Everything we do in business is a process. From hiring to paying our workers, selling our services to distributing products, processes dictate how managers and employees achieve the goals of the company. When well developed and maintained, processes can be helpful in streamlining our approach and creating consistency in our outcomes; however, when poorly created, communicated, and maintained, processes will create frustration and lead to low productivity, poor quality, increased incidents, and lower returns. In safety, one example of a broken process for many companies is the Incident Cause Analysis.
If your company is like most, cause analysis typically will lead to blaming the worker and proclaiming that they either lacked training or purposefully broke the rules and took unnecessary risks. You may also notice that the same incidents seem to come around over and over, regardless of the amount of training workers received or that despite a written disciplinary policy, those workers who “purposely broke the rules” are still working for the company. Additionally, the causes identified during the analysis, rarely get implemented or followed through. So, is it really a lack of training or worker commitment or are there larger process issues in place that need to be addressed?
A disciplinary process that is not properly implemented is not a process and needs revision.
When training workers, does your employer verify that learning took place or simply assume the worker learned what they needed? Adult learning can be challenging and may require multiple sessions combining both theory and practice before the learning sets in. Many companies fail to take the time to ensure learning has taken place, therefore the process of educating their workers is lacking. Blaming the worker because the employer’s assumption of learning did not turn out is a failure to recognize the larger issue. This process must be addressed first to ensure workers have the adequate knowledge to perform.
Even well trained and educated workers will occasionally break the company’s rules, policies, and procedures. Therefore, employers have written disciplinary processes that guide supervisors and managers on how to address these instances. Still, we frequently come across supervisors who make excuses for these workers, claiming they are the best they have, and they could not possibly deliver on the company goals if the worker were to be dismissed. There are two issues at play here. First, going back to our point on training, does the supervisor have the knowledge and training to understand the reason for an importance of the disciplinary process? Second, if the perception is that unsafe workers should be kept if they deliver on production, the corporate culture needs revising (but that is another article). A disciplinary process that is not properly implemented is not a process and needs revision.
Whether it is lack of training, improper tool, damaged equipment, lack of communication or other, the failure to implement and update practices because of gaps identified in the cause analysis is a process failure. Ask your workforce how they feel about this process, and you can quickly understand whether it is effective or not. If most say something to the effect of, “we do this all the time, but nothing ever changes”, you have some work to do.
No process is perfect. You will need to constantly monitor and revise them if they are to work in your favor. The time invested in developing and maintaining your processes will pay back exponentially in production increases, better morale, and lower incident rates. Start with the way you analyze those incidents.
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