Many industries, particularly in the manufacturing sector, are essentially driven by production. The name of the game is to produce as many widgets as quickly and cheaply as possible using existing production resources. So it’s no surprise that some companies stress productivity to the detriment of quality and worker safety. The assumption these companies make is that every dollar spent on safety instead of production reduces profits. Of course, that assumption is wrong. Stressing safety and quality can reduce the company’s costs, while stressing productivity can actually increase them. So how do you convince senior management that setting aside its single-minded obsession with productivity and concentrating more of its resources on safety will improve financial performance?
A study of the relationship between “corporate climate”—that is, how values are prioritized in a particular company—and safety at four U.S. wood product manufacturers can help you. The study shows that companies with strong safety climates have fewer safety incidents and injuries and thus lower associated costs than companies with strong productivity climates that de-emphasize safety and quality. Here’s a look at what the study says and how you may be able to use it if you perceive that your company isn’t placing enough value on safety.
Types of Corporate Climates
Corporate climate is a reflection of workers’ attitudes or perceptions of certain aspects of their work environment. Management actions strongly influence corporate climate and set the overall tone for the workplace. Workers pick up on management’s values. And workers’ attitudes and perceptions about the values and climate of their workplace affect their—and the company’s—performance. So once you understand what a company’s corporate climate is, you can change that climate by getting management to adopt new approaches. For our purposes, there are three kinds of corporate climates:
Safety. Safety climate (sometimes also called “safety culture”) is often defined as workers’ attitude toward safety in the workplace. It’s also been defined as workers’ perception of the company’s policies, procedures and practices concerning occupational safety and their sense of the priority the company gives to safety. In a strong safety climate, workers believe that the company takes safety seriously and thus they also take safety seriously. As a result, companies with strong safety climates are generally safer than companies with weak safety climates. For example, studies have shown that there’s an inverse relationship between a company’s safety culture and the number of safety incidents. In other words, the stronger a company’s safety culture, the fewer safety incidents it experiences; conversely, the weaker the safety culture, the greater the number of incidents.
Quality. Quality climate is reflected in the workers’ perception of the company’s quality objectives. There hasn’t been a lot of research about quality culture in general. Presumably, a greater emphasis on quality would result in decreased production as workers operated more slowly to ensure that things were made well. And because haste tends to increase risk, slower and more deliberate production would also presumably lead to fewer safety incidents. Unfortunately, no empirical research has been done on the actual effects of quality climate on workplace safety performance.
Productivity. Productivity climate is a reflection of workers’ attitudes and beliefs with respect to management’s emphasis on production in the workplace. It’s generally believed that increased pressure to produce reduces safety performance. But no known research had been conducted on the links between productivity climate and safety.
The Study
That’s where the wood manufacturers study comes in. The study is valuable because it demonstrates for the first time that companies with strong productivity climates have higher numbers of safety incidents than companies that emphasize safety or quality. The researchers focused on two furniture and two cabinet manufacturers in Pennsylvania. They collected surveys from 526 hourly production workers, asking the workers about:
Safety climate. Workers were asked to rate how much they agreed or disagreed with statements related to their perception of the company’s safety climate (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree). Sample statements: “Upper management at this company does as much as possible to make this a safe place to work” and “My supervisor does not seem to care about my safety.”
Quality climate. On the same five-point scale, workers were asked to rate statements about the company’s quality climate, such as “My supervisor is always willing to consider suggestions on improving product quality.”
Productivity climate. Workers were also asked to rate on the same scale statements about the company’s quality climate, such as “Our upper management does everything possible to make sure productivity goals are met” and “My supervisor sometimes allows employees to take shortcuts in order to meet productivity goals.”
Safety-related events. To determine the number of safety incidents in the workplace, the researchers asked workers how often certain safety-related events had occurred during the last 12 months, from never to five times or more. Examples: “I tripped over something on the plant floor” and “An object got stuck in my hand while working.”
Control variables. The survey included several control variables. For example, workers were asked to rate how dangerous they felt their particular job was. The surveys also collected worker gender and information about their tenure with the company and verified that information with each company’s HR department.
The Study’s Results
After analyzing the survey responses, the researchers came to the following conclusions:
Strong safety climate = fewer safety incidents. This study confirmed what prior studies had found: Companies with a strong safety climate have fewer safety incidents. That is, there were fewer incidents in companies in which workers were encouraged to work safely and supervisors put considerable emphasis on safety.
Strong production climate = more safety incidents. Workers who perceived their companies as having a strong productivity climate reported higher numbers of safety incidents. So the study suggests that an emphasis on productivity can force an increase in risky behaviours that may eventually lead to safety incidents. In addition, the survey suggests that the more companies value productivity, the less they value quality.
Meaning of the Results
What do the study’s results mean for your company? Citing the results of this study is one of the things a safety coordinator can do to show that safety has an impact on financial performance. The study is evidence that safety climate and productivity climate influence the occurrence of safety incidents, albeit in opposite ways. Although there are advantages to promoting productivity for manufacturing companies, management must realize the trade-offs of emphasizing productivity at the expense of safety. Over time, the costs associated with the consequences of a high-production work environment, such as increased worker injuries, absences and turnover and lower quality, can be detrimental. Conversely, fostering a climate for safety should reduce safety incidents and injuries and thus reduce the related costs.
These results have important implications for senior management and supervisors. Managers and supervisors should concentrate on fostering a strong safety climate within their company in order to decrease work-related injuries or incidents. For example, the researchers note that simply keeping the workplace clean and in good working condition can help eliminate safety problems, improve morale and increase efficiency and effectiveness. Plus, doing so will improve productivity and quality, while lowering product costs and enhancing the operation’s flexibility. Other steps the researchers recommend for management:
Insider Says: The study’s results also have implications for safety coordinators. You can directly affect your company’s safety climate by effectively communicating management’s safety-related values, beliefs and concerns to workers. After all, the company’s safety climate is unlikely to improve if workers don’t know that management does make their safety a priority.
Conclusion
If safety coordinators were running companies, we know they’d value safety above everything else. Workers would also probably give safety top priority. On the other hand, corporate officials driven by profit motives place stronger emphasis on productivity. So as a safety coordinator, you’re going to have to accept the fact that your values aren’t now and will never be precisely the same as management’s. But what you can and must do is ensure that safety isn’t sacrificed at the altar of productivity. Intuitively, it makes sense that a company that’s willing to risk workers’ safety to enhance productivity is making a serious mistake not of only morals and law, but also of business. After all, nothing reduces productivity more drastically than a workplace injury or illness. However, it may take more than intuition to get management to move safety up on the company’s priority list so that it’s reflected in the company’s climate.
Because this study shows that stressing productivity above everything else negatively impacts safety and thus the company’s financial performance, it can help you build your business case. It suggests that a company’s climate does make a difference and that committing to a strong safety climate in your workplace will actually improve its bottom line.
INSIDER SOURCE
“Relationships between organizational climates and safety-related events at four wood manufacturers,” Evans, Michael, Wiedenbeck and Ray, Forest Products Journal, Vol. 55, No. 6 June 2005; www.fs.fed.us/ne/newtown_square/publications/other_publishers/OCR/ne_2005_evans-d001.pdf.
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