Most organisations have policies, metrics, and values around the safety of their employees and people conducting a business or undertaking on their sites.
How well these are communicated, interpreted, and enacted in the physical workspace can be heavily influenced by the leadership of the respective teams.
If you reflect upon where most of the activity occurs and the potential danger in the organisation is, you will likely determine it is at the frontline.
Many frontline leaders are promoted into the roles due to their technical skill sets and knowledge of the department, however, the minute they are promoted, the skill set required to be effective in their new role changes.
They are now required to coach, teach, influence, set direction, foster teamwork, and most importantly to ensure their teams make the right choices when faced with decisions.
Accidents can occur when the wrong choices have been made, whether it is by creating an unsafe work environment, choosing to do something that in hindsight should not have been done, or not taking time to focus correctly.
A critical element of good leadership around safety is having what has been coined by others as the “safety gene”.
How do you get the safety gene you may be thinking?
Well-improved safety is an outcome of looking after the individuals in your team. Good leadership is about caring for your people, so if you do truly care about them, then you care about their safety and the safety of others.
As you develop your leadership skills you automatically strengthen and increase your safety genes and you will see artefacts of your behaviours appearing in the workplace and in how you act and lead others.
So, when selecting frontline leaders make sure you find ways to develop their leadership capability and choose those with the traits, skills, and characteristics that when viewed through the lens of their frontline employees, they would see as beneficial.
This would increase the chances of the frontline employees responding favourably to their new leader and therefore less chance of resistance and an increased likelihood of teamwork and peer support.
Not least of all look for that safety gene and how they care about people in their environment.
John Smith; National Operations Manager
