Safety Leadership

Safety Leadership is a vital component of any Safety, Health & Environment process. Helping to improve
employee's safety behavior by as much as 86 percent, we can help you face the Safety Leadership challenges
on your Safety Culture improvement journey.

Safety Leadership is defined as "The process of defining the desired state, setting up the team to succeed, and
engaging in the discretionary efforts that drive the safety value," which broadly boils down to "engaging in and
maintaining behaviors that help others achieve our safety goals". Common Safety Leadership strategies appear
to be:
[1] Value Alignment: Encouraging people to take personal responsibility for safety by setting expectations for
each layer (Senior, Middle, Front-line management, and employees) linked to clear goals. These are often
created at a dedicated session where the CEO outlines his/her vision and senior managers determine how to
translate that into concrete actions. Importantly, they strive to ensure the strategies and interventions adopted are
aligned to their strategic intent and do not just boil down to a simple signing of the safety policy. Reinforcement
strategies include all board members holding a weekly conference call where plant managers are required to
discuss incidents occurring in the previous week, root cause analysis results, corrective actions, best practices,
etc. At plant/operation levels, morning meetings are often held to discuss any and all pressing safety issues.
Annual effectiveness assessments are often conducted with 360 degree reviews of individual managers; an
organizational-wide safety survey; and, further diagnostics surrounding discreet organizational safety systems.
[2] Systems & Monitoring: Putting a robust Risk or Safety Management System in place encompassing (but not
limited to) Preventive Maintenance; Operation Procedures; Inspections; Permit-to-Work systems; Safety talks;
Safety Committees; Risk Assessments; Near-miss reporting; Training; Management of Change (MoC); Risk
Management plans, etc. In terms of effectiveness, the monitoring focus appears primarily to be on incident rates
(lagging indicators); Safety Surveys, and Gap Analyses via Internal Audit functions (leading Indicators).
[3] Education & Awareness: Providing safety leadership training so that safety leadership becomes a corporate
value. Effectiveness assessment of the training strategy revolves around employees visibly observing the
leadership commitment to a safe workplace, and leaders in the organization being more knowledgeable on safety
with line management accepting their safety responsibilities.
[4] Exhibiting Visible Leadership: Encouraging the management team (from the most senior down) to exhibit
visible leadership commitment to a safe workplace. This visible demonstration appears to take the form of
chairing of safety meetings; Ownership of the SMS (i.e. conducting risk assessments, investigating accidents);
Involvement in quarterly reviews & training; Two-way dialogues about safety with personnel; and, Site safety
tours. Effectiveness is assessed by monitoring the number and quality of managerial observations /
conversations (leading indicator). Typically some type of robust, but easily accessible, tracking system is required
to monitor the outcomes of the observations and discussions.
Are your managers 'Safety Leaders'?
Our proven Safety Leadership process, PEER

helps your managers 'Positively Engage Employee Risk' by

improving manager's constructive intervention skills and increasing their 'day-to-day' involvement in safety, which
in turn dramatically improves overall safety performance.
The power of PEER

to rapidly change the Safety Culture is unsurpassed and has been shown effective in a
wide range if industies (e.g. aviation, construction, manufacturing and utilities) in Asia, Europe and North
America. In each case, the results have been impressive, leading to substantial behavior change and incident
reduction.

What is PEER

?
Exhibiting visible Safety Leadership often comes about from a 'two-way' dialogue between managerial and
employee levels where Safety Leaders show they care about their 'folks' and are committed to making a
difference. We train 'Safety Leaders' in the PEER

observation process to encourage high quality managerial

communications about safety. For example praising good safety behavior and/or exploring ways to improve less
optimal behavior. In turn, these interactions allow managers to keep their finger on the 'pulse' of safety,
encouraging people to behave safely and identifying any 'barriers' to good safety performance.
Supported by our dedicated online PEER

Safety Leadership software, 'Safety Leaders' record summaries of

their 'safety conversations' and any corrective actions identified. The results are used to provide 'real-time'
feedback on the overall 'Safety Leadership' effort which helps to identify any underlying issues detracting from
good safety performance.