By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service
Field service technicians face a lot of unknowns when they report to work, as well as a lot of risks. Depending on which industry they work in, they may be repairing equipment in a cushy office or noisy factory; they could be working in a dangerous neighborhood, or in a house with an angry dog. Some technicians work in mines or climb tall towers or work to repair heavy, dangerous equipment.
And in addition to their own safety protocols, service technicians often must also follow safety protocols of their customers – which sometimes aren’t in harmony. Different service scenarios bring different safety needs, but no matter the working conditions safety is always critical.
According to Ken Chapman (an industrial psychologist and consultant) and Tony Orlowski (an engineer and executive at McWane, Inc.), authors of the book Safety Beyond the Numbers: A Path to Principled Leadership, workers are probably safer than they have been at any time in the past century, but additional improvements have been hard to come by. In their book, they note that workplace safety statistics have plateaued over the past few decades.
To make the workplace even safer, they say that companies need to embrace a culture of safety, rather than just focusing on compliance. That sounds a lot like many of the conversations we have had here at Future of Field Service around technology adoption and digital transformation, so I was pleased to have a chat with Tony, looking at some of the concepts in the book, from a field service lens.
In the book, you note that workplace safety statistics have plateaued over the last couple of decades. Can you put that into some historical context? How safe are we now compared to prior decades? Is the U.S. more or less safe than other similar countries?
Tony Orlowski: Workplace injury reduction has come a long way. In the 1920s and ‘30s, workplace fatalities occurred at an annual rate of approximately 15 per 100,000 population. By 1970, that rate was about cut in half, and by the 1990s it was cut by half again. Then, it essentially plateaued. The fatality rate has remained largely the same for 30 years while total injury rates have continued to decline. This tells us two things: We have not gotten to a point of diminishing returns where further improvement is impossible and, we are not effectively dealing with the issues that have the most impact on human lives. Technology is and has been responsible for most improvements in workplace safety over time, but its benefits now appear to be butting up against and limited by the human element of safety. That is where Safety Beyond the Numbers can help.
In field service, we have talked a lot about how compliance/punishment-focused approaches to new programs or new technologies are ineffective; you really want manager and employee buy-in. What are some ways that an ownership culture can impact workplace safety?
Tony Orlowski: We think referencing the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman is a helpful way to understand the benefits of an ownership culture. Friedman once qualified the effectiveness of spending money in terms of whose money it was, and on whom it was spent. There are four specific ways, but only two apply here. One way is to spend your money on someone else, such as when you buy a gift for a friend on their birthday. In that case, you will be very careful about the amount you spend, but much less concerned about the quality of the gift you give (It is, after all, the thought that counts!) Another way is to spend your money on yourself. You will still be careful about how much you spend, but you will be much more concerned about getting exactly what you want. Compliance matches the first example. We are asking other people to expend their efforts for the results we want. As a consequence, their effort is always measured, and the results rarely better than “good enough.” Ownership, in contrast, allows you to spend your efforts on you, and on what you want, and we think the logical effect of that on the quality of safety outcomes is self-evident.
Leadership is key in safety (and other) initiatives, in order to get team members to take ownership of the process. But how do leaders themselves get there? In other words, for leaders that have not yet really taken safety as a moral imperative, rather than an issue of compliance, are there good ways for organizations to get their leadership team on the same page on this issue? Managers in some companies tend to view things through a prism of compliance, KPI measurement, box checking – but what you are proposing sounds like it requires a different viewpoint.
Tony Orlowski: It certainly does require a different viewpoint, and you are correct in that it is absolutely necessary for management to “get there” to be successful. Leaders must begin by understanding and embracing the moral imperative. This means choosing not to view business as primarily a profit-making enterprise, but as an economic engine for the common good. That is to say, if a business is perceived by society as not providing it value, then society (the market) will not support it. Therefore, the business will ultimately fail.
Profit remains essential and vital, but rather than being the goal, it is the result, and the “profit” is a measure of the good that is done by the business. From this viewpoint, a business is a moral institution. So, there is no logical argument for harming employees in the process of “doing good.” The validity of this logic lies in the difficulty of arguing the opposite; that the best path to business success is taking advantage of customers (net-negative societal value) and exploiting employees. Few business owners would say they believe in that logic, but the problem is they are not always sure they don’t believe in it. And when they aren’t sure, their leaders (managers and supervisors) are not sure, either. When ownership is ambivalent about the purpose of the business, their leaders’ default to what they are sure about: Profit, compliance to the law and following written rules. But when ownership is committed to a moral view of their business, then leaders and the rest of the team recognize it immediately. They get on board very quickly. It’s really as easy (and difficult) as that.
What are some key strategies organizations can take to improve safety, leveraging the idea that the human factor is a key area that many have not successfully addressed in the past? What are some successful ways that leaders have been able to achieve that type of organizational buy-in?
Tony Orlowski: If we are to break it down into a few statements, we would say: Treat people with respect; tell them, and yourself, the truth; be responsible for yourself and responsible to others. These are simple statements, but with profound implications for the business. If you think about them, you will discover many of these implications. Reading Safety Beyond the Numbers will give you even more to consider.
Field service is also somewhat unique in that technicians are usually working in an environment owned/operated by someone other than their own employers/leaders. How would you recommend that technicians take that culture of safety with them into environments owned by other people?
Tony Orlowski: An organization should never be willing to trade another person’s safety for profit, convenience or approval. That includes at another organization’s worksite. A business should make that clear to all employees, and to the clients they work with. In addition to communicating that expectation internally and externally, training, communication and preparation also help to avoid landing in an uncomfortable and potentially unsafe situation. But there will still be times when a person reaches a site and is unexpectedly thrust into an urgent and unsafe assignment. In that case, you must have developed a culture where it is safe for them to say, “I’m sorry I can’t do what you are asking. It’s unsafe, and I know you would not ask me to risk my safety in doing it. My company would not allow it either. Let’s see what we can change so I can be of help to you.” Any business lost by those statements are customers you almost certainly do not want.