Safety doesn't just happen. It must be embedded into the culture, according to Steve Wiltshire, director of safety for the Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. (ABC).
Speaking at SLC 2018 in Louisville, Ky., he offered the following steps that contractors can follow which when used in the industry resulted in companies being 670% safer than the industry average.
These indicators are based on the group's ABC Step Program has been showed to also lower the Total Recordable Incident Rate ( TRIR) by 85%. The process is a self- evaluation tool comprised of 20 components. A recent report, the Safety Performance Report, based on over 1.2 billion hours worked in the field from 2017 determined the six leading indicators.
1. Substance Abuse Program
2. New Hire Safety Orientation — The best programs are three hours in length.
3. Site-Specific Safety Orientation — Enlist C-suite to give a closing summary.
4. ToolboxTalks — Keep the talks to between 15 and 30 minutes on a single topic and conduct at the job site.
5. Near-Miss-/Near Hit Analysis now called Good Catch — The new phrase helps build a culture of trust so that if someone reports something that won't be disciplined.
6. Site Safety Committee — Best practice is to have frequent inspections.
In order to deliver these steps, the leadership must be strong. According to Wiltshire, there are four key components that characterize “uncompromising safety leaders”: have courage, be comfortable being out in front while everyone else is behind them, take a stand when no one else will, and they get their energy from transforming and challenging the status quo.
To develop leaders Wiltshire outlines some basic leadership traits:
Be authentic—People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Be transparent—You will make mistakes; own up, learn and move on.
Be relational—Connect with employees so they understand their role is critical to the organization.
Be intentional—The preceding behaviors don’t just happen, you must be intentional to succeed..
Rephrasing a quote from Alan Medville, Wilshire believes that, “Safety leadership is the authentic expression of who you are in such a way that creates conditions for all to do their work without incident and go home safely every day.”