Page 108 - Occupational Health & Safety, July 2018

PRACTICAL EXCELLENCE
A Timeline of Safety Progress: Aligning Others and Minimizing Change Resistors
This template can help you communicate your company story throughout your organization.
EBY SHAWN M. GALLOWAY AND CHARLES J. DOUROS
xecutives are often asked to summarize highlights of their safety successes and are given mere seconds to do so. Whether they have a captive audience in an elevator, di- rectors in a boardroom, or a large group of shareholders
at the annual meeting, time and attention spans are in short sup- ply. Today, audiences are busy, overloaded with information from a pipeline rife with data. Executives struggle to find time to study even the most significant information, so there’s much to gain by boiling down large amounts of data into digestible, visual incre- ments to clearly communicate the message.
The July 2016 article, “Communicating Your Safety Excellence Strategy”1 (OH&S magazine) outlined what needs to be commu- nicated across a typical time horizon of 3-5 years to align others. It focused on the need to describe visually Where We Were and Where We Are, Success and Defining Safety Excellence, Strategic Priorities to Close the Gaps, and Measurements of Progress. Below, we expand on the need to communicate the history of safety and business changes, and improvements and disruptors over a longer time horizon, and provide a template for your organization to do so.
All organizations evolve in safety. While the company’s story is written each day in real time with important safety outcomes, events, benchmarks, activities, and processes all occurring simul- taneously throughout the organization, communicating the story is facilitated by using a linear timeline with the most important information highlighted for emphasis. Companies may choose to catalog difficult or challenging events out of respect to those who endured them or in order to preserve them as part of a noteworthy company history. As a company evolves its safety practices and per- formance trends, how well known is the story? Can your executives and employees tell it in a succinct manner, given only a minute or two to do so?
If change is the only true constant in business, communicat- ing the change should run a close second. In the past two decades, companies throughout the developed world experienced a favor- able trend in safety performance, yet many struggle to tell their own story. Do all levels of the organization realize what contribu- tions led to the successes and failures of safety so far? Is the impact of past safety decisions visible to them? Can they point to times when performance changed?
Too often this information is held as intellectual property by a select few senior stakeholders in the company and, by default, it retires when they do, lost forever. This must change. To help people see the road forward, it is just as important for them to map the
path up to now. The example below provides a template to commu- nicate your company story throughout your organization.
Companies measure their failure rate as a lagging indicator known by many acronyms (TRIR, TCIR, OIR). The board of direc- tors and other key stakeholders will always be hungry to under- stand and improve this result because it is tied to a fundamental financial aspect of your company’s safety journey. Select a time- frame of no less than 10 years and catalog your historical failure rate inside the box. Consider using a visual gradient scale of red, yellow, and green to indicate the range of “bad to good” for ad- ditional impact.
Record the most important business benchmarks and safety indicators on the timeline. Include new product lines, facility addi- tions, innovations in technology and safety methodology, impor- tant training events, and staff and management changes. Essen- tially, include anything that helps build the story. Remember, the safety journey ebbs and flows, but a good storyteller knows how to incorporate lessons learned. So choose carefully, but don’t be afraid to include the company’s bumps, bruises, and blemishes in the timeline.
Consider branding the timeline with your company’s logo or safety slogan and include an inspirational quote from a valued em- ployee that sums up the current state of safety in your company. The key is to provide the storyteller with a simple, graphic time- line to facilitate conversations about the most important story your company can tell—the Safety Story.
For a template and example to help communicate your timeline, contact the authors and reference Safety Timeline Visual.
Shawn M. Galloway is the president of ProAct Safety and co-author of several best-selling books. As a consultant, advisor, and keynote speaker, he has helped hundreds of organizations within every major industry to improve safety strategy, culture, leadership, and engagement. He is also the host of the acclaimed weekly podcast series
Safety Culture Excellence®. He can be reached at 936-273-8700 or
info@ProActSafety.com.
Charles J. Douros is senior consultant for Pro- Act Safety. Having worked hands-on in the safety and environmental arena as a former small busi- ness owner, regional director of EHS, and safety consultant, he has personally implemented safety performance and cultural improvement process- es across many industries. He can be reached at
936-273-8700 or info@ProActSafety.com.
REFERENCES
1. https://ohsonline.com/Articles/2016/07/01/Communicating- Your-Safety-Excellence-Strategy.aspx
102 Occupational Health & Safety | JULY 2018
www.ohsonline.com