Working from a pull-behind trailer about the size of a food truck, the Boeing Safety Dojo team connects manufacturing teammates and other employees with innovative tools to improve on-the-job safety and quality, and eliminate foreign-object debris.

Boeing’s brick-and-mortar Safety Dojo is located in the company’s production facility in Everett, Washington, in the heart of the largest manufacturing building in the world by volume (just over 98 acres). The Safety Dojo is dedicated to helping employees explore, discuss, innovate and replicate safer ways to do their jobs. The word “dojo” is a Japanese term meaning a place of sharing and learning. 

Since its introduction in 2016, over 54,000 people have visited Boeing’s Safety Dojo. Access to the Safety Dojo was limited to those who work in or visit the Everett facility – until now.

To reach a broader audience the Safety Dojo team developed the “Safety Dojo on-the-go” exhibit, which puts the best of the physical dojo into a trailer that travels to other Boeing sites.

“We decided if you can’t come to the party, then we’ll bring the party to you,” said Craig Morgan, Safety Dojo leader.

So far, the mobile Safety Dojo has toured the state of Washington, visiting facilities in Renton, Auburn, Frederickson, Kent and Burien. “Communication is a big part of what these trips are all about,” says Morgan. “We help manufacturing teams and other stakeholders learn about and replicate innovative safety and quality solutions that have been developed through the Safety Dojo and its partnership with Boeing Research & Technology and the Boeing Innovation Cells.”

This effort aligns with Boeing’s values and its Seek, Speak & Listen habits intended to create a culture of trust, care and connection by encouraging team members to seek out different perspectives, to speak up with ideas or concerns, and to listen and learn from one another. Employees visit the Safety Dojo to seek out a safer way to do their jobs. There, they are encouraged to speak up if they have a concern, and the Safety Dojo team listens to what is needed and works to identify existing solutions or develop new ones. In addition to introducing some ingenious tools, this process helps to promote and grow our safety culture.

One of the popular innovations currently on display in the Safety Dojo is a vacuum drill guide handle that was developed as a safety solution. It prevents 96% of the composite dust caused by drilling from getting on mechanics. The genesis of this successful solution was a 777 mechanic who brought his concern to the Safety Dojo team.

The team believes that when you fix a safety issue, you also help improve production quality. The “Safety Dojo on-the-go” expands the reach of its impact on safety, quality and our environment by providing a mobile, one-stop safety shop for resource identification, safety education, site solution replication and idea generation.

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Feeling like what we do matters can inspire us to personally engage at work. In a previous blog post, I reviewed William A. Kahn’s 1990 paper, “On the Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Personal Disengagement at Work” and described his view that psychological safety is one of three psychological conditions (i.e., safety, meaning, availability) that drive personal engagement. Since personal engagement is a key topic for environment, health and safety (EHS) professionals, in this second post, I dive into Kahn’s conception of psychological meaningfulness and briefly describe its connections to psychological safety and personal engagement. I then describe how organizations can use these concepts to create new perspectives that could lead to safety innovations.  

To Kahn, meaningfulness “can be seen as a feeling that one is receiving a return on investments of oneself in a currency of physical, cognitive or emotional energy” (Kahn, 1990, p. 704). The idea is similar to psychological safety – but here, people engage when they feel a sense of equity or a greater return than the personal investment they put into their work.

The distinction here is between a unique person (who they are) and their outputs at work (what they accomplish at work). However, these divisions aren’t always as tangible. When they play out as patterns in the world, people express themselves through their roles in unique ways. Kahn points out three critical elements of personal engagement. Organizations can structure their processes such that task characteristics, role characteristics and work interactions make space for people to create and derive their own sense of meaning from work.

For example, people who see themselves as competent at their job, and who confront achievable challenges which offer a chance for personal and professional growth, find more psychological meaning in the workplace.

Some Incentives to Meaning

This is both fascinating and unsurprising at the same time. EHS professionals know how vital supportive work interactions, clear tasks and clear communication are in generating and sustaining a safe workplace. Let’s explore Kahn’s definition more to understand meaningfulness for our personal and organizational contexts.

 “Psychological meaningfulness can be seen as a feeling that one is receiving a return on investments of one’s self in a currency of physical, cognitive or emotional energy.”

The definition (Kahn, 1990, p. 704) has a money and time metaphor guiding it (i.e., currency, ROI). It talks of feelings and energies and alludes to conceptions of the self and not simply a “worker” or “employee.”

The phrase “meaningfulness can be seen” points toward an observer of the definition itself. It may be flexible or possible to see this definition more clearly from a particular position, but it doesn’t try to assume a monopoly on its meaning–it points to other possible definitions of meaningfulness. Further, this definition creates space between the idea, definition and the real human interpreting the words and actions behind it. This space allows a person to form images, imagine scenarios inclusive of meaning and share in the collaborative conceptual space. Here, people can share their own conceptualization of meaning, how they define it and come to a shared understanding with others and the organization.

“A feeling that one is receiving” assumes, from my view, two things 1) an embodied response (i.e., through feeling) and 2) an availability to receive. Feelings aren’t always visible, even to the person feeling them. This might be particularly the case in the workplace. In addition, people at times, feel pressure from others to actively hide their authentic feelings. Research in voice suppression (Shore and Chung, 2021) suggests this feeling is emphatically true for people from groups who have been marginalized–that, to fit in, one must assimilate to the expected cultural workplace norms and therefore must change their authentic embodied responses (e.g., voice, body language) to be accepted.

When we think about receiving and the ability to do so, we may point toward the insecurity of a culture that rejects gifts and has trouble receiving feedback or help, blocking its meaning-making processes. However, for EHS professionals, indicators that block the necessary emotional, cognitive and physical energies are time and production pressures, fatigue, environmental conditions, power and status, and financial compensation, among other things. For example, if someone feels pressed for time, they may not have the bandwidth to receive a sense of return on their personal investment in their work role; they may be too hurried.

In the above example, if the organization were to slow down, its people could derive a more profound sense of personal return on their personal investments at work. Availability, in this sense, is essential to a person for them to personally develop and organize a sense of meaning in the workplace.

Organizations can use this or similar thinking patterns to ground emerging safety concepts with data. For example, many organizations already track overtime as an indirect measure of fatigue. With a lens for meaning-making, organizations can look at fatigue as an indicator of “availability,” which, as Kahn points out, ultimately affects safety and engagement. With a refocused lens, the data may point to otherwise unseen problems organizations can address with new solutions.

Written by: Jordan Sannito, Research Associate – National Safety Council

References

Kahn, W.A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33, 692–724.

Shore, L.M., & Chung, B.G. (2021). Inclusive Leadership: How Leaders Sustain or Discourage Work Group Inclusion. Group & Organization Management. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601121999580.

The post Psychological Meaning: Refocusing the Lens appeared first on Campbell Institute | National Safety Council.

During a recent interaction, a Campbell Institute member asked me to explain the difference between engagement and psychological safety. I wasn’t entirely sure how to answer. I had some loose ideas – some intuition and gut-based hunches – but didn’t hold a clear distinction between the two, so I explored it more. Fortunately, after some research, I found a framework in a familiar paper that offers a starting point for safety professionals to differentiate and connect personal engagement with psychological safety.

William Khan’s paper, “On the Psychological Conditions for Personal Engagement and Disengagement,” describes three conditions that lead to personal engagement.

Definitions from Kahn (1990, p. 705)

He defines personal engagement as “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves.” (Kahn, 1990, p. 694). One of the conditions for personal engagement Kahn describes is psychological safety, or the “sense of being able to show and employ self without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career” (Kahn, 1990, p. 705). We can think of psychological safety as similar to a climate – something sensed and felt by the people in it. When people sense a psychologically safe climate, they feel empowered to employ and express their whole self while in their work role. When doing so, they also express personal engagement.

However, when people feel psychologically safe to engage at work, it doesn’t always mean they can employ and express their whole selves. Psychological safety is a precursor to, or may co-occur with, personal engagement but is not a sufficient condition to generate it on its own. Two other conditions must emerge alongside psychological safety – psychological meaningfulness and psychological availability. 

Consider a situation where people feel empowered to speak up in a workgroup setting; they feel psychologically safe to engage. Even under this condition, engagement may prove difficult if people lack the cognitive, emotional or physical resources to express themselves in a given moment. For example, if they have been working overtime to the point of fatigue, they may not have the personal resources (e.g., are at the point of exhaustion) needed to speak up about a safety concern. We might expect a lack of engagement in a similar situation where people feel no return on their self-investment in their role at work. Contrast these two examples with a situation where all three psychological conditions are active and employees are engaged in their work. Those personally engaged employees can help environment, health and safety efforts enhance an organization’s safety culture.

The original question has opened up more opportunities for the Campbell Institute to connect safety research with engagement research. This blog serves as the first post in a larger miniseries exploring the psychological conditions to personal engagement – psychological safety, psychological meaningfulness and psychological availability.

Written by: Jordan Sannito, Research Associate – National Safety Council

References

Edmondson A., Lei, Z. (2014). Psychological safety: The history, renaissance, and future of an interpersonal construct. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 23–43.

Kahn, W.A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33, 692–724.

The post Personal Engagement and Psychological Safety appeared first on Campbell Institute | National Safety Council.

Research and observation will show that people mirror each other’s dispositions – things such as vocal tone, posture, inflection, and so on. It may be surprising, but more than just dispositions, people share and absorb each other’s emotions, too (Petitta et al., 2021). The process where people send emotions back and forth to each other is called emotional contagion in the research literature.

Emotional contagion in the workplace is the process of passing and absorbing emotional content and its relative intensity from and to colleagues. We might think of emotional contagion as something like tossing a ball. The ball is the emotion, and anyone who catches it then holds that emotion but can also pass it to someone else.

Further, emotions can be contagious regardless of how someone experiences them (e.g., pleasantly/unpleasantly) – people can pass on feelings with a different emotional valence such as anger or joy. When it comes to the workplace, emotions themselves aren’t always directly connected to a safety incident but play an indirect role. As for safety leaders, understanding that emotions can prime or help prevent a safety incident is another key to strengthening safety culture.

Research

In a set of papers released over the past few years, researchers from Italy and the United States, using data from both countries, explored emotional contagion and its effects on workplace safety as mediated by sleep, health, cognitive failure, moral disengagement, economic stressors and others.

The authors found anger contagion can increase rates of cognitive failures. Cognitive failure can then play a role in creating higher rates of workplace incidents (Pettit et al., 2019). Emotional tensions can also create environments where people violate safety rules and use moral justifications for such, which can lead to higher rates of workplace incidents (Petitta et al., 2021).

In another study, the authors found perceptions of job-related financial stress change depending on the type of contagion in the workplace. They examined anger and joy and found anger contagion amplifies one’s financial stress. On the other hand, the emotion of joy reduces individual perceptions of financial stress (Petitta et al., 2020). Anger contagion at work predicts higher levels of sleep disturbance and ultimately increases the number of safety incidents. Additionally, production pressure affects rates of safety incidents even more (Petitta et al., 2021).

This research shows emotional effects carry a residue that transcends particular contexts. Because of this, the emotion itself being passed on and absorbed serves as a job resource or job demand. Joy as a resource can act to prevent incidents through things like social bonding, whereas anger can increase stress, among other things, and ultimately prove hazardous (Petitta et al., 2020). In this sense, joy enhances and empowers where anger detracts and impairs.

What Safety Leaders Can Do

Emotional contagion works through implicit and explicit cognitive processes (Tee, 2015). People can pass or absorb emotions deliberately or without conscious awareness. Further, both anger and joy tend to be more contagious when their source is a supervisor (Petitta et al., 2020). Leaders can use knowledge of emotional contagion to observe members of their team for emotional cues, determine the sources of a particular emotional contagion, generate and share emotions and help implement focused training. Research also suggests implementing technologies (e.g., apps) that track sleep (Petitta et al., 2020).

Emotions can change quickly, so being attuned to the micro-shifts in the emotional state of team members can reveal just how vulnerable even a strong safety culture is. These vulnerabilities can also point toward methods for leadership adaptation to employee needs and can help an organization enhance employee physical and psychological safety.

Written by: Jordan Sannito, Research Associate – National Safety Council

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It starts with putting your organization’s story to paper. The Campbell Award criteria serve as a guide for self-evaluation and provide the foundation on which excellence in EHS is evaluated from a business systems perspective. Leadership, performance measurements & information management, the linkage between EHS & business performance and lessons learned are among the different areas that are evaluated in the review process. Organizations large and small can apply regardless of employee size and judged in two independent categories. Category I is for organizations with more than 1000 workers, Category II is for organizations with 1000 or fewer.

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Leading with Empathy

Connecting with Emotion Over Circumstance

Leadership Series

My leadership style has always relied heavily on reading body language to better understand the feeling behind a co-worker’s words—a change in posture, crossed arms or a furrowed brow can give many clues to state of mind, emotional well-being and meaning. By attuning myself to these non-verbal signals, I have been able to develop as a leader, co-worker, parent and friend.

In the traditional office setting in which I have spent the vast majority of my professional career, I had many opportunities to leverage interpersonal skills when developing relationships and coaching my teams. I could drop by someone’s workspace, read the room in a meeting, enjoy lunch with co-workers, have breakroom conversations, etc.

However, the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic has vastly altered the way we work and interact with each other. Face-to-face meetings have given way to virtual interactions. Conference rooms are now chat rooms. Sometimes, we have the added luxury of video; but often, we interact solely with a profile picture or computer-generated avatar. We are limited to reading text replies or interpreting tone of voice alone. Now, as I sit in my home office reading only the body language of my two cats, I am not able to rely on my go-to tools.

So, what now? When experts propose 70-90% of all communication is nonverbal, and we are living in an increasingly virtual world, how can we, as leaders, adapt our interpersonal skills to this new professional arena of video calls and email exchanges? These solely computer-based interactions can make the challenge facing people leaders feel insurmountable. Leadership is hard and it just got harder.

While some team-development tools may be less accessible to us right now, there are additional skills we, as leaders, can leverage to adapt to this new remote work landscape. By understanding your team and the people you work with, you can better lead with empathy. Brené Brown describes empathy as connecting with the emotion someone is experiencing, not the event or the circumstance. Empathy doesn’t require having the exact same experiences as the person sharing their story with us.

Leading with empathy builds a stronger connection with co-workers based on trust. It also increases job satisfaction and fosters work productivity. If you are leading a remote team, here are a few practices to help ensure you continue to lead, rather than simply manage.

Supporting Shifting Work Environments

Migrating to a flexible work arrangements model, leaders will be challenged by the fundamental change in where, when and how work gets done. As co-workers prepare for the flexible workforce model, it will be important to reiterate the changes in the world, encouraging the organization to “reset” vs. just “restart.” Highlighting some things are not changing, such as company values, is also important.

Leaders who were effective in primarily in-person arrangements may struggle in a flexible workforce approach without upskilling and focus. Leaders need to be intentional about how they “show up” when interacting with co-workers in-person and others virtually. By defining and embracing new observable behaviors, and by deliberately creating opportunities for remote co-workers to interact, leaders can facilitate engagement, connectedness and productivity in their teams.

Embrace Flexibility

The biggest hurdle is the mindset shift required to be successful. Working remotely poses a strong challenge to the traditional idea of a workday and does not mean or require people to be tied to their desks from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Rather, a remote work environment provides an opportunity to align with what co-workers have long been saying they want: trust and flexibility.

In a recent Deloitte study, 94% of respondents said they would benefit from one thing: workplace flexibility in the form of remote work and flexible hours. Trust your people. Make sure they know they have the flexibility to manage their own time. One of the significant benefits of remote work is an increased work/life balance with opportunities to take a break by going for a walk, enjoying a workout, tending to household tasks or having lunch/dinner with family. Not to mention, many people are balancing their children being home during this time as well.

Oftentimes, if your team knows you trust them to accomplish their performance goals on time, and you afford them the freedom to accomplish these goals in a way best suiting their needs and work style, your team will reward that trust with increased productivity, engagement and innovation in problem-solving.

Culture and Connectedness

It can be challenging to create connections in a flexible workforce model. Communicating regularly and having a good cadence for team and individual connections (formal and informal) will make a big impact. For new co-workers, onboarding is key to establishing an early connection to culture, mission, vision and team.

Wellbeing

Physical and psychological safety are critical for co-workers and core to a focus on co-worker well-being. Based on survey feedback, we know there are co-workers who are feeling very isolated and down on the mood elevator while working from home during the pandemic. Acquaint yourself with all of the resources your organization makes available in order to assist co-workers who may be struggling. Leader focus on co-worker well-being remains just as critical for remote and onsite workers.

Address Struggles Head-On

Most professionals are formally working from home for the first time, and it’s essential to ensure the entire team is on the same page. Educate your teams on the common struggles they may face while working remotely.

Studies show some of the biggest challenges for remote workers are: 

• Collaboration and communication
• Loneliness
• Not being able to unplug
• Distractions 

Instead of avoiding these, make your team aware of the struggles they are likely to face and work together to create solutions to overcome them.  

Maintain Team Meetings for the Win

If you are leading a remote team, your ability to run effective team meetings can make or break you. Not only do they provide a platform for communication and connection, but most importantly, they will keep everyone engaged and accountable if done correctly.  

Set weekly video meetings and ensure everyone on the team attends. An effective structure for a remote team meeting may look like this:

1. Personal updates – Weekend activities, news, etc.
2. Overview message about current priorities and recent wins
3. Individual updates – Each team member updates the entire group with three things: one thing they did last week that helped, what they are working on this week and where they need help 

Show Authentic Appreciation and Care

Since you won’t have the opportunity to show appreciation for the work your team is doing in person, it is essential to show them authentic appreciation in other ways. The reason is simple: co-workers who feel appreciated will always do more than what’s expected. Take time to show authentic appreciation and that you care about them. Something as simple as a “thank you” text will go a long way. An even better approach is to be specific and timely in your feedback, such as “I really appreciated the way you worked with the customer this morning to find a win/win solution.”

Closing

Whether you have been leading a remote team for a while or you are brand new, know you are capable of leading through this unprecedented time. Adapting to a virtual environment is a change we’re all navigating. Listening and communicating openly with your team, working through challenges together and embracing your virtual environment are keys to elevating each other to higher levels of performance.

Download the PDF version of this blog post. Collect the series.

Written by: Patty Carrig – Manager, Safety Strategy and Performance & Angela Spinzig – Safety Content Strategist – Ameren

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We hear it all the time, technology is advancing rapidly. But what does this mean for ergonomics and where can technology support an ergonomics program?  

In order to embrace advancing technology within our ergonomics programs, we must first have a good foundation. An ergonomics program should first have the following key components:

• Leadership support and accountability 
• Strong ergonomic risk management process and tool(s)
• Cross-functional ergonomics teams including operators
• Strong incident investigation and corrective action programs
• Clear ergonomic design guidelines
• Methods for early reporting, case management and job coaching
• Ergonomics training on body mechanics and ergonomic fundamentals

Starting with the above fundamentals, we can explore this rapidly changing world of technology. Be thoughtful to avoid patching a broken process with a technology band aid. Below we outline where new technologies could, or more importantly should, support the program. 

Collaborative Robots

These include cobots and industrial mobile robots. This technology typically has an attractive return on investment. They’re easily programmable, often bring significant risk reduction and free up employees to perform additional value added work.

Data Collection Devices 

We live in a world of big data, more data than most can effectively use. From posture to environmental conditions to health data, from wearables to surveys to cameras, it feels like endless possibilities for collecting data. Before adding to the pile of unused data, understand and set expectations on how the data will be used and what you are trying to solve:  do you anticipate job coaching, behavioral changes, engineering improvements, new risk assessment, cost justification? 

3D Printing     

    
Sometimes we have existing technology that can be used in new and innovative ways. For example, 3D printers. The possibilities are endless, 3D printing can be used to design custom handles for tools to custom ergonomic tools. It can even expand to other safety devices such as guarding. Using 3D printing for prototypes can also reduce the cost of reiterations as you make changes to the design. 

Exoskeletons     

Application, application, application. These devices are not intended to increase strength, but may be helpful in reducing fatigue caused by repetitive and/or sustained awkward postures that cannot be eliminated. Before implementing, investigate if and how the job can be improved to eliminate or reduce the risk to an acceptable level – this must be a robust process. Do your research, and ensure the device is appropriate for the application. Strategically design the implementation, introduce slowly, and follow-up regularly with employees. 

Computer Simulation

 
Timing is key. Building a virtual world after the production line is implemented offers less benefit than if built prior to design finalization. Team up with engineers to identify the best time in the design process to implement computer modeling.  

Once you’ve determined the applicability of a new technology, the fun begins. Cross functional collaboration and front-line employee buy-in is vital to the success of any ergonomics program, especially when considering new technology. Ensure the technology is socialized with operators to build a comfort level before bringing this to the shop floor. Be open and honest about the changes the technology will and will not provide. Educating cross-functional teams is important for everyone to understand where the technology could be applicable and allows them to help promote the changes. Overall, remember to celebrate the successes. This will help bring more interest to the ergonomics program and prompt others to participate and bring innovative new ideas to the table.

Written: Sarah Grawe, Ergonomics Manager, Cummins Inc.

The views expressed in this blog post are that of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Campbell Institute nor the National Safety Council.

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Consider the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, with over $8.5 trillion in assets under management. It’s likely your retirement investments contain some BlackRock funds and your company is invested in by BlackRock. Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, is well known for his growing interest in ESG, embedding it into BlackRock’s investment strategy and his annual letter to CEOs articulating BlackRock’s ESG expectations.

BlackRock’s 2021 CEO letter mentioned the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) for the second year. In other publications, BlackRock updated its Investment Stewardship Engagement Priorities, including their report “Our approach to engagement on human capital management,” which lays out what BlackRock expects of Boards and Management Teams as they work to retain and attract talent. It’s in this 4-page document where you can start to see how health and safety is a part of the larger human capital management discussion.

TCFD is about climate risk, so we’ll table that and turn to sustainability standards and reporting. SASB was founded in 2011 and took a focused look at the financial market’s interest in and use of ESG data. They documented over 550 companies reporting on the SASB Standards in 2020, and over 1,100 mentions of SASB in company disclosures. Of course, the most well known and most widely adopted sustainability standard is the GRI, aka – the Global Reporting Initiative, which was founded in 1997. Close to 80% of S&P 500 companies report with some influence from the GRI standards; and according to GRI’s Disclosure Database, close to 40,000 GRI reports exist in the public domain.

These developments mean there is a significant amount of ESG information in the public domain due to the voluntary reporting of many of the world’s largest companies. Many of these reports contain leading examples of human capital management and how companies are taking care of their people from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I), to wellness and wellbeing, to occupational health and safety.

The ‘human element’ is becoming more prominent in ESG reporting, with investors recognizing the connection between human capital management and financial performance. This focus goes beyond the traditional notion of ‘keeping people safe,’ expanding to include a focus on leadership and cultural change, as well as embedding concepts such as psychological safety, the ‘whole person’ perspective, and investment in workers’ wellness outside of work. Much more information is available in the SustainAbility Institute (an ERM company) report: Everyone Benefits: Connecting health and safety and human capital, January 2021.  Your health and safety expertise is needed in the C-suite to help executives respond to the growing demand for human capital management information. Historically, human capital management has often been perceived as a human resources mandate. However, a cross-functional approach is critical, see the graphic below. Professionals in the health and safety function can bring extensive experience in the systems and processes supporting human capital management, including operating models, management frameworks and an increasing focus on holistic health. Leveraging this experience can allow health and safety professionals to become even better connected to corporate human capital strategies.

Written by: Mike Wallace – Partner, ERM & Strategic Adviser, Capitals Coalition

The views expressed in this blog post are that of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Campbell Institute nor the National Safety Council.

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It’s like that movie “Groundhog Day,” right?  Every weekday morning, I make the trek down to my basement office and follow my same routines to begin my “solo” day again. Sound familiar? So how do we push past the “Groundhog Day” syndrome for not only ourselves, but also for our teams? How do we maintain direction, organization, connectivity and productivity when we are missing that all-important face-to-face time together to share stories and experiences?

For me personally, it all starts with being organized, including ending every day with a “hot” list for the next day. This puts my mind at rest for the night and makes me feel ready to (re)start the following day with a productive mindset. When leading a team, knowing specifically where you are headed each day gives your team members a sense of direction and responsibility for their own part in reaching short- and long-term goals. Having weekly or daily touchpoints, depending on the team member, their responsibilities and current projects, is even more critical now while working remotely.

During the touch base calls, consider making more of an effort to spend time socializing with the team.  Since we don’t have the opportunity to be together at meetings or events, it’s even more important to use that time to show active caring. For many of us, our days are filled with calls and video conferences, so we feel extremely connected to others within our organization. That may not be true for all of our team members, so this added time together is important. Beyond this, it is important to ensure that while working remotely, we are still meeting our work obligations. Tracking projects and asking for updates at each touch base opportunity doesn’t only make sure the project is getting done –  it’s a reminder to team members of their value and that their work is meaningful and necessary. This is more important than ever!

It’s time to seize the moment in a positive way by both suggesting and supporting professional learning opportunities. Teams can continue to progress in their knowledge and experiences without the need for time-consuming travel by participating in virtual roundtables, lunch-and-learn sessions and other online opportunities hosted by organizations, such as the National Safety Council and the Campbell Institute. Additionally, internal opportunities for cross-training can give team members new skills and experience, while letting them know they are an important part of the team.  It’s a real benefit to the organization as a whole.

Lastly, leading is very much about the right attitude. This is even more critical when trying to capture and understand team members’ thoughts without the benefit of being in the same room. As a leader, give thought to how you approach communicating with others. Acknowledging their frustration, isolation and concerns in a constructive way will give them a release, and hopefully some solutions to help combat these feelings. The same routine, office location and lack of face-to-face interaction can take a toll on anyone. But you can make a difference by being a positive influence. In the end, remember to reinforce how fortunate we are to be able to contribute and make a difference in helping our organizations’ teams work safely so they can go home to their families each day.

Download the PDF version of this blog post. Collect the series.

Written by: Teresa Kee – Director, Corporate Safety – United Rentals

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Dr. Martin Shain of the Neighbour at Work Centre presented at the 2021 Campbell Institute Symposium and now writes on psychological safety for the EHS Matters blog.

What is Psychological Safety?

Psychological safety is a state in which workers are free from exposure to reasonably foreseeable, significant risks to their mental health arising from the acts and omissions of other people in the workplace so there is a low risk of mental injury.

Psychological safety calls for a workplace culture where people are careful to avoid preventable injuries to one another’s mental health by making a deliberate effort to:

• Be aware of how they affect others within their circles of influence
• Understand and accommodate (up to a reasonable standard) the rights, needs and interests of those others

Another important aspect of psychological safety is feeling free to speak out and speak up about important matters without fear of retribution from supervisors, managers and other workers.

When awareness, understanding, carefulness and freedom to speak up are the norm within a workplace, there is likely to be a greater sense of community (“we’re all in this together”). However, this is unlikely to develop on its own and usually requires deliberate leadership to bring it about.

One leading safety association in Canada has found it useful to use a “cultural tool” for leaders called “Neighbours at Work” to symbolize and personify the “3Be” Imperatives – be aware, be understanding and be careful (http://www.neighbouratwork.com).

Leveraging Lessons Learned

The pandemic hit the workplace when many organizations, large and small, were not anywhere near this level of psychological safety. As a result, employers had little to rely upon to create a sense among workers that they were all in this battle together.

This lack of shared identity was alienating and demoralizing for many as they struggled with how to maintain their mental health in the face of grave uncertainties and dangers.

Ironically, the pandemic did spur some organizations to address the issue of community, but in many cases they simply floundered and resorted to recommending self help measures rather than addressing systemic issues of mistrust and alienation among workers.

However, some organizations recognized – perhaps as they always had – that taking every reasonable precaution to keep workers physically safe – whether in real or virtual settings – showed workers they were valued and cared for. So providing appropriate PPE, materials and time for sanitization, enforcing social distancing, creating opportunities for virtual social support and referrals to EAPs all helped give employees the sense that they were valued as people, not just as cogs in a wheel. In other words, carefully taking care of workers’ physical safety translated into mental health promotion.

As many employees ended up working from home, this created another challenge for employers to keep people safe. Some employers took this as an opportunity to reach out in ways not previously done by offering both social and material support to workers to function safely and effectively from their homes. This benefited both their physical and psychological safety.

Returning to Work

Ultimately, many workers will one day return to the physical workplace. This will create a fresh set of issues for employers as they work to rebuild an enduring sense of community while getting the organization back on its feet again. How employees were treated while working from home will no doubt have a significant impact on how successful a return to the physical workplace will be.

Considered from another perspective, the return to a physical workplace can be an opportunity to revisit what a psychologically safe environment can, and should, look like.

New or reinvigorated policies and programs aimed at sustaining the cultural norms of awareness, understanding and carefulness may offer organizations a new lease on life for the benefit of all. This should also help organizations prepare for any future crises from external forces, such as pandemics.

Dr. Martin Shain is the principal and founder of the Neighbour at Work Centre, a consulting agency in workplace mental safety and health. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. In his role as an academic lawyer Martin wrote two policy papers that laid out the legal foundations and general specifications for the Canadian National Standard on Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. His fifth book, “The Careful Workplace”, was published by Thomson Reuters in 2016. Currently he is partnering with Workplace Safety and Prevention Services in the development of education and training resources for the OH&S community.

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