppose that actually were the case, in real life practice? It would stand to reason that the leaders who benefited by the new knowledge would have a significant impact on the safety performance of their followers. For example, some follower would go back to the locker or truck to retrieve that piece of PPE they need to do the job safely.
 
If it were to happen that way in real life practice, who deserves the most credit: the supervisors who practice what they were taught, or the executive who saw the need, caused the content to be identified, and the help to be given to those who need it?
 
That’s the invisible hand of leadership.
 
Paul Balmert
May 2024