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Is Safety Really Everyone’s Job?
How resilient cultures operationalize safety ownership
“Safety is everybody’s job” is a slogan we see plastered across walls, on bulletin boards and hear in pre-shift and safety meetings. These constant reminders have slowly made this message one of a few safety slogans that almost anyone can recite verbatim. If we truly believe that safety is everybody’s job, how do we ensure this mindset is embedded into our safety culture, not just a trite saying?
When I was a new leader, I thought my team was looking to me for all the answers. It was my responsibility to create and set the vision for operations and safety, to provide all the solutions, and to put out all the proverbial and literal fires. What I thought was helpful – moving from issue to issue like an operational superman! – was actually creating resentment and dependency. While I said the team’s innovation and ideas were valued, they didn’t see my actions affirm that.
When an organization truly makes safety part of everyone’s job, it provides opportunities for involvement, empowerment and ownership of the safety system. It offers employees a seat at the table and creates the conditions and processes to empower their participation. It values their input by inviting them in as solution-seekers.
Involvement
For my team to believe their voices were being heard, I had to change the way we communicated. Periodically, I added some seats at the leadership table and invited staff to join the conversation. I found opportunities for them to take formal and informal leadership, such as leading project teams and contributing subject matter expertise during leadership team discussions. While the tide was shifting with early adopters willing to lean in, I knew I was still missing a critical ingredient of ownership – empowerment.
Empowerment
What gets recognized gets repeated, and by recognizing participation, problem-solving and collaboration, we became a team that owned safety and quality as naturally as we did production. We normalized discourse about improvement ideas and projects, and along the way we developed comfort with open debate and dialogue. At times it felt like a struggle – but we came to call it “productive struggle,” because it enriched our work by inviting divergent ideas.
After team conversations opened up, the next step was one-on-one safety conversations. We learned simple skills to convey care and focus on the message, not the messenger. In groups, and one-on-one, the improved interaction and connectivity built psychological safety, and everyone felt empowered to ask questions, seek help, make suggestions and recognize one another.
Ownership
When employees see and believe they have ownership of the safety system and safety culture, an organization is equipped to:
- Implement systems designed with fidelity based on employee wisdom, limiting operational drift
- Reveal leadership capabilities in their people that previously did not have a forum to be expressed
- Reinforce desired mindsets about proactive safety management and operation
- Shift the culture from reactive to proactive, and create ownership among employees
In my current role as a Senior Leadership and Culture Consultant with Caterpillar Safety Services, I worked with an energy company whose leaders had assumptions about how and why their employees were getting injured at a high rate. They believed lack of training and low accountability for safe work were the primary culprits. However, when they deployed a Safety Perception Survey to see how the entire team felt, it revealed that low accountability for safe work was a symptom of a culture that hadn’t operationalized safety leadership or safety ownership. They decided to tackle both through the Zero-Incident Performance (ZIP™) Process
One of their tactical efforts to foster ownership was commissioning a cross-functional safety steering team to launch and govern safety system improvements. This team identified a need to equip frontline leaders with the skills and processes to effectively implement safety activities, measure results and provide employees with frequent feedback. The safety steering team decided that a team of frontline leaders – not management or the safety team – would be best suited to identify the gaps, build a process to onboard new supervisors with clear expectations for safety leadership, and continuously develop their skills.
Management was amazed by the depth of their solution and the framework they built to link each level of the organization into the process. Through the involvement and empowerment of a cross-functional team and subject matter experts, this approach provided a pathway for the collective genius to shape a new safety leadership development process that felt reasonable, valuable and achievable to all. The masterminds demonstrated immense pride in their solution and were excited to champion it across the organization. This is why Ownership is one of the Components of a Resilient Safety Culture.
Your Journey
Looking back at my days as a new leader, I wish someone had guided me earlier to see employees not as people bringing me problems to fix, but as the best problem-solvers. When we built a system of collective ownership, we found ourselves getting ahead of problems, avoiding incidents and focusing our energy on innovation rather than investigation.
If you’re working to overcome a culture where “Safety is everybody’s job!” seems like just a slogan; where the safety team bears most of the responsibility for safety processes; or employee involvement is limited to a suggestion box or climate survey, Caterpillar Safety Services can help you explore a more effective approach to building cultural resilience.
Patrick Brown
Senior Leadership and Culture Consultant, Caterpillar Safety Services
Patrick Brown began his career as a bilingual middle and high school instructor, leading the development of bilingual academic programs in school systems, and eventually serving as a school administrator. He has been a Senior Leadership and Culture Consultant for Caterpillar Safety Services since 2022, working with Caterpillar facilities, Cat dealers and customers across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe in pursuit of process and culture improvement. When not out in the field with customers, he resides in Detroit with his spouse where they spend most of their time at state and provincial parks in Michigan and Ontario. Follow Patrick on LinkedIn.
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