The 7 Crucial Things all Leaders Need to Know About Safety

In our work at Krause Bell Group, we’ve found that the most important ingredient in any safety program is strong leadership. But all too often, senior leaders don’t “get” safety at the level they need to in order to be effective. So what is it that senior leaders need to ‘Get’ about safety? What is it that these key safety leaders need in order to influence the organization and achieve better and better performance? We’ve devoted more than 20 years to figuring this out, and our research has yielded seven critical insights.

1. SAFETY PERFORMANCE LEADS BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

The first insight is about the relationship between safety and organizational performance. When a senior leader understands how safety and organizational performance are connected and why they are connected, it will affect the way they think about their strategy and vision for the organization.

2. SAFETY LEADERSHIP STARTS WITH ATTENTION TO SERIOUS INJURIES AND FATALITIES

The second insight into safety excellence is that senior leaders should focus attention first on addressing serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs). The long-held practice of concentrating on minor incidents and hoping for a trickle up effect has been proven inadequate, and leadership needs to familiarize itself with the most serious risks

3. LEADERSHIP SETS SAFETY IMPROVEMENT IN MOTION

The third insight has to do with how safety leadership sets the stage for safety improvement, and why safety leadership is the starting point for successful organizational change. It answers the question, “What does it mean to ‘Get It’ when it comes to leading safety, and where does ‘It’ come from?”

4. CULTURE SUSTAINS PERFORMANCE—FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE

Leadership affects culture, and culture amplifies everything. The fourth insight is about the role culture plays in safety and organizational performance generally. It explains the very interesting relationships between leadership and culture, and implications for the long-term future of the organization.

5. DECISION MAKING IN SAFETY IS BUILT ON THE UNDERSTANDING OF CORE SAFETY CONCEPTS

The fifth insight has to do with injury causation and prevention. It offers core concepts about injury causation that inform and guide strategies for decision making and safety improvement.

6. UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF BEHAVIOR IN SAFETY PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT

The sixth insight is about the role of behavior in organizational safety. It tracks the history of Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) efforts and explains why BBS is controversial and poorly understood. It shows how the term “BBS” has been abused as well as how it was originally defined and successfully implemented.

7. COGNITIVE BIAS AFFECTS SAFETY DECISIONS

The seventh insight has to do with decision making and some of the ways cognitive bias undermines our judgment. It discusses several biases that affect decisions we make in leading and managing safety—as well as individual risk-taking decisions—and how those biases can misdirect efforts to improve.

These seven insights teach organizational leaders how to become excellent in safety on purpose. In a world where work is inherently risky and exposure to risk is ever-changing, organizations must be clear on their value for safety and the data-driven approaches that will chart their progress. Our 7 insights are drawn from decades of research and the latest thinking. They will help leaders understand why good intentions are only the start for a safer workplace, how to sidestep common misinterpretations that can derail safety efforts, and why leaders at every level need to engage with safety—with a focus on preventing the most serious events first. Every person and every organization has the opportunity to be excellent at safety. It is good for your people, it is good for your culture, and excellence in safety will show up as excellence in other areas of performance. You can be more efficient and effective in your organization. You can be insightful. Safety is not such an enigma when you get this stuff.

To explore each of the 7 insights in greater depth, you can read our book, 7 Insights Into Safety Leadership, or if you are interested in learning more about organizational culture, you can read Tom Krause’s newest book If Your Culture Could Talk:  A Story About Culture Change.