Safety's Attention Share and Attention Capitalization

February 14 2022
By: Shawn M. Galloway

Companies of all kinds develop external strategies to increase their market share and market capitalization, the value of their shares of stock. If we want cultures of excellence, discretionary effort is vital. To capture this, these same companies need internal strategies that focus on creatively growing the attention share of the workforce and measuring the ROI from doing so.

Workers are not the problems to be solved; they are the problem-solvers, consumers and customers of the safety efforts within a company. What we do in safety has to be of value and create the perception of value. We need their attention, and we need this attention to yield continuous improvement.

Capturing attention is a competitive field. Production, engineering, HR, and quality all want the worker's attention. Like with safety, if what we are doing is not perceived as valuable, a worker's attention is focused elsewhere, even during a safety meeting. If the worker sees what safety is doing as fun, engaging, and of value to the company and the individual, the worker will give their discretionary time and energy to participate. If safety is not monitoring the reality of attention share and the attention capitalization (value derived from the worker giving additional attention), other parts of the organization will, and safety loses the workforce's attention share.

"The most basic way to get someone's attention is this: Break a pattern." — Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick

"You've got to keep reinventing. You'll have new competitors. You'll have new customers all around you." — Ginni Rometty