The latest white paper from SafeStart will help you navigate the complex matrix of human factors. Hear how you can use it to shape decisions, actions, and ultimately the safety climate of your organization.
Host: Danny Smith
Guests: Dr. Pandora Bryce, Pete Batrowny
https://safestart.com/file/idclip/
The latest white paper from SafeStart will help you navigate the complex matrix of human factors. Hear how you can use it to shape decisions, actions, and ultimately the safety climate of your organization.
Host: Danny Smith
Guests: Dr. Pandora Bryce, Pete Batrowny
https://safestart.com/file/idclip/
Welcome back to Safe Talk with Safe Start. I'm Danny Smith. We here at Safe Start recently published a white paper on six success factors to help leaders focus on much critical to successfully sustaining a Safe Start or Safe Lead implementation. And joining us today for the Cliff Notes version of their work are the co-authors, Dr. Pandora Bryce and our fellow consultant, Pete Batrowny. So for both of you, welcome back to the podcast.
Pandora Bryce:Thanks for having us.
Pete Batrowny:Thanks, Danny, it's always a pleasure.
Danny Smith:So a bit of background on Pandora and Pete. Pandora is our vice president of product development. She and her team are responsible for the Safe Start Now process, the updates we did there, also Safe Lead, the human factors framework, which we'll talk about as a bit as we're going through this, and so much more that we're doing right now. And Pete, in addition to being a subject matter expert and each of those that we just mentioned is also a frequent guest here on this podcast as well as on Larry Wilson Live. So, Pandora, let's start with you. As I read through this paper which, by the way, I've linked in the show notes for everyone I was delighted to see that it really drew from our over quarter of a century experience as an organization, but also from the extensive research that really serves as third party validation of what we've been saying all along.
Pandora Bryce:That's right, Danny. In 2018, Safe Start developed and introduced a framework to help organizations not only improve their safety systems, but also their organizational performance in production and quality. The framework is informed by Safe Start's more than 20 years or 25, as you said, years of field experience with human factors in safety. This framework provides a structure for considering where an organization is doing well with managing those factors and where they could improve. In the framework, we consider how human factors or, as we say it, people elements influence individuals, actions and decisions, and how they interact with an organization systems and workplace conditions. We use the framework as a lens to view and assess various elements of an organization systems to identify opportunities.
Pandora Bryce:Along with the framework, the Safe Start research team began investigating proven drivers of safety and leadership effectiveness in a range of industries. The research scope included studies of organizational development, leadership development, safety leadership, safety culture and safety climate all of those things intersecting. One outcome of this project was the Safe Start safety climate success factors. The six success factors provide the foundation for SafeL ead, which is our evidence-based safety and leadership program for supervisors. The program provides coaching and mentoring on specific technical and people skills for safety leadership and communication that contribute to an improved safety climate and safety outcomes. So in 2022, we reviewed our findings from several years of field application and expanded the research with additional, more recent studies.
Danny Smith:And for everyone. Just a reminder Tim Page-Bottorff and I did a podcast on the human factor framework a bit ago which focused on the content of that original white paper which Pandora and Colin Duncan authored. We'll also put a link to that in the show notes for you as well, in case you have not read that. I encourage you to go back and do that. Pandora, talking about this new white paper, this really takes a much deeper dive into the people elements on the individual learning loop side of things, those which are dressed. When you do address those, rather, you can really find just a yield, tremendous results in a number of key performance indicators, not just in safety, but in a lot of areas.
Pandora Bryce:Yes, Danny. While it's been our experience that SafeStart positively impacts all areas of performance, including quality and production, the focus of this paper is safety. For organizations that are making progress with embedding human factors management into their practices, it can at times be difficult to identify what's next in applying those human factors methods in their business. So a useful approach is to consider how organizational culture and human factors management are interrelated and how to move the needle on both to improve performance and reliability. And here's where we come in with our very well-defined people elements. It's possible, then, for leaders to influence improvement in the safety climate within their teams and departments. Those local effects of a healthier safety climate can spread throughout the organization, building organizational change gradually as the systems are improved and individuals experience the effectiveness of human factors methods. Our research into safety climate provides ways to distinguish between ineffective people systems and those that are high- performance. More than that, we develop practical methods and tools for improvement.
Danny Smith:Now, Pete, when we hear clients often say they want to change their culture and that's a common thing that we hear quite often right, and it's important to recognize that their current culture didn't happen overnight. So I, along with you and all of our other consultants as well, always encourage our folks hey, you got to be realistic, you got to realize this isn't going to change overnight either. It didn't happen overnight, is not going to change overnight. But and this is a huge point you can start changing your culture incrementally by addressing the climate today, and this new paper focuses on the important things we need to consider and to understand in regards to safety, climate right.
Pete Batrowny:Yeah, that's a great point, Danny, really important point. And you know, one of the things that I find really fascinating about this paper and how it can be used, and you know that a lot of the leaders that we talk to you know they think about their responsibilities really in the context of three things its production quality and then the people aspects of their responsibilities and a big part of the people responsibilities of safety, as we all know. So then we start thinking about how leaders receive feedback on these three critical elements, you know, of having a successful operation and how this feedback reaches them on a day to day basis. You know, with production and quality, those results are manifested in real time. If we're not meeting our production goals, if we're not meeting our quality goals, the phone's going to ring and we're going to do something about it immediately. We know about it real time.
Pete Batrowny:But when it comes to safety, that's not always the case, right, sometimes our safety, you know, we don't perceive that in real time. Right? We granted, we look at leading indicators, we look at lagging indicators. That's more of. You know, things that we talk about during meetings, and what this paper is going to do for us is give us the ability to look at those people aspects, especially safety, in real time and have it effect on those things.
Danny Smith:Exactly, and you know it's often been said that you know success in safety occurs when nothing happens, but it's also kind of hard to measure when something didn't happen as well. Right, but what we're suggesting and, more importantly, what the research suggests and supports as well, is that we can examine some key factors that are much more leading indicators, which a lot of people struggle to define in terms of safety.
Pete Batrowny:Yeah, that's right, Danny. You know the safety climate success factors really going to give an organization and specifically individual leaders, tools that they can use to influence those people, aspects of their job, you know, including safety in real- time. Right, it's going to give them the opportunity to provide immediate feedback, influence the safety outcomes, as we're saying. You know right now what's going on right now. That's the one of the big values of the of this paper and you know.
Pete Batrowny:One quick example is you know leaders think about how they interact with their teams or they deliberate about it. How are these interactions? When are they taking place? You know, are the interactions positive or are they usually in response to when we have an upset in production or safety or something like that? And if a leader or an organization kind of honestly answers those questions, it's going to give them some insight into whether the climate is responsive or whether it's reactive. And it's also going to be an indicator of how much trust the team is developing in the leadership, in the organization and that's going to have an influence on quality of engagement.
Pete Batrowny:All leaders shows up can have a huge impact on the safety climate and in this paper we discussed those safety climate in some depth and it's really been informed, as you and Pandora pointed out, by some extensive research. But we've also included some real life examples in there, some you know experiences that we've had in the field, and, in addition, we're developing some new tools that are going to help organizations assess, measure and prioritize their progress on their journey to optimize the safety climate and use them, these specific activities, to improve what they're doing on a day to day basis, on a real time basis.
Danny Smith:That's great, you know, and that's, I think, it's important to mention here. The six success factors that we're going to talk about here today that are included in the white paper are not an exhaustive list. However, from our research and our experience, we found that these six are the most critical or the most important. So, Pete, let's talk about that just a bit as well. Sure.
Pete Batrowny:It's, you know, not only important to point out that this isn't an exhaustive list, Danny, but also that the six success factors that we have identified and expanded on they're interrelated. You know, for example, if we have a climate of blame in your team or in your organization, that's going to have an influence on the trust and engagement and that influence on trust and engagement is going to have an effect on how effective our systems are at identifying and correcting issues. So it's really important to kind of understand how these interact with one another.
Danny Smith:You know we alluded to it a bit earlier, but before we go too deeply into this, we probably should loop back just a bit to the concepts of culture versus climate and really define those a little bit better here. So, Pete, if you would talk a little bit about how we really distinguish between culture and climate and what we mean when we're talking about those, sure, Danny, you know, at SafeStart we use the term safety climate to really kind of describe that.
Pete Batrowny:You know collective perception, the experiences with safety within an organization or within a team at a particular point in time. You know, in other words, how do we feel about safety right now? It's really a snapshot of, you know, employees' perception, teams' interactions. How important is safety in the organization and how do people prioritize safety when they're performing their everyday tasks at work. Safety climate can be influenced.
Pete Batrowny:It's important to understand that the response to the recent events, incidents and other things that are happening within the organization whether they're good, whether they're bad, that climate is going to change quickly Could be for the better, could be for the worse.
Pete Batrowny:You know safety climate will change. It's important to understand that. Whether leaders decide to jump in and try to influence it or not, it's going to change and what this paper will do is give leaders some insight into how they can influence the change for the benefit of the organization and benefit of the individuals that work at the organization. You know, in contrast to the safety climate, you know, if we think about that as how we feel about safety right now cultures, really, you know how do we do things around here. Culture develops over a long period of time, as you noted, very difficult to change. Culture is complex. It's a blend of facets that are interconnected, you know, one of which is safety, one of those important facets, and the facets include the value we place on safety and the extent to which people take personal responsibility for safety for themselves and how they look out for their coworkers.
Danny Smith:You know, some of this really comes down to how safety is treated within the organization as well. You know, is safety viewed as as many as has heard through the years, and is safety seen as a necessary evil, or that's just another line item expense that we have to deal with? It's the cost of doing business those type things versus. Is it something that really is at the heart of who an organization is and what they really do?
Pete Batrowny:Yeah, great, great point again, Danny. You know we hear a lot of people talking, or a lot of organizations talking about safety as a priority. You know, but for me I know it's kind of a nuanced distinction but it really should be a value. You know priorities change over time. Values are things that influence all of our decisions and if we have an organization that really values safety, you know a couple that with leaders who have that systemic approach to safety, systemic mindset, you know a couple that with a no blame mindset, you know workforce is positively engaged, bringing opportunities forward for improvement, you know it's more likely that that organization is going to develop a culture, places of value on other things as well, you know, like communication, effective leadership, how people respect each other, trust and positive behaviors that reinforce all of these things and all the organizations characteristics are contributors not only to safety but the optimizing performance and production quality and other aspects of our, of our business.
Pete Batrowny:You know, as we said earlier, organizations, culture develops over time. Some organizations may have multiple cultures and subcultures. You know, you've pointed out to me many times, Danny, that sometimes people join our teams and they bring a culture with them that we didn't have before and the example that we talk about is if someone comes from an employer where you know safety was looked down on a lot of discipline, when safety events happen, that person's going to be less likely to bring things forward in a new job, even if the culture is better within the new organization. And it's also important to point out that with good leadership, you know, we can have that assimilation really really quickly, right, change that person's view, make them understand that safety is a value in a new organization and it really relies on that that good leadership, good skills and an understanding of how these elements of the safety climate affect how we do things on a real time basis going to change and really accelerate that, that change in mindset, right.
Pete Batrowny:So you know, just kind of wrap up, if we use the analogy of a person, for me climate's kind of like a person's mood. You know, we can see that in a real time basis. Culture, more like a personality. It develops over time. Yeah, you can change personality, but it's really really difficult, right. So the the personality, is really analogous to the, to the culture of an organization. Climate, analogous to the mood of the organization, takes time to understand and to understand and and, you know really influence us. But but it's worth the effort to take the time to understand the culture, and one of the ways we can do that is by understanding these elements of the safety climate. Right, and people are at the essence of the culture. Human factors framework and safety climate are really good tools that allow us to, you know, take this complex aspect of an organization whenever people are involved. You know things get complex really quickly but it gives us a way to look at it and, you know, make it a little less complicated without over simplifying the issue.
Danny Smith:Sure, Pandora, you mind picking up a bit there and thinking about this idea of continuing the idea of climate versus culture.
Pandora Bryce:Yeah, sure Thanks, Danny. You know, to put it simply, climate plus events over time equals culture. And you know, as Pete was saying, there's no question that culture change, organizational culture change, is complex, and if you look at the research you know some of the models have 30-40-50 elements of organizational culture. That's a lot to try and absorb and how on earth do you figure out how to change that? And so you know it's. It really requires ongoing active commitment from leaders at all levels when that kind of change is desired, and so it takes time and effort. You have to get buy- in momentum more than you ever might think to achieve that organizational change.
Pandora Bryce:And you know, essentially changing minds and hearts is a lot different from introducing new equipment, say. You know the and our leadership, formal and formal leaders and informal leaders, their key players in the work of directly influencing people at a personal level within their own teams, and they can change the mood, you know that climate on their team. They can have that influence locally. And so we've been finding at the Safe Start organization we've been finding ways to influence safety culture for decades using practical activities that anyone can do that fit right into the everyday workflow. And you know that that idea that it's really important to find simple activities to do, to create that complex change, bit by bit, you know, using very simple, simple methods.
Danny Smith:So the white paper outlines six very specific success factors, and again, not an exclusive list. There are others, but these are the ones we found to be really, really important and really critical. So, Pete, if you would, let's go through these, and if you wouldn't, maybe we'll get you to take the first three here and then we'll come back to Pandora and she can tackle the last three for us. So which one do you have up first?
Pete Batrowny:Thanks, Danny. Yeah, the first one we talk about is a no- blame mindset. And what we mean by that no- blame mindset for the way we interact with each other, you know, especially when something out of the ordinary happens, right, something unexpected happens production error, quality error, safety incident how does a leader show up when those things happen? You know, do we have a habit to pause, think and respond. That's pretty healthy way to, you know. Come at a unintended incident that happens, or do we react? And if we're honest with ourselves, that reacting that that's kind of our human nature, right, that's our natural way that we would, you know, behave when something out of the ordinary happens.
Pete Batrowny:What we need to do, you know, is acknowledge the impact of, you know, habituation, autopilot. You know how a human brain actually works. It's normal to go on autopilot during familiar activities, repetitive activities. Right, it's not intentional. People don't do it on purpose and often do it with good intentions, right? So we can't really blame people when the brain is acting normally, right, what we can do is provide appropriate conditions, training, to help prevent those unintentional injuries, unintentional things, from having bad outcomes, right. The other thing, you know, we talk about no blame mindset, Danny. It's really important to understand that blaming workers doesn't do anything, you know, to prevent some of the incidents from happening in the future. And the other very important point is that a no blame mindset doesn't mean no accountability. Right, we still have to have accountability. We still have to, you know, kind of do the things that we're supposed to do. But what it is really about is responding appropriately so that we can learn as an individual and learn as an organization.
Danny Smith:Yeah, I think that's a big distinction. Put it another way no blame doesn't mean that it's a free- for- all. It's not the wild wild West out there. It's about moderation, right? I think about this in terms of how we talked to our kids. You know you wouldn't major. You major on the majors, right, I guess, would be the way to put it. So responding appropriately is the key, right? All right, so that was the first one there. If you would pick up, what's the next one?
Pete Batrowny:Sure. The next one we kind of call fresh eyes, and that's really about looking at hazards, looking at risks, managing risks in a new way and bringing human factors, a human factors perspective, to safety and to performance. It's the way that the no-blind culture mitigate for human factors related to habituation. Fresh eyes concept mitigates how a human brain develops expectations about complacency with our environment to the point where sometimes we just don't see what's right in front of us. That's the way our brain is programmed for speed. We either delete it, we ignore it until something bad happens, things that are factually present. So this fresh eyes approach and incorporating human factors into the way that we look at hazards and the way we evaluate risk can really help us come up with more sustainable ways to mitigate the hazards that we know are around us all the time, and if this is a new idea for our listeners.
Pete Batrowny:Classic example is the invisible gorilla experiment. I think we've all seen the video with the. We tell people to concentrate on how many times the ball is bouncing, and when you're concentrating on that, you can't see the gorilla walking right in front of you. I saw another very similar exercise where and this is kind of scary actually that radiologists were asked to look at x-rays and someone put a little black gorilla in the x-rays of lung that radiologists were asked to look at and the majority of the radiologists never saw the gorilla in the x-ray because that wasn't their focus. They were focused on looking at other anomalies there and openly admitted that they didn't see it. So it's really about what we focus on, you know, and our brain is trained to delete things that we see all the time kind of fill in the blanks. So these fresh eyes give us a way to, you know, kind of take a look at those hazards and risks in a new way.
Danny Smith:Yeah, I'm always amazed at how easy it is to just become accustomed to seeing something in a common environment, something you're used to doing, a place that you're at all the time, whatever it is, and you just don't see things that are around you, even though they're right there in front of you, right? Or, as you said, if your focus is on one thing, you completely miss the other details. And again, that's not a bad thing. It can produce problems, certainly, but it is the way we're wired a bit right, it is the way our brains operate, so we need to keep that in mind as we're talking about this and thinking about this, right? All right, let's go to the third item here, and that relates specifically to systems and to data.
Pete Batrowny:Yeah, thanks, Danny, and you know that's really about how we learn from reporting, how we learn from each other. You know we set up a lot of systems to help identify, prioritize and correct things that happen at work, and so what we look at with the safety climate success factors is how effective are those systems set up to really identify and correct these errors? And again, we're incorporating integrating human factors concepts into these systems, right? And you know, one of the questions we ask are systems set up correctly to identify and correct things first time, or are we frequently addressing the same thing over and over again? A lot of organizations I go to and you know this is true, Danny you know we have a problem when we put a band-aid on it and then you know, we're doomed to come back and have to revisit that issue again. So if we set up the systems properly, consider the human factors when we're looking at the issues that arise, we can fix them once right, because the irony is that stop-gap solution we put it in place to save time and what it does it causes us to have to spend more time on it later on. And in the safety research and literature you know, there's abundant support for the importance of the systems to really preventing the unintentional human error that can lead to injuries right and poor business performance.
Pete Batrowny:Human factors approach, you know, really acknowledges that not all mistakes are intentional right. Deviations from standards all those things are lots of times done with good intentions, right. Some are based on how the human brain works, as we mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, the natural neurology functions in a human brain can sometimes reduce our awareness of the risk. That's a fact, right. Your pressure. Human brain generally won't remember rules or processes. You know things that we've been trained to do, especially if there's a high risk about that. That's just part of the brain and how it works.
Danny Smith:You know, Pete, I find that really interesting because you're right part of our brain does go offline, then it's unfortunately the logical part, the prefrontal cortex right, that goes offline, if you will, when we're faced with stress, and that's a part of what the research shows as well. Whatever those stressors are, that kicks that off, and so we revert back to that subconscious or unconscious mind and that's where we revert back to habits and things like that, doing things the way we've always done.
Pete Batrowny:But the systems and data really can point to that and show us where those tendencies are, not only with individuals, but also with organizations right, you know there's many human factors, base reasons why the systems that we set up to you know, in good faith, solve problems aren't capturing the important information we need. You know the high quality information we need and therefore we miss out on the opportunity to improve our organizations. We're not getting that high quality data. You know, putting that into the organizational learning loop, we're really missing opportunity. And some of the reasons that we're not getting that data, you know we convince ourselves that we're too busy. We convince ourselves that if I report this into the system it's going to create more work for me.
Pete Batrowny:You know, sometimes people are concerned about what their colleagues are going to say. Right, I don't want to be that guy that's always reporting the things. Right, they're not all good reasons, but it's reality. That's the way our brains work sometimes. Right, and you know it's important for leaders to create an environment where we're getting those high quality opportunities to improve. We want to make sure that they're getting shared, discussed and acted on as effectively and efficiently as possible. Right, that's the way that you know we're truly going to be efficient and effective. Right, the fast paced world that we work in and we really don't have time to revisit issues. So if we can set up the systems, consider the human factors, make sure that the systems are really well designed, then we're going to be able to fix these things the first time and prevent us from having to come back and revisit issues over and over again.
Danny Smith:Sure, and even in those well designed systems, there also were some key things that have to be present, particularly related to leadership. So, Pandora, if you would, that kind of leads us into the next three there, so if you would talk about those as we go through them.
Pandora Bryce:Yeah, thanks, Danny. The three leadership factors that we're going to go through there. There are all the things that really bring this work to life. You can have every kind of policies and procedures and systems in place, but it's really our people walking the talk, is leadership supporting those things. And so we start with two very simple things in the personal commitment success factor.
Pandora Bryce:And one is that leaders need to demonstrate that they care about keeping their people safe, and that can look like all different things. It's not about being nice or something, but it's about recognizing the importance of human factors in the employees and in the workplace. And so that idea of caring about keeping your people safe there's nothing fuzzy about it at all. It's organizational accountability for creating safe conditions and individual leaders taking action not only on those conditions but also on work induced human factors that may be affecting their team members. Safety you know it's this is not a fluffy concept. It's really demonstrating and walking the talk that safety really matters and that your people matter to you. And then the second element of personal commitment is ensuring that your people have the training and skills to do their job safely and to standard.
Pandora Bryce:I keep hearing stories about, you know, summer students going into a manufacturing environment. They on the first day they're shown how to use some kind of terrifying machine and then nobody ever checks on them again. It's like, well, you've had your, your training, so have at it. And you know that is with most of us. It is not sufficient to be shown something once. We really need to have that, you know, mentorship or apprenticeship and someone really showing that it matters to them, that we can do it right, we can do it to standard and we can do it safely.
Danny Smith:Yeah, I remember early on in my career I had one of my mentors say this you know, if you take care of your people, they're going to take care of you and obviously you're going to reap the benefits from treating folks right. But besides that, I mean it's just the right thing to do right and just taking care of your folks and treating them right, making sure they're safe, making sure they have the right training and skills to do their job. And it goes beyond just that. One time of well, I showed you how to do it one time. You should have it by now. You know it just doesn't work that way. So all of that kind of leads us to the next success factor, and that is trust and engagement. So let's talk a bit about that.
Pandora Bryce:Yeah, so you know, trust and engagement and personal commitment obviously they overlap, but it is really helpful to kind of divide them out and think about them separately, because the actions that you can take are different for those two things and together they help shift safety climate. So the first one is open communication. You know, when leaders are effective communicators and they really demonstrate personally that they're not jumping straight to blaming an individual when a mistake occurs, for example when they talk about what's really going on. And you know, even if they can't completely fix an issue, if they at least have a response that shows that they're listening, that's where you really can build that trust and engagement. So the other piece of open communication is leaders actually listening.
Pandora Bryce:And when you look at all of the safety methods now, there's a lot of focus on that kind of team learning, learning from everybody, letting the people at the pointy end of the stick provide their input on how to make improvements.
Pandora Bryce:So leaders need to be able to listen and not just jump in and kind of what's the word? Impose their personal opinion on whatever the person is saying. And so you know that open communication goes hand in glove with the no blame, because when there is that openness and trust. Workers are going to tell you what's really happening. They won't be concealing stuff, they're not going to conceal safety issues, they're not going to hide their near misses, and you know. The other piece of it is that when leaders are role models for candid conversation about their own mistakes, and when leaders really show through what they do, that they want to solve the real problem, not just point a finger somewhere, then you're, you know, you're putting more and more in the bank of trust and engagement. They're seeing that your, that their leaders, are willing to listen, even if it's not a happy, happy message, you know, and that they want. They want to solve the real problems, because that's what actually works in the long term.
Danny Smith:You know, I think strong leaders really want to hear what's really going on, and not just you know what they want to hear. You know, that type thing I've often said to my supervisors, not just here, but at other positions, other companies I've worked with. You know, you don't pay me to be a yes man. You pay me to tell you what I see and what I think, and some of that's positive and some of it's negative. But having a leader that's really willing to listen and then apply both, that's that's really key, right? And sometimes the answer is okay, Danny, that's fine, but not right now, and that's okay as long as that's communicated. But that goes back to this idea of trust and engagement, right, all right. One more to go in the trust in the, in the trust factors, in the success factors. Here we go, go ahead, Pandora.
Pandora Bryce:Yes, you're. So the the concept of active leadership is one of the ones that are our folks find really challenging, because sometimes it's easier to talk about something than to actually demonstrate it in the you know every day in the real world. So our first principle there is to inspire action through what you do and say. So one of the terms you'll hear in our Safe Start process is leaders go first Right. Leaders go first in sharing safety stories. Leaders go first in sharing that sometimes they get tired or complacent.
Pandora Bryce:You know it's. It's it's that leadership walking the talk, to put it in another way. And then the other piece of active leadership is when you get some input. You know you're asking for input from, from workers, so you better do something about it. You know don't just collect the information. You know hazard cards or near misses or any of that, those things, if you're not going to do anything about it, or you're going to do something about it but not tell anybody. You know your people need to know what you've done and when, and it needs to be pretty timely, otherwise you're you're just breaking down that trust and engagement because the leaders aren't acting on what they're asking for.
Danny Smith:I saw one organization where they were actively soliciting, you know, safety, safety issues and things that needed to be improved, and they actually had like a big whiteboard that was in their break room and they it was literally like a live document for them, if you will accept.
Danny Smith:It was obviously a whiteboard, but the things that people were suggesting they were putting it on the whiteboard and they had an expected resolution date on there and you could tell just from where some of those had been, you know, written over or crossed out or whatever, but they had updated the dates. But they'd also put notes there. You know working on this, but we're waiting on a new piece of equipment or we can't do this now because the CAPEX budget won't allow it, but we're putting it in for the next year's CAPEX budget or something like that. So communication is really, really a big part of that and that's just what people want, right? So thinking about all this, all of these success factors that we've talked about, sound really great, but it's all really predicated on measuring. Success, which is we talked about before, doesn't have to just mean you're measuring the absence of bad things happening, because that's kind of looking in the rear of your mirror. So, Pandora, talk to us a bit about measurement here.
Pandora Bryce:Yeah. So you know we're. We want to make sure that businesses know they're making progress. There are metrics for everything else. Why not metrics for safety, climate?
Pandora Bryce:And so the idea of different kinds of metrics. Some are early, you know, leading indicators. They're a little more activity based, a little simpler things like safety context, you know, actually paying attention, you know, to leaders going out on the floor and having a safety conversation. Just get out on the shop floor, listen to someone and and so it's. You know, at first it might be a very simple metric are people doing that and how many and when did they happen? You know how many happened this month.
Pandora Bryce:And then, as your climate improves, then you can get more specific about what good looks like. What's a good safety conversation? What's our focus this month? How can you be more effective as the communicator and make that conversation really meaningful to the worker and connect with them properly? And so your metrics are going to evolve over time and and that's you know, that's perfectly natural Some of you would say, well, you know, just counting safety context. Someone might be, you know, just checking a box, ticking a box. Well, that's okay, they're starting to have safety conversations and you can always improve how you measure that and how, how you, how effective those things are. And so as the climate matures, then the metrics in your safety management system can also improve as well. You know it'll, it'll as you get to stronger and stronger safety climate. It is more about quality and less. You know a quota.
Danny Smith:Sure, exactly you know, and on the surface changing culture sounds like it's a lot of work, but really, if you're making small incremental changes and just having these interactions on a day to day basis with leadership, talking with folks out on the shop floor, having these interactions, it can yield such incredible results, right yeah?
Pandora Bryce:We've really seen that and I have a fantastic quote from a recent client where at the end of the SafeL ead implementation they said you know, we used to. The only reason we used to go out on the floor about safety was to find people to write up. Yeah, and so that was the entire purpose. They're looking for people who are screwing up and you know that's just not an atmosphere for trust and engagement and positive momentum towards getting the kind of climate that you want. And so you know it really it needs to be leaders at all levels to have that commitment. The CEO needs to get out there.
Pandora Bryce:You know we had one client who the CEO was going out monthly also hosting a bi-weekly meeting on the implementation and what was being done and sharing successes and and plus had, you know he was active, actually attending the classes. You know that is an active leader who's really driving the commitment all the way down, all the way down the line. And so you know the it takes some time to train leaders with those skills necessary to actually drive those climate and culture changes. And so the human factors framework can be very useful because it helps, helps an organization prioritize where to focus those activities. What are the things that will move the bar?
Danny Smith:Yeah, and that all gets back into the phrase we hear a lot is sustainability, right. So we were wanting to not only change the culture and the climate to where it is more positive than it was yesterday, and sometimes that is a day by day process, right? So, Pete, if you would talk to us a bit about how do we sustain things?
Pete Batrowny:You know, for me, sustaining that positive change in safety climate and that that's ultimately going to hopefully transfer to a healthy, growing safety culture, it really requires a, you know, strategically driven interventions from the leaders at all levels, as Pandora was pointing out. You know, not just strategic but also consistent, right, or the messages that the senior leaders are, they being translated, if you will, or communicated in a consistent way throughout the organization. You know another thing that we see with resilient organizations. You know the ones that have, you know, healthy response or healthy, recovered to unexpected unwanted occurrences or events. You know they prepare their leaders with the technical skills, the interpersonal skills and the leadership skills that are really necessary to continuously drive that culture change. You know in the right direction, right.
Pete Batrowny:And the relevance of the human factors framework, you know in this discussion of safety climate and improvement, you know provides a way to prioritize. You know where to focus our limited resources, our energies and the organization and individuals' activities and really with an emphasis on proactive leadership, as Pandora was saying, got to get out there, got to be recognized and people doing good things given positive, specific feedback to people to drive those improvements. And on the human factors framework, also a useful lens I think Pandora pointed this out before you know for assessing, identifying the continuous improvement opportunities and all the elements of organizations management systems. So and we've used this as a really really powerful way to identify improvement opportunities and come up with some, you know, really good roadmaps for organizations, using the safety, climate, success factors and the human factors framework as a lens to you know kind of look at the things that we're doing and the systems that we developed to drive those improvements.
Danny Smith:Do you give us a real, specific example of why this approach is critical to high performance organizations?
Pete Batrowny:Sure, Danny, and the one that I look, and you know you and I have had this discussion before. I'm going to call it stop work authority, for lack of a better term now. But it's really about people looking out for each other, and you know this concept in high- performing organizations, you know where people really do look out for each other for the right reasons. It really originates in the organizational learning loop. You know it's usually a standard, if you will, or a statement that was made by a senior leader. You know we give people the authority or the obligation, if you will, to stop things if they see something that's out of the ordinary, something that might result in a bad outcome. Right, we have standards, we've got, you know, documents, that kind of lay out what this looks like.
Pete Batrowny:But then in reality, you know we find out that people, even given the opportunity to exercise that or look out for each other, for one reason or another, they don't always do it. Almost every incident that we look at, someone was there, someone had the opportunity to intervene, but for some reason they didn't. We can't look at just the individual when we think about that. There are some individual reasons why people don't do it. They don't want to look like they didn't know what was going on or they're afraid of what the repercussions might be. A lot of reasons why individuals do it, but then there's also systematic organizational drivers that cause that decision too. Do we really value safety or is it crunch time? Do we need to get this job done? What's the pressures really telling people how to behave?
Pete Batrowny:And the human factors framework. It gives us the ability to look at these organizational factors, the people elements that reside in our systems, and design them. In a way. They're going to get the outcomes that we want by driving people's behaviors in a positive way. We say organizations say that safety is our top priority. That's the verbal message that's going out, but all the nonverbal messages are when it comes down to the wire. We got to get this job done. It's the end of the month, end of the quarter. We're going to meet our production. It leads to just little things, like people not using LOTO properly because they perceive that they're going to get the job done faster. So having the knowledge of the human factors, the people issues in both the organizational learning loop and the individual learning loop, going to help organizations really create the environment where people are not only willing, but know that it's the right thing to do to look out for each other when they see things that are out of the ordinary.
Danny Smith:Sure and Pandora, a lot of the technical systems, the things like lockout, tagout, the process safety management systems. Those technical systems are hardwired, if you will, to the overall system. But what we're really talking about here today is looking really at both the technical and the often overlooked people systems.
Pandora Bryce:Yes, absolutely. And looking at both of them and how they interact. And we look at that. We look at systems and we think of them as the technical systems, which are all the processes and equipment and procedures and all that stuff, and then the people systems, which are more about communication and those kind of elements. There's a ton of support in the world for those technical systems. They're all kinds of OSHA regulations, other safety regulations. There are all kinds of supports available for how to do that, how to do it right. It's technical systems have typically been pretty well supported in organizations and so it's often there's a real strength in that area.
Pandora Bryce:And what we find is the challenge is that the people systems aren't well enough developed to actually use those systems super well. An example, a very simple example, is if you've got a near-miss reporting system, it doesn't mean that you're actually going to learn anything from the near-miss data. Like, if you collect some near-miss reports and nobody ever looks at them and nobody ever fixes anything, then it's all very well to have the system, even if people don't use it. But even if they do use it, it's great to have the system. But if it doesn't give you anything useful and it doesn't help you prevent injuries. The system itself is not the solution. You really have to have people knowing how they're supposed to communicate, what they're supposed to do and what the human elements are of really paying attention to those reports and the impacts they might have.
Pandora Bryce:And the idea of people systems tends to be treated as softer in nature than technical systems. It's less likely to be tracked. What's your communication process for near-miss reporting? What's the deadline for how long you're supposed to or how soon you're supposed to respond to that? How often are we supposed to track the data? How are we reporting what gets done about those? Maybe that's happening less, because that's all about people having conversations and discussions to look at the data and talk to some workers and figure out what a solution might be, and so typically you might see instead, for those softer quote, lagging activity indicators. If you look at training, it might be training hours per year. Well, that's great. People are in the room for an hour. Are they changing their behavior? You can't tell from that kind of a number, and so we want to make sure that people systems metrics are something that are considered.
Danny Smith:Sure, it kind of goes back to how you're evaluating your training as well. We won't get at all of that right now, but certainly you've got to not just measure the fact that they were there and they signed off on the smile sheet, as we call it, the level of type evaluation. But are they really having that level four, behavioral change. And again, we don't have time to get in on all that, but you've got to be measuring that. Let's explore this idea of people systems a bit more. Can you give us some more examples of what you're talking about when you're talking about people systems?
Pandora Bryce:Yes, absolutely. You know I had earlier mentioned communication skills, that idea of transparency and dialogue. Those are in the leadership skills, because when information is moving well around your organization then you get way better function. You're learning from the information, you're learning from events and you can become proactive in preventing things. Another example of people systems is a climate and eventually a culture where leaders think a bit and respond as opposed to just reacting with what the bleep are you doing? You know it's really that thoughtful approach to try and solve the root issues and it won't just be one. You know the root problem is not Danny, there's a lot more going on there. And so that kind of responsiveness, that's a learned skill that you can learn from seeing somebody else do it as well as from training.
Pandora Bryce:Another is problem-solving capabilities. You know organizations have problem-solving capabilities. How well do they deal with problems? Do they have a well-defined way of identifying, defining? You know if you define the problem wrong, you're not going to fix it very well. Why solve the wrong problem? That's not going to be much help. So that's definitely a people systems element, because humans thinking together is how you solve those problems.
Pandora Bryce:Understanding and use of human factors you know we're all human, we're carrying around human brains. There are things that just change how we think and act, that are based on those human factors, and so we need to know that they're there. Another piece of people systems is training and development, and especially those mentoring pieces, the human pieces of training and development, that it's ongoing, it's sustainable, that people are checking in and reinforcing learning. And then a really useful element of people systems is having a common language, common language for safety, a common language for processes. Right, that everybody knows what something means and they're all rowing in the same direction.
Pandora Bryce:And you know, none of those things are typically tracked in a safety system, but they can be observable, they can be measured. They can be measured, trackable for the level of quality as well as for what happens afterwards, what the outcomes are. If you're thinking about something like an incident investigation, well, first of all, did they follow the process? But then it gets into how well did they solve the problem and how well are the leaders demonstrating the process that everyone is supposed to be using, so that everybody learns from that? And are the leaders using the process and not just jumping to pointing a finger and you know that's all wrapped up, we're done, and so you can always get more refined as your climate improves.
Danny Smith:Yeah, and it really isn't possible to have those high-functioning technical systems without having those good, strong people systems, and I think we've known that for years, but I don't think we've ever had a way to quantify that, and I think that's a part of what we're talking about with these six success factors that we're discussing today. Pete, you want to jump in just a bit more about that?
Pete Batrowny:Sure, Danny, I agree, you know, 100% with that notion of the technical systems got to be strong, right, without having people systems in there, you're missing out on opportunities, right. And in this paper we kind of look at how to develop the specific elements of the safety climate. Right, we share specific examples that are, you know, not only based on the research. Certainly are. We give real-life examples of how this can be done. You know successes that we've observed, right. But one thing that we always recommend, you know, before you jump into the details, into the specifics, you know really want to look at organization, to start working on the systems, right, put conditions in place for the safety climate activities to be as effective as they can, you know. And an example of that is non-negotiables. You know we talk about non-negotiables and safety all the time, Danny, but when we really look at them, you know they're really for compliance. Right, we have lists of cardinal rules, golden rules, sticky lists, all those things that you know. We know that are really rules driven right, don't walk under a suspended load, those types of things. But not many organizations really extend that into the people systems, right, that's really a lot less common, right. But when we really define our people systems really well, it becomes easier to spot those misalignments to, you know, kind of develop those non-negotiables for our people systems right, and leadership commitment being consistent, that they're paramount when we start thinking about those things right. And so for those non-negotiables for the people systems to be implemented, well, you know, we see them done as employee pledges, for example. Right, these required actions, things that are expected people. But in order for that to become non-negotiables, leaders have to be on the lookout for them, they have to be given specific feedback for those things right.
Pete Batrowny:And we create these people systems not necessary to have an exhaustive list, but it's important to have a number that are going to make a big impact on people's thoughts and the way they make decisions. Make sure that they're clear and they address how people work together. Your own example of a safety climate non-negotiable might be the one that we talked about already looking out for each other, right, that's, that's imperative, right. If you want to have a really strong safety climate leading to a strong safety culture, you have to have an environment where people are willing to look out for each other, make sure they're doing the right thing right. Another one might be to identify and report the high value near misses immediately. Right, so that we get those fed into the organizational learning loop. You know, and do the right thing to fix those once, as we talked about before, right.
Pete Batrowny:So having those clear people driven non-negotiables really, really important. And when we're articulating those to the people, people really want to know why we're doing. You know it's important for a leader to be able to understand that you know in themselves but also articulate that to people when they're telling them what's expected of the organization. So once you've articulated those expectations, you know it's a lot easier to provide the tools, the climate, the resources that people need to be successful. And if we're out there doing that active leadership that Pandora was talking about, you know we get the opportunity to give specific feedback on those activities, on those people system non-negotiables. And when you know our co-workers see us out there doing that as leaders, those types of behaviors are more likely to be repeated throughout the organization. Get it ingrained in the culture.
Danny Smith:Yeah, I'm so excited about this white paper and just the impact that it and the concepts that we're presenting here can really have with organizations, with all of our partners. So I want to just thank both of you for spending the time with us today. I know this is a bit longer than our normal podcast, but I really, really think this just has been a phenomenal time to spend and share. Even if our listeners have had to listen to this in two or three segments, I think that's okay, because you can always hit the pause button and pick back up again. But for both of you, thanks so much for being here and thanks for everybody else for spending some time with us, right?
Pandora Bryce:Thanks, Danny and Pete, it's been a pleasure.
Pete Batrowny:Yeah, Pandora. Danny, thanks for inviting me along, for helping with the white paper and helping with the podcast today. I really appreciate it.
Danny Smith:So, on behalf of Pandora, Pete and the entire team here at Safe Talk with Safe Start, thank you for spending part of your day with us. Remember to share this episode with others and don't forget to check the show notes again for links to the entire white paper and also the episode that Tim and I did on the Human Factors Framework as well. Until next time, I'm Danny Smith for Safe Talk with Safe Start, reminding all of us safety really is a skill. So if it's a skill, it's something that we can continue to improve, and that's what we're trying to do. Right, have a great day, everyone.