Business of safety, part one: drive improvement, not just compliance

July 3, 2024

Here’s an unremarkable truth: safety managers think about safety and CEOs think about the entire scope of the business. Sometimes that means that there is a disconnect between what the safety manager thinks is the right move and what the CEO has in mind. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

In a recent webinar, the CarriersEdge team had a unique opportunity—the chance to sit down with Trevor Bent of Easson’s Transport, someone with experience in both the safety manager and CEO roles. Having seen how things work from both perspectives, Bent had some unique insights into how safety is managed and understood in the yard and in the boardroom.

In this first of a two-part series, we look at some recommendations for safety managers in terms of getting buy-in from drivers, from the C-suite, and what to watch out for in your own approach to driving safety results.

Common pitfalls

Safety managers sometimes get tripped up by three kinds of problems:

• Over-relying on regs for enforcement,
• Not being consistent with messaging and follow-through, and
• Not knowing how to get executives on-side with what they are trying to do on the safety side.

However, there are ways to manage all three of those if you know what you are looking for.

I’ve got regs

Recalling his earlier days, Bent notes that a lot of safety managers fall into the trap of focusing on compliance, which basically makes them an enforcer. Believing that their true role is ensuring everyone is following the rules (“I’ve got regs and you have to listen!”), these kinds of safety folks can come off as bristly investigators, rather than a source of support for the team.

The reality, Bent says, is that “this is a people business”, and the hard edge is less effective than people think. Sure, you can come at people hard and be uncompromising. Still, ultimately that’s just going to put you in a position of putting out fires (and having people dread talking to you), rather than being a resource for the steady improvement of your people’s skills, the safety numbers, and the bottom line of the business.

Instead, take a longer view of figuring out how everyone can improve, and think about problems and incidents not simply as violations, but as opportunities for progress. “I always tried to be assertive and passionate about what I needed to do, but in a non-threatening way,” Bent reflected.

When someone has an incident, you now know what they don’t know (i.e. where their skill gap is), and that gives you a place to start when you are figuring out where you want them to be in the future. Bent’s advice? “Build a reputation so they know you’re not going to back down to get the right results, but they also know you’re going to work with them to understand what the barriers are.”

Use the front office to build credibility

Safety managers need to build credibility with drivers, which isn’t always easy to do when everyone knows they aren’t the ultimate boss (this is also one of the reasons they can fall back into the compliance enforcement trap mentioned above). That becomes even more difficult when the messaging differs between the front office and the front line. According to Bent, executives and safety managers all have to be on the same page, and the language you use to explain things to drivers should be the same thing they hear from everyone else.

Why? When you have to talk to a driver about lagging performance, there is a risk that the driver will think it’s personal (even when it’s not)—especially if you are the only one ever talking to them about those things. Yet when you have clear, consistent policies that are endorsed from the top down, the things you are critiquing will seem familiar—when every all-staff call, policy update or even a casual comment from the front office is exactly the same message that a driver hears from the safety manager, an intervention no longer seems like a personal attack—it’s just the way the company runs.

The critical part is that you have to be consistent (and the C-suite has to be consistent, too). Even if letting someone go means you’re going to be short of drivers, everyone from the top of the company all the way down needs to be okay with that. “Be consistent—have those hard conversations and exercise due diligence,” Bent says, “because the minute you have a gap in that oversight, you’re going to have a problem.”

Talking numbers

You’ve decided that you are going to commit to pushing improvement, rather than just chasing compliance. You’ve got a plan for how you want to do it, but if you’ve got an executive team that doesn’t have a background in safety, there may be details that are obvious and relevant to you that don’t resonate as clearly with them.

So how do you do you get them onside? “Figure out what the key safety metrics and KPIs are and focus on one or two of those things,” Bent says. “Get those in front of the leadership in a very quantitative way—be ready to show the numbers, prove that you can move the needle, and show the return on investment.”

And when you’re thinking bigger, and want to try a new program or initiative, get used to presenting formal, structured, well-reasoned arguments for what you want to do (and for an example of how to do that and what kinds of things to think about, try this post).

Build your brand

Bent’s best advice for safety managers? “Build yourself a brand of continuous improvement, not continuous compliance.” If you can establish a reputation as a builder rather than an enforcer, both the front line and the front office will come to trust you as a reliable resource for enhancing your people's safety and the business's bottom line.

So what about the flip side? Why (and how much) do CEOs need to pay attention to safety (beyond what things are costing), and how does that connect with everything we’ve said so far? The answer to that will be in next month’s article. Stay tuned.