Safety Culture: Getting Leadership Support

Welcome to the WorkSafe Podcast, where we share workplace safety strategies and what you need to know about workers’ compensation insurance. The WorkSafe Podcast is brought to you by Missouri Employers Mutual and Provisor Insurance. Thanks for joining us on the WorkSafe Podcast. I’m your host, Heather Carl. In this episode, we’ll explore why having management buy-in is so important to developing a successful safety culture in the workplace. To help us understand how that can be achieved and the impact it has on a business, we’re joined today by Clint Bergman, general manager and co-franchisee with Two Men and a Truck Moving Company, based out of the Springfield and Branson, Missouri area.

Thanks for joining us today, Clint. Thanks for having me, Heather. Before we dive into the podcast, can you share a little bit with us about your role at Two Men and a Truck? Sure. It’s kind of all-encompassing. I did start out as a mover and eventually became a driver and moved up to management and now have made it to the top at the general manager as also co-franchisee. And so, I had a chance to explore sort of all avenues, all aspects of the business, but currently oversee sales, marketing, operations, human resources, accounting, and so forth. And safety applies to all of those. So, naturally, my interest is peaked in every aspect of the business.

But my role pertains to just an overall basis of the company, how it functions, the daily operations, as well as the general oversight of the entire company. Well, it sounds like you wear quite a few hats, which isn’t uncommon. It’s a blessing and a curse altogether. Absolutely. I can imagine that. So, from the perspective of, it sounds really interesting. You’ve actually had the opportunity to work your way up through the company in a lot of ways. So, that probably gives you some great insight into areas where safety is most important. Absolutely.

You have to know every aspect of the business in order to be effective with your safety practices and policies in those different departments and areas. If a manager or owner has no clue the scenarios that a mover and driver face on a daily basis, they’re just not going to be effective in helping them be safe, point blank. Kind of like with any processes or operations, you know, if you haven’t experienced it yourself or tried to work through those different stages, then it’s hard to know where those opportunities might lie. Absolutely. So, Clint, what motivated you to really begin investing in safety within your business? Well, I’ll be honest.

It did not start with safety, but it did start with this desire to win. I can’t stand losing, whether it’s playing with my daughter, you know, chess or checkers or four square with the family or winning at business. So, that’s where it all started. And when I came into the business several years ago, I flat out just told every employee, we’re going to win in how we do things, whether how you comb your hair, how you shake a customer’s hand, you know, how we lift furniture, how we care for customers, whole nine yards.

As I started to dive into just every aspect of the business and working on it just one by one, and then we would win in one area, then we’d move on to another, we eventually got to safety. And this concept of wanting to win was very applicable to the safety area because we did not have a good safety program. We did not have good safety results with our home office the prior years that I was here or that was not here rather. And so, it really, it made it really easy to just dive in and try to figure out what can we do to make this program better.

It came from a desire to win, but then once we got into safety, we started realizing it’s not just about winning and having fewer injuries and having fewer accidents on the road and fewer damages and fewer claims and stuff like that. We realized really quickly that if safety is not the most important thing that we’re doing, then it can sink our battleship as a business in many different ways. And so, I immediately made this the absolute ultimate top concern. It’s just a hair above profitability.

Now, there are other managers and co-franchisees that would argue with me on that one, but because of my influence and passion, we’ve all accepted that safety will trump profitability, even though they’re really close to tie together. Well, I appreciate that. You know, it’s interesting to hear that it started with your desire to be the best in the business and where you saw one of the biggest opportunities was around being a safer workplace.

So, I’m sure for many business owners, they hear the word investment, you know, of investing in safety and they think the costs associated with that and they think about what is that going to do to my bottom line and maybe focus on that a little bit more back to your profitability point, you know, and they’re not seeing the full picture of what a safety culture in a workplace can do. With many investments, you know, you hope to see a positive change or some type of rate of return on the investment. What types of results have you seen within your company? And then if you wouldn’t mind kind of breaking that down. So, not just financial, but you kind of touched on it a minute ago.

There are other ways that this improves business besides just in the numbers. So, if you wouldn’t mind walking us through how you’ve seen that help your business, that would be great. Sure. Good question. The decision process was really simple. There was no hesitation, period. I quickly demonstrated just the savings that we could experience on the financial side, the level of care that we could show on the front side to all employees. So, from start to finish, there just was no hesitation and I didn’t care about the cost because of the cost that we were going to save on the back end. So, the expression, it pays to be safe is very true.

Now, as far as results go, yes, you could speak financially, employee morale, employee confidence, you know, fewer injuries, fewer accidents. The way we operate, the way we function, the way we talk, the way we think, which is very critical. It’s hard to break that barrier sometimes with employees to break that thinking barrier, believing barrier. But you got to get inside that nucleus with those employees and they need to smell the same air that you’re smelling and breathing the same air and thinking the same things. And it has to be a cultural shift, a mindset shift in order to really have an effective campaign or program, if you will, and to get the results that you’re after.

But the number one thing I can tell you as far as results go, and this is more important than all of the things I’ve just mentioned, the employees believe that you care. They believe that you care about them and their health and their safety and that they can go to bed at night and lay down on their pillow and put their comfortable sheets and comforter on top of them and take a deep breath and go, ah, job well done today and be able to do so comfortably and not have to roll over in a certain manner because their back is hurting or their legs are hurting or they hurt their shoulders. So now they can only sleep on one side.

So we seriously stress around our company and our business that we have got to care for the way we sleep, the way we want to function on the weekend when we have time off. And we want to make sure that every employee knows in their mind and in their hearts that our company cares for them. Would you say that that mantra, making sure employees believe that you care, know that you care, would you say that has somewhat of a trickle down effect, domino effect as far as, you know, not just management, but also encouraging the way employees interact with each other? Oh, absolutely. In the last several years, trying to break down, that’s our core motto. Just it’s on the side of the trucks.

We movers who care. It is an expression and it is a motto. But until you have complete buy-in, until you have managers holding others accountable, even themselves accountable to how that can trickle down to every aspect of what we do, it’s not really going to take root or take effect. And so we’ve had to really turn around a lot of different aspects of our company. And it could even be the way we talk to customers, the way we treat each other, the way we hold tightly or firmly to certain processes, certain commitments, certain standards. You know, how many people know the mission statement and the core values and the core purpose versus how many don’t.

You know, the statistics should get better in those areas if we care. Statistics and results should get better. And even Google reviews should get better if we care about the way a customer perceives us, if we care about furniture, if we care about damages. And just the whole night, we could spend the next 10 minutes talking about all the different ways that we could demonstrate our, you know, motto. We are the movers who care in all the different areas. But it does come down to, you know, safety being a part of every aspect of our company. But it’s important to get buy-in from everyone and to show them, you know, that we care.

So when they start seeing that we care about all the different areas, whether it be a P&L or a budget, or there being enough gasoline in a truck, or when someone’s sick, or if a customer is having a hard time and we know about it, you know, we even would send a letter or a card with the movers and drivers to give them a sign from the staff just saying, I’m so sorry about your recent divorce. I know this is a hard time. Let us work hard for you today. We’ll be praying for you in the meantime for the other aspects of your life and hope you can start to move forward soon and just demonstrating care.

So when they see the different ways that we care across the board, it just gives them more confidence knowing that when they have something that we should care about, that we’re going to give it due diligence. Well, I have to say that that’s definitely above and beyond any moving experience I’ve ever had. And that’s a great thing, though. I mean, that’s wonderful that you take the time to really kind of get to know your clients and understand where they’re coming from, whether the move is a positive thing in their life or something that they weren’t expecting and not really looking forward to. So hats off to you guys for that level of customer care. Sure. Well, moving is stressful.

I mean, you put it up there with death, divorce, taxes. It’s up there. And there’s a lot going on in a customer’s mind in their life when these moves take place. And a lot of times the movers and the drivers, they have no clue. They’re just waking up in their own world and they just want to go to work and make a wage and come home and eat dinner. But if you can convince them that they’re actually having a huge impact in someone’s life, kind of like if you get hurt, you need the ambulance or if there’s a security issue, you need the police or there’s a fire, you need the fireman. Well, when it’s moving day, you need some move heroes.

So we really try to promote that level of care in our movers and drivers to be able to help out our customers. Well, again, I think that’s that’s fabulous that you guys go that extra mile. You mentioned earlier, too, that, you know, getting buy in from everyone’s important. But what happens, you know, it’s not always an easy process to get people to buy in to something new, especially around safety. Maybe somewhere that it hasn’t been probably as important as it should be. And so it’s a pretty big shift because maybe you have employees who’ve been there a long time, always done it one way. It’s always worked fine. Only a couple incidents here or there.

Do you have any practical, simple steps that might be helpful for our listeners looking to gain management buy in so they can create that trickle down safety culture? Yes, and I probably would answer that in two regards. In terms of buy in and getting everyone to comply and whatnot, I’d probably say there’s probably four things on the first attempt to answer this question. Number one, you have to mandate it. And that’s got to come from the top. You absolutely have to mandate it and and then hold people accountable. I’d say you also have to model it. It can’t just be something you want or lip service. Three, I would say you have to manage it. Well, it has to be your baby.

You can’t just give it to someone else and hope that it goes well. And then number four, I would say you have to materialize it. It’s got to be something that’s tangential or related. It’s got a an appeal or an attraction or an incentive, something that’s tangible for employees to understand, oh, OK, if we do this, then this benefit or this fruit will come. And so I think just mandating it, modeling it, managing it and then helping others understand how it can materialize into better fruits for the employees and the companies is probably the first answer I would give you. The probably the second thing that I would suggest is, number one, is compliance.

So find out all the different areas of authority for your industry. For example, OSHA might be one of them. What are their standards? What are their expectations? If they showed up to do an audit, would you be ready because you’ve complied or you set your business up to be compliant with all of the things that they’re expecting you to be compliant with? And then I would say go above and beyond that. Don’t just settle for that as a minimum. Be creative. Do more. It’s not enough just to have the posters. Add some flavor to the posters. Get employees engaged on creating the posters or creating something or creating part of the safety meeting.

Don’t just let it be from top down and someone speaking 30 minutes and no one else says a word. It’s got to be all inclusive, 100% engagement from everyone. And then number three, I would say it’s got to be a cultural shift. It can’t be just something that you do once a month, once a week or here and there. And it can’t definitely just be a check the box kind of thing. It’s got to be every aspect of what you do. It has to bleed over into every area of life in terms of how we think, in terms of what we watch for, in terms of how we look out for our brother and sister that’s on the truck with us or in the office.

And so maybe that’s the second way I would ask or answer your question is just figure out what you have to be compliant to for authority purposes. Be creative above and beyond that. And then just make it all over your culture. It’s got to be a cultural shift in everyone’s mind. Those are great tips. So it sounds like you’ve kind of got a 4M approach there that you talked about in the beginning. Mandate, model, manage, and materialize. So those are kind of four key steps that you mentioned earlier. I think another piece that you touched on, too, in there that is important and something that I know we see as an insurer for WorkComp is companies may have a checklist.

They may have a corporate guide. You know, those are things, especially in bigger companies. And they think they’re doing safety right because, well, I had this safety meeting. I did this toolbox talk. Everyone signed in. But the difference is they weren’t engaged. So just because someone sat in a room for 15 minutes or stood out by the truck and everyone talked and the safety manager shared the information, maybe their mind was a million other places, right? What they had to do that day, maybe what’s going on at home, maybe their kid has a question, you know, all those different things. So I think what would be great is if you had some tips on how you can really engage those employees.

Because it sounds like, you know, you’ve got a process down, but you’ve also been able to really engage people in all different areas of your business. Do you have a couple tips for how some of our listeners might be able to really get people to actually truly be present during some of these safety discussions? Oh, yeah. You may have just struck a nerve with me. I’m about to get really excited. So this is fun stuff. Having been a former professor, I really relish these teaching moments and getting others involved. It’s just really fun. And so, yeah, to answer your question, you’ve got to get others involved.

A lot of times when you go to meetings or a classroom session or a safety meeting, there’s one person that speaks and they speak for 20, 30 minutes and no one else says a word. That’s not what our safety meetings look like. And it’s not what my classroom looked like. It’s not what my speaking engagements look like. So I would say get people involved. And the best way for a student to become the teacher is to allow them to be the teacher. When you give them an opportunity to speak and to be a part, then you have multiple people now leading and guiding the discussion.

And then those people that are actually given an opportunity now realize what the person who normally teaches all the time is going through, the preparation, the follow through, the putting everything together with technology wise or whatever material needs to be printed. And then the follow up afterwards, when you assess what results do I have to show for this and so forth, then the aha moment comes and they realize, wow, there’s more to this than just listening to someone speak for a while.

So I would say you’ve got to find any and every way to get as many people involved as possible, whether it’s a safety committee meeting that meets behind the scenes or it’s the safety meeting itself that’s in front of everyone, whether someone’s running the computer screen or someone owns a certain aspect of the meeting that may take five minutes. Another person takes another and leads a discussion for five minutes or someone tries to get all the conclusions summed up. And so just get as many hands on deck as possible, I’d say, number one.

Number two, I would say you’ve got to ask good questions and you have to be patient to let everyone go through their own mindset of, wow, am I really going to answer this? I’ve got a good answer, but I might be intimidated to answer in public. You know, so people need time to answer questions, but you have to have good questions for them to want to answer in the first place. So something that would really pull them out of their chair and go, oh, I’ve got a great scenario where someone can prevent from damaging their finger or hurting their elbow in that situation. So knowing the great questions to ask is critical.

I would also say just the level of engagement for the group as well and not just for like an individual. So a couple of things that we do for our safety meetings, and this is where, again, the other co-franchisee would laugh at this because he would always say, well, here comes the teacher out of Clint again. So we would play CAHOOTS, if you’ve never been to CAHOOTS.IT, it’s a way for you to put together a pre-planned quiz. You create the questions, you create the answers, you choose the right answer. It’s all based on choosing the right answer and the amount of time that it takes you to choose the correct answer. And it’s all there on your phone.

You can see the computer on the screen, but you touch your phone, the right color, red, green, yellow, blue, and it records how fast you choose the correct or incorrect answer. And then you can see your responses on the board if you’re answered correctly or incorrectly or if you were the first to answer or the 20th to answer. And then after all the questions, usually it’s about 10, you can find your ranking, and then we all celebrate, you know, who was first, second, or third, and it’s kind of a bragging thing.

So when it’s time for us to play CAHOOTS, everyone kind of gets perked up and excited and ready and engaged, and it’s almost like everybody’s got their pistols on their hips and they’re ready to draw. Well, if I could use a Western analogy expression there, but I’d say the last thing is we also have a quiz. Usually it’s a five-question quiz. It’s a sheet of paper that has their name on it and the five questions, and they turn it in, and we keep them.

And it’s just simply part of the culture that we have, and it really challenges those individuals to pay attention and to listen because at the end of the day, there’s going to be five questions that we’ve re-selected, and we go through them at the end. And a lot of guys feel embarrassed if they can’t get them. So you don’t want to feed off the negative aspect of being embarrassed. You really want to encourage them and be positive for having the right answer and having listened and paid attention. But that element of embarrassment is there. They do want to have all right. Everyone likes to get a perfect score.

And so we’ve added that to our safety meetings as well just for employee engagement. Those are some really great ideas. I know even as a company, MEM has used Kahoot in our quarterly safety luncheons. So the quiz will incorporate different things, whether it’s specific safety topic questions or even things around our financials, you know, just to see are you paying attention to the information you’re getting and those types of things. So it is always fun, and it is always fun to try to be the first one to answer with the right answer. Oh, yeah. So it definitely encourages engagement in that way. Well, and a lot of our meetings are at 7 a.m. in the morning.

So, you know, some people haven’t had their coffee. Some may have woken up at 6.45. Who knows? And so when you can start off a safety meeting that normally most would say is boring, but at our company, if you could start off a safety meeting, and have a Kahoot quiz and it’s competitive and it’s engaging, then, you know, you can really help an employee kind of wake up and be alert and enjoy it at 7 a.m. in the morning. Yeah, that’s definitely a challenge. So if you’ve done that, you know you’ve done your job.

So keys to what you’re talking about here, implementing new ideas like this, making it engaging, making it interactive so that you have a role in it, you’re more likely to remember and be invested. All of those things kind of hinge on management being supportive. So someone like yourself and then the managers you have underneath yourself are all on board for this. So what happens, what can you do as a business, whether you’re small or large, and you know you need to have a better safety culture where you work, but management just does not buy in, does not support it for probably a plethora of reasons.

I’m sure you could name off a whole bunch that you’ve heard before, but what would you say to our listeners that are thinking, yeah, this is all great, but in my company, management isn’t going to do it. Yes, and unfortunately, not every company’s safety program is created equally. Fortunately, not every company’s safety manager, if there is one, are created equally as well. After you’ve kind of maybe digested the whole mandate it, model it, manage it, and so forth, and if the compliance and creativity is all there, maybe it’s not.

You know, I would just say there’s probably three things you could probably do just to reiterate, get people on board with you, and I would just flat out say, number one, it’s consequences. Letting other managers know from the top down, these are the consequences that are going to happen if changes are not made, if improvements are not made, if we’re not getting the results that we want or the morale that we’re after or the culture.

And so those consequences could range from, you know, a host of things that we all could, you know, dive into and understand from an HR level, whether it’s write-ups or, you know, suspensions or, you know, who knows, or maybe you’re just not the right guy for the position. You know, are you my guy? Are you my girl? Are you my teammate? Are you rowing in the same direction we are? You know, if you’re not, then, you know, do you need to think about your tenure here, your position here? Is this the best fit for you? I mean, from start to finish, there’s a lot of different ways to express that and really gives the employee a chance to consider, okay, do I really want to do this? Is this me?

Because if it’s not, then I need to exit. But if it is, then I need to be all on board. And if an owner, a franchisee, a manager, general manager, if they’re holding you accountable to that and they’re serious about it and you know they’re serious about it, then that employee has to make a change. They have to make a decision if they’re going to jump in the boat or jump out of the boat. And you have to give them that opportunity to do that. But I would just say start with consequences. And number two, I would make it just part of a general performance review for all the managers like we do here. It’s the first part of all their monthly and yearly reviews is safety.

They are held accountable to all the metrics and the dynamics that we want in place. And it’s just part of their review. If they want to raise and they want to increase their scorecard result, then they need to be pretty good at safety. If they’re not going to be good at safety, then it’s going to be difficult to justify their score and their results and their raises. Or if they do get a raise, you know, how much is it or how less is it and so forth. And then number three, the positive part, I guess the flip side of the consequences is just having something incentive, giving something to shoot for.

If we’re going to save money, if we’re going to have morale is going to increase and culture is going to increase and we’re not spending money on claims and we can rather spend money on breakfast or it can go to, you know, more bonuses for other people, then that’s great. And so you want to spell that out, you know, put it, put it on paper form, let them see, put the bone in front of them, let her, let them go after it and give them something to shoot for, give them a goal, let them be competitive. Maybe altogether, just there’s got to be consequences for accountability. There’s got to be performance based reviews and, and then give them something to shoot for with incentives.

And those three things would probably be what has been effective here in Springfield. It may not be effective somewhere else, but at least as a, as a baseline approach, those sort of basic elements, these three would probably suffice anywhere. I think, you know, you’ve really touched on something there. It’s kind of basic human psychology, behavior psychology, as far as how you get changes in behavior and results. And so working through consequences, positive reinforcement incentives, all of those things can absolutely, can absolutely play into that. Another thing you said, you just briefly said something about, you know, make sure everybody’s in the boat.

And I know something that we see a lot of is, you know, safety isn’t just one person’s job or one person’s role. And oftentimes in a situation where you’re working on a job site or, you know, moving furniture, you know, driving a large truck, all those things. If everybody’s not in the boat, then there, you know, there could be a hole and then safety doesn’t really work if everybody’s not working to make it, make it happen. So I think that was another really important thing that you mentioned, that it isn’t just the safety manager or the manager or the foreman or the supervisor. It’s everybody who’s there has to, you know, be that link in the chain. Correct.

And probably one of the biggest reasons or benefits of having a great safety culture is not just the lack of accidents and incidents and whatever, but it’s the paperwork, it’s the conversations, it’s the investigation, it’s the getting to the root cause and having to document it. And then you have to send that paperwork on down the line to the next person for us after the manager’s document and, you know, their paperwork and have their questions, that stuff goes to the accountant who’s also kind of our HR personnel. And she sends it off and records it and gets everything and then she sends it to me.

And if I don’t find the paperwork satisfactory, like we haven’t asked enough good questions, well, then it goes back to the managers involved and then you have to have more conversations. And then now there’s a one-on-one with myself and the other manager who did the interview and I have to find out, why didn’t you ask these critical questions? Could you have asked better questions? And so then it becomes a coaching moment, which is fine. And we’re happy to do that. But I’m telling you, when these things happen, it just creates more work for everybody. If you’re on the truck and you do something wrong, it could potentially create more work for someone else.

If you’re holding a 300-pound item and someone makes a bad decision, you’re going to create a lot of work for the other person involved. Same applies for internally with processes and procedures and paperwork and the whole nine yards and then managing up to sharing all that information with the owners and having to answer their questions. And it can just be an albatross of a burden, an Achilles heel, and if it’s just not done right. So I totally agree with you. If there’s a hole in the boat, it just creates more work for everyone. And nobody likes extra work.

So however anyone listening could take that and appreciate it and share it, it’s got to be a huge incentive for everyone to not place those burdens on each other. And you can do it by just simply being safe. Exactly. So safety is actually the most efficient way to do something. It may sometimes add a step or two in and people think, oh, you’re adding more into the process, so it’s not as efficient. But in the long run, like you mentioned, you’re not having an injury. You’re not creating paperwork. You’re not creating lost time. I mean, there’s lots of things there that you’re saving just by adding a couple steps in. Absolutely.

So we’ve talked about quite a bit today, and it’s all been really great information. Usually at the end of our podcast, we like to kind of recap really quick. So I’m just going to ask you, Clint, if you could come up with the top two rewards you think there are to having a safety culture. And then if you could mention maybe the top two or three ways to get management to be on board that this is the direction your company should go in. Sure. I’d probably have to reiterate for the top two things. Number one is the employees believe you care about them from start to finish, from head to toe. That’s huge. That’s critical. When they believe you care, they give you more.

They give you themselves because you’ve given them yourself. Probably number two would be just the headaches. What we just finished with was when you’re not safe, you create more work for everybody. And so those are two things that I’d say are very critical. Management buy-in, I would say this, it’s got to start at the top. It cannot be someone in the middle that’s trying to manage down, manage up, reach those below them, reach them above them. It just makes it easier for everyone if it starts at the top. And then everyone being accountable to whatever standards and procedures and authorities are in place is the best way to keep things going.

Knowing the standards, knowing what the measurements are, and then knowing those that you’re going to be accountable to personally. And you’ve got to make it your culture. It has to bleed across everything. So from top to bottom, being accountable, and then widespread across the culture is probably the top three things I’d mention. Well, thank you, Clint, for joining us today, for sharing your insight and your expertise as our guest. And I’d also like to thank our listeners for tuning in to the WorkSafe podcast. Thanks for listening to the WorkSafe podcast with Missouri Employers Mutual and Provisor Insurance. If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

Find free safety resources and industry insights online at mem-ins.com.