The role of discipline in leading safety performance.

• Author: Branham, Charles "Bud"
• Position: Report

Months after a devastating accident, we were interviewing the Distribution Cooperative's Operations Manager trying to determine what their current approach was for improving safety performance. The manager's response was quick and direct: "What we need around here is enforcement. We may have to fire a few people but we will get their attention. I would rather fire them than bury them."

Many cooperative leaders undoubtedly feel this way. No one wants to lose a co-worker, an employee or a friend due to an accident at work. No cooperative leader ever wants to make that phone call to an employee's family. To avoid it, leadership often turns to a "do it or else" mentality in an effort to stop unsafe acts and hopefully reduce the possibility of another serious accident.

Many of us have shared this same frustration at one time or another. The complexity of trying to control the variability of all the factors and events that increase employee exposure to injury can be overwhelming. With poor safety results, frustration frequently sets in, and leaders often turn to an enforcement strategy as the best "quick fix" method to improve. Yet time and time again, experience and data have proven that an over emphasis on enforcement and discipline for safety can actually have a harmful effect on organizational culture, thus actually hindering, rather than achieving, sustainable safety improvement results.

A key component to achieving great performance is increasing field interaction at all levels of the organization. This is achieved by an engaged work force providing regular and consistent feedback (coaching) in the field, both positive and constructive, to motivate safe work practices and reduce hazards. The effective utilization of discipline to improve safety performance must be done fairly and consistently balanced within the context of this coaching process, to achieve the highest possible results.

The prototypical enforcement strategy generally occurs as outlined in Figure 1.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

This approach can also be described as safety improvement through forced compliance: "we audit you--comply or else" and is usually created by some version of the following actions:

1. Creation of a specific disciplinary policy for the critical "thou shall not" rule violations--usually 5 to 8 rules.

2. Strong disciplinary action for each violation (a "cook book" approach).

3. A safety audit form to document crew audits and compliance.

4. A supervisory expectation to conduct a certain number of crew visits per week, with emphasis on finding violations, turning in forms for tracking, and...