… Bajirao B. Dethe, Sr. Safety Professional
Introduction : Success of any organization depends on human relation between –Management executives &work force at operative level. A worker may not apply his knowledge / ability / effort to Work safely as he lacks in motivation or he is de-motivated by erratic judgement. Motivation is the force that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. It is what causes us to take action. Motivate for safety & health by understanding human behaviour Knowing why people do thing they intend to do.
- Every person as many urges/ needs directed to achieve certain goal
- These needs emerge from driving force or impulse within individual
- They are called motivational force or motives
Expecting others to do the expected things is a motivation. Motivation refers to an internal state of a person that activates him and gives direction to his thoughts. If you want to build Safety Culture in the organization, Motivation is an important tool which can be used to build Safety Culture.
The subject “motivation” is by and large an abstract one and like a modern painting, a theory in motivation is interpreted by different people in different ways. Nevertheless, I am my-self an admirer of modern art and to that extent, have developed an expertise of talking on abstract subjects, motivation being one of those Naturally, a part of my presentation will have to be explained later, a part, a part of it need not be explained at all and whatever remains, must be all ready known to you. With this comfortable background, I will try to tackle safety as product of motivation. It is my own experience that selling any concept of safety to a production man is a hard as convincing your mother-in -law that her daughter needs some further training in cooking. However, with several successful husbands around, I am sure; we can gather several techniques to convince a production man that he needs safety.
While motivation has been explained by number of management experts like Peter Drunker, motivation in my opinion can be defined in a very simple way as a strong desire to act-act positively. The poor concept of motivation is normally the expectation that a man will act for a financial gain. If this was true, all the traders in “Dave Bazar” would have been a highly motivated mass. Money has its own value only as long as it lasts. But as soon as the same is finished, the man wants further quantum of money, as his action ends with the last penny. Peter Drunker and surprisingly, I also along with him, believe this to be a basic need like hygiene. Motivation on the other hand is a continuous source of inspiration and a desire to act continuous forever. The subtle difference between the hygiene and motivation can appropriate simile. Hygiene is like a battery. You are required to charge it and it will operate only as long as the charge lasts. In fact, if there is a wrong connection or a bad earthling, you can lose the total charge in no time. Contrary to this, the motivation is like a dynamo. It develops its own charge.
Now, let us examine, why it is difficult to motivation a production man to accept the concept of safety. I think it will be better understood, if we find out the reasons why he is not motivation or why he has some basic negative motivation towards safety. We need to know the answers for the three questions:
- When does a man get motivation?
- Why does he get motivation?
- How does he get motivation?
The answers are really pretty straight-forward.
- A man gets motivation when he sees good results. This becomes his own achievement.
- The answer to why, is the fact that everyone likes achievement. There is a basic ego every human-begin likes to satisfy. Rarely will you find a man who would like to go home and tell his wife about his failures. In fact, several psychiatrists have analyzed the behaviour of the working class of people, particularly their rough handling of the members of their own family including children and they have assigned this to the lack of satisfaction of ego in their normal working life.
- Finally, a man starts getting motivation when he sees a way to achieve the results.
Having found answers to the basic three questions why, how and when does the motivation take place, let us analyze the factors which cause propagate and fulfill the basic requirements of motivation. We will naturally consider them as related to safety.
The first major factor for motivation of any kind is normally the achievement. A successful man is normally very highly motivation. If we man is normally very highly motivation. If we compare production or sales with safety, a glaring difference comes out. It is this, basically, all objective related to performance in production or sales are quite measurable in that sense. This negative yardstick starts measuring the positive need of safety, only making an accident as the starting point. Naturally, when the safe practice adopted throughout a particular period does not go into the books of a management, it can rarely be considered as great achievement. If achievement is fundamental factor for motivation, you can well visualize the difficulty in setting up proper objectives for safety, fulfillments which would give a man a feeling of achievement and this feeling of achievement must be supported by the management with proper rewards. Several management try to look at safety as a secondary week is celebrated, they have done everything that they are supposed to do with safety. This, some more further entrainment, by way of slogan competitions and safety bulletins etc., but rarely do they accept and impress upon their managers that safety is an important element of performance. Unless the management itself has seen the real benefits of safe practices, it will be difficult for the managers to find any positive motivation in it. It will not be out of place here to mention that importance to safety gets suddenly recognized only when a major mishap or an accident takes place, destroying a substantial part of activity and ultimately, hurting the organization beyond imagination.
If achievement, therefore, has to be made a factor for motivation in safety, results based on ability to introduce and practice safe practices to overcomes the dangers in operation must be covered as definite objective and must be given a high weight-age in the performance review of an executive if this happens safety will not only get its due importance, but will motivate many other executive down the line and process may becomes a way of life.
Reward for an achievement is another factor which motivates human begins. The reward comprises of recognition by way of authority, advancement by way of promotion and financial benefit by way of improvement in salary. Unfortunately safety, like training is always an award given to people who are normally taken away from the mainstream of production. There are examples where a productions manager has been made the general manager, the sales manager coming up to the level of managing Director, but rarely a safety man has becomes a chief executive. There is a definite need to change this standing practice. For motivation to achieve predetermine results, one must take into account safety because any unsafe practice or an accident emerging out of it can cause indefinite delay or loss of production. Management men should therefore budget definite rewards for fulfillment or safety requirement and both improvement in salary and advancement must be considered during the performance review in relation to the results obtained by an executive on the basis of safety norms adopted by him.
The work itself is a great motivating factor here, safety can be biggest contributor. It is not an uncommon experience that once an accident occurs in a particular department or with a particular machine; the management finds it extremely difficult to get more people to work in such a place. In fact, requests for special categories of workmen with special emoluments do come up time and again from the department where particular set of equipment or machinery is likely to cause some harm to the operators, when safety norms are not fully observed. The change in practices to achieve better safety can emerge out of several innovating, because it attracts the attention of other people. It provides the basics recognition and introduces the challenge for innovating the operations further. Safety is an ideal subject to bring about such innovations which can make the work more stimulating and challenging.
Responsibility to introduce safety renovating safety practices and to add safety equipments is often limited by the disproportionately lower authority given to an executive. It is a common experience that resources are made more easily available, when a production supervisor asks for the spares of a particular machine, but he has to go through a lot of hurdles to get the same resources, when he has to introduce safety equipment. This naturally is so, because of the fact, that the safety equipment is not directly coupled with the safety equipment is not directly coupled with the output of production line. I think , the management who realizes that benefits of safe practices are much larger, compared to saving made by adopting unsafe practices, then they would definitely consider budgeting higher amounts of resources for safety, and would provide the requisite authority to an executive, who should also be then assigned a higher responsibility with reference to safety in the process.
Finally, the relationship between the safety people and the operating people is one factor, which if properly handled, would provide a tremendous amount of motivation. Normally the safety groups tend to remain out of action and play the role of an ad-visor that too only when the crisis develops. The safety people should have an attitude, which will build up a close relationship with the operating group and this can happen, only when the safety people should share a part of the accountability of the operating group.
I think, these five factors, if properly handled, would definitely provide motivation to operating people in considering safety as a basic requirement. With all this achieved, the only thing that now stands in the way like a screen of smoke with a lot of unknown beyond, is the fear of law in common man. The law is a book of horror tales. Penalties can never be appreciated and it is out of this fear for penalties that people find their own ways to avoid to act. Typical behavioral pattern with reference to safety can be easily understood, when production people start providing excuses.
Most production people avoid safety manager, so that, even the beginning gets substantially delayed. If at all they may do so, they argue real hard and finally, if they are compelled to accept safety procedures, they do it with a tremendous amount of reluctance and often, cursing the safety man.
It is not very uncommon that you hear a statement from a production manager after an accident has occurred: “Thank God, I am not the occupier.” Now, occupier certainly is not only man punishable by law, but the lack of knowledge of the law leads to believe that the production manager can get away without punishment because he is not the occupier. Several times, you see a group of managers discussing “can’t this be passed on to the contractor?” Again, the idea is to save your own neck. The law normally defines that even if a contractor is involved in an accident situation, the principle employer is still the responsible body for the accident.
I have seen people altering the conditions of the accident situation, so that it is easy for them to conclude that the man could be blamed for the accident for his own mistake. In a situation, where a fire and explosion had taken place, before any investigation was started, a few butts of cigarettes were seen to planted in the situation and this was enough to pass on the blame to the victim itself.
“”We must look at what we need to do and how we need to do it in order to take the next step towards our common vision of zero injuries, zero incidents. We must engage in discussion, exchange ideas, and empower you to own safety.”.”–Murray Elliott
“Your Talent determines what you can do. Your Motivation determines how much you are willing to do. Your Attitude Determines How Well You Do It.”
……Lou Waitz