Answering The Ultimate Question In Safety—Why Do Employees Do What They Do?

This performance management seminar for line and staff managers, may be more appropriately titled: The Ultimate Performance Leadership Seminar, for two very good reasons:

First—it tackles, head-on, the Ultimate Question in Safety, the one question that so many Operation Managers can’t answer: Why do employees do what they do, act unsafe, and have accidents?

Second, because it frames the answer(s) to this complex question of human behavior, in clear, precise and practical terms which link manager actions to the five safety excellence strategies that most impact employee performance… and which ultimately determine operational results-- Safe Vs Unsafe!

The Ultimate Question seminar may also just be the ultimate learning experience.  This program is designed to be an experiential learning process in which participants are organized in groups which represent various organizational functions, and are challenged to earn points at four critical levels of learning:

• What they know.

• What they don’t know.

• What they don’t know they know…and

• What they know that isn’t so!

In this process, participants learn (see, hear, and feel) performance management principles, and experience (Zap—Gotcha!) the powerful impact that management practices (active or passive and intended or unintended) have on employee behaviors (overt…and covert!).

This session imposes many of the reality constraints that managers face in their daily task of producing a high level of goods and services at a low competitive cost.  Groups are presented with quizzes, exercises, and problem-solving workshops, which are timed, graded, and competitively scored as a measure of their performance in key behavior management issues and questions…including:

• The Ultimate Question: Why do employees do what they do, act unsafe, and have accidents?

• What really is the #1 cause of workplace accidents?

• What is the one critical mindshift requisite to achieving safety excellence?

• What are the Five Core Truths concerning accident causation

• What are the Four performance management strategies, which offer but one choice?

• What are the headwater issues, which drive loss, costs in an organization?

• What are the Five advanced strategies, which drive safety excellence?

• What is the biggest impediment to peak performance in most organizations?

• What motivates employees? (the 60-year secret from managers remains safe!)

• Do incentives really work…in improving performance?

In this process, participants experience both traditional management practice and high performance leadership, and recognize how the latter, with a focus on intrinsic motivation, involvement, achievement, teamwork, recognition, reinforcement, praise, appreciation, and the ultimate motivator…SUCCESS drives employee performance in an organization…including Peak Safety Performance!  
 

MBC  (Managing By Consequences)

This session identifies consequence delivery as the most powerful shaper of work performance…and generally, the least effectively employed strategy to improve safe behavior in the workplace.  The session identifies the four consequence based performance strategies, and explains why we really have but one choice, if our objective as line managers is to produce better/safer results.

Participants engage in workshops and group exercises to learn how to recognize and employ (or avoid) the various behavior management strategies: (Re-enforcement (+) and (-); Punishment; and Extinction) to influence work performance.  This session includes a Performance Grid that allows participants to identify, list and classify performance management activities (by strategy type), thereby creating a customized reference guide for future application on the shop floor.

As this program is designed to be an elementary primer on performance management, we’ll visit two old friends and follow along as; “Dick and Jane Get a Job”!  Unfortunately, we’ll also see how this story gets rewritten into a more modern day business case: The Evolution of the Smart-Ass Employee!  Now, everyone, turn to page one, see Dick and Jane get even!  
 

If Unsafe Behavior Is Your Problem, Training Most Likely Isn’t Your Answer!

This presentation challenges the deeply held beliefs concerning the primary cause of accidents, (unsafe acts) and the common remedy, (training) to fix the problem.  The session identifies the four primary, prevention strategies currently practiced in most organizations: 

1.) Initial Training - (dumb employee), 
2.) Re-training - (really dumb employee), 
3.)  Remedial Training - (how dumb can they get)
4.) Discipline- (so dumb they’re untrainable).  

SORRY! But if accidents are your problem, training most likely isn’t your answer!  This presentation discusses findings and opinions from a number of sources including: NIOSH, The Reliability Group, the U.S. Postal Service, numerous behavioral interventions, and a major Insurer large loss survey, which strongly indicate that the majority of accidents, aren’t caused by knowledge deficiencies, but rather by performance deficiencies.  In other words, injured employees understand safe Vs unsafe, but commit unsafe acts for other reasons.  This session engages participants in an exercise that identifies the numerous non-training causes of accidents i.e. - the good reasons for poor performance in an organization.  This exercise demonstrates that safety programs fail for one good reason--EMPLOYEES! —And, in turn, employees fail for one equally good reason, (Hint: begins with M).  

The program identifies the twelve management owned reasons for unsafe employee performance, and concludes with a review of twelve performance management practices that need be employed, before work commences, and after work is completed to build strong safe work performance.  Bottom line on this session: Dumb ‘R Us!  Maybe we need more training?
 

Safety Excellence Requires The Best of People

This presentation identifies the critical role People play in achieving safety excellence in an organization, and the critical role ‘Leaders’ play as catalysts in unleashing the Best of People that drives excellence performance.  All to frequently, managers lament: “If only we could get good people.”  Well, here’s the dirty little secret: World-Class organizations get their employees from the same places others do.  The real difference is, excellence companies lead their people to success.  This program identifies the three critical elements of a high performance organization, (High tech-High Talk- and High Touch) and details the 7 Ps of an operational excellence process, depicting how PEOPLE are the critical leverage point of the process.  The session concludes by identifying twelve Best of People leadership practices that bring out the best human performance in an organization.  This presentation is based on an article of the same name currently approved for publication in Professional Safety. 
 

Signing Up For Trouble:  The New Employment Contract

A national risk management survey confirms that the number one concern of Risk Managers today is loss of human capital.  This presentation explores the strong relationship between management values, employee actions and organizational results…or put another way: How managers manage, directly impacts how employees perform… including safe Vs unsafe.  This session questions the long tem validity and financial sense that: to hell with loyalty; come payday we’re even, strategies have on organizational performance.  The presentation discusses the negative impacts (lessons from the Cat, Hog and Coffee Pot) that such practices have on workers…or as Agent 86, Maxwell Smart would say: “Missed it by that Much!”  The session aids participants in understanding how progressive people policies and practices can unleash the discretionary effort in a work group and create a smart  (competitively advantaged) workforce Vs a Smart-ass  (Competitively disadvantaged) organization. The session identifies the three critical aspects of a high performance organization, and reveals the number one attribute…(and predictor) of a safe work environment…do you know what that is?  This session offers six realities (cautions) to those contemplating signing on to the New Employment Contract, and identifies alternate strategies used by progressive organizations which focus on how managers produce, (managing to values), as well as what managers produce (managing to goals).  Bottom line:  You don’t have to be a lawyer to figure this one out!   This presentation is based on the November 1999 Occupational Hazards cover article of the same name. 
 

Getting To The Core of The Problem: 
Exposing The Bad Seed Of Failure!

This presentation targets the core problem frequently found within organizations suffering from high accident costs, low morale, declining productivity, and shrinking margin, Them Vs Us attitudes and adversarial behaviors!  This session pursues these issues exposing the seeds embedded deep within this core; autocratic management beliefs and practices.  Like most organizational issues, behavior is a cause and effect relationship.  Just as many things in a manufacturing process boil down to a make or buy decision, so to do employee attitudes.  Assuming we’re doing a fairly decent job hiring (buying) them, then we’d best look at what we’re doing to make them in the workplace.  T

he first step in resolving a problem is recognizing that one exists…or as the Preparation H advertisement proclaims: “First you gotta believe you got ‘em.”  This session addresses the many problem indicators concerning safety today, and identifies the evolution of American management practice that has influenced today’s situation.  The session identifies performance leadership as a key to improved results, and discusses four leadership practices that generate high performance. 

he session discusses how leaders shape culture, how leader decisions impact behaviors, how leader actions drive performance, and how leaders who employ the power tools of their trade, (motivation, coaching, communications, reinforcement, goals, and measurement) generate better results.  The session concludes with a reading of: The 60 Day Miracle, an all to common rendering of how employee attitudes are shaped in the workplace a/k/a The evolution of the smart-ass employee.
   

Unsafe Performance—So What’s The Problem?

This session helps managers understand, identify, and resolve motivation-based work (safety) performance problems.  Five critical tests to determine if substandard employee work performance is due to lack of can do Vs want to are examined. 
 

Punishment And Its Dire Consequences

This session addresses the pitfalls of excessive use of discipline as a performance management tool in an organization, and reviews the proper methods and practices for administering employee discipline…when needed.