How To Build a Winning Safety Culture

Booga Gilbertson | Energy Industry Advisor and Board Director

Dr. Kevin Rindal | Vimocity

In today's conversation, we're absolutely thrilled about its strategies for optimizing your safety culture, and we've received some really good feedback from, people about, just wanting to learn, how they can continue to grow, their safety culture. And so we're so pleased, today to have Booga Gilbertson join us. Booga is someone that, we worked with, professionally when she was, the COO of the energy company, investor owned utility here in Seattle where we're based out of. And she was just fantastic to work with, and we've continued, to start, to get, continue to work with her. I'd like to give, some just housekeeping before we jump in and before I formally, introduce Bugha. So first of all, there are a couple of starter questions here that I thought that, most of you may want to, be able to just at least start to think about, as we prepare for this conversation.

So these are questions that we received from, different folks who have attended the other webinars who are interested about this topic.

And so these are just things that you can think about. And as we dive into this, Google will also be covering, some of these, answers and strategies, but, would love you to think about that.

Number two is that, you can drop questions into the chat. And so we have, Deb Mayer from the team here, and she's gonna be, overseeing the chat. And so if you, just leave some questions there, we'll do our best to try to to make sure we answer those. This is gonna be a shorter format. We're gonna wrap up within thirty minutes. And so if we don't get to your questions, we'll have some follow-up resources, and we'll make sure, I I think that this might actually turn into a part two conversation, based on the conversation that we anticipate.

At the very end of this presentation, we also are gonna have, some follow-up resources, and you'll see that there's some books that, Buge has recommended, that have really helped shape her as a leader, within safety. And so, you can look forward to seeing that, but then also expect to receive an email from our team, to provide you some additional feedback. So we're at eleven o two. I I wanna make sure that we are efficient with our time inside. I'd like to, introduce Buga. I'm gonna leave most of the, introduction up to to her because she is such a great storyteller, and so she's gonna weave her experience into this. Bugha, is just an experienced leader from an operational perspective.

Chapter

Introducing Booga Gilbertson

And, the thing that I respected so much about her is just the way that she was so boots on the ground with, the frontline employees and just led by example in every way, as a servant leader. So, Bugha, we're so grateful to have you here. I'm gonna turn it over to you, and then we'll we'll dive into, the conversation.

Great. Thank you, Kevin. This is a topic I'm I'm I'm passionate about, and I've grappled with many of the questions that we'll be covering at different points in my career. And and I still do today as I I work with with different companies, and it's really frankly great to see such broad participation in in this, in this webcast.

Some names I recognize for sure and then a lot of, other participants as well. I think it's just great. I thought I'd just give a little bit more of my background with respect to our topic. So first off, for perspective purposes, I come at all of this from a business perspective.

I'm not a safety professional by training, but I have worked in and around safety in some capacity for most of my career. And I really have come to view safety as a completely integral part of a broader business wide strategy.

In terms of actual experience, it it it really spans working in the field and in manufacturing as a as a technical resource, often alongside skilled craft. I was a VOTEC instructor for a while, and and I've had a variety of operating and and corporate leadership positions. Had the pleasure of being COO for several years at a utility company. And the last few years, I've currently been an adviser to large and small companies who are working in energy and infrastructure.

So if I kind of take all those experiences, they really provided me different exposure and different perspectives around safety.

The other thing it's provided me as I think about the composite of everything over time is there's two realizations I've had that really have shaped how I view safety culture. And those two are for first one is communication or the flow of communication.

And what I'm really getting at there is bringing awareness to risk through that flow of communication. And the second one is is using data to build alignment and buy in. And it's not so much about the number, but it's really about the conversation that is enabled by those numbers. So I'll I'll weave that in kind of as we work through the discussion.

First, a little bit more on this importance of the flow of communication and bringing awareness to risk. That really comes from being asked the question over a number of years. I'm still asked the question. I ask the question of others because it's a great question, and that question is, what keeps you up at night?

You know? And that's really kind of getting to the heart of risk. And over the years, and this is still my answer most often when it comes to safety, what keeps me up at night is the things that I don't know about. Because if if we can't effectively be aware of risks, we can't address things without that flow of communication.

And so and so you might go, well, like, this is safety. Why would there be bad flow of communication or not free flowing communication? And and, you know, I think you and the participants and myself, there there are a number of reasons, but two that I see pretty frequently are somebody in the past may have brought up a safety issue and they felt not listened to, or they felt there was inadequate follow through, or there was follow through, but they disagreed with the follow through.

Another reason I typically see is is maybe it's somebody who's uncomfortable or embarrassed to bring something up. They might be new to a situation, or they don't know the norms and expectations.

I found that it's easier for people to bring up things around process safety.

But when we look at other elements of safety, of course, you have process safety, worker safety, you you know, mental health, wellness, all these things. But when it comes to something like more personal, like maybe mental health that's affecting safety, that becomes more difficult to bring up. And so creating different mechanisms, a comfort level, expectations, and norms about how this communication is supposed to flow. How to bring this awareness to risk is hugely important. And my experience is that leadership plays a very large role in modeling what that communication and bringing that awareness to risk should look like. So my other realization, my second one is about the power of data to help drive alignment and buy in, and I'll talk more about that, later in the conversation. So that's a little bit of background on me.

Thank you so much, Buge. That was fantastic. I was writing down a few notes, and, really, those feed right into this next portion of, of this webinar, which relates to the first question that was posed or what are the ingredients of building a great safety culture? And as you mentioned, communication, culture, they go hand in hand. You have to have that trust, at all different levels of the organization to, be able to have effective communication and and ensure that you're measuring what matters. So question, what are the ingredients in building a great safety culture?

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Ingredients of Building a Great Safety Culture

Yeah. That's a that's a great question. I really wanna recognize too that, you know, companies go through cycles in their safety culture. You know, there's times when it's, in a building phase.

There's times when it's in a, you know, a mature and working really well phase, and people go through cycles. And so while I don't think there's one recipe that consistently is a winner, in my experience working with and learning from different companies, different people, different challenging situations, I have found some common elements that consistently do make a positive difference in safety culture, and and those are versus visible leadership. Second is employee engagement and connectedness, and the third is resources so you can get stuff done. And and I'll say a little bit more about each of these.

First off, visible leadership, so hugely important. I mean, leadership sets the tone for what's important to the organization. They convey what's important by what they say, what they do, and what they spend their attention and time on.

It's no mistake that a lot of leadership and management material talks about the importance of visible leadership, not just in safety, but in many different context.

When it comes to building safety culture, visible leadership, and my experience, is really about really being out there engaging.

It's about communicating, role modeling, kind of a clear, consistent vision with expectations that every single person, no matter where they are, can relate to that vision. And it's about inspiring the right safety outcomes.

You know, an example I like to point to is many people are familiar with the DuPont organization. They're really very well known for their work in in safety culture, and they created what is called visible felt leadership. And the expectations for leaders at DuPont is that they engage with employees and they emphasize, and I love the words that DuPont uses, an unwavering and continuous improvement safety culture. And so, you know, those leaders are out there communicating.

They're communicating expectations and reinforcing empowerment around safety. So that's number one. Number two is kind of the employee connectedness and engagement. And so this is the employee side of the visible leadership.

This is about employees having meaningful involvement, meaning they can see what's important to them in the safety culture and the safety program. They've got buy in, and I think really a key indicator is that they have ownership of the safety outcomes that affect them personally and their work. I will also include in into this, which which goes back to one of my realizations, this is about employees being well equipped to communicate about safety, to bring that awareness to risk. And the last one here is resources.

We gotta have resources to enable leaders and employees to realize these safety outcomes. And this is your safety program structure, the policies, the expectations, the governance, and and just the training to get things done. But we kind of kinda take these three things in total that I've talked about that are part of part of what I found works, if there's one takeaway, it would be that visible leadership, for me. So there there's there's that.

Thank you so much, Guga. And, yeah, I think that all of us would agree when we've been around, really effective leaders, these are three components that are just you can you can feel it when a when a leader is on the ground with the employees and, focused on connecting and listening, it has such an impact. So thank you so much for that.

Question two.

A lot of people have approached us asking questions about how do I get buy in, at all levels within the organization.

And, you know, it may be with senior leaders. It may be with, you know, middle management or, like, people who are directing the people who are the boots on the ground employees,

but then also still winning the hearts and minds of the employees and really

Chapter

Navigating Buy-In with Different Groups

communicating with them that you're their champion as well. So I'd love to hear, your perspective on what drives safety buying at each level of an organization.

Yeah. So this is a this is a this is a great question. I'm not surprised you get it all the time. I think navigating buy in really has to do with communication and engagement that's tailored to to different groups.

That said, one of the things that I found resonates for for most most groups and most levels, and it really drives buy in and alignment and transparency, is a top level dashboard or score scorecard with KPIs that are reflective of a company's desired safety outcomes. And this dashboard is visible by all groups. So so what's on the on the screen here is sort of sort of the chart bogus chart of how I see buy in and what my experience has been in in the past. And so we're on the first column there, dashboard.

One of the things, you know, about a a a dashboard, and this gets back to one of my realizations about data. Data just does a great job of telling a consistent story to all audiences. It has a depersonalized way of fostering those conversations that that get people on the same page.

Several years ago, I studied communication with a guy by the name of Michael Grinder, and he specialized in how the brain processes verbal and visual information. One of the classes that I took was titled how to not get shot, as in don't shoot the messenger. And the theory in that class was that the information more of the information processing part of the brain is used when it's presented with visual and quantifiable information like you would see in a dashboard.

Whereas for verbal information, more of the emotional centers of the brain are activated. So he used to say that if you want a true, you know, two way dialogue, first show and and then talk. So that theory always stuck with me about dashboards.

Now I know organizations, you know, they have some type of top level dashboard that includes safety metrics, but I'm gonna offer up it's that some of the value of that document might be being left on the table if it's just used as a reporting document.

I have found that it's actually a very powerful alignment and buy in document and tool. Yes. It's important to have the numbers on the dashboard and know where they come from, but what's much more useful, and this is the power of the dashboard, is that those numbers unlock a conversation that you can walk right in the door of that conversation about risks, trends, opportunities, and strategies.

So now, Kevin, you you know, people this is where people then go, what should be on my dashboard? And, and, you know, I know you said that's a question you get to. And and I tell you, I I do work with strategic level dashboards, and my real answer to this is it just depends. It depends on how mature the safety program is, how big the organization is, how complex the safety processes are, and so it it it does depend. That said, there are some things that are typically on a dashboard. One is those kind of traditional safety metrics that are lagging indicators, and, you know, they they have their drawbacks, but in fact, they're incredibly useful because they're benchmarkable and they do provide insight.

Leading indicators.

When I think of leading indicators and a lot of people will have different definitions.

But when I think of leading indicators, this is where an organization has decided intentionally that they are gonna lower that threshold of acceptable risk on something. And so they create a program around it, and there might be some some milestones and some observations, and those become the leading indicators.

Two other things I typically see is third party safety KPIs to keep visibility to those and then some element of business performance or ROI.

So that's the dashboard. If we go to the next column, something that draws buy in for all groups is visible leadership, which we just talked about. And I'm gonna kinda talk about some of these different groups and and the different different rows there, and it's really about understanding their priorities and speaking their language. I'm gonna give, give a plug here and a maybe a pro tip.

And this is that I really strongly suggest that whoever is the person navigating buy in with all the different groups is that that person also has a decent working knowledge of the entire business strategy, not just one piece, but the entire business strategy and generally how the business is performing. You don't have to be an expert, but just well well aware of what's going on. And and this is because if you can demonstrate you're a good knowledgeable business partner in helping these different groups kind of calibrate the benefits, risk, trade offs of of all the stuff they're they're thinking about, including safety, that will go a long way to building rapport and navigating that buy in.

So that's kinda my pro tip. Now talk about let's just kind of pick off the top row. Senior leaders, there's a couple different things here that my experience is senior leaders need for for navigating the buy in. So these are your senior executives to kind of your oversight board, however that is in your organization.

These are the folks that are really weighing the needs, the risk, the benefits, the trade offs, the resources broadly across the whole organization, and it is a darn tough job. So in addition to what we already talked about, this group really wants to understand how the safety outcomes are gonna impact the business outcomes. This is where some of your ROI elements come in. They are also really interested in benchmarking information, like how does our organization compare in its performance and its practices, so senior leaders.

Next, kind of going down, next level down to to management. So in the way I'm thinking about it here, this is like supervisor to senior manager. These are the people who are overseeing, like, the work of the business that gets done day in, day out. They're super busy. They're knocking it out of the park, making sure that all the right things happen for the organization. These people are busy, and one of the things they want is they want relevance. They wanna be supported.

They want a partner, and they want a resource who's gonna bring relevant solutions, relevant safety solutions that are gonna resonate with their department and that are gonna be sensitive to all the other stuff that they're trying to balance. So, for example, they wouldn't love, some element that has them filling out three new forms that doesn't, you know, add a whole lot of value that's relevant to them. I mean, this management, I found they're interested in these other things, but relevant partner enablement support.

Now I'm gonna kinda go to the employee. I'm gonna double down on visible leadership and how important that is to to the employee.

But employees really want for buying. They have to, like, show me. Show me that I've got relevant resources, training tools that help me do my job here today. Yeah. I care about the department, but I really need to do my job well. So that's what I found in buying buy in. If I kinda take this whole sort of messy chart and focus on one thing, one takeaway, it would be the power of that dashboard to enable a, a good conversation that builds alignment and where you can get to the conversations that you need to have that are unlocked by those numbers that are in the dashboard.

Thank you so much, Buge. That was fantastic. So many good takeaways, from this, especially just the thought process of how to get that buy in at each level and then measure what matters as well. You know, make sure that the things that we are measuring are driving the results and the behaviors that we're really trying to, to drive from from that perspective. So thank you so much. There's been so much good information

Chapter

Next Steps and Actionable Strategies

here. I think that the next step now would just be to bring it all together and maybe walk through some actionable steps that people can put into practice, right away from from this conversation.

Yeah. It's so important because, like, because the rubber needs to hit the road. Right? And and the things I'm going to serve up here, don't do all these.

These might give you some ideas or give you ideas of other things that you wanna do. These are things I have done and that I have found to be effective. They are geared towards things that an individual can do, and you have complete control over the timing and the resources. They're short duration.

They're small bite sized pieces. And if you take several of them, you know, they're going to inform and give you insights about broader directions and broader things you wanna do as you continue to mature and develop the safety culture and your safety programs.

So these are first one's gonna be increase increase leadership visibility. The second one's gonna be doing an assessment, which is gonna re going to also include some thought questions, and the third one is some purpose follow through. So I'm gonna first talk about increasing visible leadership. I already spent quite a bit of time talking about why that's important, but I just wanna spend some time talking about what I have seen that look like. Like, what does it practically look like? This could look like increasing engagement at safety meetings and events, doing a walk around, doing a site visit.

But the key is as the leaders out there is to engage on something that's relevant and relatable and meaningful to to the group that they're talking with. So talking about, like, way to go team and getting your first aid cards up to date, that's not gonna cut it. You know, we it's so some intel gathering ahead of time to know what's meaningful to that group would be just really awesome.

Another idea is if you're a person who already has a lot of visibility would be to help another leader who doesn't actually get out a lot or have visibility. Really encourage them and invite them to increase their visibility, help give them something to engage in. So that that would be the increase visible leadership piece and some ideas around that.

The the next one is performing a mini assessment. And so this is a miniature self assessment that you do. It's not not hire a third party. You do this. And some simple review and reflection, and I'm talking easy, not big involved project, really can give you some insight on where things are. If you choose to do this, you could look at one or two things that I'll talk about here.

First thing I'd look at is the dashboard. Is that dashboard, is it relevant? Is it easy to understand? Is it useful?

Is it used? And is it driving the right conversations that you want in the direction of the safety culture? So dashboard, I'd look at. Second thing I I would look at would be what I'm calling safety artifacts.

Artifacts are those those documents. It's your program document.

Dashboard?

Another thing I'd look at is is I added some reflection questions. We had two of them in the front as we just started our discussion. And then when we click through the slide, you'll see you'll see two more that I've added, and you'll you'll get these slides so you can you can have those. So those reflections questions can give you some some insight, to your safety culture and your safety program.

So now after you've looked at a couple of things, you're gonna develop your top three to five different different insights, priorities, and observations that that you wanna think about. If you wanna have an amazing conversation, take those three to five observations and get a peer leader, calibrate them with a peer leader, and say, look. I've done this kind of thought process on our safety program. I've got three observations.

I'd love to run them by you and get your feedback. Not only do you get their insight, you also have increased their engagement.

So last step here is kind of then purposeful follow through. This is where you decide something, commit to it, and schedule it. Here's a pro tip. Keep it simple. Think about the impact and the feasibility of getting it done, the time you have to get it done. It is much better to do several small things than something that you can't can't complete.

Next, you're gonna do something. Let's just say you you you do a site visit. Track the impact that it had to. Track the impact that it had on, it did have the impact that you want. Make adjustments.

Then do several of those. Intentionally develop the plan for your next steps, which I would suggest would include something like incorporating these into your own personal leadership practice for the next month, two months, three months, and develop a group of insights, see how it goes, and let that inform the direction that you wanna take and drive your safety program and your safety, safety culture next steps.

Chapter

Key Takeaway: Increasing Visible Leadership

If now I take all of that page and focus on one thing and say one takeaway, my go to, probably no surprises, increasing visible, leadership.

And so then, you know, Kevin, I know that we had three questions. I just wanted to point out some resources I've found helpful in the past. I will say the bottom two that are on the left, so that safety culture and that leadership, consumer warning, these are heavy duty reference text books. The other ones are ones that you can kinda pick up and and pick a pick up a a relevant chapter. The other two are nerd fest, worthy. And, then I think we've got our, contact information, and and there you those are my those are my thoughts on these questions, but we could talk about it all day.

Thank you so much. And, Buge, that was so helpful to just get some real life examples of how to implement that and how to calibrate especially because we're oftentimes not gonna get it right the very first time, and so you you do have to, to recalibrate. And I think going back to the visible leadership, that's how that calibration happens as well because you're getting real time feedback from all the different levels of, stakeholders within the organization, and that can really help. So thank you so much.

We did get a question here, and I know we just have couple minutes left. But what are some tactics that you've seen to be successful for building trust with employees around safety in particular? Because, you know, there this is a a topic really related to safety, and safety can be a hot button issue at, at times. So I'd love to hear, some more feedback from you in terms of tactics that you found to be successful for building trust, especially with the employees.

Yeah.

So, a a lot of times, I find that trust can be broken if they felt a safety issue, like, wasn't handled well. Or sometime, the rumor mill indicates that a safety issue wasn't handled well, but some tactics that I've seen work well. This is why increasing visible leadership is one of my go tos. There is nothing like being out there on the ground and exposing as a leader.

Wherever you are in the leadership ranks, exposing yourself to a true conversation about safety on something meaningful. And that's not gonna happen in one conversation. It's not gonna happen in a month. It's not probably gonna happen in a year that trust starts to get built. But over time, if leaders consistently can increase their their, visible leadership and build the flow to bring awareness to risk and make it okay to talk about topics and have a complete discussion no matter if there's agreement or disagreement.

Over time, that is what I've found is, building trust, but it but it does take time and and transparency.

Great question.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Booga.

Chapter

Closing and Follow-Up

Well, when we were, preparing for this webinar, some of the feedback that we've received from a couple of our other webinars that we've, run was that, fitting it into a thirty minute time slot fit really well for people's schedules because we know that most of you are back to back with meetings. And so, we are gonna end today at, twenty eight after the hour, and there are several other questions that came through. I think what we'll probably end up doing is doing a follow-up, webinar with Booga so that we can continue this conversation. It was it was very, excellent. And, Bugha, we're so grateful for your time and for the knowledge that you shared with us today. You can see our contact information here on the screen. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions.

We are gonna make the follow-up resources and the guides available. And so this entire slide deck will be, emailing out along with, some additional resources, and so you can look for those in your inbox. But once again, we're so grateful, for you joining today and continuing these conversations about how as leaders, within, this industry, especially around safety, we can continue to, optimize the way that we lead, influence, and, drive success within our organization. So thank you once again, Booga. We really appreciate your time.

My pleasure, and I'll be happy to to, work with you on following up on any of the, other questions that you got because I know we didn't get to all of them. Thanks so much, everyone.

Great. Thanks so much. Have a great day.