Q3: Is it cheap?
It’s cheaper than the alternative. If you prefer, there are
companies who specialize in maintaining records on your
behalf.
Q4: Will it help protect our organization in litigation?
Yes.
Q5: You have my attention. If I agree, what do I do next?
Read on my friend.
The Nitty Gritty
The materials referenced below are a sampling of informa-
tion from a handful of expert sources. As I stated earlier, your
organization’s unique circumstances should determine your
path to making change. Whether you are restarting a dormant
safety program or starting a new one, begin with the basics.
Five Tips for Creating Sustainable Change
(Johansson, 2017)
1. Consider the Individuals You Are Dealing With
• Narrow your focus to a granular level and engage the
team individually or in small groups.
• It’s not the change that’s difficult for most people, it’s
sustaining that change.
2. Make the Right Hiring/Firing Decisions
• Eliminate toxic employees and hire the right talent.
• Meet with problem employees to allow them a chance
to modify their behaviors. This helps you decide who has
to be fired.
• When firing, be sure you can replace the person with a
better replacement whose mindset aligns with your val-
ues.
• “Go overboard with the onboarding process.”
3.Set Short-Term Goals
• If you want to see steady, consistent change you need
to implement short-term goals.
• Set timetables for achieving all goals.
4. Give Employees a Chance to be Heard
• We tend to think we know our employees, but unless we
ask them we don’t really know how they are feeling.
• There is a natural gap between upper management
and employees, it’s unrealistic to assume everyone is on
the same page. For more clarification watch an episode
of “Undercover Boss”®.
• Engage employees during the development of the
change system. It will allow them to be heard and give
them an emotional attachment to the system.
5. Follow Through With Promises (Good and Bad)
• Set boundaries, make and keep promises.
• Whether your feedback is positive or negative, it’s im-
portant to identify and cite the reason for that feedback.
• When a policy threatens docking of pay if the policy is
broken, you must follow through with the policy regard-
less of the person’s position.
• Reward high performing employees.
• Closely monitor reporting and incentive programs. The
issue with rewards and incentives for safety is, it opens
the door for non-reporting in order to receive rewards
and incentives.
• Keep accurate records of reportable incidents, recogni-
tions for good safety practices, and disciplinary actions
for poor safety behaviors. These records will be import-
ant one day, e.g. litigation or insurance policy renewal
time.
Anyone who has ever had to justify the safety section of a
budget knows that safety is not free. Those line items have
been omitted from so many event budgets for so long lead-
ership and clients are unfamiliar with seeing it and they de-
fault to thinking safety should be covered somewhere else
‘by others’.
You will hear “Why am I paying for that?”, or “That shouldn’t
be in our budget”, or “That should be in your cost of doing
business…” and depending on the circumstances they may be
correct. Regardless, the requirements for protecting our staff
and maintaining a safe site need to be funded and that mon-
ey has to come from somewhere.