Imagine an employee who has two ways to complete a task.
The first is the safe way: stop the work, get the right equipment, complete the required safety steps, and ask a question because something doesn’t look quite right.
The second way is faster. Skip a couple of steps, use the tool that is already there, and get the job finished on schedule.
The employee chooses the faster way. The supervisor sees the completed work and says, “Nice job getting that done so promptly. We really needed to get that done, and time is money.” The customer is happy, the schedule stays intact, and nobody gets hurt.
So what did the organization just teach?
That unsafe behavior can have positive consequences…
After an incident, organizations often focus on what the employee knew. Did they understand the procedure? Did they recognize the hazard? Did they complete the training? Those are reasonable questions, but they can cause us to overlook something important.
I like to take a different approach and ask a different question: What happened the previous 100 times someone took that shortcut?
In many cases, nothing bad happened. In fact, something good probably happened. The employee saved time, avoided delaying production, kept the supervisor happy, and finished the job faster. Meanwhile, the possible negative consequences of the unsafe behavior were uncertain. An injury might happen, but saving 15 minutes happened right now.
That difference matters because our behavior is strongly affected by what happens immediately after we do something. If a shortcut consistently saves time and effort, while the negative consequence is unlikely or far in the future, we should not be surprised when the shortcut continues.
This is why telling employees that “safety is our number-one priority” may not be enough. The work environment may be teaching a different lesson every day.
Leaders have the power to influence the work environment from a broader scale – this is how safety improves, not by telling people “act safely” without any support.
