Professional Safety - December 2024
By: Shawn M. Galloway
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When values are shared, little supervision is needed. How would you describe your culture? Does it feel like being part of a tribe, where members are constantly looking out for each other and successfully indoctrinating new individuals into the written and unwritten rules that govern behavior? Is little supervision needed to accomplish the stated objectives?
Every company, over time, develops a culture. Common beliefs, behaviors, decisions, experiences and stories specific to the reality of the role safety plays to getting the job done, are a part of this culture. We call this a safety culture. In Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger, the author writes, "We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding."i These are tribes. Do you have a tribal safety culture?
Tribal Safety Culture
Sierra Morris, in an article titled, Getting Your Safety Message Past the Tribe Mentality at Workii, writes, "Tribal instincts affect the workplace in a multitude of ways. First, safety culture is born and cultivated by the individual tribal groups within the workplace. ‘Culture’ of any sort is just the agreed-upon values held by the tribe as a whole; it’s a very powerful thing, as most members of a tribe will feel pressured to uphold and embody the group’s cultural values. But unless you have a very small workplace where everyone from the night guard to the president of the company belong to the same social group, you will inevitably have varying safety cultures within the workforce. It is very important for safety management to understand that their tribal safety culture (very pro-safety) may not necessarily be the same as the safety culture in other workforce tribal groups." Consider this: in your company, how many frontline supervisors are there? This answer reveals the potential for as many subcultures that may exist in the overall occupational culture. How well aligned are the subcultures? Do you have one safety culture tribe or many?
Hire for Tribe
Armory, founded in 2016 and based in San Mateo California, is a leader in enterprise-scale continuous software delivery. Getting the right people with the right beliefs and capabilities who buy into the newly forming culture is a challenge for any start-up. Chief Product Officer and Cofounder, Ben Mappen, took the challenge of developing their culture head-on. He wanted to build a tribe. In a blog post, he shared how the founders approached the creation of the company culture: "A strong culture is important because it fosters trust. If you have a high-level of trust with your co-workers, the breadth and depth of communication required to get things done sharply decreases. ‘I think we should do X’ is typically followed by ‘Sounds good, I trust you to do the right thing.’
"A company without a strong culture (or trust) must implement strict rules and processes to get ANYTHING done. ‘Before you can ship X out the door, it needs to be signed off on by Johnny, Theodore, and Jessica, then you have to follow these 10 steps…etc.’ If you have a strong culture, you don’t need as many rules. Think about your relationships with your spouse, your parents, your siblings and other family members. You know ‘in your bones’ how things work and what each person’s expectations are."
He writes further, "While politics shouldn’t have a place within a startup, tribalism should run rampant. Tribe members live in close quarters, support one another, hold each other accountable and respect status based on value add rather than name or title. This tribalism breeds incredible loyalty, shared purpose and an egalitarian ethos. When people belong to a tribe, their lives have more meaning and, when that tribe is a startup, they move mountains for the company."iii
The effort is paying off. In a 2023 review of this company on the website Glassdoor, one of the largest job and recruiting sites, an individual wrote the following recommendation in the advice to management area: "Ensure that we hold true to our core beliefs and hire future Tribals that live and breathe our dedication to them. We may have to pass on some highly qualified and successful candidates that just don't fit our Tribal Culture. Other than that, let's continue to rock it!"iv
Are your employees moving mountains to further your company's success while protecting your safety culture from competing priorities or demands (i.e., production, customer demand, quality, etc.)? What about competing perspectives of influential people who are newly hired?
Guard the Front Door
As a culture matures and is successfully onboarding or indoctrinating new members, guarding the front door becomes a new strategic priority. Cultures of safety excellence should hire people to support and further the culture. "Hiring with safety excellence in mind, especially for key or leadership positions, must become a common practice. What must people know about safety? What must they believe? What must they be able to do? What experiences of theirs would tell you they are a great fit for your safety culture and would help it advance? These should all be key considerations. If a new hire is well liked and becomes influential, but has a negative attitude, undesirable beliefs and behaviors, could they compromise what you have worked hard to create? Yes, of course. Work to identify this during the interview process rather than being surprised during onboarding or orientation."v How well are you hiring for cultural or tribal fit?
Rely on Culture?
What do you do if your tribe isn’t present or big enough to influence? Hiring for safety culture is a strategic priority and last frontier of safety excellence for many mature organizations. Relying on the tribe to norm new members is an even better tool for safety excellence. But we can’t rely on culture alone in today’s complex world where change seems to be the only constant. Rules, policies, processes, procedures and systems are also important in the pursuit of both compliance and excellence in occupational and process safety.
A previously unidentified concern became apparent to executives during a workshop with senior leadership at a Canadian oil and gas producer. Leveraging the model, The Bridge to ExcellenceSMvi, a discussion was facilitated to gain insights on where leaders believed they were on the construction of the bridge, if they had all components in place, and where focus should be concentrated.
Figure: The Bridge to ExcellenceSM
One of the areas of agreement was the need to better define both the required and desired expectations with employees, especially with contractors, as much of their work on company locations is not self-performed. When contractors (who also work for other oil and gas companies that are not as dedicated to safety excellence) arrive on location, these expectations need to be explicit and constantly reinforced with the right experiences and stories. Realizing this now glaringly obvious gap in their safety strategy, one executive quipped, "We have been relying on our culture." Considering members of their tribe are not always with the contractors, this was quickly identified as a horrible approach to shaping desired performance. Relying on culture is indeed critical to shape new members of the tribe until the tribe gets overtaken.
While beginning an engagement with a large chemical plant in America to develop an effective long-term safety excellence strategy, the project began with an assessment of their management systems, culture, and existing strategy. Previously, the site had celebrated many successful years in safety as measured by traditional lagging indicators until the new plant was built on the complex. Once this new plant was online, the population more than doubled in size. Many problems arose, and losing ground on safety performance was one of them. In providing feedback on our findings on what was leading to the current culture and results, and pausing before offering recommended areas of strategic importance, the plant manager nodded and offered, "That makes perfect sense. It seems we outgrew our tribe."
Strategically Focused
They were surprised by the results. When a leadership team is surprised by significant results, this is an indicator they do not have an effective safety strategy that saw this coming. Strategy is a framework of tradeoffs and small bets an organization makes to determine how to capture and deliver sustainable value. Strategy is about value creation. Where, if you focused your efforts, would it create the most value and perception of value? If, in assessing your data, it is identified that 30% of injuries occur to individuals less than one year on the job, what will you do with this information? If you know the population will more than double in size three years from now, preventing the negative effects of the tribe being overrun must become a strategic priority. While culture does eat strategy for breakfast, the business strategy will eat the safety strategy all day long. How integrated is your safety strategy into the overall business strategy, including the short- and long-term growth trajectory? How well does your safety strategy consider the current vs. needed culture and its effect on others?
Figure: The Safety Culture Excellence Evolution Modelvii
Cultures Form and Norm
What experiences and stories shape the beliefs and behaviors of new or temporary employees and contractors? Unless the tribe is overtaken, groups tend to norm others to not only "the way we do things around here," but also why. Sometimes, the ‘why’ is based on accurate stories or experiences; sometimes they are not. When individuals join your organization, they have existing perceptions, such as, "I believe it is a good idea to stop the job for a safety concern." Your existing culture has perceptions as well, that often become culturally norming beliefs. When someone holds a positive belief toward something, a positive attitude often manifests. The opposite is also true. If an employee thinks leadership doesn't support safety improvement efforts due to a belief that production takes priority, it is likely that a negative attitude towards safety initiatives will be displayed.
If an employee perceives leadership will not support decisions to join safety efforts or stop the job for an identified safety concern, and his peers feel similarly, it is doubtful that when the opportunity presents itself, he will take action. If, however, an employee feels that near-miss data is used effectively and reporting such information is "the way we do things around here," he will be strongly influenced to make the decision to report when an injury-free event occurs. What an individual or group of individuals perceive will play a large role in nudging decisions.
Decisions Create Expectations of Behavior
"All disappointment is based on a set level of expectations." It is important to remember this adage. When an employee decides to intervene for a safety concern, report a near miss, or volunteer for a safety initiative, he establishes a degree of probability of what will occur following this behavior. Decisions are made with the anticipated consequences that will follow the behavior in mind. Unless individuals are gluttons for punishment, normal, rational humans do not make decisions knowing they will result in undesirable consequences. If decisions to help a new employee, conduct a job observation, or suggest an innovative new solution are believed to be supported and recognized by a supervisor, the desirable behaviors are likely.
Behaviors Result in Experiences that Produce Stories
When someone takes action and behaves in a certain way that results in a negative experience, stories are told to others throughout the organization that either confirm (+) or conflict (-) with the existing individual or shared perceptions. Negative experiences are known to be spread more virally than positive experiences. "The worse the experience, the more people will know about it."viii
Stories are the tribal characteristics of an organizational culture. Whether formal or informal, they are the most effective influence on decisions and behaviors. How accurate are the stories being told throughout your tribe and to new members? Who has the loudest voice? If you don’t control the narrative, one will be created, and perhaps not the one you want. Whoever has the loudest voice is often shaping your tribal safety culture. Control the narrative, or you will be controlled by it. Control your strategy to shape performance and culture, or you will be surprised by undesirable results. How well is your tribe shaping new members? What is the efficacy of your safety strategy? Are you able to proactively detect early and respond, or are you routinely reacting to results?
Cultures are powerful tools. In fact, they are the most effective sustainability mechanism a leader has. However, there must be a strategy in place to support and prepare for company growth or reduction. Don’t rely on your tribe alone. Never forget that your strategy will work because of your culture, not in spite of it. Work to ensure the tribe supports the strategy and that the strategy protects and advances the tribe.
Hand in Hand
The power of tribes and the case for a safety strategy go hand in hand. Culture is a crucial element in shaping behavior and beliefs, but it must be supported by a well-defined strategy that aligns with the overall business objectives. Hiring for cultural fit, guarding the front door, and proactively shaping the narrative are all important considerations for fostering a strong safety culture as well as the overall occupational culture. By integrating safety into the broader strategy and actively managing the culture, organizations can achieve and sustain safety excellence and create a tribe to be proud of.
i. Junger, S. (2016). Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. New York: Hachette Book Group, Inc.
ii. Morris, S. (2019). Getting Your Safety Message Past the Tribe Mentality at Work. SafetyTalkIdeas.com.
iii. Percival, L. (2019). What exactly is a Tribal Culture? blog.armory.io. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20200118071659/https:/blog.armory.io/what-is-a-tribal-culture/
iv. (2019). Retrieved from glassdoor.com: https://www.glassdoor.com/Location/Armory-San-Mateo-Location-EI_IE1831256.0,6_IL.7,16_IC1147406.htm
v. Galloway, S. M. (2016, March 1). Guard the front door: Protecting your safety culture. BIC Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.bicmagazine.com/departments/hse/guard-the-front-door-protecting-your-safety-culture/
vi. Galloway, S. M. (2023). Bridge to Excellence: Building Capacity for Sustainable Performance. Texas: SCE Press
vii. Mathis, T. L., & Galloway, S. M. (2013). STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
viii. Galloway, S. M. (2012, August 1). Evolving the Safety Culture: Leading Indicators and Influencers. Occupational Health & Safety Magazine. Retrieved from https://ohsonline.com/Articles/2012/08/01/Evolving-the-Safety-Culture.aspx
Shawn M. Galloway is the CEO of ProAct Safety and co-author of several bestselling books. As an award-winning consultant, adviser, leadership coach and keynote speaker, he has helped hundreds of organizations within every major industry to improve safety strategy, culture, leadership and engagement. He is also the host of the highly acclaimed weekly podcast series Safety Culture Excellence®.
For more information, call (936) 273-8700 or email info@ProActSafety.com.
