BIBLIOGRAPHY

Activating executive safety leadership
Robert Pater. Occupational Hazards. Cleveland: Mar 2005. Vol. 67, Iss. 3; pg. 26, 1 pgs

Advanced Safety Leadership, A Safety Course Designed Specifically for Well Site Leaders
Werngren O. et al SPE/IADC Drilling Conference 2005

Age-Old Conflict: Baby Boomers Vs Generation Y
Melissa Nicefaro, Business New Haven

Attributes of an Injury--Free Culture; Ownership
Donald R Groover. Occupational Health & Safety. Waco: Aug 2007. Vol. 76, Iss. 8; pg. 24

Be a safety leader
Richard Hanson. Pulp & Paper. San Francisco: Aug 2005. Vol. 79, Iss. 8; pg. 64, 1 pgs

Become a Safety Leader
Joe Tavenner, Occupational Hazards, Dec 2007

BP denies that it put profit over plant safety *'Harsh ' Baker report finds serious leadership failings; [LONDON 3RD EDITION]
FINANCIAL TIMES REPORTERS. Financial Times. London (UK): Jan 17, 2007. pg. 1
The effective safety leader: Leadership Style & Best Practices
Thomas R Krause. Occupational Hazards. Cleveland: Dec 2007. Vol. 69, Iss. 12; pg. 19, 1 pgs

The Role of Distrust in Offshore Safety Performance
Stacey Conchie and Ian Donald, Risk Analysis, Vol.26, No.5, 2006

The Role of Leader Influence Tactics and Safety Climate in Engaging Employees’ Safety Participation
Sharon Clarke and Katie Ward, Risk Analysis, Vol. 26, No.5, 2006

The Top 10 Ways to Improve Safety Management
Sandy Smith. Occupational Hazards. Cleveland: Dec 2003. Vol. 65, Iss. 12; pg. 33

Transforming Safety: Beyond Behaviour and Towards Belief
David Broadbent, Keynote Address, New Zealand National Workplace Health & Safety Awards, May 2007

Trust Relations in High-Reliability Organisations
Sue Cox, Bethan Jones and David Collison, Risk Analysis, Vol.26, No.5, 2006

Understanding Gen Y http://www.learningtolearn.sa.edu.au/Colleagues/files/links/UnderstandingGenY.pdf.
Building a safety culture
Dan Petersen. ISHN. Troy: May 2005. Vol. 39, Iss. 5; pg. 62, 1 pgs

Building trust for safety
Robert Pater. Occupational Hazards. Cleveland: Feb 2005. Vol. 67, Iss. 2; pg. 64, 1 pgs

DuPont Recognizes Five Companies for Safety Leadership Focusing on Employees, Customers and Local Communities; Recipients Announced at 2007 DuPont Leaders Forum on Safety and Sustainability
Anonymous. PR Newswire. New York: Oct 18, 2007.

Evolving your safety culture...
David J Sarkus. ISHN. Troy: Sep 2007. Vol. 41, Iss. 9; pg. 40, 2 pgs

Influencing Safety Behavior of Senior Leadership in Safety, Health & Environment
Thomas Krause, Behavioral Science Technology, Inc 2003

Leadership & Safety Excellence: A positive culture drives performance
Dan Petersen. Professional Safety. Des Plaines: Oct 2004. Vol. 49, Iss. 10; pg. 28, 5 pgs

Maximising Safety Performance via Leadership Behaviour
David Broadbent, 28th World Congress of Psychology, BEIJING, CHINA, 11th - 14th Aug 2004

Overcoming executive resistance to active safety leadership
Robert Pater. Occupational Hazards. Cleveland: Aug 2005. Vol. 67, Iss. 8; pg. 17, 1 pgs

Safety Leadership at Its Best EC & M. Overland Park: Sep 2006. Vol. 105, Iss. 9; pg. 10

Safety Leadership
Thomas R Krause, Thomas Weekley. Professional Safety. Des Plaines: Nov 2005. Vol. 50, Iss. 11; pg. 34, 7 pgs

Safety Leadership
Rosa Antonia Carrillo. Professional Safety. Des Plaines: Jul 2005. Vol. 50, Iss. 7; pg. 31, 4 pgs

Safety leadership formula: Trust + credibility x competence = results
Rosa Antonia Carrillo. Professional Safety. Park Ridge: Mar 2002. Vol. 47, Iss. 3; pg. 41, 7 pgs

The Effective Safety Leader: Personality, Values & Emotional Commitment
Thomas R Krause. Occupational Hazards. Cleveland: Sep 2007. Vol. 69, Iss. 9; pg. 24, 1 pgs

10 leadership qualities for a total safety culture
E Scott Geller. Professional Safety. Park Ridge: May 2000. Vol. 45, Iss. 5; pg. 38, 4 pgs
This amounts to a cultural change that can only be achieved from the leadership group that needs to acquire effective leadership skills and competencies including team building, goal setting, planning, motivation, stress management, performance management, coaching, emotional intelligence and communication.
In conclusion, there is a consensus that leadership is crucial to successful safety performance. If improved safety performance is the goal, the challenge is to determine the means to achieve an improved safety performance. How do we measure success? Again, it depends on who you ask. According to behaviourist theories, workers' behaviour - how safely they act and what risk taking behaviours they engage in - is the appropriate place to measure, quantify and qualify safety.

Behaviour-based safety has had its successes but it seems that a simple behavioural approach fails to address the entire safety leadership environment under which businesses operate and to be effective, there is a need to also address the behaviour of senior, middle and first line management. “When leaders walk into the workplace they see the behaviour of their people but they also see reflected in them their own behaviour” quoted in Werngren et al 2005).

The opportunity to improve safety is through a participative approach based on vertically integrated initiatives and relying on sound team leadership, individual ownership and effective leadership skills and competencies. It requires a new breed of leaders that educate, listen, are effective communicators and emotionally intelligent, create a positive safety climate and build relationships and trust. The next generation of leaders will significantly contribute to improving safety not necessarily by targeting behaviour that directly contributes to safety, but by developing an environment that effectively supports safety.
A new generation of workers
As the baby boomers (born between 1945 and 1964) are retiring and generation X workers (born between 1965 and 1984) are opting out of long hours, generation Y (born from 1985 onwards) is moving into the workforce, 76 million of them in the US alone. They currently represent 28 per cent of the workforce.

They are characterised by a vastly different set of expectations from previous generations of workers and the reliance of compliance-based leadership and on Behaviour-based safety is increasingly unlikely to resonate with them. Not only do they have different expectations, but they communicate in ways foreign to older generations and their motivational triggers are also different. McCrindle (2002) suggested that when deciding to accept a job, salary ranked sixth in order of importance after training, management and leadership style, work flexibility, staff activities and non-financial rewards and effective communication.

As far as communication is concerned traditional chalk-and-talk doesn’t work as well. As McCrindle (2002) ponders, “there is no point in giving music to a friend on a cassette tape if they only have a CD player, or on a CD if they only use MP3”. This analogy describes the current situation in many industries including the Oil & Gas and Mining Industry, where behaviour-based strategies are in place to enforce compliance to SMS. As some research showed, no matter how important the message, if it is written on a piece of paper and pinned on a notice board most Gen Ys won’t read it.

Furthermore, rather than making decisions based on core values, Gen Ys live in a culture that encourages them to embrace community values and to reach consensus. In other words while organisations are trying to sell safety based on core values or organisational values in a particular language, the new up-and-coming workers believe in community values (team values and peer recognition).
Finally, there is consistent evidence that hard or “forcing” influence tactics such as Behaviour-Based Safety (BBS), based on reward and punishment, are counterproductive in engaging employees’ commitment and motivation.
The new generation of workers expect a more participative style of leadership that creates a positive safety climate based on delegation, trust and the building of good work relationships.

As leaders we must show employees that we believe in safety through our behaviour, not just our words. Leaders must create a culture where everyone is absolutely clear about safety expectations and the consequences of not meeting them.

What needs to change?

The challenges are at both ends of the leadership scale. At the top end executives need to set the vision for safety and define implementation strategies. The challenge here is to ensure that between the vision and its implementation no discrepancies are introduced. For instance if the intention is to implement a “participative” implementation strategy lets make sure that the end result is not a compliance -based system. Senior executives need to ensure that reward and recognition strategies and communication systems recognise the needs and expectations of the new generation of workers. It is also essential to understand the difference between managing and leading, especially at the senior level. If senior leadership gets it right, then the culture will change. If senior leadership doesn’t get it right then everything else is like swimming upstream. It’s a never-ending struggle. (Krause, 2003).

Unfortunately many safety professionals use the word “management” more than “leadership” (Geller S., 2000) and while good leaders invigorate the flow of interpersonal communication and inspire people to want to do something, managers hold people responsible for doing something (Krause1999). This has a direct implication on safety. 
Research shows that generation Y enters relationships if they deem that they are trustworthy.

The body of research showing that leadership is the key to safety is overwhelming and a more detailed review of the literature is not the purpose of this article. Nonetheless, if we entertain the idea that leadership is the main key to the success of safety initiatives a number of questions arise:  what kind of leadership style will be most effective in the 21st century? Will current leadership styles be as efficient in the future? Do we need a different set of leadership skills and competencies to meet the demands and expectations of the new generation of workers?

To help us clarify the challenges faced by organisations to improve safety records let’s try to paint a picture of the current environment and how we got there:
·   Safety records (LTI’s) have drastically improved over the past 20 years
· To achieve this organisations have developed comprehensive Safety Management Systems (SMS)
· The implementation of SMS was mainly based on reward and punishment strategies 
· More recently safety records have plateaued eventually showing an upwards trend
· The current system seems to have reached the limits of its effectiveness. This does not imply that SMS’s need to be entirely remodelled, but that the way people are lead to commit to SMS’s has to be reviewed
· The new generation of workers (Gen Y) have different priorities to the previous generations and has entirely new expectations of their work environment
· A new kind of leadership is needed to cater for a new work environment that requires a different set of leadership skills and competencies.
· This carries its own challenges as the workforce is shrinking, this lack of skilled workers means that people are promoted more rapidly on the basis of technical abilities and without leadership training
· When there is training the leadership skills learned do not take into account the new generation.
The skill shortage issue
There is a well acknowledged world-wide shortage of skilled workers and the trend, as reported by Executive Development Associates, is looking increasingly grim for the future. A study found that 70 percent of surveyed companies in the USA are experiencing moderate to major leadership shortages and expecting them to get worse. This trend is significantly amplified by the fact that on the one hand the demand for skilled workers is increasing and on the other hand the workforce is forever shrinking. The American Society of Training and Development is predicting that 76 million Americans will retire over the next two decades and only 46 million will be arriving to replace them.

As a result most organisations have put strategies in place to rapidly promote workers. Generally people are promoted over a very short period of time, mainly on the basis off their technical skills and often without any leadership training. As people are promoted up the hierarchy they find themselves further removed from the technical aspects of the work and in managerial and leadership positions for which they are ill-equipped. This has significant impact on business and often leads to loss of productivity, job dissatisfaction in team members and high turnover of personnel. Furthermore it has a considerable impact on safety as it was found that the “quality of leadership” is the single most important factor that distinguishes successful from unsuccessful safety improvement initiatives.
The answer to these questions, although multifaceted, is quite simple. There are historical reasons for the current state of affairs. Traditionally people have been asked to comply with SMS’s under reward and punishment strategies, but mentalities are rapidly changing and for the new generation of workers (generation Y) it is an increasingly ineffective strategy. Without ownership and willing participation very little if any buy-in will occur and such strategies often lead to dissatisfied employees who are easily able to find employment elsewhere in a booming resource sector.
Another aspect of the answer to these questions can be found in the saying that “familiarity breeds contempt”. Familiarity may breed contempt, but along the way it also breeds “taking for granted”. In other words safety for a repetitive task is gradually taken for granted and can eventually become unsafe as deviations are not anticipated or even seen. It seems that the more familiar and efficient with a task someone is, the more at risk the person becomes when managing safety on his/her own.

Part of the solution to this problem is to have someone else point out to you when you are unsafe. Who else is better placed to do that than your team mates? It is at the team level that the safety message is best kept alive and reinforced. It is at the team level that processes should be developed and implemented to change mindsets from compliance to commitment to safety. This in turn leads to ownership and active participation to ongoing and sustained safety initiatives. But how do we get there? It needs a change of mindset, a change of strategy, and ultimately a change of culture. And this can only be achieved by effective leadership from top to bottom, from the executives to the frontline supervisors.

To begin with let’s see what the experts say about leadership for safety in the workplace. An overwhelming amount of research points towards leadership as the key factor to better and long term sustainable safety in the workplace.
Research shows that leadership for safety is needed at all levels of organisations to ensure not only an alignment of values throughout organisations but also to ensure that leaders at the “coalface” have the necessary skills to practically translate organisational values into daily practical actions.
“Over the years organisations have used a variety of approaches, activities, programs and procedures to improve safety.  But without outstanding leadership, even the best programs will not succeed” (Carrillo 2002).

Leadership has been often defined as the ability to influence people to follow a particular course of action. This ability to influence people is an essential skill when implementing change and in particular (safety) cultural change.

It has been demonstrated that for any organisational initiative to be successful it needs to be driven and supported by the very top of the organisational leadership and implemented in a “top-down” manner all the way to the shopfloor. The development of sustainable and long lasting safety cultures is not exempt from this principle: “… The presence of health and safety professionals does not seem to guarantee high safety performance. Rather it is active, genuine and continuous management support that is the key to providing a safe, healthful working environment for employees” (Erikson, 1997). Furthermore, Krause (2003) notes that the single most important factor that distinguishes successful from unsuccessful safety improvement initiatives is the quality of leadership.

Safety has often been considered from a risk management perspective, but as Carrillo (2002) suggested: “Over the years organisations have used a variety of approaches, activities, programs and procedures to improve safety.  But without outstanding leadership, even the best programs will not succeed”. For instance it has been shown that a positive safety climate has a direct positive impact on safety and on safety participation (Cheyne et al, 1998; Neal et al, 2000) and that the safety climate is created by the influencing tactics of the leaders.
LEADERSHIP FOR SAFETY  © 2008

The concern for safety has evolved considerably over the years. What were acceptable standards a hundred years ago are certainly not acceptable anymore in most parts of the world.
On the other hand, we have all seen those appalling pictures of people wearing layers of foam as safety hats and plastic bags as welding masks. Nonetheless, it would be a challenge today to find any organisation that did not proclaim safety as a primary concern.

Business leaders, concerned staff and safety professionals view safety as essential to business success and prosperity. Furthermore there are growing expectations from the public as to how organisations should behave as corporate citizens;

“There is an increased public and government interest in the concepts of corporate social responsibility and future sustainability being addressed by organisations. An organisation demonstrating its commitment to the health and safety of its employees meets one element of social corporate behaviour….Good health and safety management, like good environmental management, is an indicator of business health. Poor OHS management, like poor environmental management can lead to costly liabilities” Worksafe Victoria, 2006).

Costs of injury or death in the workplace are enormous and more often than not impact on all levels of business including financial loss, productivity, staff turnover, loss of reputation etc.... Consequently organisations are constantly looking for ways to promote and improve employees’ safety. Some organisations, for instance, have taken steps to move safety from a ‘high priority’ to being a ‘core value’ of the organisation, arguing that priorities  change under external pressures while values do not. (Broadbent, 2007).
In the past two decades many safety-minded organisations have developed comprehensive safety management systems (SMS) and adopted either an OSHA compliance approach and/or a behaviour-based safety (BBS) program which focuses on the unsafe acts of employees and reward and punishment strategies.
In the same period the incidence of Lost Time Injury (LTI) has shown a steady decrease. However, more recent figures indicate a plateauing and possibly an increase of LTI’s and it appears that the current system is not as effective today as it was in the past in improving safety records.
What are the reasons for the diminishing performance of the current system and what can be done to remedy the situation?
The remaining part of this article will endeavour to highlight some of the key reasons for the need for change and will suggest some solutions to the problem.

The question is: what does leadership have to do with safety? Aren’t SMS’s and procedures enough to ensure the highest safety records? Isn’t safety an individual responsibility? The answer to the latter question must be in the affirmative since most safety campaign strategies have been developed to target individuals as recipients of the safety message. Surely, if everybody was truly responsible for his/her own safety, zero Lost Time Incident (LTI’s) would have already been achieved, wouldn’t it? Obviously it is not the case, but why? And why is leadership a key component for improving safety in the workplace?


A survey of a number of safety experts shows that the first need for safety improvement is safety leadership, not just safety management (Smith S., 2003). Furthermore, Krause (2003)  notes that by ‘managing’ companies make things happen. It’s a linear, practical function, by ‘leading’, organisations show employees why safety matters, why they should be motivated to get behind it and want to do it.

Successful safety leaders advocate a few basic principles such as ensuring goals are shared and clear, setting the example, creating trust by trusting people, viewing mistakes as learning opportunities rather than fixing blame, to establish credibility and gain support for safety initiatives. According to these leaders, technology and procedures are important to safety performance, but none of it works if people don’t believe that the leaders care and are sincere. Safety is largely about building relationships, it is about communication, it is about establishing a foundation of trust and credibility that motivates people to follow and enforce safety procedures because it is the right thing to do, not because it is mandated (Carrillo R 2002)

Increasingly, safety and safety improvement is perceived as contextual performance rather than task performance. That is, safety is promoted with participation and commitment in mind, helping co-workers to promote safety programs within the workplace, demonstrating initiatives, and putting effort into improving safety in the workplace. Practically this includes involving employees in the decision-making process and the alignment of employees values to organisational values. Accordingly, leadership styles that promote empowerment, delegation of responsibility for safety and encouraging commitment to the organisation have been significantly associated with better safety performance.
To create a positive safety climate and to satisfy a new generation of workers’ needs in the workplace a different set of leadership competencies is needed that promotes effective communication, coaching, effective management of performance and trust. In other words, safety management needs to move from a compliance-based approach to a participative/commitment-based approach.

Leadership for Safety