Great Health & Safety Program Results Mean More Than Just Low Injuries Rates
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Safety Brye: [00:00:00] When you first started your role or your safety career, you might have been feeling a little nervous, but I bet you were also wanting to make a big impact to be able to show that you can really do this job. But big results come in a variety of ways. So let's chat about it. Hey, there, safety friends.

Welcome to the safety geek podcast. I'm Brye Sargent CSP and 20 year safety professional. After spending years trainings. Safety leaders across the globe for a large corporation and creating safety programs from the ground up, over and over again. I am now sharing my processes and strategies with you at the safety geek, you will learn how to manage an effective safety program that increases your management support and employee engagement all the while helping you elevate your position and move up in your career. If you're ready

[00:01:00] to step into the role of a safety, influencer and leader, you're in the right place. Let's get to it.

Hello hello. Hello. My safety friends and welcome. We are working our way through what I'm calling a little mini training. Last week, we discussed tracking the results you're getting and building your career portfolio. Today, let's dive into how you can get those big results and what they can mean for you, your company and your future in safety management.

So first I wanna squash a misconception. I have had safety managers tell me that when they wanna do an improvement project, They feel like they have to go like the full six sigma or agile project management, or they have to kaizen it. Now it's not that I don't like these methods because I absolutely do.

[00:02:00] I can geek out about them. And these are common lean manufacturing and project management techniques, and they do work great for very large or complicated projects. But when we're talking about our day to day, just safety improvement projects, they can actually be a little bit of overkill. So one of my favorite sayings is done is better than perfect.

So I don't want you to wait to get your black belt in six sigma or your PMP and project management, or hire a fancy consultant. Learning those techniques will definitely make you better at completing your projects. But believe me, when I say we all just need to start off simple and just to get the project out there and get it done.

Now going back to the word big results or the phrase I should say. Although our goal is to show big results, you know, like millions of dollars saved

[00:03:00] a lower mod rate, zero injuries, a reduction in fines, right? Those are all huge results that we can create. To get those big results, it's actually a series of very small baby steps.

For example. Let's say that you identify a strain and sprain trend in your workplace, which I think most of us can identify this. Right? So your improvement projects to improve strains and sprains could include ergonomic changes. It could include warmup programs, wellness programs changes to job descriptions, lifting, training, engineering controls, and so on.

There's lots of different things that you can do to reduce strain and sprain injuries. This isn't one project. So you don't do like one project reduced strain in sprains. It's multiple projects under this big umbrella of strain in sprains of how you're going to get big results in the strain and sprains area. So do you get it?

[00:04:00] So going back to part one of this series, What if you also grouped your results into broader categories, such as strains and sprains and then showed the full result of the multiple projects that you completed within that broad category. And this is a really interesting way to group your debriefs or you're completed projects because it highlights what your most improvements have been on.

So it actually allows you to identify gaps in your focus. I see this a lot with people who have very strong skills in one area and all of their projects are based on that one area. You know, like maybe you're an ergonomic specialist. So all of your projects are based on ergonomics, but you haven't made any improvements in machine guarding or machine operation, or I don't know, slips and falls or something like that.

So when you group them this way, it allows you to see not just where your focus is, but maybe where your

[00:05:00] team's focus is. And then it allows you to go, okay, my next improvement project. And I need to make sure that I add some breadth to this, as well as some depth. Right? So depth shows that you have the ability to try multiple things, to get the results you want.

So depth is not a bad thing, like doing multiple projects in one area, but breath, breath, there's a D in there shows that you are diverse in your knowledge. And that you're not just good in one area. And this is what we want to develop. We want to do what's called T-shaped skills. You have a good amount of knowledge and skills in many, many things, but you're an expert in one or two of those things.

And the way that you get these skills is by starting and completing many safety improvement projects. The topic today is how those big results mean more than just lower injury rates. And it is so true because every

[00:06:00] step of the safety improvement process benefits you way more than just in injury rates.

So I want you to make sure that you're looking beyond the injury rates and claim costs when you're starting a project. So safety improvement projects, they actually benefit the company by yes, lowering the costs of the company, improved processes. They offer better quality to the end of product. It looks really good to customers.

Like when you have safety improvement projects, it helps increase sales and looks good to customers, especially if you are in an industry where they regularly invite customers in to tour your facilities. Fewer returns because you are offering better quality. And then there's also some teamwork. There's some loyalty, there's some reduced turnover.

So safety improvement projects have a lot of benefits to the company. There are also benefits to the employee. For one, you do get that teamwork and

[00:07:00] culture. Even our introverts appreciate teamwork. They get to feel like they are part of something bigger and that their work actually means something. They get to enjoy their work.

They are safer. So that means that they go home the same way that they came in. Or hopefully like, what I like to say is that they go home better. And then it gives them job security. And I love these benefits to the employee, because think about a company that doesn't have good safety. And there's been several in the news over the past couple of years that have really poor safety records, or maybe you've worked at a place that's had a really poor safety record.

How do those employees feel? They're usually looking for other jobs. They might be nervous about going into work. They're definitely not enjoying their work because they're like, this is a piece of junk company that I'm working for, that doesn't even care about their employees. And they're gonna be the type

[00:08:00] of employees that are just doing their job and going home.

There is no teamwork, no loyalty, no pride in the work, no connection to the company. So in your safety improvement projects, you have to be thinking about these benefits and make sure that you're expressing them to get them improved, because there are tons of benefits to employees and tons of benefits to the company.

And lastly, safety improvement projects benefit you and your career so much. So going back to what I was talking about about the T-shaped skills and making sure that you are not just being an expert in one area and that you don't have gaps in your project. So that way you are having that breadth of knowledge as well.

When you are working through the process of safety improvement, you actually have the opportunity to learn new skills. So you

[00:09:00] are beefing up that resume of yours. You are also solidifying the skills that you currently have. I love the term extinction and that's something that I learned in psychology, which was like, when you're talking about behavior and education and skills.

Right. So think about how you knew like probably advanced algebra when you were in school, but if you had to do it now, you couldn't do it because that skill went extinct. That's the actual term for it because you weren't practicing it. So safety improvement projects give you the opportunity to practice your skills.

And it allows you to build up that portfolio that we talked about in the last episode. And it helps build your reputation for getting things done. You become this like master problem solver, master project manager, because you are just working one project after the other and getting them done. And then you are seen as a leader, as a vital

[00:10:00] team member. This is how we start making sure that you're getting invited into those meetings that are normally held behind closed doors. Right? I believe that safety should be part of all business decisions and should be included in all areas of the business, including sales, purchasing, merchandising, things that we aren't typically included in.

Because it affects safety. And when you start showing by completing the safety improvement projects, having positive results, sharing those results, when you start doing that and sharing that you are then seen as a vital team member and slowly but surely, it's like, Hey, why don't we bring the safety person in?

I make you bet they have some feedback on this. Right. And lastly, although you might not see this as a benefit, it actually is. When you work a lot of safety improvement projects, when you do it in a very concise way, where you always have several going, you're going to learn to fail because not all of them will work.

[00:11:00] A lot of them will fail, but that's okay. Because what I see is that you need to actually build that muscle to success. If you look at all the successful people in the world, They were actually built on a ton of failures. And I don't see this as a bad thing. I see it as that's the workout that got you there, right?

Like if you wanted to have abs or run a marathon or something like that, it takes a lot of work to get there. So, if you wanna be at a high level in your safety career, let's say you wanna be the VP of safety or the chief safety officers, which what I wish every company had. So you wanna be that chief safety officer, there's going to be a lot of stepping stones and failures along the way that you're gonna learn from, and that are gonna help build those muscles

[00:12:00] to one, make you a better leader, but two to teach you what works and what doesn't work.

So a lot of times people only do the projects that they know are gonna succeed. It's much better to just do all of them, whether they succeed or not. And when they do fail, just know that you're learning from it. And then you just need to go back and say, okay, what did I learn from this one? So that is the benefits of safety improvement projects.

So I guess what I wanted to express was just the importance. Of focused work on safety improvement projects because it's so easy to get lost in the day to day of safety. It's so easy to be in that comfort zone of let me do my training, my new hire orientation, my inspections, I guess I would do some observations, all audit some programs, right?

That's day to day stuff. Those are not safety improvement projects.

[00:13:00] So comfort zone is not helping you grow as a safety professional. So in order for you to grow as a safety professional, and to gain the skills that you need, remember the depth and the breadth of skills, you need to be doing a lot of different projects.

Now, in the next episode, in this short little mini series, We're going to discuss how to choose those projects. You work on to help you get. The biggest results. I will see you in just a couple of days. Buy for now.

Hey, if you're just getting started in safety or you've been at this for a while and are hitting a roadblock, then I wanna invite you to check out safety management academy. This is my in-depth online course that not only teaches you the processes and strategies of an effective safety management

[00:14:00] program, but how to entwine management support and employee participation throughout your processes.

Are you ready to finally understand exactly what you should be doing and ditch that safety police hat forever. Then you have got to join me and your fellow safety scholars over at safety management academy. Just go to thesafetygeek.com/sma to learn more and to get started. That's thesafetygeek.com/sma

and I will see you in our next students only live session. Buy for now.