How to make the most of Safety Observations

These are questions I have been asking myself about Safety Observations for some time. From time to time, I have the chance to look through other Manager’s Safety Observations, and, on occasion, I will see things like “Observed employee sorting files” or “Observed employee backing vehicle.” While I am sure these observations are well intentioned, I can’t help but wonder “Why?” Did that observation do any good for the organization or the employee? 

Let’s explore Safety Observations.

Why do we conduct Safety Observations?

I have heard it said there are studies that show a direct link between Safety Observations and increased safety performance. Basically, the management theory is this, “The more safety observations a company has completed, the fewer safety incidents a company has.” Now, I have not seen these studies myself, but I have heard a lot of mangers reference these “studies.” This idea for reducing safety incidents becomes our internal motivation as an organization. We want to reduce the number of safety incidents, so we participate in an action that should have a direct positive impact. Great! But is that all there is to it? Is that really all we need to do? We just need to watch more people sort files or back their company vehicles into a parking stall to prevent the next fatality, broken leg or PVA? There must be more context to these studies folks are citing.
Ultimately, the goal of Safety Observations should be to improve the everyday work practices of our employees. We should be out in the field to give them a different perspective on how they are going about their work. We should be showing them things from our point of view that will help them complete tasks safer, more efficiently or quicker. In turn, their work will be less cluttered, be more efficient, have less re-work and ultimately be safer. This should be why we are conducting Safety Observations. If all Safety Observations are done in this context, there could be a correlation between number of Safety Observations and reduction in safety incidents.

Do Safety Observations Help with Safety Performance?

If the point of Safety Observations is to help our employees improve everyday work practices, then we should be conducting them in ways that support that goal. However, if we are completing safety observations to simply fill out a form and say we completed them in order to fill a quota or meet a KPI goal then we won’t have a direct impact on Safety Performance. We can’t, as operational leaders, simply fill out a form stating we observed an employee doing a random task and then expect that to have any impact on the performance of our employees. Just filling out the form will have zero impact on the performance of our organization.
Any realized impact on our Operational Performance is going to come from the quality of the observation and not the number of observations. If a leader is not having conversations with their employees about what they are observing and helping them think through best practices during the task, there will be zero improvement. We must engage with our front-line employees during a Safety Observation and ask questions about their work. We also need to positively challenge assumptions they have made about their work to facilitate their growth.

Do Our People Feel Better About their Work After a Safety Observation?

Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I ask myself, am I keeping this perspective when I interact with my front-line workers? I genuinely believe we can apply this perspective to our Safety Observations. If we can back away from trying to say the right thing or do the right thing in order to show them how to become safer, and instead we press into helping our people feel valued, believed in and trusted, then it will make an impact on how they behave. For example, If I approach a Safety Observation with the goal of finding something wrong with the job to make sure I correct the action or behavior, my bias while talking with my employees will be assuming there is something wrong with their job. This tone will come across in my communication. Additionally, I am viewing my workers with a negative perspective, and it is hard to have a positive conversation or interaction with someone you suspect is doing wrong.
Approaching the Safety Observation from a partnership perspective, that has a goal of both sides becoming better and learning from each other will have a more positive impact on the interaction. Using questions and phrases like; “Hey, show me how you set that up?”, “Who taught you that trick?” or “Do you always have success when you do it this way?”, are great approaches that have a positive perspective to them. These approaches help the worker feel valued but can also lead to conversations that will dig deeper into organizational norms and latent error traps. These organizational norms can lead to some real nuggets of learning about how work is normally performed. These nuggets can then be used to discuss best practices or procedures. Most importantly, the Safety Observation will leave the front-line worker feeling valued, heard, and understood.

Valued. Heard. Understood. What better way is there to leave our people feeling? If this can become the focus of our Safety Observations, then I believe that our organizations will see an improvement in Safety Performance. Will that improvement be in direct correlation to the number of Safety Observations? No, it will be a direct relationship to how our operational leaders are listening and supporting our front-line workers. The Safety Observation is simply a tool to help facilitate that support. Remember, there is no magic bullet when it comes to safety performance, there is only hard work, lots of conversations and supporting our front-line with the right conversations and following through to support them.

RJ Jubber, COO, GRIT