1. Darrell Lingk CIH CSP CHMM
Excellence in Safety
Growing a Safety Culture
Presented by:
a presentation by:
Darrell Lingk CIH CSP CHMM
&
Steve Gasowski

2. What We Plan to Convey?
A practical approach to elevate your organization’s safety culture,
Identify who typically influences safety the most in organizations,
Provide a case study of one approach we created and implemented at CDOT; and,
Provide examples of leading indicators that help us measure performance.

3. and safety performance across an organization.
is essential in the growth of a culture that supports and promotes strong health
and safety performance across an organization.
Leadership

4. Why Grow Your Safety Culture?
An organization’s safety culture comprises the collective beliefs, attitudes and work practices of management & employees.
A high-performing safety culture is one that:
Has visible management commitment to safety,
Portrays high levels of trust between managers and employees,
Promotes open & honest incident reporting,
Demonstrates a low level of risk-taking behaviors,
Motivates and recognizes safe work behaviors; and,
Allows employees to provide input and innovation for continuous process improvement.

5. Elevating Our Safety Culture The Safety Professional’s Role
As a safety professional you will influence and enable leaders:
Safety culture’s biggest cheerleader,
Identify problems and obstacles,
Teach, coach and facilitate growth,
Identify proponents and advocates,
You keep processes on track; and,
You set goals and expectations.
Don’t expect to change your culture by yourself

6. Where Do I Start? Understand your current safety culture:
Is your safety process based on compliance or behavioral methodologies?
Does your organization emphasize production over safety?
Do your supervisors:
Intimidate your employees?
Lead by example?
Know what hazards their employees face?
Prevent and correct unsafe work practices?
Motivate and encourage their staff to work safely?
Promoting and applying consistent and sustainable safe work behaviors in Everything We Do!

7. Competence and Control
Employee Empowerment
Employee empowerment is crucial to build a positive safety culture.
Employees must have the freedom and authority to make proper, safe decisions in performing their job.
Confident, safe decision-making will only come when employees have the information, skills and support to do their job effectively; and, without retribution.
True Empowerment
Competence and Control

8. The Influence of Leadership
President
Vice President
Manager
Manager
Supervisor
Supervisor
Employee
Employee
Employee
Employee
Employee
Employee
Employee
Employee
Employee
Employee

9. Building Trust A crucial step
Get out and talk to your employees.
Explain why we need to make changes.
Follow-through with promises.
Educate your population; do not lecture.
Have humility; take ownership of mistakes.
Respect traditions, positions, and organizational history.

10. Preparing to Implement Your Process
Customize your approach to your organization’s management
structure
Identify key positions
Where are the problems?
Influential positions (people)
Train the influencers first?
Make them your safety advocates
Use your leaders in your training to inspire employees

11. A Case Study Founded in 1910 Divided into five operational regions
Nine maintenance/traffic sections
Regions led by Regional Transportation Director
One Regional Safety Officer assigned to each region
Average 3,200 full-time employees
Approx. 75% = maintenance/traffic employees
Maintain over 23,000 total lane miles:
Road & Bridge
Right of way maintenance
Snowplow operations
Avalanche/rockslide mitigation
Emergency response
Promoting and applying consistent and sustainable safe work behaviors in Everything We Do!

12. CDOT has a vertical management
structure

13. CDOT Before Excellence in Safety
Before EIS
Compliance-based programs
Lagging indicator goals
Trendy, canned training
Regional message delivery
Reactive safety policies
Safety incentives
Employee entitlement

14. Our Guiding Principle Focus on one common and realistic mission
Promote and apply consistent and sustainable safe work behaviors in
Everything We Do!

15. How CDOT is achieving Excellence
Promote and apply consistent and sustainable safe work behaviors in Everything We Do.
Engage all levels of the organization.
Supervisor/employee interaction with Safety Engagements.
Goals based on leading vs. lagging indicators.
Focus efforts on real problems.
Recognize employees for “consistent” safe work behaviors.
Sustain program momentum with new products and training.
Promoting and applying consistent and sustainable safe work behaviors in Everything We Do!

16. A proven, effective tool to improve your safety culture.
Safety Engagements
Allow a “management-by-walking” approach to improve safety.
A safety-focused discussion between supervisors and their employees at the job site.
A tool for supervisors to use to coach consistent, safe work behaviors.
Allow supervisors and employees to exchange ideas.
Something a supervisor should formally prepare and plan for before meeting with their employees.
Best performed using the Six Keys of a Quality Safety Engagement guidelines.
A proven, effective tool to improve your safety culture.

17. The Six Keys of a Quality Safety Engagement
Be prepared
Lead by example
Discuss the importance of performing a Pre-Job Hazard Assessment
Focus the engagement on your recent injuries or accidents
Prompt employees to ask questions and give feedback
Always provide positive and/or constructive feedback

18. Recognizing Excellence
Recognition programs acknowledge and reinforce the accomplishments of employees.
Recognition is more about long-term goals.
Sincere and legitimate praise should be the default “incentive” for your employees.
Talking points/Tips
Time Limit: 10 minutes
Anticipated Student Interaction: Medium
Working safely on the job is a condition of employment and it should not need to be rewarded or incentivized.
Example: Zero accidents doesn’t necessarily make one a safe employee (read: lucky)
Many current incentives are rewarding group behaviors vs. the individual.
Incentives vs. Recognition
Incentives are effective at reaching short-term goals, they don't go after overall cultural change and are typically limited to select units in the organization (i.e. maintenance).
Recognizing an employee for consistent safe work behaviors can be motivational:
Recognition is linked to appreciation for a job well done
Incentives are linked to monetary/tangible awards that have a psychological link to expectation and entitlement.
Recognition can occur in real-time to address an immediate act/behavior by an employee.
Recognizing employees/engagement has been considered the soft side of managing (artful part).
This program doesn’t ask supervisors to “buddy-up” with their employees.
Simply asking to be more involved with the employee’s work and safety.
When employees are disengaged it affects their morale, the morale of the patrol, and production; hence your morale can then be affected.
EIS recognition is not intended to replace current regional, safety incentives (i.e. Chief Engineer’s, Safety Innovation, etc.)
In turn, regional efforts should not supplant Safety Champion.
A simple “good job” or “thank you” has a tremendous impact on employee morale, loyalty, and confidence.
Promoting and applying consistent and sustainable safe work behaviors in Everything We Do!

19. Excellence Recognized
Excellence in Safety is recognized by CDOT’s Safety Champions
& Safety Leaders
Safety Champions are products of
Safety Leaders

20. Excellence in Safety Before and After
Before EIS
Compliance-based programs
Lagging indicator goals
Trendy, canned training
Regional message delivery
Reactive safety policies
Safety incentives
Employee entitlement
After EIS
Behavior-based process
Leading indicator goals
In-house, focused training
Centralized message delivery
Proactive safety procedures
Individual recognition
Employee empowerment
Decreasing
Incident Rate
High-Performing
Safety Culture
Status-Quo
Incident Rate

21. CDOT After Excellence in Safety

22. CDOT’s Leading Indicators
Safety Engagements
Over 24,000+ performed
Safety Champions
1,200 employees recognized
Safety Champion II
400 employees recognized
Safety Leader
40 supervisors recognized

23. Excellence in Safety Lessons learned
We are three years into our process.
Along the way we learned some valuable lessons:
Changing behaviors is hard work.
Expect resistance at all levels.
You will not convince everyone.
You may have to reinforce the same message several times.
Results may vary across organization.
You Need to Be Patient!

24. Our Safety Culture What is changing
Excellence in Safety has and will continue to improve CDOT’s safety culture:
Management has integrated safety into CDOT’s strategic plan.
Safety is being discussed without safety team prompting.
Employees are seeing tangible, positive results to their feedback.
Increased participation in safety training.
Recognition for individual safe work behaviors is “a matter of pride.”

25. Excellence in Safety-s Existing challenges
We still have a ways to go:
Trust in management
Ulterior motives
Accountability of leadership
Differing management styles
Employee investment in safety
What do I get for my efforts?
Complacency
Visibility of success
Political priorities; safety as a value
Emergencies, duty to perform

26. Improving Our Safety Culture How will we know?
Concentrate on the “people”
What is management’s commitment?
Support for new safety initiatives
Accountability and recognition of employees
What are employees saying?
Trust in management
Trust in new products, polices and processes
What are employees doing?
Safe work behaviors
Peer-peer support
Innovation and process improvement
Your improvements can be measured and observed
Promoting and applying consistent and sustainable safe work behaviors in Everything We Do!

27. Questions?

28. Thank You Darrell Lingk, CIH CSP CHMM Steve Gasowski
Steve Gasowski