‘Selling’ safety to leadership

Safety and health professionals know that to accomplish their goal of protecting workers, they need the support of senior leadership.

That support can come in the form of actively backing safety training efforts, communicating about the benefits of safety, budgetary support and more. But how can safety pros secure it? .

We asked four experts about how they “sell” safety to upper management and what advice they have for other safety pros. Here’s what they had to say.

How do you define “selling safety”?

Patrick Karol, president of Karol Safety Consulting: I go back to a quote from Dale Carnegie in his book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” He wrote, “Selling is about influencing somebody to do something you want them to do.” The only way to do that is find out what they want and show them how to get it. If we want to sell safety, we’ve got to show them how safety can fulfill that need, whether it’s a financial need, a human resources need, an operations need, a legal need. Whatever that may be, you’ve got to tie safety to it.

Brian Bailey, director of safety at Tradepoint Atlantic: It’s demonstrating the value and the necessity of your safety culture, your safety practices in a way that really resonates. It’s helping folks see that the tangible benefits of safety are things like reduced injuries, higher morale, better productivity. It’s ensuring that safety isn’t just viewed as an extra cost but as a critical investment.

Sharli Adair, senior manager of workplace safety compliance and infection control for the City of Memphis (TN): “Selling,” for me, is a word that I would caution against using. What I try to do is help people embrace the culture more so than selling it. I would say “collaboration” or “partnership.”

Nathan Benson, director of occupational safety, risk management and disability services for Chatham County, GA: “Selling safety,” to me, means inspiring others with our passion as safety professionals to include safety in all the decision-making processes. You’ve got to communicate your passion to get others to believe in it.

How closely is selling safety tied to an organization’s culture?

Adair: What we’ve done is we’ve branded our safety division. When you see us walking around, the uniform is a shirt that says, “Safety is the way we live.” That’s how we do it. It should be something that we are living every day. It should be a way of operations, a way of life, a way of thinking. It should be culture driven. It has become part of our DNA.

Bailey: You could say that they go hand in hand. If a strong safety culture creates an environment where safety becomes a shared value, we want that to be one of the values. Typically, if you have managers, directors or executive leaders who were at one point on the front lines, managing frontline employees, they can harken back to some incident that has influenced their opinion on why safety is important. Selling it to them is very easy.

Benson: I don’t think they can exist independently because a safety culture changes over time. You’ve got different operational events. You’ve got staff retiring. You’ve got younger workforces coming in. So, you’ve always got to be able to sell that safety message to keep that change moving in a positive direction.

When needing management buy-in, we often think about money for a safety budget, support for taking workers off the line for training or actively backing safety efforts. How else can leaders show support?

Karol: Management support can be something as little as a communication that goes to employees. I used to give a little cheat sheet to executives so, when they went out to a site, they’d have something to talk about. I would get their calendars. If they were going to a location that has an exemplary safety history, then I want them to take a gift card or something to thank workers for their efforts. Communication and recognition are two big things that they can do to support us.

Bailey: If you see the boss doing it, you’ll want to also do that. It does build trust between employees and leadership and improves morale. Employees feel that their well-being becomes a priority. That kind of stuff does things beyond safety, too. It creates a more engaged workforce. It heightens employee satisfaction.

Benson: We call it MBWA, which is “management by walking around.” When your safety leaders and your executive leadership team are wearing the hard hats, wearing the safety gear, they’re reinforcing those safety policies. But they’re also meeting employees where they are.

What methods do you recommend for selling safety to leaders?

Karol: The three things I look at really quick: the metrics, the recognition and how they react to incidents. If they have a scorecard and they’re measuring a location based on some financial metrics and operational performance metrics, show them how a safety metric can fit into their scorecard. Now you’re integrating safety into the organizational culture.

Adair: You’re going to still have people who don’t get it, or you’re going to have to go the extra mile. For those people, I live what I’m training them on and teaching, along with my team. Living what you preach is essential for a strong safety program.

Bailey: There are two ways to do it. You can frame it in the lens of a safety culture, or you can also try to frame it in words or language that aligns with their priorities: risk management, cost saving, regulatory compliance, keeping us out of legal trouble. I recommend focusing on how safety does support the broader goals, whether that’s being more efficient or enhancing productivity.

How can a safety pro use storytelling to sell safety?

Karol: Storytelling is a little-utilized, low-cost, high-impact tool. The mistake we often make is we come armed with all these figures and numbers. They’re not inherently helpful unless we tell the story behind it. I did that for a business president who didn’t see the value in safety. He was OK with his injury rate of just below 10. I got invited to his quarterly managers meeting. With a rate of almost 10, that meant in this group there were about five or six people who would be injured if that were applied to them. I had index cards, and I wrote a person’s first name, the description of an injury and the cost. I put that under about every fifth seat, under their notepad. When I got ready to speak, I said, “Flip your notepad over and read it.” About five people stood up and read, “Jill was injured when she slipped and broke her elbow” or “Joe was picking up a 40-pound bag of flour and hurt his back.” I said, “That is the equivalent of your rate today.” If you can tell an emotional story, it’s more likely to drive behaviors.

Adair: I’ve often taken difficult situations and used our staff to act it out. Role-playing and acting it out is an art, and it’s very helpful in the workplace.

Benson: Storytelling makes it personal. When you or one of their co-workers can share a personal story about a time that maybe they had an injury or watched someone get injured, that could be a game changer.

Who are some allies that safety pros can look to to help gain support?

Karol: One of my biggest success stories is with a vice president of HR, who was charged with improving employee engagement scores. I said, “Here’s how safety can help you. We can do safety training for supervisors. We can do a safety recognition program. We can build a safety committee.” All of those are engagement opportunities. She put a program together, and a lot of the pieces were safety related. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a safety professional say, “I’m just a one-man show. All I can do is put out fires.” Well, you need to go find some allies. I guarantee you they’re out there. My first boss and mentor in safety taught our department the ABC rule: allies build careers.

Bailey: Maintenance, operations and facilities teams can be excellent partners. They have a vested interest in the impact of safety on productivity and keeping the equipment running and keeping folks safe. Any time you can build a cross-functional relationship and create a network of safety advocates in your own company, it’s good.

Benson: Your frontline supervisors. They’re solving problems all day long. The more you can support the frontline supervisors and the frontline teams, the more support you’ll have.

Adair: Leadership. When people see leaders doing the right thing, it’s like a pastor at a church. If the pastor does it, everybody is doing it. To see leaders engaging and understanding safety, you’ve got a win-win situation.