Today we’re again speaking with Jade Brainard, the Senior Director of Product Management at KPA with 17 years of experience in B2B markets. Jade is a seasoned SaaS technology professional who has a true passion for solving complex business challenges and driving customer satisfaction through innovative software solutions. She’s a hands-on leader known for her strong communication skills and her unwavering focus on aligning product strategies with business objectives. Jade is here to share her insights on a critical topic, getting safety to the front lines. Thanks for being with us today, Jade.

Good to be here.

[00:00:48]
All right, let’s jump in. So from your perspective, what does it truly take to build a safety-first culture?

Engaging frontline workers is essential for achieving a safety-first culture. This requires a holistic approach across an organization that prioritizes safety at every organizational level.

We’re talking about top floor to shop floor, C-suite to Craft. Every level of an organization being involved in the safety program to help ensure employees feel engaged. Because safety culture is about ensuring employees feel empowered, they feel accountable, and it really takes that holistic approach that the entire organization is committed to.

Most importantly, it needs to start with leadership and go from the top down. So, having that leadership commitment to grow and foster that culture across the organization is key.

[00:01:55]
I can see how if there is no buy-in from leadership, if the people at the top are not engaged in making sure that people are safe or making sure that they have the right things in place, how the managers right below might let it slip off of their plate. And therefore it doesn’t get to those people that are on the frontlines, who are actually the ones who are risking their safety. So I can see how important it would be for leadership to drive safety engagement.

Do you have any examples that you can share of leadership initiatives that have worked well to get that leadership involved so that it actually makes a difference for those frontline workers?

Yeah, for sure. So leadership is critical to driving that safety engagement. When we think about a change management process within an organization, change management happens all the time, right? Whether we’re changing engineering controls or operational processes, change management processes are structured approaches that an organization uses to plan, implement, and then to sustain these changes effectively by making minimal disruption and ensuring adoption.

So leaders are crucial to this process. And sometimes it goes by the wayside. We don’t consider safety culture or a safety program as change management within an organization.

It really is, and every change management process requires leadership adoption. So how do leaders get involved?

Leaders really set the tone for the culture, so they demonstrate how important it is; and why safety is so important. They participate in the communication. And this could be things like doing safety walks. Maybe being on a job site or a manufacturing floor. They have a visible presence with the frontline employees. Because sometimes, there can be a lack of trust from frontline employees, believing that management doesn’t understand what’s going on in the field, or is too far removed to really see the full picture.

So having that visible presence is super important. Maybe even leading safety meetings, leaders can participate or run these safety briefings. I know some of our customers have done that even as part of their process in rolling out a new safety tool or safety program. Have leadership come on site, lead the toolbox talk for the day.

This is something that Southwest Airlines does. Senior leaders in actually every staff meeting. They start with a safety moment and just connecting about safety discussions and real life incidents and improvements that they could be making.

It is super important for leaders to really set that tone to head down that positive safety culture direction.

[00:04:46]
That makes a lot of sense, and it’s cool to hear those real-life examples, especially from companies that are on the larger side where senior leadership can feel really disconnected. If they’re able to do it, then I think the smaller businesses should be able to bring those senior leaders in. But I’m sure that there are a lot of barriers. I know you mentioned that frontline workers sometimes don’t trust that leadership knows what’s going on. So I’m sure that there are common challenges that companies face when they’re trying to engage the frontline workforce. Do you have any tips on how to address these barriers?

Yeah, I mean, we talked about the lack of trust, and that can really be overcome by participation, being visible, being present, participating in the program, and being on the frontline with those employees. But there are several other challenges that many organizations face.

One of them is kind of an age-old issue: the perception of safety as a burden. This is an extra step to my day. It’s going to add time to where I could skip steps and get this job done a lot faster if I didn’t have to follow this certain safety procedure.

So, perceiving safety as a burden is certainly a challenge. Also, there are communication barriers. You could have the best safety program or software in the world, but it has to be practical. For example, if we’re not providing communication avenues that are relevant to our workforce, or if we have a remote workforce but our safety program requires that they have to go to an office each day and fill out some paperwork and handle things manually. That is just going to add to the problem of perceiving safety as a burden.

You can overcome those barriers by choosing the right tools, making sure that you have really evaluated where your workforce is, and understood what communication strategies are going to be the least to overcome would be a good way to kinda overcome those issues.

[00:06:58]
Speaking of communication issues and making sure that the safety program is accessible, I think this is a great time to consider how technology has changed the space.

So I know that in the last decade or so, technology has really changed the way that we approach safety overall. So how can tools like automation and real-time data improve the engagement and outcomes of these safety programs?

Yeah, so I mean, we are all accustomed to having a device either near or on us at all times.

And that’s true for the entire workforce, whether you are on a job site, you have a phone accessible, you’re on a manufacturing floor, you have either computers or iPads or other things accessible to you. So now with that technology and the way things have gone, safety programs are now in the hands of everyone.

It is more accessible than ever before. It really helps overcome some of that perception of safety as a burden. I don’t have to dig through a binder for a form to fill out. I can open my phone, I can use talk-to-text features. It’s so much more accessible now than it ever was before.

[00:08:11]
That makes a ton of sense. And, thinking about the fact that everyone does have it on their person, it’s not always just the burden of the company to provide these things, but even just having access to something within that piece of technology and being able to have it with you, like you said, not having to go in and fill out those things. I can see how it can open up those communication channels.

So, along with technology, as we mentioned, what are some strategies that you’ve seen that enhance communication channels to foster more of a two-way dialogue with these frontline workers?

So why do we want to improve our safety culture? What is, what is the measurement of a good safety culture? It’s all about participation.

Participation is all about focusing on proactive engagement and proactive reporting, where we’re trying to capture things before something occurs, trying to capture near-miss reports, identifying hazards, and proactively understanding where our risk lies in the business.

That is what helps us really change a safety culture, to understand where we can make improvements, before something actually happens. By using technology, you can put safety in the hands of everyone. Make it easy for them to proactively report those leading indicators.

So, our workforce has the ability to just take a photo, identify a workplace hazard while they’re headed to complete a job. I don’t have to go and fill out a report, to do that. Because the chances of that actually being reported are slim-to-none. So by making safety accessible, we are more likely to get participation.

And now we have more data, more information to make actionable insights. We can see where those losses are headed, rather than just where they’ve occurred.

[00:10:07]
I think that everything that you’ve said comes together in something that you’ve repeated a couple times now, which is putting safety in the hands of everyone. I think it’s great to be able to say: “We’ve put safety in the hands of all of our workforce.”

So how can organizations empower those frontline workers to take ownership of that now that they’ve given them the access? How are organizations getting people in the mindset of:  “This is something that I can tackle now. It’s not a burden on my day. “

Yeah. So back to one of the questions that you asked is how do we foster that two-way communication? So we empower frontline workers by giving them a sense of ownership of safety practices, first of all.

Step one is putting the safety program in their hands, making it easy, making it practical, and encouraging participation. We do that through technology and different tools, but that two-way communication is very important to have a long lasting impact.

So, we might be successful in getting the adoption of proactive reporting, but if our workforce doesn’t see any changes made as a result, or that there’s no response to their participation, we’re going to see that participation decline over time. So, making sure that if a workplace hazard is reported, there’s a response back, “Hey, thanks for reporting that these are some changes that were made.”

Or maybe even, on a weekly basis, communicate the incidents that have occurred. Here’s the hazards on the manufacturing floor, on the job site. Here’s how we’re going to mitigate those.

So really allowing them to see the results and the action taken as a result of their participation is a great way to empower workers.