THE #1 SIGN YOU’VE GOT A GREAT SAFETY STRATEGY
Aligning safety strategy to business objectives.
We’re often asked by safety leaders to help develop meaningful and impactful safety strategies.
Whether the outcome is a reduction in incidents or a commitment to safety ownership, developing a cohesive safety strategy needs to start with understanding the overall organisational objectives.
Last week, one of our mining collaborators invited Everyday Massive to the Bowen Basin, the heartland of Queensland’s resources sector, to workshop and articulate a three-year safety strategy.
After a quick stop to marvel at the Big Easel in Emerald, the EM team bunkered down with health and safety leaders to unpack the data and insights, and start to identify a way forward for the team and business over the next 3 years.
Getting on the same page
Before analysing safety performance and current initiatives, we spent time discussing strategy in broader terms with the safety team. What it is, what good looks like, and the difference between a strategy and plan.
Over the last few years, we’ve noticed strategy is a word thrown around a lot, but unless people are specifically trained in it, it’s often mistaken for a list of initiatives and actions — in other words: a plan. And the danger is, these actions and initiatives aren’t working together cohesively to achieve a common goal. A common goal that’s in service to the overall company mission.
We also spent some time talking about what can happen when we don’t get the process of developing, communicating and executing a strategy right.
Confusion: This occurs when the strategy hasn’t been clearly articulated, and/or refined to include only the elements that will make a difference.
Disengagement: This occurs when the strategy isn’t relevant to the workforce, and/or contextualised to the current situation.
Invisible: This occurs when the strategy hasn’t been communicated effectively, and a rhythm of executing on the strategy hasn’t been set.
Connecting the dots
Every executive leadership team wants to know that their business units are all working towards the overall vision for the future. So the next stage for the workshop was to understand the business objectives for the next 3 years, and establish how the safety strategy would enable organisation success.
This makes for a bigger and more interesting conversation — pushing it into an important, yet sometimes unfamiliar area. Because now we’re asking how does safety enable financial success? How will safety improve production performance? How will safety contribute to, and enable growth? As well as the familiar topic of how will safety drive our culture?
The #1 sign you’ve got a great safety strategy
So how do we know when we’ve got it right?
For us, it comes down to just one thing. And that is: a safety strategy will be successful when it can be simply and clearly articulated. But the rub is that anything seemingly simple takes a whole lot of work to get there.
So what makes something simple and clearly articulated?
When it’s told to someone, they get it and can repeat and explain it.
It only makes sense in your world. It feels familiar — almost obvious — but until this point, it hasn’t yet been spoken out loud. But now it has, of course it’s the strategy!
You genuinely get excited that this is going to lead to real change. This is the way to shift the dial, pull the lever, or insert whatever company jargon your team has for taking a real leap forward. 😉
Ultimately a safety strategy is about ensuring people go home safe and well everyday. The exciting future for safety leaders and their teams is ensuring that safety is a driver in all key business decisions. And this starts with a smart strategy.
