Safety Leadership

by Angelica Grindle, Ph.D.

The Goal—Develop a World-Class Safety Culture

Novinium® provides cable rejuvenation services to the aging infrastructures of large industrial and utility companies. Due to their patented process for extending the life of underground cables, they have experienced phenomenal growth—expanding eight-fold in the last six years. The majority of Novinium employees are electrical linemen who work in the field delivering cable rejuvenation services.

From the Proceedings of the 9th AARBA International Conference, Verona, Italy 9th - 10th May 2013

by Grainne Matthews, Ph.D.

Behavioral safety is a proven technology based on the established science of behavior. When implemented with fidelity, it can dramatically improve safety performance, i.e., the rate of occupational illnesses and injuries among employees. Unfortunately, many organizations underestimate the complexity of the technology and fail to devote the level of leadership support that they would to any other major system change in their organization. Three major categories of leadership behavior are essential if a behavioral safety process is to be sustained and to accomplish its objectives. The behaviors derive from the work of Judi Komaki as reported in her text, Leadership from an Operant Perspective (1998). They form the basis for the development of checklists to measure the performance of each level of leadership.

Miles from Tucson, Arizona, in the northeast corner of the White Mountains, approximately 350 employees work to generate electricity for three different electric companies’ four generating units. Tucson Electric Power’s generation station (TEPSGS), in Springerville, Arizona, has recently become the third company within Unisource Energy Corporation to opt for a behavior-based safety (BBS) process. They completed the design phase this August.

“A bad leader can kill a good process.” - Rixio Medina

by Terry McSween, Ph.D.

Those of you familiar with behavior-based safety know that organizational trust is a basic element that is critical to a successful safety improvement effort. Employees have to know that they can openly and honestly discuss safety issues without fear of reprisal. The use of fear as a motivator destroys trust and is contrary to the whole philosophy of creating a positive workplace that promotes safety. Bullying is the term we often use to describe the activities of leaders who rely too heavily on fear and negative consequences in a misguided attempt to motivate employees to perform well.