SafetyInsights.org

This paper developed a leadership engagement assessment scorecard, aiming to gauge the quality of the interaction.

Providing background:

·       Safety performance has “long been measured using lagging indicators such as total recordable incident rate (TRIR) that involve counting the number of injuries”

·       However, “recent research has shown that these metrics suffer from severe limitations in terms of validity, reliability and relevance”

·       Recordable injuries are underreported, and even when accounting for millions of worker hours “changes in TRIR are almost never predictive because the occurrence of injuries is rare, and the timing of an injury is almost entirely random”

·       Leading indicators have become more popular, but are usually measured by the frequency of an activity and not the quality

·       But, “measuring only the quantity of safety activities may promote a checking-the-box mentality to meet quotas and targets”

·       Leadership engagements is when leaders “emotionally connect with employees to positively influence their commitment, motivation and well-being within the work environment”

·       Productive and meaningful leadership engagements may improve employee engagement levels and increase commitment to the organisation’s mission

·       Moreover, “Conversations with employees are an avenue for leaders to communicate key values that reinforce the organization’s culture”, and can positively influence employee emotional, behavioural and social status; thereby improving work performance

·       Most validated leadership performance survey tools are said to be designed to evaluate the personal qualities of a leader and their style, “rather than the quality of an engagement between the leader and employees”

These questions were evaluated in the study:

1. What are the characteristics of a high-quality leadership engagement?

2. What is the relative importance of these characteristics?

3. What is the reliability of the scorecard to assess the quality of leadership engagement

Results

The scorecard is below:

Some guiding principles are provided by the authors. Leaders should “consider these guiding principles to have a natural conversation that hits the right essential features of a high-quality leadership engagement”.

These are:

1. Be genuine and understanding: the engagement should be used for listening and learning from employees to better understand how they can be better supported

2. Demonstrate care: Leaders should be interested to get to know employees and seek to understand their personal and professional motivations and priorities

3. Show humility: It’s said that in many cases, leaders aren’t ‘safety experts’, and “nor are they typically experts in different crafts found on site”. Hence, leaders should ask questions to learn about work and acknowledge the skills and efforts of workers to successfully complete work

4. Emphasize that safety is a priority: Engagements provide an opportunity for leaders and employees to build trust and share ideas/concerns; this also allows a leader the opportunity to “verbalize the importance of safety over production targets”

5. Focus on what matters most: “Instead of reviewing the site for potential violations, the leader should ask questions to understand the hazards and conditions in the work environment”. Leaders can ask how employees plan to protect themselves and what the company can provide to make their jobs safer (or work easier)

6. Show appreciation and solicit feedback: Leaders should ask for feedback and use active-listening skills.

In summarising their scorecard, they note that “the scorecard and associated guidance have been developed to provide leaders with the tools for excellent engagements”.

Further work is needed to subsequently test the scorecard.

Ref: Bhandari, S., Hallowell, M., Scheve, C., Upton, J., Alruqi, W. M., & Quashne, M. (2022). Assessing the Quality of Safety-Focused Leadership Engagements. Professional Safety, 67(01), 22-28.

Study link: https://aeasseincludes.assp.org/professionalsafety/pastissues/067/01/F1Bhandari_0122.pdf

My site with more reviews: https://safety177496371.wordpress.com

LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/assessing-quality-safety-focused-leadership-ben-hutchinson-48dqc