From Safety 2015: Help the "Bulletproof" Employee Make the Connection

During his June 9 session at Safety 2015, J.A. Rodriguez Jr., CSP, focused on showing attendees effective ways to “Help the Bulletproof Employee Make the Connection." He offered guidance on helping people inspire conformance through influence and awareness definitively through the identification of both the harmful and helpful biases people have.

Rodriguez, global senior manager with Raytheon Corp., explained how biases and corporate culture can help or hinder engagement in employees. He also offered several tips for helping employees make connections that modify their behaviors to achieve buy-in and drive safety excellence.

• Consider all outcomes of processes the responsibility of leadership, including work-related injuries and illnesses.

• Focus more on process changes and less on people changes because people changes are often difficult to achieve.

• Adapt the philosophy that an injury is the result of a process owned, designed and implemented by leadership and that the process in place at the time of the injury is the cause of that outcome.

• Ensure that the safety culture promotes open discussion without retribution; promotes the concept of taking care of each other; has no tolerance for taking unmitigated or controlled risks; holds leadership accountable for employee actions and their well-being; is committed to making safety a core value; and focuses on fixing processes rather than fixing people.

• Perform a self-check on your biases and take action to keep them in check. Are you using some standard that others are either not aware of or simply do not subscribe to? Is there an issue with your approach or approaches that have cemented opinions to the point of no return? Is your bias in conflict with those of others?

• Commit to stepping back and evaluating the intent of the bulletproof employee. Does the employee really not care or does the employee simply not see the risks s/he is take and its effect on everyone? Is there an unspoken expectation that production is ahead of all else at any cost? Is there a culture dichotomy in which employees are simply playing their roles as described?

• Develop an approach plan centered around your analysis of the issue(s) with its implementation strategy focused on selling the message through their set of lenses.

• Evaluate your process at every logical opportunity to ensure a predictable result.

This session was recorded during Safety 2015 and is available for purchase on http://learn.asse.org.