Safety Is Everyone’s Responsibility: 3 Proven Moves

Stop Being a Department of One
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Safety Brye: [00:00:00] If you're the person responsible for safety, I bet your to-do list actually never ends. Every inspection, every policy, every training, every near-miss follow-up, it all routes back to you, doesn't it? You're the department of one, and you're likely drowning. Here's the part that's going to feel a little bit backwards.

Safety Brye: [00:00:24] The fix is not to work harder, to get more organized, or wake up earlier, or even to get your boss to hire you an assistant. You will never out-hustle a whole facility's worth of hazards by yourself. The safety leads who actually climb out from under that pile do the opposite. They stop trying to own it all, and they build a system where safety becomes everybody's job.

Safety Brye: [00:00:56] So today, I'm gonna show you exactly how. The first of three fixes in this series that we are currently running that shifts you from being buried to being influential. Let's get to it Hey there. If we haven't met yet, my name is Bry. I'm a CSP. It rhymes with sky. And around here, we talk about all things safety culture, building safety influence, and getting management support and employee engagement that you're likely missing.

Safety Brye: [00:01:28] If that sounds like your jam, make sure that you subscribe so you never miss an episode. Now, today, this is part three in a series that we're doing. In the previous episodes, I handed you the entire roadmap of what we're going over, the three problems that are standing in your way, and the three fixes to solve them.

Safety Brye: [00:01:48] Today, we're actually gonna go deeper on that very first fix, which is getting you the support and participation you need, so that way you don't feel so overwhelmed, and the three moves that solve the overwhelm and get you out of being a department of one for good. So a quick heads-up before we dig in.

Safety Brye: [00:02:10] Everything I'm walking you through today is one piece of our free safety management influencer system guide. It lays out the full cycle and all three pillars behind it step by step. There is a link where you are either watching or listening to this right now, so make sure that you grab that guide. Okay, so being overwhelmed in safety isn't a time management problem.

Safety Brye: [00:02:37] It's actually a design problem. If every safety decision in your building has to run through you, and you know everything can be a safety decision, then you've built a machine that can only move as fast as one exhausted person can handle. So let me show you why this happens and the shift that you need to make to fix it.

Safety Brye: [00:03:02] Starting off with how you became a department of one. I honestly think it's crazy that when you look at most organizations, if you look at their HR department, it's multiple people, their accounting department, multiple people, quality department, multiple people. Obviously, operations is gonna have multiple people.

Safety Brye: [00:03:20] And then they add a safety department, and it's just you, and it's a department of one. And you might think, like, "Well, then they need to give me more resources so that way I can hire, you know, admins or coordinators, and it's just a... not just me doing safety, and I'm no longer a department of one." But honestly, my take on this is that is not the right move That the better move for safety management is to build influential systems and start shifting the work within the line of power.

Safety Brye: [00:03:53] And these are things that we talk about in that guide, the safety management influencer system guide that is linked below. Now, how you became this department of one is because they only put one person in the department, right? And your job was to keep people safe, so you're the one that cares about safety the most.

Safety Brye: [00:04:12] You're also the one that kind of is, like, entrenched in it, and you can see not just the compliance issues, but all the stuff that could go wrong and all the bad endings that could happen. And then so you're entrenched in it, and then everything for safety defaults to you because everything in a workplace can be turned into a safety issue, and everybody wants to dump work off of themselves and give it to somebody else to do, right?

Safety Brye: [00:04:39] So they're constantly like, "Oh, that's... Just go ask safety. That becomes a safety job. That's safety's job to do," right? And then the culture becomes, just turn it over to safety, and then you become the bottleneck. You're the one that has to fix everything. Your to-do list gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and working harder can't fix this.

Safety Brye: [00:05:01] I remember early on in my career, I felt so overwhelmed. I had so many things I was doing. I decided to list them out, and then for each one, I listed how long it would take me to do this task in an ideal condition and in a bad condition, so that way I could get an average amount of time and how frequently I had to do that task.

Safety Brye: [00:05:25] And when I did all the math, 'cause I'm a spreadsheet junkie, I'm a total nerd when it comes that way. When I did all the math, in order to do everything that my job required me to do, that everybody expected me to do, I would have to work 16 hours straight without any interruptions, and that didn't account for any, like, accidents that might have happened or anything that somebody had to pull me, pull me out of my office for.

Safety Brye: [00:05:48] It was impossible for me to do everything that I had to do because I had basically built this Jenga tower. Every gap found, I put something else on my list. Every accident and root cause, I put something else on my list. Everything just kept piling up, and it was piling up on me. And then the other thing that you have to think about, about why we are this department of one is going back to episode one in this series where I talk about how safety departments are built, that they throw everything on you.

Safety Brye: [00:06:22] So now you're the one doing all the training, all the inspections, all the coaching and observations, all the reporting, all the corrective actions, all the follow-up, all the action planning. All of it is put on you. When a lot of that stuff is actually not best suited for you to be doing. The ref- the reframe that I want you to h- make here is that just because it's a safety issue does not mean that safety is the best person to be doing that task and to be doing this job.

Safety Brye: [00:07:08] This is why adding in coordinators and administrators does not solve the overall culture problem or the overall perception of safety Anything that is employee-facing, whether that employee is an hourly employee or a supervisor, anything that is employee-facing should not be done by safety because we are not in the line of power.

Safety Brye: [00:07:36] So what you need to do is build systems where safety gets done by the best possible person to do that dr- to do that role, and that truly shifts safety is everybody's responsibility. Right now, it's just a tagline, right? We say safety is everybody's responsibility, but technically, no, it's just yours, because nobody else is doing anything.

Safety Brye: [00:08:01] But once you build systems where people truly start taking a part in that safety program, then safety is everybody's responsibility. And you go from being the doer, the one doing all the safety tasks, to being the designer or the guide on the side, the true subject matter expert and support for that line of power.

Safety Brye: [00:08:27] So that whole system of, like, shifting everything over to supervisors, it takes time. It takes having the right systems in place. But once it is in place, it stops safety from living and dying all on their own. It stops you from being isolated on an island, right? Or, or I used to feel like I was the red-headed stepchild, right?

Safety Brye: [00:08:50] Like, it stops you from being, like, a separate entity to being a strategic partner for the organization. And all of this is inside that guide, so make sure that you click the link below and you download it and get yourself a copy of the Safety Management Influencer System guide. So how do you actually build this?

Safety Brye: [00:09:13] It starts by not doing safety to people anymore, but by starting to do it with them, right? The fastest way to stop being a department of one is to stop building your safety systems alone. When people doing the work actually help build the rules, build the policies, build the processes that they have to then follow, two things are gonna happen.

Safety Brye: [00:09:47] The program actually fil- fits the business, and it actually fits their work that they're doing. And it stops becoming your problem, and it becomes theirs. So our first step in shifting everything the right way and solving your overwhelm is to build collaborative systems. Build your systems with the people that it's going to impact the most.

Safety Brye: [00:10:18] Not for them, right? And this is a hard shift because we are trained professionals. We understand the regulations better than anybody else. We are exposed to what works for other organizations. So when s- we see a problem, we just wanna be like, "Hey, this is how you fix it." And honestly, it's what our management teams expect out of us, too.

Safety Brye: [00:10:41] They go, "Well, how do we fix it?" Right? They come to us, "Well, how do we fix it?" But the better results are when you actually collaborate with the employees and the frontline supervisors, managers, directors, whoever's involved, um, who that issue is going to impact the most with. Let me tell you what typically happens right now at most organizations.

Safety Brye: [00:11:07] The safety manager identifies a gap. They come up with a solution for that gap. So let me give you an example that I had at one of my facilities. The gap that they had was that they were having a lot of close calls with their forklifts. So the safety manager says, "Yeah, we need a pick path, that when you go through the warehouse, you can only go one way into each aisle.

Safety Brye: [00:11:29] It creates a pick path. It makes it safe. Everybody's going the same direction. This is what works at other organizations. It's more efficient," everything. He decides this, and then he takes it to his, um, manager and says, "Hey, this is what I wanna do. Can I do it?" A very binary decision, yes or no. The guy says yes.

Safety Brye: [00:11:48] He builds out his whole system, and he puts this whole pick path in there, and then he can't get anybody to follow it. He spent months and months and months writing people up, correcting people, coaching people, trying to get them to follow this solution that he came up with. So I said to him Next time, let's shift it.

Safety Brye: [00:12:20] Instead of you deciding, why don't you first work with your employees and supervisors, and you come up with one or two solutions on your own, on the- as a team, right? And then as a team, you pick the right one. That s- shift takes time, right? So like when I see a gap and I see a problem, I can very easily fix it, come up with a policy, can literally be in my boss's office by the next day with a whole action plan and say, "This is what we need to do."

Safety Brye: [00:12:54] It's quick, it's fast. Implementation is the slog. It is so slow, right? So instead, let's flip it. Let's slow down on the corrective action development. Let's put in more collaboration there, slow that down, and guess what speeds up? Implementation. You have no issues there because now you've built this collaborative system, right?

Safety Brye: [00:13:24] And then what happens is they actually then follow it, right? They actually change their perception of safety because now they see it from your side because you collaborated with them. Now, why this kills overwhelm is that every single time you do this, ownership is spreading.

Safety Brye: [00:13:45] People's perception of safety shifts. Their understanding of why we wanna follow the policies and procedures and how following them helps them tends to change. Their internal beliefs are changing. And you are no longer the only set of eyes out there. People who created, helped create these changes and these systems are now there to help enforce them as well and tell new people and other people why we do things the right way.

Safety Brye: [00:14:23] And there is proof on this, too. Like, I gave you one example for my organization, but I actually have a student named Gabe that he actually empowered his safety committee. And he was like, "Look, I'm not telling you what to do. We're on a team." And he just empowered them to come up with ideas on their own, action plan it out on their own, and their process they found, and they ended up finding process improvements that he would have never found on his own.

Safety Brye: [00:14:54] And it opened up his eyes and made him better at his job. So I break down how to set up these collaborative systems in that free guide, so make sure you click the link below. Now, building them together is move number one, right? So there's lots of steps to this, but move number one is making sure that you have those collaborative systems.

Safety Brye: [00:15:18] The next step is to make sure that it actually travels through the people who run the work every single day, through our line of power. Because here's the truth that stings, right? You don't have authority to make safety happen. It's crazy, right? Like, you're put in charge of safety, but you actually have no authority Over the people who are taking the actions that determine your results, and you probably never will.

Safety Brye: [00:15:53] Like, this was a hard lesson for me to learn because when I started off in safety, my very first dedicated safety role, I had hire-fire authority. But what I learned after leaving that role was that, at most organizations, you do not. So the supervisors and the managers, those are the people who are in the line of power and who have authority.

Safety Brye: [00:16:19] So safety leads who, uh, stop trying to carry it themselves and start equipping that line of power are the ones who tend to succeed, right? Like, our job is not to correct the employee, it's to train and equip the supervisor to correct the employee. So the line of power, as I went over in episode one, some people like to call it a chain of command.

Safety Brye: [00:16:52] I call it a line of power because when somebody has power over you, uh, they have more of an opportunity to influence your decisions and actions. So the line of power is important to understand because it directly impacts the behaviors of the people in that line, right? Now, they can choose not to follow the directions of their supervisors 100%.

Safety Brye: [00:17:21] They can, but then they're opening, they're opening themselves up to, uh, getting fired or laid off or, or having just a terrible experience at work, right? But typically, what happens is they will do whatever their supervisor tells them to do. So it is safety's job not to correct that employee, but to equip the line of power.

Safety Brye: [00:17:47] So our role should be to write the policies, the procedures, develop the trainings, develop the resources, train the supervisors on how to enforce safety, on how to get their employees to do everything, on coaching the employees, on observing the employees. So where we, if we tell an employee to do something, for that employee it's a choice.

Safety Brye: [00:18:15] But for the supervisor to tell them, because the supervisor's in that line of power, it's less of a choice, right? So us spending all of our time with employees doesn't change anything. So where we need to really spend our time is on the line of power. And because power comes from the top down, we need to truly make sure that we are changing the perceptions and beliefs about safety from the executive level on down.

Safety Brye: [00:18:45] But we can't complain about supervisors not enforcing safety if we are not properly training them. So when we talk about doing coaching and observations, that should be from safety managers on the supervisors, not on employees. It should be the supervisor's role to coach and observe employees, safety's role to coach and observe supervisors.

Safety Brye: [00:19:11] So this is why, um, it's so important that we train them properly. Now, once again, the supervisor does not have to listen to us because we are not in their line of power. This is why we have to change the perception at the executive level to make the supervisors kind of like go through our training, and then we use our observation and assessment skills to then report back to the executives on the activities of the supervisors, so that way they can take action, right?

Safety Brye: [00:19:45] So thinking about like how we do it right now, where we focus all of our time on employees, and then technically you should report to the supervisors, and the supervisor's supposed to take action on it, right? Nine times out of 10 they don't. But we're doing the same thing to the supervisors. We are watching and observing the supervisors, and when they're not doing things right, we're bringing it to their manager to make sure that they Are enforcing them to do the right things, right?

Safety Brye: [00:20:17] So it's just shifting it up one line. Now, there is obviously the opportunity for the supervisor not to listen or the manager not to listen, and this is why it's so important to work at that executive level and to shift the beliefs and the mindset of the executives, so that way it trickles down. When I actually first started learning behavior-based safety, one of the things that I was taught was that if you can't get the executives to change their mind, that you focus on the employees and it will trickle up.

Safety Brye: [00:20:47] That is not true. I have found that out over and over again, and honestly, if you think about it, it really hurts your organization if you do it that way. So you're in safety and you're trying to work with the employees to get them to make the right decision. You're actually forcing the employees to split between y- what you're saying and what their supervisors are saying.

Safety Brye: [00:21:10] And if they truly believe what you're saying is right and they want to do what you say but the supervisors are telling them something different, it's going to make that employee not like their supervisor, not like their job. It creates some contempt, right? And eventually that employee will leave, and that's not what you want because employees don't want to work in, in organizations where they don't feel safe, they don't feel the company cares about them.

Safety Brye: [00:21:35] They're eventually going to leave. So that's why you always have to work from the top down. So when I say that it's our job to equip them, for executives, the way you're equipping them is with data, ROI, the business case for safety, and then they go, "Okay, we agree with you. How does this trickle down to our directors and managers?"

Safety Brye: [00:21:56] So for, like, the director and VP positions, pretty much the same thing. You're... But for them, you're talking more about efficiencies and, um, labor costs and things like that. And then when it gets down to supervisors, you're talking more about how it helps them look good, m- makes them a better leader, gets them home at the end of the day, that type of thing.

Safety Brye: [00:22:17] So you're equipping them with all the information, but then it's your job to provide training as well, right, to this leadership team, because you can't just expect them to do coaching and observations and training without being trained themselves. So one of the systems that we put in place in the academy is having a regular supervisor meeting where you can train them, right?

Safety Brye: [00:22:41] So that is what equipping the line of power looks like. And why it works is that now safety is traveling down from executives all the way down to supervisors who are actively working with the employees whose actions directly impact your results, right? Okay, so that sets up our hardest move- App overall, right?

Safety Brye: [00:23:06] So we're trying to end the overwhelm, and as you see, we've already, like, started to collaborate. We're changing perceptions. We're now making sure the supervisors are doing the coaching, the training, the observations. I actually even have them do accident investigations. Um, and now the next step, and you're gonna have to forgive me on this one, because I know a lot of people don't like this one But safety has to give up control of safety, meaning that you are no longer the decision-maker.

Safety Brye: [00:23:39] So here is the most counterintuitive move in safety leadership: stop making safety decisions. As long as every call is run through you, you are always gonna remain the bottleneck, you are always gonna feel like the scapegoat, you are always going to feel overwhelmed and unsupported. So the moment that you actually step back from decision-making and let others own the decision, you stop being the safety cop, and you start being the safety leader.

Safety Brye: [00:24:15] Now, the reason why this is the hardest thing for most safety leads to do is that we are the experts in safety. We are the ones that know the answers. We- they expect us to make this decision, right? What I want you to shift to is you are giving the executive teams options and letting them choose, or you are showing them the gaps and saying, "How do we fix this?"

Safety Brye: [00:24:44] When you step back from decision-making, it allows them some autonomy, and autonomy is one of the key motivators in our human brain. We need to be able to make a decision, and you want to give them something more than just a binary yes or no decision. And the reason why this is so hard for us is that our best practice, the, the thing that we want them to choose, they may not choose.

Safety Brye: [00:25:15] The decision they make we may disagree with, and what you have to realize is that that's okay. You have to let them fail sometimes. You have to just back what they say, knowing in the back of your mind it's not the best choice, and it's not gonna solve the problem completely, and just be like, "Okay," you know?

Safety Brye: [00:25:39] "You made the decision. I- we'll follow through with it. We'll create an action plan around it, and we'll get it done. We'll measure the results. This is what I expect to happen from it." And when it doesn't go as planned, then you can go, "Okay, that didn't work. What can we try next? Here's are two or three other options."

Safety Brye: [00:25:57] Eventually, if you make a strong enough business case, they'll pick your option. This is why it's hard for people. It's really hard for a lot of safety leads to step back and allow their executive teams to make the wrong decision Or allow their executive teams to, to just be like, "No, we're not facing this right now."

Safety Brye: [00:26:18] But that takes the weight off of you. You have to see it that way, that this is the opportunity for you to be like, "Okay, then I, I wash my hands of it, but I'm still gonna be measuring it, and I'll bring it up again in the future," right? It's scary. It's scary to feel like you're losing control over it. But w- the moment you shift decision-making over to the executive branch of your organization, it actually builds influence, because now they own the outcome They made the decision, they own the outcome.

Safety Brye: [00:26:54] It's your job to assist them on implementing it, right? And when they have some skin in the game, which is what is happening here, they are more apt to put resources to it and support it. And when you do go to implement the thing, it's not you telling somebody what to do. It is their boss or their boss's boss, whoever made that decision.

Safety Brye: [00:27:19] And you can go with it like, "Hey, we gave them several options. This is the one that we're trying right now, and this is why." This builds influence. It also strengthens up your muscle for building stronger business cases, right? So we have to make a business case for safety to our executives, and if you don't make a strong enough business case for the option you want them to go with, then you'll know you need to strengthen it next time, right?

Safety Brye: [00:27:47] So the payoff when it comes to overwhelm is that it dissolves, 'cause it's no longer on your shoulders. It's no longer this weight that you feel that it has to, it has to work. You, you came up with an idea through collaboration. You, uh, created a business case for it. You presented it. They made the decision of which, which option to go with or what to do, or whether or not to approve something, so the weight of it goes on them.

Safety Brye: [00:28:18] I know it's hard, but stepping back from decision-making is one of the best steps that you can take that shifts you from managing safety to leading it. All righty. So those are the three things that you need to build to make sure that you're ending the overwhelm that you're feeling in your safety management role.

Safety Brye: [00:28:44] You need to have collaborative systems. Every system in safety has to have some form of collaboration in it. You need to equip the line of power and make sure that you're shifting things over into the line of power, anything employee-facing. And three, you need to step back from decision-making and allow the executive team at your organization to make decisions, and understand that it's your job to just present that business case.

Safety Brye: [00:29:13] And that business case is what we're gonna talk about in our next episode. So in episode four of this series, we are gonna be talking about business acumen and how to get leadership to actually listen to you, so that way you stop feeling ignored. And make sure you subscribe, because the rest of this series we're gonna go over the rest of the system, as well as how to build the whole thing for yourself All right, so your next move, make sure that you download that SMIS guide down below.

Safety Brye: [00:29:49] It is a meaty guide, I know. This is a lot to put into your program, and I get that, so I try to break it down for you. But if you need help, if you would like to work with me directly in helping you implement these systems for your organization so that way you are a safety rock star and you can accelerate your career, then make sure that you book a safety leadership roadmap session with me, and we will go over your specific situation, the results you're getting, and the steps you need to take to improve your results and advance your career.

Safety Brye: [00:30:30] All righty, my safety friend, thank you so much for listening, and I will see you in the next episode. Bye for now