Insane Safety: Expecting Excellent Results while Caught in the Complacency Trap
By Carl Potter, CSP, CMC and Deb Potter, PhD, CMC

Some leaders and employees think that their work place is pure insanity. And they may just be right. Now, we’ve all heard the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Safety professionals, workers, leaders, and executives continue to do the same thing with safety over and over, expecting the results to be different (better). We see it all over the country and in every industry. We even hear it when people say “that’s how we’ve always done it” or “it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” The problem is that performance can begin to level out or even decline – and this translates into short-cuts, injuries, or even fatalities in a hazardous workplace. The root of the problem is complacency.

Initially, when something new is going on in the safety management process, it may take a bit for it to take hold, yet once it does, a great deal of improvement may be realized by the organization. Over time, the results may be plateaued at a level that is less than the goal and eventually, the performance hits a decline. Richard Foster, author of the book Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage , explains that growth in a process, performance, or application can have significant impacts on the organization until a plateau begins. The plateau occurs with changes in the environment or changes in the perceptions. We often call this plateau “complacency” in the workplace. The key is to recognize that this can happen and take steps to invigorate the process through ideas and innovation.

TIME

1. New process or procedure
2. General acceptance
3. Implementation/success
4. Plateau/complacency
5. Decline

The important thing for everyone – workers and leaders alike – is to understand that you don’t have to get on the plateau, and if you get there, you don’t have to live there in that place we’ll call The Complacency Trap. Investigation, ideas, and innovation can be used to reinvigorate the safety process. These steps can used to avoid and escape the complacency trap:

1. Freely listen to employees’ concerns about what is going on in the workplace with regard to safety. Create a safe environment for workers to voice their issues and concerns about safety policies and procedures. The best way to do this is with an independent facilitator who will not exercise judgment, but will take good notes and help management and leaders understand what preoccupies employees.

2. Look for employees and leaders who are willing to get involved in the safety process to share ideas for improvement. Many times employees or their supervisors want to get involved in sharing and developing ideas for improvement but haven’t been asked to or have been shut out of the improvement process altogether. Take steps to seek out interested people and include them in discussions and solutions.

3. Let everyone know that safety is of great importance to the organization. Regardless of your role in the organization, you can do this. Start every day with a safety briefing relevant to the work to be done. If you’ve already been doing this, try some new techniques, shake it up a bit. Ask different people to lead the discussion. Cover a recent incident and focus on learning from it, not on berating a fellow employee. If you have budgetary control, free up some money to do some unexpected advances in your safety process. Even in a tight economy, you can find a few extra dollars to thank some employees for a job safely done with lunch or some other type of recognition.

4. Use the five factors of creating a zero-injury workplace as a place to start. In our book, Zero! Responsible Safety Management by Design, we describe many different things that you can do to improve employee involvement, management commitment, worksite analysis, hazard recognition and control, and training.

Innovation and new ideas can come from a variety of sources. Employees, leaders, vendors, and consultants can all have a role in synergistic creativity and purposeful changes that can keep organizations from plateauing. An example comes from one company I worked with that continued to have the same type of worker hand injury over and over again. Leaders were angry and threatening, workers were frustrated and fearful, and nothing changed, year after year. Finally, someone got smart and relooked at the type of gloves the employees were using. New products were on the market and after some careful research, the supervisor found the right kind of gloves that were also comfortable to wear. Suddenly the number of hand injuries dropped dramatically, and remains low to this day.

Create an environment where zero-injuries is possible by continually working to avoid the complacency trap, especially after a period of successfully improving the safety results and reducing injuries over a period of time. The steps you take can help you create a sustainable safety process that will eliminate injuries and save lives.