Ep.7 What is the relationship between safety leadership beliefs and practices?
Dec 29, 2019
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Dive into the intriguing connection between safety leadership beliefs and practices. Discover how perceptions impact behaviors in workplace safety. The challenges of aligning research questions with effective survey design are discussed. Insights from a large survey of offshore managers reveal gaps between beliefs and real-world applications. The role of leadership styles in shaping safety culture is examined, emphasizing the importance of communication and motivation in enhancing workplace safety.
The podcast emphasizes that while leadership beliefs are essential for workplace safety, real-world actions often contradict these beliefs due to organizational constraints.
Survey-based studies are valuable for understanding safety leadership dynamics, yet they face challenges in accurately capturing true behaviors and attitudes of respondents.
Despite recognizing best practices in safety management, leaders struggle to implement these effectively, highlighting a significant gap between theoretical understanding and practical application.
Deep dives
The Impact of Leadership Beliefs on Practices
Leadership is widely regarded as crucial in various safety theories, yet the connection between leadership beliefs and actual practices remains complex. The discussion highlights that theories assume a strong relationship where changing beliefs should lead to behavioral changes in safety. However, real-world examples suggest that leaders may often perform actions contrary to their beliefs due to structural limitations or external pressures within their organizations. This raises questions about the reliability of the assumption that beliefs directly influence behaviors in safety management.
Survey Methodology in Safety Research
The podcast delves into the significance of survey-based studies in understanding leadership dynamics within safety contexts. Surveys are favored due to their cost-effectiveness and ability to gather data from a larger, more diverse group without extensive resources. However, the presenters emphasize the challenges of accurately gauging behavior and attitudes purely through surveys, as responses reflect what individuals are willing to communicate rather than their true behaviors. Design choices in surveys become critical, determining the quality and relevance of the data collected about leadership beliefs.
Findings on Leadership Style and Safety Approaches
The research focused on offshore installation managers revealed that experience does not consistently translate to more effective leadership styles or better safety attitudes. Contrary to expectations, veterans in leadership roles did not demonstrate a more participative style nor did they attribute safety issues to broader organizational factors. Most leaders identified personal negligence and non-compliance as common accident causes, indicating a disconnect between their beliefs about safety practices and actual leadership behavior. This observation underscores the complexity of leadership dynamics in safety environments where theory and practice may not align.
Open Responses Yield Insights into Leadership Practices
The analysis uncovered that while leaders are aware of best practices in safety management, translating these into their daily operations is a challenge. Key thematic areas emerged from their open responses, including the need for visible leadership, strong relationships, workforce involvement, and proactive management. Interestingly, leaders recognized these critical factors but often failed to implement them, revealing a gap between their articulated beliefs and their actual practices. These open-ended responses provided valuable insights into how leaders perceive their roles and the challenges they face in fostering a safe workplace.
Identifying Safety Culture and Improvement Needs
The study pinpointed several critical areas for improvement within safety practices based on G200 respondents' feedback. They emphasized the need for greater worker involvement, enhanced competency, standardized safety culture, and streamlined procedures across the industry. This reflects a broader sentiment among leaders who felt overwhelmed by excessive safety initiatives and procedural demands, stifling their effectiveness. Thus, the findings call for a reassessment of safety management systems to facilitate better practices that align with leaders' and employees' shared understanding of effective safety culture.
Tune in to hear us discuss the paper Site Managers and Safety Leadership in the Offshore Gas and Oil Industry and its survey’s findings.
Topics:
Leadership is something everyone agrees is key to workplace safety.
The paper we reference is Site Managers and Safety Leadership in the Offshore Gas and Oil Industry.
Matching the research question to a survey is quite difficult.
This research paper had a uniquely large sample size.
Understanding what people think good leadership and safety look like.
The methods by which the survey was produced and why they worked.
The results of the massive survey.
Quotes:
“If we think about the effort it would take now to try to actually get thirty-six organizations to, at the same time, want to do the same research project, may be near-on impossible.”
“I don’t think there is any particular reason to believe that people’s attribution of accidents changes with experience and leadership style.”
“Once we try to fix problems with safety by putting in systems and procedures...it’s not a case of being able to just easily build back in good leadership…”
