Get Leadership to Listen to Safety: The Business Case

How to Get Leadership to Actually Listen
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Safety Brye: [00:00:00] If you're the person responsible for safety, I am almost positive that you have had this moment. You walk into a manager's meeting with something that actually matters, a hazard, a training gap, a piece of equipment that's gonna hurt somebody, and you start telling them about the hazard and what needs to be done, and then you watch their eyes glaze over. You get a nod, maybe a like, "Hey, we'll look at it," and then nothing happens. So I wanna tell you what's going on when this happens.

Safety Brye: [00:00:33] You're walking into the room and you're talking about accidents or citations or regulations, and they're sitting back and the only thing they're thinking about Are profits, KPIs, OKRs, whatever they, they measure their results for, and what they have to answer for at the end of the quarter. Now, it's not that they don't care about their people, it's not that they wanna run an unsafe work environment, it's just that they don't believe what you're telling them is going to happen, at least not to them, or at least not in this quarter.

Safety Brye: [00:01:13] They think it's something that they can put off. So in their head, they're weighing those two risks, the safety risk and the business risk. And the safety risk doesn't feel as certain as the business risk, and that's why certainty ends up winning every single time. So today, I'm gonna hand you the second fix in our series, and at the end of this, you'll know exactly how to walk into that room with something that they can't tune out. But first, hey, thank you so much for being here.

Safety Brye: [00:01:52] If you don't know me, my name is Bry, I'm a CSP, and I've built safety programs from the ground up dozens of times, and I have spent the last decade teaching safety managers the exact systems that I use. So today, what we're covering is part four of an entire series. The last time we chatted, we solved the overwhelm and got you out of being that department of one. Today we're solving the second problem, which is being ignored, not being listened to, and there are three strategies I want you to put in place to get past that.

Safety Brye: [00:02:31] The first one is building data. Next, we're gonna translate everything into their language. And third, we're gonna turn it into something leadership can't get anywhere else. So before we get started, a quick heads-up. Uh, I put everything that we are talking about today, as well as in this entire series, into a free guide. I call it the Safety Management Influencer System Guide. It lays out the full cycle, plus the three pillars of influence that you wanna layer on top of everything step by step. So the link is below, so make sure that you grab that whenever you're ready.

Safety Brye: [00:03:12] Okay. So our second problem is that you are feeling ignored, you're not getting listened to. It's everything you're saying is landing on deaf ears. And the good news is, is that this is fixable. And it's not really about respect At least not respect for you personally. What it's actually missing is that leadership doesn't understand the value that safety brings to the business, or why safety needs to be part of the decision-making process at all. To them, safety isn't something that belongs in the conversation at all.

Safety Brye: [00:03:52] It's something that they have to do in order to control expenses. And why do they think that? Well, it's because of the way that we, as safety leaders, have been presenting it. It's because of the way that the traditional method of safety management has been taught. We are not taught to show up in a way that grabs attention and demonstrates the value of safety. So let me show you the three things that you're probably leading with that are contributing to you getting tuned out every single time, and also contributing to you not getting that management support or that employee engagement that you know you need to have a successful program.

Safety Brye: [00:04:45] So the mistake that I commonly see safety leads make to this day, even, like, with my current students when they first enter Safety Leadership Academy, is that you lead with compliance. You lead with the regulations. You lead with, "We have to do this because OSHA says we have to do this," making you kind of like the rule police. And it makes safety actually an expense on the P&L statement, because you're telling them that there's extra things that they have to do in order to meet the laws or meet the regulations on the little chance that they're gonna get caught not doing it.

Safety Brye: [00:05:29] And what I want you to remember is that what you're striving for in your safety program, which is to keep, you know, your incidents at zero Control your costs, right? Keep your insurance rates down, your mod rates down. Uh, have everything running smoothly. Have everybody looking out for hazards and risks and following safe work practices. That is your goal, right? That is not the goal of the regulations. The goal of the regulations is barely a C grade. The regulations were never designed to get you to zero injuries.

Safety Brye: [00:06:10] The regulations were designed to reduce serious injuries and fatalities. And the process of developing a regulation, a lot of it gets watered down, and, uh, there's a lot of exceptions that are added into it. So if you're constantly pushing just to meet the regulations, you're white-knuckling it just to get to a mediocre safety program, right? So as hard as you're pushing for that, why don't we just- Put that to the side and instead push for your true vision of the safety program, which is that zero injury rate, everybody following procedures, and yada, yada.

Safety Brye: [00:06:50] So that's mistake number one. So, like, whenever I talk to somebody and their first question is, like, "What's the regulation say about this? Well, the regulation says this. I have to, you know, have to have them do this because the law says this," you are leading with the wrong thing, okay? The number two mistake is leading with fear. So this is very similar to number one, where you're leading with compliance. The underlying thought about compliance is the fear that you might get fines or citations or they might come shut you down, right?

Safety Brye: [00:07:25] And this works, like, for a little bit. Like, when I come into a new organization, like, like I said, I've built safety programs from the ground up dozens of times. So my very first thing is to do a hazard assessment and find those serious injury or fatality risks that can cause fines or shut the company down, right? Those are the things that I will always look for first. But there's typically only a few of those in every organization. So once you get those taken care of, so that might be something like equipment training that was never done, so that way if that equipment was involved in a serious injury and OSHA came in and saw that you never even did training for those people, they can shut you down for that.

Safety Brye: [00:08:13] Things like that, or something like this caused a fatality and it was a blatant, willful violation that's gonna cause, you know, a multi-million dollar fine depending upon the severity of the injury that happens. Those are the things. There's typically only a tiny few of them whenever you go into a new organization. What most of us are dealing with is just the everyday hazards and safety issues. And if you start leading with fear on those and saying, like, "Hey, if we don't fix this, this could lead to, you know, a 70,000 or 170,000," I don't even know what the fines are up to right now.

Safety Brye: [00:08:52] Like, if you're leading with that fine as being the reason, that ends up just being noise, right? It's, it's something that in a business person's mind they'll go like, "Yep, that is a risk." But honestly, what they're gonna end up weighing it with is the cost of that fine first versus the profit of inaction, right? You're, you're weighing with something that they don't actually think is going to happen, so it becomes like you catastrophizing what the situation is. It's the same thing with leading with fear of the cost of a claim.

Safety Brye: [00:09:28] I'll see this a lot, too. If you were to look at years of back injury accidents and really drill down on the cost of that accident, most back injury claims are only, you know, maybe a couple thousand dollars. But then we'll say, "We need to put this initiative into place 'cause it'll… If it just reduces one back injury claim, it's gonna save us $250,000," because a $250,000 claim is somebody who seriously injured their back But your normal claim history is only a couple thousand dollars. So because you're going in with this like, "This is the catastrophic result that it's going to save," they're gonna be like, "Yeah, but we don't ever see those."

Safety Brye: [00:10:16] Right? Or you might see one every five years or something like that. So this is why leading with fear just never works, and that it ends up making you look like the bad guy. Now, the third mistake that I hear a lot is people not leading with specifics. They lead with, like, an anecdote of things that could happen, and this goes back to our back injury incident, right? I can totally build a return on investment business case with that back injury, uh, statistics of being a couple thousand dollars per injury and still have a good ROI.

Safety Brye: [00:10:53] But if you're just leading with, "Yeah, you know, I saw that this guy wasn't lifting properly, and if we continue to let this go, you know, it's, it's going to eventually lead to something," it's, like, very vague, not a true story, not true data, just kinda like things they've heard, things they've read about. It's like one story compared to, like, years of analyzed data. And what ends up happening is the loudest voice in the room is always gonna win, and when you're talking to your business people, they have years of data that they can look at.

Safety Brye: [00:11:31] And if you've not built a data-driven safety program, all you have is kind of story, right? One story, one observation, one little piece that doesn't tell you the big picture of the whole thing. And I know the feeling, like, I know, like, you're sitting there, you walk into the room, you know that this hazard is something that needs to be fixed. Like for me, for example, I read all of these, all of these stories and accounts of forklifts driving off docks. And I went to this one facility that had dock locks, so that way when a truck backed into the dock, it was locked in place, so there's no way for the truck to drive off while the forklift was loading it And I was like, "That's amazing.

Safety Brye: [00:12:15] We need that." But I had nothing in my organization that showed that forklifts driving off a dock was a true hazard for us, right? So me trying to sell them on dock locks by just showing them YouTube videos or showing them a magazine article, because this was way back when, um, is not going to sell it, right? So this is why I never got my dock locks way back when. So this is what I see a lot of people doing, is that you see these best practices that make these beautiful safety programs, but you can't, you can't reference it to what you're doing.

Safety Brye: [00:12:54] So when you're going to your leadership team and just giving them that anecdote, it's never going to give you that buy-in. So what I want you to shift in your thinking is that we don't need to convince them that safety matters. They know that safety matters. Not a single executive is going to be okay with somebody dying to make their widget or deliver their product or build their project. Nobody is going to be okay with that But they need it, they need to understand safety in a form that they can make a decision with, not necessarily doing it just for safety's sake.

Safety Brye: [00:13:37] So what I like to say is that the moral argument of safety can only take you so far, so you have to go to that next step and not guilt trip them into it, but create a true business case for safety. And that comes down to understanding the value that safety provides to the organization above and beyond accidents and incidents. Now, there is a whole system underneath this of how safety actually earns influence instead of asking for it, and that is what is inside that free SMIS guide below.

Safety Brye: [00:14:19] So make sure you click the link and download that guide. I know it is a meaty guide. I started to write it, and I thought it would be, "This'll be a quick, easy read for you guys," and it ended up being way too long, but I promise you, it is well worth the read. So download the guide. I've got graphics in there and all the good stuff, so make sure you check it out. All right, so if fear and the regulations don't move your executive team, what actually does?

Safety Brye: [00:14:50] And it actually starts with something that most safety programs are missing entirely, and that is real data. So here's what changes the mind of executives. When you stop telling leadership what to do, and instead showing them what the data is telling you instead. That shifts everything because business decisions are built around data. They are not built around feelings or moral arguments, right? Every single business decision has got some backing behind it, some research, some data. Every one, except when it comes to safety. It's like our argument in the past has always been what the regulations say and worry about fear.

Safety Brye: [00:15:44] We've always argued about the law and citations instead of actually collecting the right data so that way we stop guessing about what the problems are out there, and actually showing them what the data says and why this is important to the business. So when you can stop guessing, you can actually show them the data and your priorities, you will stop getting tuned out. So the first step of this is making sure that you are collecting all of the data. So what I typically see in most organizations is that for safety data, what they are collecting always is going to be accident injury data.

Safety Brye: [00:16:24] So you got your claims runs, you've got your accident reports. If you, if you have any sort of a robust safety program, you also have near-miss reports or first aid reports as well. Maybe you've done accident investigations and you have root causes on those investigations. That might be the next set of data that you start collecting. And you've heard that you should be p- paying attention to leading indicators and that claims data is a lagging indicator, but you don't know how to collect the data on those leading indicators.

Safety Brye: [00:17:01] So let me first differentiate the two. A lagging indicator is data on something that has already happened. A leading indicator is data on something that could potentially happen, but hasn't happened yet, right? So two different sets of data. I like to keep near-miss data, which a near miss is an accident that was a close call, hasn't happened, could have happened. There's tons of different definitions for near-miss data. I like to keep those into lagging indicators and not leading indicators, at least a certain subset of near misses I put in lagging All right?

Safety Brye: [00:17:41] So that is the difference. If you're always paying attention to lagging indicators, then you're always looking at the past to predict the future. That, there's nothing wrong with that, right? I love that old saying is like, "It's all happened before, and it will all happen again." I think that was, like, a Peter Pan saying or something. I don't even know where it came from. I do remember it in, like, an '80s song, but, like, it's all happened before, and it will all happen again. So looking at your historical lagging indicators is definitely gonna give you some clues as to what could happen in the future.

Safety Brye: [00:18:20] But the problem with lagging indicators is that they don't change that often. Unless you have tens of thousands of employees, you're not gonna get that much lagging data. So if you're constantly staring at the same data and constantly sharing the same data, that does not change, it's gonna be really hard to change other people's perceptions about safety. And honestly, you're pointing at the negative all the time. If you're always looking at lagging data, then there are always… You're always talking about all the bad things people are doing.

Safety Brye: [00:18:54] And then the other thing you wanna consider is that once your safety program gets really good and your accident rate does drop down well below industry standard, close to that zero or even at zero, what lagging data are you gonna be paying attention to? It's gonna be gone. Your, your argument for safety is now gone. You can't convince them to make any improvements after that, and improvements can always be made. So that is why we want to stop focusing all of our attention on lagging data and focus most of our attention on leading indicators.

Safety Brye: [00:19:29] And my, uh, split between this is usually 75% leading and 25% lagging. See the difference there? It's a huge difference. So leading indicators are the unsafe acts, unsafe conditions that could lead to an accident or incident Okay, so these are inspection results. These are observation results. These are assessments. This is everything that we are doing to gather the health and wellbeing and compliance to our safety policies, procedures, and work practices. It is our coaching results, our observation results. Everything is leading indicators. And I know that a lot of people wonder, like, "Well, what leading indicators should I be tracking?

Safety Brye: [00:20:21] What leading indicators should be in my data?" So your first clue is unsafe acts, unsafe conditions, right? Now, unsafe acts and unsafe conditions are the things that actually cause accidents, unsafe acts being behaviors, sa- uh, work practices, things people do, and unsafe conditions are your inanimate objects, um, your building, your facilities, your vehicles, uh, your job sites, right? Things that are inanimate objects. So if you think about it, somebody leaving equipment out where it could, uh, fall and hurt somebody, that is… Leaving the equipment out is the unsafe act, right?

Safety Brye: [00:21:02] But if you have that piece of equipment that is missing a machine guard, um, that is an unsafe condition. Okay? So those are the difference between the two. So if you're wondering, like, what leading indicators should you actually be tracking, that's when you go back to your job hazard analysis and you look at your safe work practices. Every safe work practice is your leading indicator. And you can also look at your lagging data and see, like, what behaviors, what conditions were in place that caused the accident.

Safety Brye: [00:21:32] Those become leading indicators. This is how the past predicts the future because if those things haven't changed, then they're gonna happen again. So now the other piece of data that you should be collecting is your impact on other departments, and you can't judge that until you start collecting that data from other departments. So safety has a positive impact on all the other departments. We, um- We reduce turnover, we reduce the cost of hiring, we im- improve efficiency and operations, we reduce the amount of equipment damage, we improve preventative maintenance, reducing costs in the maintenance department.

Safety Brye: [00:22:15] We improve customer service by improving the quality of the product that is coming out. We improve sales because our department looks good, we're creating a quality department, all of these things. But you can't judge your impact unless you have the data from all of those other departments. So you need to be able to, you know, understand turnover rate from HR, understand the cost of hiring, understand the efficiency ranking that operations does. How does operations measure, measure success? Is it, like, you know, time on project, uh, cost per widget, you know, products per hour, pounds per hour, whatever it is that they're measuring.

Safety Brye: [00:23:00] You need to understand how customer service measures success. Complaints, reviews, um, returns. You know, we need to understand security risks and understand maintenance and all of that. So you need to have access to that data, and the magic happens when you actually overlay your safety data with all the other departments' data. Because you can see that, hey, I started to emphasize this safe work practice, and our quality numbers improved at the same exact time or shortly thereafter. So this allows you to build a better business case because you can compare what your activities and your doing to the impact on all of the other departments.

Safety Brye: [00:23:46] So what this does to your credibility is that you are not necessarily just telling leadership what to do. You're not making up a story or sharing something that you believe could happen or, um, something you've heard that has happened at competitors or similar organizations. You're actually showing the data. And when you track and trend it, it can actually say, like, "Hey, if we don't take care of this, it's eventually gonna lead to this issue," which will also impact operations, transportation, um, project management, whatever it is that you can show that it's going to impact.

Safety Brye: [00:24:28] And it gives you a better business case for what you're doing. And, and on top of it, you're putting the full picture in front of your management team instead of just safety data. 'Cause if you're just giving them safety data of, of accidents and incidents or even just your leading indicators, they'll be like I don't know what this means. So it's having that trend and comparing it to how it impacts all the other departments. Now, setting up a data-driven safety program the right way is actually broken down in that guide, so make sure that you download it.

Safety Brye: [00:25:07] There's a lot of pieces to a data-driven safety program that go above and beyond, uh, safety management, as you can see, and as I've been speaking here. So it's not something that you just want to DIY and hodgepodge together. So make sure that you download that guide and get in touch with us if you need any help. Safety data on its own won't land with a leadership team. You need more than that because the numbers only matter if it can be attached to something that they are actually measured on And that's why I wanna talk about the motivating metric.

Safety Brye: [00:25:46] So in most organizations, safety is seen as a cost center, but honestly, safety is a profit center. I really want you to take that in. Safety is a profit center, and it always has been. We've just never been taught how to prove it. So here's how we are going to build a business case for safety in the language that the people across the table in that managers meeting actually get paid on. So our first step in building a business case for safety is understanding what is your business' motivating metric.

Safety Brye: [00:26:29] Now, the motivating metric is the thing that your management team gets measured on, and it is different at every single level. So your executives get measured on one thing, which is probably stock prices. If you're a public company, it could be profit, it could be rate of return, right? Your directors are gonna be measured on a different thing, your managers are gonna be measured on a different thing, your supervisors are gonna be measured on a different thing. So you need to identify what that motivating metric is for every single stage of the organization.

Safety Brye: [00:27:06] So if you think about it, the reason why every level is a different metric is because those are the things that, that, that are in their control. So what the supervisors are measured on, which might be efficiency rates or hours worked, help the manager meet their goals, which might be, you know, costs, expenses, number of widgets made, which helps the VP m- reach their goals, which might be sales, um, profit margins, which helps the executive reach their goals, which might be, like, return to the stakeholders or overall company profits.

Safety Brye: [00:27:45] Who knows what it is? It's different at every organization. Uh, so you need to understand what is that motivating metric. What are they measured on? What are their performance goals? And the best way to find this out is to have conversations with each level. I tell my people all the time, sit down and have a conversation with all the members of management, and basically ask them what their goals are, what they're measured on, what their success is. And then the, the key is making sure that you tie your results to whatever their goals are.

Safety Brye: [00:28:18] Another little hint at what the company's motivating metric is, is what they talk about at their town halls. So if you do any, like, town hall meetings or, like, all-hands meetings or where the CEO or the president or the head of the organization, the owner, talk to all the employees at once, what are they talking about? That's their motivating metric. That'll give you a hint as well. And lastly, if you can't figure it out, I will tell you right now it is always better, easier, faster Better, easier, faster.

Safety Brye: [00:28:53] How does safety make their job better, make it easier, make it faster? That works everywhere. So even if you don't even know their motivating metric, you're just starting out and you don't understand what a KPI even is, that's okay. Focus on better, easier, faster. Even in the public sector, which is one of the hardest sectors to determine the motivating metric, better, easier, faster always works. The other thing, just a little hint for my public sector people, it's finishing a job, um, on time, in budget, right?

Safety Brye: [00:29:26] So better, easier, faster. So it works for nonprofits, too. So when you're talking about this safety thing that you want them to do, this gap that you found, this hazard that needs to be fixed, this piece of equipment that you want them to buy, this training that you want them to take, how does that make their job better, easier, or faster? That's where the money is. So you have to go past claims. If you're just going to say, "We have to do this because it's going to reduce claims cost, it's gonna reduce injuries," you're talking about things that they don't believe are gonna happen.

Safety Brye: [00:30:04] But if you say, "If we do this training and they learn how to follow these safe work practices like a machine, it's going to improve efficiency by 2 or 3%. It is gonna make their job easier, and in return, we will have happier employees who that will in turn reduce turnover rates, and they will take better care of our equipment. So I expect maintenance costs to be reduced by at least a half a percent, if not a full percent. And I expect, uh, talent acquisition costs to reduce by a fraction of a percent as well."

Safety Brye: [00:30:46] That gives you an entire business case, and you have not once said it's gonna reduce accidents and injuries. So what I want you to see is that when you're creating a business case for safety, the accidents and injuries, that's the icing on the cake, my friend. It is not what you're selling them. You're selling them on better, easier, faster, right? That is how you can get them to do it. So always connect it to, um, operations, quality, maintenance, sales, all of those things. Even if it is just a fraction of a percent, which is what I recommend you go with, it's still gonna give you a positive ROI.

Safety Brye: [00:31:28] Now, the reason why I always say a fraction of a percent is because we don't just ask for one initiative, do we? We ask for multiple, so we wanna make sure that we're piling up those fractions of percentages- So that way we get yeses over and over and over again. So you wanna back it by research as well, so make sure that you're looking at your claims data. Like, if you just implement a warm up for work program, it's gonna have an impact on your, on your, uh, strain and sprain injuries.

Safety Brye: [00:32:00] We already know that, right? But, uh, at … That impact on your strain and sprain injuries is so minimal, right? It might reduce them by, like, 10%, 15%. And if your back in- injuries, like we talked about, average maybe a couple thousand dollars each, that's not gonna give you enough ROI. So if you think about, like, a warm up for work program, this creates employee camaraderie. It also creates a time for the supervisors to set up the day with their employees to make things run more efficiently.

Safety Brye: [00:32:33] It makes them feel good, um, as an employee. Like, it really does make your body feel good when you do a warm up for work program. Uh, it makes them happier because they see that the workplace they work for cares for them, so they're less likely to leave or move on. And all of that, you know, ripples throughout your entire organization. So when you're building a business case for safety, these are the things that you need to line up with. So our first step is knowing that motivating metric, and then connecting our work to that metric, and if we can't find it, then it is how does our work make their job better, easier, faster?

Safety Brye: [00:33:18] So I wanna warn you about one little thing, which is the budget trap. So you never want to sell the value of safety as a budget savings, right? So what ends up happening is, like, if we go, "Oh, if we do this it's gonna save us on expenses. It's going to save us money here," in the end that's gonna end up biting you, especially as you get better, um, in your safety program and the budget keeps getting tighter and tighter. Another thing that ends up happening is if you keep getting, coming in under budget every single time- The next year, they're going to keep cutting your budget and cutting your budget.

Safety Brye: [00:34:04] So you get punished for your efficiency, right? So what we want to do instead is look at your budget that they've given you, if they've even given you one. Most safety departments do not get a budget. Um, but when you're looking at the budget for whatever it is, you have to frame it as an investment instead of a cost. So that's why you need to know that motivating metric, know the impact that safety is making on that metric, and selling it as a business case. So that way the budget does not get shrunk and you don't get stuck in that budget trap.

Safety Brye: [00:34:40] And I actually learned this from a VP years ago. He actually came under budget one year and he was like, "I have got to spend some money because I cannot be under budget." And I, I was like, "Well, I don't get it. Isn't being under budget a good thing?" He's like, "No." He goes, "If I come in under budget, then next year they're going to cut my marketing budget." He goes, "So I need to spend some money so that way I have more money next year to spend."

Safety Brye: [00:35:07] So that was like the reframe that I got, and that came directly from an executive. So if that's the way that executives think, we need to think the same exact way. Now, I know that building a business case for safety is tricky. A lot of people don't understand the business acumen side of it or the value that safety provides above and beyond accident reduction. Um, that is why I made that SMIS guide. So make sure that you download it below and take some time studying it, and if you need any help, reach out to us.

Safety Brye: [00:35:43] This is what we do. All righty, now here's the move that takes you from the safety person that's got good numbers and cr- can create a business case to being the safety person that they actually invite into the room, that earns the seat at the table. Because the thing that I have found over and over again is that when you have a really strong data-driven safety program that you can attach to the motivating metric of the business, your low performing departments are going to get easily highlighted So the thing is, is that safety becomes this beacon of the problem areas in most organizations.

Safety Brye: [00:36:36] So think about this. You are collecting safety data. Like, that's the data you're collecting. We're overlaying it with everybody else's data, but the only data you're collecting is your safety data, and you can track and trend it, and you find a department that is underperforming where it comes to safety. When you start overlay- laying your safety data with all the other data, what you will typically find is that in that department, expenses are kind of out of control as well. Performance is lower, right? Uh, the output, whatever they are producing, whether it be projects or, uh, widgets or products delivered, that's gonna be lower too.

Safety Brye: [00:37:24] They're gonna have a high turnover rate, maybe a high employee complaint rate. Maybe they have a lot of damaged product, or they have theft. Safety becomes this beacon that can shine a light on a poor performing department before it gets out of control and starts costing the company a ton of money. Because when you set up your systems correctly, the way that I teach it in Safety Leadership Academy is that you have an executive advisory committee that every month you are reporting your trend analysis and the story the data for safety is telling.

Safety Brye: [00:38:03] You're overlaying it with all the other departments, and those poor performing areas are just going to be highlighted to this group immediately, and everybody in this group also has their own data that they've likely been tracking. And all of a sudden they'll start connecting those dots, and they'll understand, like, here we thought we had this leader in this area that was, you know, working well, but I can now see that they're not working well. So you walk in and you're like, "Yeah, we've had this poor performing department, and these are the steps I've taken to try to improve this department, and now I'm bringing it to the committee," right?

Safety Brye: [00:38:47] So you become this Partner, right? That is really looking out for the business as opposed to just your one little department. And the data is so helpful to those executives, and it's being shown in a way that they don't typically look at it, right? So if you think about all the data that we want to collect from other departments, when HR is looking at their turnover data, they're just considering whether the person they hired Um, worked out. And if they didn't work out, they'll assume they made a bad hire or they made a bad recommendation for a hire, 'cause typically HR is gonna hand, hand a supervisor or manager a handful of qualified candidates.

Safety Brye: [00:39:41] So they'll assume they made an error, right? But if that same department also is having quality issues, the quality department might be thinking, "Well, we're not enforcing our rules enough in this area," or, "We're failing in this area, and we're doing something wrong." Or the maintenance department might think, "Well, the equipment in that area is just really old and needs to be replaced," and, "Yeah, it's about time that it, it, it's, it's just breaking down." They're looking at it as a business as a whole, maybe not necessarily in an area.

Safety Brye: [00:40:17] But then you come along and you're like, "No, I'm kinda connecting the dots because, like, I'm seeing that other areas are doing really well when it comes to safety. This one's not. But I'm overlaying it with quality data and I'm also seeing, ah, quality's not, not good in that area either, and I'm overlaying it with HR data and, yeah, HR data's not good in that area either." Those other departments aren't used to overlaying it. We have to overlay it because of the fact that we have to influence people.

Safety Brye: [00:40:51] We don't have authority, so we have to use all the tools in our toolbox. So for us, that's why we, we look at everything holistically. HR is only looking at one portion of the business. Quality is only looking at operations. We're looking at the entire business 'cause that's what we impact. So this is why we become this beacon. And I wanna tell you the story of one of my students, um, Keith. He actually has a small safety team. He's, he's lucky enough to have some employees helping him as out, helping him out and at his organization, he has multiple locations.

Safety Brye: [00:41:22] He has 400 employees, and he started to learn the language of business and changed how he communicated with the operations team and his boss. And he, he actually reports not to the CEO, but to an admin officer. And what ended up resulting within a few short months of him changing how he approached safety, he got invited to the executive team on a s- on a site visit. So, like, that is a true seat at the table, and this is what happens when you start communicating when it comes to business.

Safety Brye: [00:41:53] And I have another student, um, Kelly, who'd been in safety for a very long time, and she's actually a regional over 200 locations. And she'd gone through, like, multiple acquisitions too. And she started shifting how she talked about safety with her management team, and she said to me that, like, this was the first time that she actually felt like safety had a seat in the executive suite, that we were getting heard. And that's what we're going for here, guys. We do not want to be playing telephone through other managers.

Safety Brye: [00:42:27] It's not just about, like, getting the executives to do what we're asking them to do. It's about earning that seat so that way we can present our business case, so that way they can make the best decision for the business. Because if we don't have that seat in that executive suite, our message gets watered down. What ends up happening is we tell it to our boss, who's the operations manager, who waters it down a little bit, that might then tell it to the executive team. Or let's say that we, we answer to legal.

Safety Brye: [00:42:59] I've seen that a lot, too. Well, the legal department has a lens of just compliance, so they're gonna water it down some before it goes to the CEO. Let's say that we report to HR and we're saying the problem, but HR doesn't quite understand it as well, so they don't make the case like we can. We just want a seat at that table so that way we can present our case. If they say no, they say no. Not a big deal. So that is the whole goal here is how can we get into that ear of the executives, and the way you do that is through a data-driven safety program And presenting a strong business case for safety around their motivating metrics.

Safety Brye: [00:43:43] Now, the full framework on using your safety data as a diagnostic and all of that can be found in that free guide below, so make sure that you click on it. But if you build these things and you start changing how you communicate with your management team, they will start to see the value of safety beyond being a cost center. They will start seeing that it's making the company money, and then they start shifting their beliefs in safety, and that's how they start supporting you. I've literally seen this shift happen relatively quick.

Safety Brye: [00:44:15] My students have told me, like, within a couple of months they start to see the shift happen. All righty, so let's review what I shared with you today so that way you could take action on it. So number one, you, you need to build out your own data. So get off of your lagging indicators or at least stop spending as much time on them, and start collecting data on your unsafe acts and unsafe conditions on your leading indicators, which would include observations, coaching, um, assessments, inspections, all of that good stuff.

Safety Brye: [00:44:51] Number two, make, make sure that you're speaking in their motivating metric. Identify what your company's motivating metrics are, and then tie your work to those metrics. And then number three, become the diagnostic. Overlay all that data and start highlighting how the people who are not performing in safety are also not performing well in other areas, too. Or not necessarily people, it could just be areas. Could be lines of business. I've had that, too, where it was not a specific person, it was a product, and everything with that product was causing safety issues, and I was able to highlight it and show that it was not a profitable product Just to not throw any one person under the bus, right?

Safety Brye: [00:45:42] All righty, so we went over a lot today. Um, make sure that you download that SMIS guide and start implementing those processes in your safety program today. If you want help, if you're reading through this and it still is confusing to you, and you need somebody to walk you through step by step, that is what we do at Safety Leadership Academy. So the first step in that is booking a leadership roadmap call, where we will talk about what your current situation is, the results you're currently getting, and give you steps that you can take to actually improve the results you're getting, and walk you through how you can join the academy so that we can hold your hand as you are doing that.

Safety Brye: [00:46:28] All righty, I look forward to seeing you in the next episode, where we are going to talk about how safety is a sales job, right, and how to sell it. And if you know a safety lead who is struggling as well that could use this, make sure you share this with them, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. All righty, my safety friend, thank you so much for being here, and I will see you in the next one. Bye for now.