getting senior management buy-in for your safety software

Getting senior management buy-in for your safety software project

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Contents Introduction 2

The impact of senior managers 2

Learn about your audience 4

Who makes the decisions (and who influences the decision makers)? 4How, and where, are decisions made? 5What goals do the decision-makers have? 6

Tailor your message 8

Sell the benefits 8Use their language 10Tell a story 12

Reinforce their response 14

Manage expectations 14Provide feedback 15

Conclusion 16References 16Acknowledgments 16

Getting senior management buy-in for your safety software project

The impact of senior managers

It is not a new idea to say that senior managers have a definite impact on the safety culture of an organization, and hence on accidents and ill-health. In a 1999 guide from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) ‘Reducing error and influencing behavior’ (HSG 48), the UK regulator made it clear that ‘management commitment and leadership’ were key factors for success.

HSG 48 goes on to define what management commitment looks like:

The importance of time, money and people is obvious. If working hours are cut to the bone, people will skip time-consuming safety measures. If there is no budget to replace damaged equipment, accidents will happen as equipment fails in use. If people are not trained and su-pervised, they will make mistakes that lead to accidents, ill-health and loss of production.

But the role of senior managers goes beyond the resources provided. Senior managers need to demonstrate the right behaviors, to talk about health and safety in a positive light, and to sup-port measures that go beyond compliance.

As HSG 48 puts it ‘Staff need to believe that all their managers are committed to health and safety.’ If your organization has a culture that accepts that a steady stream of minor injury ac-cidents is inevitable, you need your senior managers to paint a realistic picture of a day when these accidents are rare.

If lower back pain is seen as ‘part of the territory’ for people working in manual jobs, you want support in raising the expectation of people to feel well.

“It is best indicated by the proportion of resources (time, money, people) and sup-port allocated to health and safety management and by the status given to health and safety. The active involvement of senior management in the health and safety system is very important. Managers need to be seen to lead by example when it comes to

Introduction

2 Getting senior management buy-in for your safety software project

In 2013 the HSE reinforced the vital role of senior managers by publishing a guidance document (INDG 417) in collaboration with the Institute of Directors (IoD). This spoke directly to directors, board members, business owners, trustees and equivalent roles:

If you are a senior manager, that you have chosen to read this suggests you are already looking at how to show that commitment, and how to engage other senior managers. If you are a safety professional, it’s likely you’re reading this because you’re still struggling to get that demonstrable commitment from senior people.

EcoOnline has spoken to health and safety professionals who have successfully made an impact on the senior managers they’ve dealt with. They have persuaded boards to invest in health and safety products, training and systems. They have shown individual managers how to demon-strate their commitment to health and safety through their behaviors. They have engaged them in health and safety.

From their experience we are going to explain the three steps that they follow to gain – and maintain – that engagement from senior managers.

The three steps we will cover are:

Learn about your audience

Tailoring your message for that audience

Reinforcing the decisions senior managers make

“Protecting the health and safety of employees or members of the public who may be affected by your activities is an essential part of risk management and must be led by the board.

Failure to include health and safety as a key business risk in board decisions can have catastrophic results. Many high-profile safety cases over the years have been rooted in failures of leadership.”

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Those controlling the purse strings of an orga-nization will have an impact on the resources available for health and safety, so you might need to start with the managers sometimes known as the ‘C suite’ such as the chief executive officer (CEO) and chief financial officer (CFO).

However, managers at various levels in the organization have influence over the workforce, and influence over the board-level decision makers.

In this paper, unless we are referring to a specific category of manager, we use the term ‘senior manager’. This includes operational managers, the C-suite and other board level directors.

Who do you need to talk to?


Who makes the decisions (and who influences the decision makers)?

Your enthusiasm for health and safety is not a substitute for good homework. You might feel you have already done enough: you have a plan for improving health and safety, you’ve calculated the costs and timescales, and you’ve even made some estimates about what the return on investment might be.

But have you put the same effort into understanding your audience?

Get to know your organogram. Who reports to whom in an organization? Which managers are on the board, and which report to other board members? These are the formal chains of decision-making.

Influence, however, can be harder to identify, and isn’t illustrated in an organogram. The people with influence might not be those you first think of.

Is there a production manager that the chief technical officer (CTO) always consults for an opinion? Does the chief financial officer (CFO) always have a chat with the top sales executive about new ideas? How do the HR team influence decisions about occupational health provision?

Learn about your audience


Since it isn’t documented, how can you find out who the influencers are? Successful health and safety managers have suggested looking at the social media that senior managers use, including external platforms like LinkedIn, or internal messaging and communication boards.

Who is linked to whom? Who has commented on whose posts? What’s the tone of their comments? Who is copied in on emails?

What do company documents tell you? Whose signature is on the health and safety policy, and who was involved in reviewing it? What do the minutes of internal meetings tell you about influence and decision-making?

Ask questions of the managers you deal with, and listen carefully to their answers.

How, and where, are decisions made?

Where you need a board decision to fund a health and safety project, what process will the approvers follow?

Do they want it explained in detail at a meeting, or do they want a proposal they can review in their own time? Will senior managers decide at the first meeting, or mull it over, meeting after meeting, before they conclude?

Sometimes the discussions all take place before the meeting – exchanges of emails, phone calls, chats over lunch. If the key people have already made up their minds before they hear your presentation, all your beautiful PowerPoint slides will be for nothing. You’ll need to get the message to the right people in advance.

The pandemic has changed the way people meet, and this includes board meetings. Some organizations reverted to face-to-face as soon as they could put appropriate safety measures in place, but others have continued with remote meetings.

If the sessions where decisions are made are now held online, does this make it harder for you to influence people because everyone is in a different place and it’s harder to catch their eye? Or is it easier to get heard, because geography is no longer a barrier?


Most senior managers will tell you that safety is a priority. But what does this mean to them, and how do they measure success? For some, it might simply be a lack of injury-accidents. Others might be more interested in compliance with regulatory requirements – whether pressure vessels and lifting equipment have had their statutory inspections, for example.

Long-term, you might be keen to help them understand that a positive health and safety culture is about more than compliance and avoiding injuries. You will want them to demonstrate avisible and consistent commitment to safety and a concern for the wellbeing and health of staff.But you must start with where they are and their current goals.

In Table 1 we’ve summarized the official, organizational goal of common senior manager roles. These might be linked to the way senior managers are rewarded. For example, if the CEO gets some remuneration in shares, the price of those shares might be a primary focus. If the CFO gets a bonus for financial savings, that will be on their agenda.

However, you need to go beyond organizational goals to look at their personal goals. Find out what makes people tick – it might not be what you expect. The CFO or finance director might be interested in more than counting money. CFOs are likely to be good with data, so you might want to get them onboard early, to help build the business case for a safety proposal.

The background of each manager might give you some clues. Traditionally, CEOs had a finance background. However, an increasing proportion now have a marketing background, so they might be more sensitive to issues around reputation management, and more receptive to selling techniques.

Looking at their CV or their LinkedIn profile might tell you where a manager studied and where they worked before. Have they worked their way up the ranks, picking up qualifications by studying in their own time, or are they fresh from taking a sabbatical to achieve an MBA? Have they come from an industry with a different risk profile?

An active LinkedIn profile can indicate what groups a manager follows, and what discussions they engage with. Are they all about work, or do they have a hobby you might be able to use as an analogy?

What goals do the decision-makers have?


Role Responsibility Organizational goal

Chief Executive Officer(CEO) (other C-Suite roles report to the CEO)

Manages the overall direction of the organization. Might be chair of the board, or can report directly to the board if not.

Maximize the company’s value in the long-term.

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or Head of Business development

Oversees the organization’s marketing activity, including branch and product management, market research, pricing and customer service.

Sell more product or service.

Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or Financial Controller

Financial planning and record- keeping. Includes analysis and reporting of past financial performance and risk management of future financial performance.

Plan spending for the best impact.

Head of Human Resources (HR) or Chief HR officer or Personnel Director

Contributes to and implements the organization’s strategy for recruitment, promotion, benefits, retention and training.

Ensure competent people are available to meet the goals of the organization.

Chief Operating Officer (COO) or Director of Administration

Responsible for the daily operation of the organization and management of property. Reports regularly to the CEO.

To implement the plans agreed with the CEO.

Chief Information Officer (CIO)

Responsible for the computer and communications systems and information used by staff.

Sometimes these roles are combined.

Goals are to maintain reliability of existing systems, and to innovate and improve future use of technology.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Responsible for the technology and information used by customers (where relevant).

Chief Administrative Officer (CAO)

Responsibilities include supply chain, property and data.

Chief Data Officer (CDO)

This is a less common role, and might be part of a CIO, CTO or CAO role. The CDO is responsible for complying with GDPR (data protec-tion legislation) while making best use of data internally.

Protect data while making best use of it.

Make people aware of data protection requirements.

Table 1


Sell the benefits

If you’ve learnt all you can about the senior managers and their decision-making process in the previous step you can tailor the message. Sell them the benefits which map to their goals, using their language, and tell them the story of how things could be.

A conventional way to sell a health and safety proposal is to persuade senior managers of the legal, financial and moral costs of not implementing the new measures. People will get hurt, you will have legal action taken against you, your reputation will be damaged, you will losecustomers.

Successful health and safety managers warn against using the stick approach too often. If there has been a recent accident, managers might be looking for a solution. But if there hasn’t, they might be prepared to gamble that there won’t be. So instead, focus on the benefits to the organization of your proposal, such as:

It will reduce time spent on administration. How will you use the extra time?

It will reduce employee absence. If you cover absences with agency staff, or have people on long-term sickness absences where you’ve had to recruit replacements, show how much money the organization would save by even a small reduction in employee absence.

It will reduce turnover of employees. Work with HR to find out how much it costs to recruit, induct and train a new employee. Find a convincing story of why someone competent left the organization, and explain how your proposal would have prevented this.

Tailor your message

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It will improve the company’s reputation. Find a statement from an existing or potential customer that shows they place more emphasis on the safety and health efforts of their suppliers than on price. Or look at the concerns of communities where your organization operates. If a local school has a campaign about the dangers of parking on pavements, your proposal for improving driver training could benefit reputation.

It will increase productivity. You can count absences, but productivity and presenteeism are more difficult to measure. Don’t claim employees will be healthier, happier and better motivated without some evidence or examples.

It will improve customer service. If you’re in retail or hospitality, you can show that a proposal to improve health and safety management has a direct benefit on a customer. If your customers are remote, can you show how the proposal will reduce costs, improve quality or provide more choice?

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In selling the benefits, be realistic about the costs. If you try to sweep under the carpet that a system will need new hardware, or training, or a new process, someone is likely to rumble you and undermine your whole case.

If you’re supporting your story with the cost of accidents, use costs that are comparable with your industry. Using stats calculated from all UK industries 20 years ago might not withstand the scrutiny of senior executives. Find numbers for your industry, and if your own data is good enough, for your organization.

Note:


These examples relate to the formal goals of the senior managers. But using their language goes beyond looking at their formal position. What language do they use when talking about the workplace?

Do they use the language of cogs and wheels, of people and their behavioral responses, or of wellbeing and value?

Use their language

Once you have worked out the benefits of your proposal, how can you tailor the presentation to show it supports the goals of each of the senior managers? Look again at the organizational goals in Table 1. For example:


Let’s say you want to ask for the resources to implement an incident reporting system that makes use of mobile devices (phones and tablets) to allow all workers to record safety observations or near misses immediately. You could just state that this will lead to fewer accidents, which in turn will improve productivity – that’s a benefit.

But in convincing them of the benefit, consider the different interests of these managers:

All these explanations can then conclude ‘.. and so this system will reduce accidents and improve productivity’ but whether you hooked them before you got to that point depends on understanding their language.

Using their language also means tailoring how your message is delivered. Your preference might be for a slide deck of bullet points or a detailed report, but managers might want a one-page summary. Others might want calculations, graphs or diagrams.

If you spot that a manager comments on a lot of videos on LinkedIn, film some of the current issues in the workplace as part of your business case. If you did your homework, you’ll know too whether you need to prepare a formal presentation, lobby individuals separately, or arrange a conversation with one key decision-maker.


https://www.ecoonline.com/health-and-safety/incident-reporting-software

Tell a story

Some health and safety managers are good at telling stories. A work at height course might start with the account of the decorator who fell off a stepladder, broke his neck and died; an awareness session for senior managers might start with a story of an accident that led to a multi-million pound fine for a large organization. But can you tell a positive story?

Your story needs to capture the benefits to the organization, and to each individual’s goals. You could do this from the perspective of a customer, or a member of staff, or for a director walking around the site in the future, if your proposal is accepted.

A good story isn’t just about what happened – it appeals to all the senses. If they accept your proposal for buying quieter machinery, the managers will be able to walk through the production line without hearing protection, and hold a conversation with the workers without shouting. If your proposal for improved ventilation is adopted, their shoes and their suits won’t get dusty when they walk through the workshop. If electric vehicles replace the diesel ones, the warehouse will smell better.

Your story needs to be realistic, and with a reasonable timescale. A credible set of small wins in the next 12 months is more convincing that a description of utopia in ten years. If you are seeking ISO 45001 accreditation, describing the benefits of getting this for one site in the next financial year paints a better picture than company-wide accreditation at some undefined point of time.

With a software solution to safety management, you could describe how improvements in incident reporting and investigation could be realized in the next year, rather than try to describe how risk assessments, permits, plant management, audits and training records could all be automated in


https://www.ecoonline.com/health-and-safety-software

You can supplement your own story with the real experience of other people. The guidance on leading health and safety at work from the HSE and IOD (INDG 417) includes some examples: When the director of service policy and planning at the Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service started making site visits to talk to the workforce about the importance of incident reporting, investigation and monitoring, the service reported a 50% reduction in injury rates and a £100,000 reduction in insurance liability premiums.

If you need backing for a software project, you could use the story of the packaging company, Coveris, that streamlined its multiple platforms for safety data into a single system. The head of health and safety calculated that he has cut the time to produce his month-end report from two days to two hours, and that the data he provides is more accurate.

Other benefits are that information is available more readily to anyone else who needs it. Safety observations are dealt with much more quickly, and as a result, there are significantly fewer lost-time injuries.

One last tip on storytelling from our experts. Should you tell the managers your proposal and back it up with a story, or start with the story and then conclude with your proposal?

The answer depends. In writing you should almost always start with the recommendation. This provides a summary of the proposal, and gives the reader a reason to carry on with the rest of the document. If you know your senior managers are receptive to new ideas, it’s a good strategy for a face-to-face presentation too. The classic ‘tell them what you propose, tell them why, then tell them what you proposed’ works well.

However, if you believe that the senior managers might be hostile to your proposal (but you know they will have to sit through it nevertheless) you might want to tell the story first. You sell the result first, telling the story to describe the benefits that are available. Get managers thinking ‘Yes, I’d like my organization to be like that.’ Only then do you explain your proposal for how it can be achieved.

Find more examples like this at https://www.ecoonline.com/our-clients


https://www.effective-software.com/resources/case-studies/coveris

https://www.effective-software.com/resources/case-studies/coveris

https://www.ecoonline.com/our-clients

Manage expectations

Much has been written about how to reinforce good health and safety behaviors in the workforce. Positive reinforcement improves engagement. We know what happens if we reward people who finish quickly by cutting corners, while penalizing those who took the time to put on the PPE and to make the pre-use checks.

Senior managers are people, so just like the workforce we need to reinforce in them the behaviors we want them to repeat: back our proposals for improved health and safety.

If you promise ‘zero accidents’ and an accident happens, where do you go next? Consider what you can and can’t control.

If in January 2020 you’d promised a lower rate of sickness absences during 2020, COVID-19 might have made that promise impossible to keep. If you’d outlined a lower rate of sickness absence due to manual handling injuries you could still demonstrate that you had met your target.

Improvements take time for the benefits to be realized. A new system for safety observations is unlikely to have an immediate impact on accidents.

Your initial goal might be to increase the amount of reporting in the first six months, with accidents only reducing once systems around responding to reports have become embedded.

Reinforce their response


https://www.ecoonline.com/health-and-safety/near-miss-reporting-software

Remember to use the power of the story:

Or something more personal:

Last year you gave me £10,000 for a new cloud-based safety management system, and as a result of using it effectively we’ve saved £20,000 in lost production.

That incident reporting application you supported last year has had some great benefits. For example, in response to a safety observation last week, maintenance made a repair that not only prevented someone getting hurt, it also avoided a breakdown on the production line that would have taken hours to fix.

After your walk about on the factory floor last week, where you wore all the right PPE, I noticed that a couple of people who I’d constantly had to remind to wear their safety glasses were using them without prompting. Your example might save someone’s eyesight.

Provide feedback

When you are busily managing health and safety, going back to the decision makers to give them feedback might not be your top priority. But if you only go to them when you want something, they might be more resistant when you do. On the other hand, senior managers don’t want to be overloaded with masses of data every week – so how much feedback do you give them?

If they want specific information when it’s relevant to their goals, respond quickly to any requests they make for updates. If your safety information is online, you could tailor a dashboard for them to see just the information they want, at the level of detail they need. Some systems will let them choose which reports they want to subscribe to, putting control of the feedback in their hands.

When there is an opportunity, give them some nuggets of positive feedback in between formal contacts. It might be an email, a phone call, or even a chance conversation in the corridor. Your feedback should refer to what they did that has enabled the positive outcome, as well as describing the positive outcome using their language and linking to their goals.

For example:


References

Acknowledgments

Worker engagement is important, but so too is engagement from the senior managers who control the resources and set the example that others will follow.

To get their support, find out what makes them tick, and how decisions are made. Then tailor your message using their language, to show how your proposal helps to meet their goals. Senior managers might have different and conflicting goals, so you’ll need to curate your message carefully to deal with this, and a good story can help.

Finally, once you have their support, reinforce it. What gets reinforced gets repeated, and this is as true for senior managers as it is for the workforce.

HSG 48 ‘Reducing error and influencing behavior.’ HSE 1999

INDG 417 ‘Leading health and safety at work.’ HSE 2013 (produced with Institute of Directors)

With thanks to Zoe Davies (Head of Safety, BBC), Mike Webster (Consultant and Expert Witness at MPW R&R) and Pete Jones (Digital Transformation Consultant, previously a CTO) whose contributions to the Engage EHS Virtual Safety Summit influenced the ideas in this document.

Thanks also to many Engage EHS (now EcoOnline) clients, but in particular to Steve Huntsman, Head of UK Health and Safety at Coveris, for sharing his experience.

Conclusion


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