Episode 214 - Safety System

Safety systems are more than tools for preventing injuries—they can become the foundation for how an organization operates and improves. In this episode of Leading and Learning Through Safety, Dr. Mark French explores how organizations can build effective systems from the ground up, particularly during startups and turnarounds.

The process begins with reliable data. Organizations need to understand what information they need, where it comes from, and whether it accurately reflects what is happening in the workplace. Without trustworthy information, leaders cannot make meaningful decisions. This same principle extends beyond safety into quality, delivery, and cost.

The next critical component is a strong root cause and corrective action process. When organizations thoroughly investigate safety incidents and address their underlying causes, they develop problem-solving capabilities that can be applied across the business. The same methodology used to prevent an injury from recurring can help resolve quality problems, productivity challenges, and cost issues. The key is selecting an approach appropriate for the complexity of the organization and investing the time necessary to teach people how to use it effectively.

Finally, effective systems require communication and feedback. Information must move throughout the organization and create a complete feedback cycle rather than simply flowing from leadership downward.

Safety provides a powerful starting point because protecting people is a fundamental organizational responsibility. By building strong systems around safety, organizations simultaneously develop capabilities in data collection, problem-solving, communication, and continuous improvement that can ultimately transform the entire organization.

Transcript

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Mark French: 0:00

This week on the podcast, I want to talk about safety systems-the systems that build our program-and just a little preview. It's not just for safety. This week coming up on the podcast.

Unknown: 0:31

Welcome to the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French. Mark's passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment, together we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now, here is Dr. Mark French.

Mark French: 1:28

Welcome to this episode of the Leading and Learning in Safety podcast. Yeah, I am excited to really jump into this idea of safety systems. Recently, had a really interesting conversation about how do you build systems? How do you begin from nothing and you do a startup or a turnaround that may not have what you need? And how do you create? Now, am I an expert in this? No. Have I done this a whole heck of a lot, yeah. So I'm closer to an expert than a novice. What I love about safety systems is that they easily become people systems. They become company organizational systems, and that's really the point of it. Is that we begin, and this is a common theme for me. We begin with safety, and we build into so much more. Why do we start with safety? Because it's the most important. And why is it the most important? Well, I I always fall back on morality. If an organization fundamentally does not care if someone gets hurt at work, do they really care about anything else except maybe personal profit? That's the only thing I've found that exceeds the idea of keeping people safe, and that is that there is an individual or a group of individuals who they're not really looking out for company profit. They like company profit, but the reason they like company profit is because it drives their individual profit. It's dollars over people, and that's a ultimately it becomes a personal choice because usually someone at the top makes that choice, and then they surround themselves with people who were equally motivated by cash, and so then we begin the endeavor of where making the profit is more important than the people. But when I look at it from a very step back to an ethical standpoint, it's really hard for me to rationalize of putting profits before people, and understood a company is there to make money. A company, this intangible thing filled with people, is there to make money. It's intangible. It's not a. It's an organization thing of people, and everyone understands that. If the company can't make money, it can't pay the people. The people can't be there. But let's step back and go. How much profitability is profitability? How much are you squeezing? And I am getting way off topic very quickly trying to prove a point that's out there, and I think we would all agree that this is where we are. Let's start here. Safety is critical to the organization. It is a fundamental building block that we care about people. Now let's take the step forward, and let's imagine a brand new company or a company that needs to turn around and has really been-they've been running off of spreadsheets and local knowledge and a whole bunch of post-it notes, and that's where our we begin our journey of the system. When looking at how do. You install systems. You have to move pretty quick because generally, well, I say that I like to move really quick when I enter an operation that that needs that type of work because it's data. You need certain flows of data pretty pretty quickly, and you can train on these things really efficiently, which is really good. It's easy. You got to find a system that is easy to learn, easy to pick up. And so when I begin with a safety system, and I start researching, what do we need? All right, what data do I want to collect, and is the data even available? And this is the Geiger principle: garbage in, garbage out. If I can't collect real, up-to-date data about safety and what I'm looking to try to learn from it. I can't get anything out of it. Bad data in only gives me bad results on the other side. And if it's all made up, or if it's all pencil whipped, or if it's all not even usable, I might as well not waste anyone's time trying to collect that data, I might as well give up. No need for it. So step one is looking for the system or the process that will give us the right result. Something easy to use. Something people can learn quickly. Something that will collect the data easily, in a way that will then allow me, the user, to see the data and use it for some decision making or calibration. That's a lot of words. It's a whole lot of words for basically saying the first step is getting information. You must understand what you're dealing with, and it has to be real time from the floor. And you cannot be everywhere at once. Now let's look at the idea of a lean

system: 6:47

safety, quality, delivery, cost. Your SQDC. These are your main. There's other letters out there. There's inventory sometimes. There's other people metrics to get thrown in there. I'm going to stay purist and I'm going to stay simple because even if I stay simple, it is going to get really complicated as I talk through it. So I might as well try my best to begin with something very basic: safety, quality, delivery, and cost. Four letters. If I am building a good system and I work through the process of building a good safety system, of getting good information, of getting correct data, of getting real time data, that process now the same system probably cannot be used for quality delivery or cost, but the methodology of looking for ways to collect accurate data is really important, and this can be cross-referenced when you're really looking at the the functionality of the company. And here's an example of a way safety data can show, or at least correlate with other data. If we're doing based on the work happening, let's say we're doing observations or we're doing walkthroughs, we might see an uptick in an area where there may also be quality issues because the supervisor may be in that area more because they're trying to watch out for an issue, and if they're there, we're already correlating the fact that okay, we're trying to address something. Or frequency of time can show that more productivity is there, more work is going on there, more process can be going on there. It's somewhat of a correlation. Now that one is a bit of a interesting stretch, but it should correlate. There should be truth behind it of saying I'm seeing more activity in an area. Why am I seeing more activity than normal, or what is the increased activity? Is it normal? Is it cyclical? Is it this is part of it? But let me take one step back to asking the

question: 9:01

Do you know what data you need? Do you know where it's coming from, and do you know it's accurate at the source? There's the important questions for any of it: safety, quality, delivery, or cost. What do you need to know? Are you able to get it? Is it accurate? If it's any of those three are not part of it, we're missing. And so the simple process of even understanding how we want to gather safety data-if we use that same process-we as leaders can also help bring in and and kind of guide or even calibrate these other metrics, looking at okay, well, where is the data even coming from? And this is a cycle I sometimes get into, and this is where part of the discussion began, is that that same process that helped me set up the safe. System is the exact same process that can help set up a quality system, some sort of operational system, and some sort of financial system. All of it can work very well when we fundamentally understand what is it that we need to measure. Now let's move on to some other systems on the next half of the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast,

Unknown: 10:24

you are listening to the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast with Dr. Mark French. What drives next level performance in your business? It's not just strategy; it's your people, and great performance starts with great leadership at TSDA Consulting, we believe real leadership begins by creating a workplace where people feel safe, supported, and heard. TSDA Consulting is led by Dr. Mark French, a recognized leader in the workplace culture who helps organizations bridge the gap between behavioral psychology and operational safety. Learn yourself, lead others, create safety. Visit tsdaconsulting.com today.

Mark French: 11:08

Welcome back to the second half, the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast, talking about safety systems. So the next safety system, once we're able to gather data, we have to be able to address nonconformances. Now, I'm sure everybody's quality ears just perked up. Just bing, he said the word nonconformance. Ah, I did. A quality term in safety. It's unbelievable. See, real synergy happening real time right here. What I this is where a great root cause or corrective action process is important. And when there's a blank slate, when you walk into a turnaround a brand new system, there's the opportunity to build a root cause corrective action process. Now there are a lot. Oh my God, there are so many, so many root cause processes out there that you can use, you can tailor, you can grab. The most important part is find one that one you can teach in depth, not just a five-minute. Ask yourself why five times. Now the five why process is powerful, but you better use it. You better teach it more than five minutes. You've got to really teach it. Fishbowl, all the other methods that you can buy software for or be taught about. It's all there. But what's important, what is critical, is you find one that will fit the complexity of your workplace. So if you're talking a very complex chemical workplace, or or food manufacturing, or even more complicated, you've got to find a system that can help take the complex and break it down. If it's a fairly simple process. You can use some some different tools to build you there. Again, most important is that you take time to teach it well. And if you don't have the expertise internal to be able to teach it, that's okay, because there is a difference between someone who can run a good root cause and someone who can teach a root cause process, you may have to look outside to find someone to come and teach that. That's okay. Generally speaking, running something like that is well worth the cost, and here's why. If you have a good root cause process, the nonconformances will lower. That affects everything. So imagine we start with safety. We're having injuries. We want to stop injuries. Well, how do you stop injuries? Is you look at what you're having right now, even though it's exceptionally reactive. You look at what you have right now, and you prevent them from happening again. The only way to do that is to understand them and to put in the right processes. Follow the hierarchy of controls. Eliminate, substitute. You get rid of the risk. You reduce the risk out. So if I do not want any more injuries happening, I root cause every injury. I figure out what was the real reason why it happened, and I put into place items that will prevent it from happening again. Now my team is trained because of a safety issue. They're now trained on how to do a good root cause corrective action. We have a quality issue. What process are we going to use the same root cause corrective action. We have a productivity issue. What can we use the same root cause corrective action? I bet you can guess where I'm going. Cost. We have a cost issue. We're going to use the same process. Root cause corrective action. We've taught the tool. The tool is now available. Our team understands it. Now it's just a matter of what problem do we want them to attack with that knowledge, with that tool. Once that tool is operational, once that tool is running, once that tool is doing its job, and we've started it with safety because we don't want anyone getting hurt, and we understand how bad that is. We can suddenly use that exact same tool across the organization to improve every piece of our work. It's one of those perfect examples of using safety as the spear tip, we're getting to the organization by saying we don't want anyone else hurt. So we're going to teach you this tool. We want you to learn this. We want you to use this process because we're first going to say no one else gets hurt. We're going to make sure people are safe, and once they're safe, you've got the knowledge. Let's go after some other problems within the organization. So now we've got real data. Once we have real data, and we know it's fairly reliable data, we can use that data along with all the other observations and processes that we have to be able to look at nonconformances, to look at issues that are out there, and fix them, because we now have a process for root cause and corrective action. It's a powerful, powerful methodology that we begin by saying we're going to do it because of safety. We're going to do it because it's the right thing. We're going to do it to protect our most valuable asset that are inside the that is in our organization, and that's our people. Now that we have knowledge, let's keep using it. Let's spin that up and keep using it. One of the other critical systems that is this probably I've left this one for last because it's one of the most I would say fluid, one of the most foggy, one of the hardest ones because you really it never really stops evolving itself, and that's feedback, communication feedback. This is one that I have. I feel like I've never gotten it right because it is so much, and I I truly believe that there is nowhere close to perfect in this, especially when the workplace is ever evolving, how do you get communication flowing in a way where it goes, it gets where it needs to go, and it has a full cycle? Because communication is not just one way; it cannot just be I tell you something. There, it can be, but there should be at least an acknowledgement. I understand what you said-a nod, a shake. Now, sometimes that that is extremely simple, but it gets tougher the bigger the organization gets. And this is probably a whole nother topic that we'll move to: is how do we build a communication system? What is important about having a good communication system? Thanks for joining me this week on the podcast. So happy to be part of your podcast vocation. Thank you, thank you for downloading and listening. It's been great talking about safety systems and how those systems build into organizational systems. We begin with safety. We begin with protecting our people, and then we build into really transforming an organization through good principles and good systems. Until next time, we chat. Stay safe.

Unknown: 19:10

Thank you for listening to the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast. More content is available online at www.tsdaconsulting.com.com. All the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training, or legal advice. This has been the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast.