Is safety about change?

As summer is on the wane, attention inevitably turns back to work-related matters. September is the time when many people start a new job or take a new position.

Health and safety people seem to move around a lot. Everyone’s been in those interviews where you might ask what happened to the last person. The answer is often vague. Something like they were not a good fit, or they were looking to make a change. Sometimes they might expand on things they thought the previous person did that they didn’t like or that they didn’t see the benefit of.

These conversations often contain frightening phrases such as “positive change.” They might even talk about safety culture or human factors. Those new to the management game may be excited by such phrases but it is important to understand that the people using them often don’t know what they mean.

So you are arriving at a new position, and whether you are going to be an advisor or a manager, we all like to make our mark. That can be with some empty platitudes or catchphrases, or it might even be wearing a hard hat of a different color or stripe.

One thing that has struck me over the years is how health and safety people arrive at an organization and somehow believe that wholesale change is needed. They have somehow convinced themselves that the last person didn’t know what they were doing and everything must change. I’ve always said these people are not helpful.

In an extreme example, someone may decide that the current health and safety system is just no good and implement a new health and safety manual. The new manual will be suitably thick and heavy. It may even still have the logo of a different company on it. This certainly makes a mark and is a big change. An all new and shiny health and safety system. Of course, the new safety person is the only one who knows what’s in this magical manual because writing a manual, while requiring a certain skill set, is nowhere near as hard as implementing one. Cue a building frustration until the person who brought the magical manual leaves the organization.

Sure, that’s an extreme example. I’ve only seen it play out about a dozen times. But it sure drives home the point. If the health and safety manager or advisor is changing things or they are the only ones who know the new process, then they are reduced to wandering around telling people how wrong they are. Not exactly a way to add value, I would say.

There are less extreme examples where changes are more gradual and even more targeted. These changes are often driven by ideology rather than results. For instance, changes that drive more accountability in operations or at the front-line supervisor level, are unlikely to be greeted with enthusiasm. Health and safety people who get caught between levels of management often get squashed. That’s because health and safety people are advisors and have little real authority in an organization.

Organizations hire new health and safety people because they didn’t get along with the last one, didn’t think the last one was being effective, or the last one really pissed them off in some way. Most of the time, it’s the latter. People who are in health and safety often have to deliver news that is not necessarily welcome. As an outsider, delivering less than stellar news, can be a recipe for ultimate failure.

Some say a new broom sweeps clean, but that should really not be the case when you’re dealing with the health and safety system. Each health and safety system or program in a company is a result of the company’s values and priorities. It is not necessarily a result of the values or focus of the health and safety director or manager. Health and safety people arriving at a new organization often look at the health and safety system with a critical eye and quickly understand that there are gaps in that system that probably need to be addressed.

This brings us back to the same old problem. Before you can solve a problem, you have to have a clear problem statement that actually defines the problem. Often you are seeing symptoms of a problem rather than the actual problem. That is why it’s always important to understand the actual problem. The reason your health and safety program or health and safety system seems ineffective or broken is probably not because it’s poorly written.

For example, when I taught at a university, there was a course that included a scenario, and the student was supposed to assess the hazards and make recommendations to the owner of the company. It’s a pretty straightforward exercise. I was often surprised when people decided that the most important thing when dealing with a serious chemical hazard was to have a health and safety policy. In my entire career, I don’t recall a single instance when the health and safety policy prevented an incident. However, we should have a policy, and it is an important part of the health and safety system. It’s just not the part that really matters when the rubber hits the road. You see, the students thought that almost everything could be solved with the procedure or policy. Some health and safety people are that way. When presented with a problem, they immediately say they’ll write a procedure or policy. They may also identify a requirement for some training. They do that without really trying to understand the problem.

So you’ve arrived in a new organization, and they said they want change. What does that really mean? Does that mean you should stop bringing forth facts that might be uncomfortable? That was a real problem at one organization where I worked. Does it mean that you should change some of the people in the department? Perhaps it means that you should change some of the procedures or policies that they might find objectionable.

The thing is, change just for the sake of change often leads to failure. In taking on change or promoting change, health and safety people think that they can change the culture of an organization and change the way the organization thinks about safety or work safely. That’s a really nice thought. The problem is, it’s simply not true. The culture of an organization almost always flows from the C Suite. People in the C Suite have a lot on their plates, and priorities shift, causing things to ebb and flow in terms of importance.

When you are the “new” health and safety person, manager, or director, starting with change is starting to knit your own noose. Many start by evaluating the health and safety system and identifying weak areas. That sounds like a prudent course of action. Unfortunately, once those weak areas are identified, some may start working to change those. It would be much better if, after identifying the weak areas, you try to identify why those areas are weak. You can assume that your predecessor was reasonably competent and probably knew that those areas where we could not, for some reason, shift the company’s perspective or get the support they needed to make meaningful change in those areas.

When I was in the military, people used to ask me. Aren’t you angry about Canada ignoring its military and sticking you with all this old equipment? Don’t you think that we should have a better military?

My reply to that did change over the years, but it ended up with this. Canada has the military it wants. If Canada wanted a better military, it would have one. That’s not something I can change as much as I might want to.

It’s like that with health and safety. When you arrive at a company, blown in on the winds of change, what awaits you is what the company wants to have and will accept. You’re unlikely to change their minds on that. I’m not saying you can’t do that for a short time, but the organization will eventually revert to type.

In a new position in a new organization, it is never a wasted effort to try to understand the organization before you try to make any change. It is always good to make sure that the basics are in place before you try anything fancy. As many great military leaders have said, “time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.”

Organizations often want change. The most important thing you can remember about change is — Change is great, unless it’s happening to you.

Although the organization wants change, they often do not know what that really means or looks like. Embarking on a campaign of change while ignoring the basics is the road to failure.

Identifying problems is OK. Providing solutions is better. Providing solutions to the actual problems is great. But— there are no guarantees.