Safety 2: Are You Changing Culture or Just the Rules?

What if your safety programme is changing the processes but leaving the culture untouched? Here’s why the biggest shift may have less to do with tools and more to do with people.

Safety 2: A Different Way to Think About Safety

The concept of Safety 2 has been around for about 10 years. Safety Differently is an Australian creation and largely aligns with Safety 2. In the last few years HOP [Human Organisational Performance] has come to Australia from the USA. 

It seems all these Safety 2 type programs, from my perspective as an organisational developer, are more based on a cultural rather than a technical focus.  

As a broad summary, Safety 2 invites everyone to own safety & safer outcomes are delivered.  Safety 2 type programs take a large organisational step where people are core to the solution.  Safety 1, unintentionally and unconsciously stated that people are the problem, and leadership needs to design a safety system that keeps people safe.  This was delivered by imposing a system on the workers to keep them safe. Safety 1 also has a lot to do with keeping the organisation compliance safe.  

In contrast Safety 2 is a more collaborative way of working. It moves from a Me [look after me] to a We [look after each other] focus; it invites interdependence.  Safety 2 ticks the compliance box while building an empowered workforce; from my perspective it is about best in class [BIC], not just about compliance. 

Safety as a journey

Safety programs can also operate on a continuum; like any maturity model, organisations move in small and big steps up to the next stage. I have seen HOP being delivered more as a Safety 1 program as it leaves out the cultural shift. One example is the use of the 4Ds process and creating a learning team. This Safety 1 approach forms a learning team and facilitates a conversation with the floor workers into what is Dumb, Difficult, Different and Dangerous. 

In contrast the Safety 2 focus is moving the culture into a whole of workforce learning team.

Safety 2 has top-down priorities that connect with bottom-up execution. The cultural shift can be challenging for a reactive leader still working with a power over style in a calculative manner. Where fear is still a strong motivator then the cultural shift can be a leadership challenge.  The challenge with Safety 2 is we need leaders to operate more creatively and proactively. 

The Hudson Safety Ladder explains this well in the proactive and generative stages of safety evolution. 

Safe Care Culture

Safe Care Culture, a program I developed and have implemented over 8 years, is a Safety 2 program.

The three core principles of a Safe Care Culture transformation includes 

1. Simplicity – Intervene with Care and look after yourself and your work colleagues. The program needs people skilled at intervening with care!  

Interdependent suggests the organisation is open to a collaborative system where people do not have power over others. It is a style that has power with others. This moves into a grey leadership area.  Intention is critical and I have seen very reactive leaders transform into creative leaders who give up power but gain much greater influence and safety improves dramatically. In this environment everyone starts to behave like a safety conscious leader.

The mysterious element of this cultural and leadership shift is that; while safety improves so does productivity, service levels and the costs base. The uplift can be as much as 20%. 

2. Everyone strives to be their best self.

When I say everyone; I mean that. That is what really changes how things work. The lowest levels are equal with everyone when it comes to values and behaviours deployed in the workplace.  Maybe it is more accurate to say that a best-in-class culture delivers equality.

The focus is an above the line approach. Everyone [operators and managers] complete a mirror about themselves, and they document how they behave and think when they are above the line but also detail what happens to themselves when they fall below the line. This demands that everyone has a sense of themselves -they are invited to Know Thyself. 

A Best Selves Culture invites a radical responsibility & one that does not blame others – people start to see the organisational system. 

I take a developmental approach where learning and contribution is core to the organisational improvement process. Leaders need to make style changes to deliver on a Safety 2 approach. To support this transition, I deploy the Print Profile that details each person’s best self and their shadow. Our experience in the Safety 2 environment is to avoid the unavoidable by becoming conscious of when incidents occur. Often when we are below the line incidents occur!

3. Relationship is Core.

Slow Down to Speed Up is the catch cry. Build relationships and connection to enable this intervening with care on the floor. Lived Values & Behaviours provide the key for this Safety 2 workplace. Context is how we behave and that takes precedence over Content which is defined as what we do. A relationship focus enables a care for self and the other. We challenge respectfully with a focus on issues; we do not go hard at each other.

A case study learning may assist here – after doing the values and behaviours exercise, I returned to the site the next day. A warehouse operator approached me and said that she had resolved a conflict that had existed for years that everyone on site knew about. It was just accepted that the two people did not like each other and did not work together. Safe Care Culture demanded a care factor and this person took it upon herself to have a necessary conversation to create a resolution between the two of them. They were never going to be friends, but they can care about each other’s wellbeing when it comes to safety. 

Building trust through inclusion

Story telling is another key element of the Safe Care Culture approach. It is also consciously facilitative and this invites buy in from all involved. It is a trust-based system that distributes power across the site, and this empowers all to be safer.

Another key issue in a Safety 2 program is that we invite people to be real and in relationship with each other. We invite people to remove their work mask. We want people to care and have each other’s backs. Safety 2 invites and nurtures inclusion. Workers and managers are asked to contribute to the group workshops. Learning follows from this inclusion, contribution and invite for candour. The impact can be profound, and people do things that surprise in this environment. 

The elements of Safety 2 demand Emotional Intelligence development and my experience has been that everyone enjoys this learning. The interdependence that the approach nurtures create the feeling of a We; we care for each other and are willing to intervene as it keeps us all safer.

Where HOP and Safety 2 connect

My research around Human and Organisational Performance [HOP] discovered that the five principles below have resonance with the Safe Care Culture and Safety 2 principles. It would be easy to call Safe Care Culture; HOP Care. 

Safe Care Culture implementations in warehousing, distribution, manufacturing and call centres have focused on the creation of both physical AND psychological safety.

As declared by the leader of the most successful Safe Care Culture site; there is no hierarchy in Safety!  We all have skin in the safety game. It creates a strong energy that people can feel when they visit these Safe Care Culture sites. As detailed above this is a Safety 2 approach.

The Me To We transformation into Safety 2 is an environment where expertise outranks ranks; it is, by definition, less hierarchical.

Stephen Hanman works as companion developing safety transformations. Safe Care Culture creates an environment based on interdependence where operators and managers intervene with care across the floor. This safety work aligns with the book Stephen published with his coauthor that Transitions Workplaces From Me to We. See stephenhanman.com for more information.