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A University of Georgia study conducted by Dave DeJoy and Todd Smith indicates that a worker’s perception of safety in the workplace and work-life balance have significant effects on on-the-job injury.

“Organizations who blame individuals for injuries do not create a positive safety climate.” ~ Dave DeJoy

According to an article in UGA Today, (“Perception, Work-Life Balance Key Factors in Workplace Safety, Says UGA Study,” April Reese Sorrow), an effectively run company with minimal constraints on worker performance can decrease injuries by 38 percent; and a worker’s perception of positive safety environment at the workplace can decrease injuries by 32 percent.  However, when work interfers with family life, the risk for workplace injury increases by 37 percent.

The study is one of the first to examine U.S. safety climate perceptions among a diverse sample of occupations and worker groups and to highlight the factors linked to injury.  The study appeared in the Journal of Safety Research, Volume 43, Issue 1, February 2012, Pages 67-74.

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Rio Tinto, a licensed TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis System user, is looking for an engineer to develop, recommend and assist with implementation of strategies for improving equipment reliability and processes based on FMEA and other reliability methodologies, maintenance management, facilitate root cause analysis, recommend design changes determined by RCM studies. For more information and to apply, CLICK HERE.

Senior Root Cause Analyst – Progress Energy – Hartsville, SC

Industrial Engineer (Root Cause Analysis) – Engineering Resource Group – Parsippany, NJ

Quality Engineer (Apparel) – Nike – Portland, OR

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We’ve been discussing an infographic from Human Resources MBA describing how your job may be killing you. We’ve explored the following tips from the infographic about what employers can do to reduce job stress for employees including:

Aligning workload with capability.  (View tip.)
Making room for workers to grow and use talent in their positions.  (View tip.)
Ensuring all workers know their job responsibilities; and letting workers have a say in changes related to their jobs. (View tips.)

Today is the last segment of this series of tips, so let’s dig a little bit deeper into the three remaining tips provided by the infographic and think about how to reduce job stress for employees by:

Keeping employees up-to-date on future developments so they can have some sense of certainty.
Allowing workers to socialize with one another, whether via company events, lunch activities, etc.
Making sensible work schedules.

1.  Keep employees up to date on future developments so they can have some sense of certainty.

Certainty or security is a basic human need that somehow gets overlooked in the workforce. Feeling “out of the loop” creates anxiety in employees, and lack of information can lead to negative and unnecessary gossip. An informed employee is a better ally in improvement than one left in the dark.   “You can’t lead if you can’t tell your people where you want to go, and if you can’t inspire them to go there” (Geoff Loftus, 4 Keys to Great Leadership).

2.  Allow workers to socialize with one another, whether via company events, lunch activities, etc.

According to Shawn Anchor, author of “The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work,” the best predictor of career success isn’t toiling away alone, but is investing in the people around us. “Strong social bonds enrich our daily lives, give meaning to our work, and even improve our physical health.”  Most people spend more waking hours at work than anywhere else, and encouraging lunch breaks with co-workers and holding occasional company events give employees a chance to reap these benefits and bond as a team.

3.  Make sensible work schedules.

Who chooses the work schedule at your facility, and how do they choose it? According to a free white paper from Circadian® 24/7 Workforce Solutions, “Shift Scheduling & Employee Involvement:  The Key to Successful Schedules,” employees should be consulted.  When employees are consulted during the scheduling process, they experience fewer accidents, improved morale, decreased absenteeism and turnover, and optimized production levels.

Thanks for your comments and feedback on this series.  We hope that you can take advantage of some of these tips, and proactively reduce on-the-job stress at your facility.

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[Editor's Note: The following article is reprinted with permission from the author, Captain George Burk.  Learn more about the author on his website: www.georgeburk.com.]

Character Really Counts

Character: “a complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, group, or nation.”

It’s great when an organization hires a new employee who possesses the skills that perfectly fit the job.  But human resource professionals and others in the organization should consider a more important factor first: character. It’s an important and has greater emphasis in an organization’s decisions when they hire new employees.

“More and more, we’re finding basic behaviors coming up in recruitment,” said Steve Heinen a principle at Mercer Resource Consulting. “How you interact with people, how much people can trust what you say and how reliable you are, those are all having a critical impact on performance.”

As it’s more difficult to train people in character issues, those become more important in the hiring process, Heinen says.  Today, more organizations have determined they can train employees in technical areas. It’s really important that employees have solid core values.

In general, people are finding various characteristics when dealing with a person’s character critical to success.  And those are the things you can’t train or develop.  Many times, they don’t show up until there is a problem.

Act Accordingly

The key here is the leader.  If a leader wants a dependable group, the leader must act accordingly and set the tone. It’s the difference between “walking the walk” and “talking the talk.” Do the leader’s actions match their words? This means a leader who believes the end justifies the means and pushes only for the bottom-line will get behavior that matches that philosophy.  That may sound acceptable but employees may well decide to cut corners or make unethical decisions or deals to get the desired results they believe the leader and, hence the organization’s culture, want and even demand. People listen to what the leader says but they watch what the leader does.

“People take their cues from the leader,” Heinen says.  “You can take otherwise honest people, and they will justify their unethical behavior or even believe it’s expected.”

The way in which organizational goals and then personal goals are met makes a big difference. If reward’s are withheld in an all-or-nothing basis, that can spell trouble.  People will then be tempted to cheat if they’re close to making the grade or achieving ‘success.’  To focus on the “bottom-line” with little or no concern for how to get there is a big mistake.

“People remember two things: who kicked them when they were down and who helped them up.”  George Burk

Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden believed in the value of character.  A good leader, he said, builds belief throughout the organization in the leader’s philosophy and the group’s mission.  But it’s difficult to do if the basic core values are lacking….values like honesty, courage, and integrity.  The kind of people who only focus on the end result won’t likely commit to the hard work needed to win, Wooden wrote in his new book, “Wooden on Leadership.”

The Correct Habits

The leader can and does make a difference.   Coach Wooden recalled a time when some of his players took the team’s practice T-shirts as souvenirs to wear around campus. The shirts didn’t belong to them, but these players saw nothing wrong with wearing them outside of practice.

Coach Wooden did see a problem.  He told the players to ask him for a shirt if they wanted it, but they couldn’t just take it. “I wanted to create good habits under my leadership,” Wooden wrote.

Integrity: what you do when no one is around (or you don’t think anyone is watching.)

A leader with strong values will attract those with similar traits, he said.  It’s not unlike a moth that’s attracted to a light.

“When you bring an individual on board for whom character doesn’t count for much, you place a rotting apple in a barrel of good ones,” Wooden wrote.  “This is a terrible mistake for a leader to make.”

Does your organization have people with character or an organization filled with characters? Do people do things correctly using good habits?  The leader must become the benchmark by which other leaders are judged.
 

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