Why your best people have the worst safety practices – and how to fix it. Thought leaders share their views on the HR profession and its direction for the future
| Pages | 291-292 |
| Date | 13 November 2017 |
| Published date | 13 November 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-08-2017-0049 |
| Author | Garrison Wynn |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Employee behaviour |
Why your best people have the worst safety
practices – and how to fix it
Thought leaders share their views on the HR profession and its
direction for the future
Garrison Wynn
Garrison Wynn is CEO at Wynn
Solutions, Houston, Texas, USA.
Employers spend a lot of time
trying to educate new or
inexperienced employees on
safety. At a basic level, it makes
sense to view such employees as
most likely to have an incident. Isn’t
it the doe-eyed Gen Y worker with a
noticeable lack of urgency and the
contractor who doesn’t seem to
know where he is who cause us the
greatest concern?
The truth, as revealed in studies at
least as far back as 1999, is that
you’ve got to spend the most time
with your best people and unleash
that talent so it creates an overall
culture of excellence. This idea,
outlined in First, Break All the Rules
by Marcus Buckingham and Curtis
Coffman, comes from a Gallup study
designed to uncover what the best
managers did differently. The Gallup
organization surveyed 80,000
managers and more than 1 million
employees, ultimately to learn that
your most talented people deserve
more of your attention. And it stands
to reason – after all, your best
people have options and will leave if
not properly managed [. . .] but the
people who suck are with you for
life!
My personal experience, from the oil
and gas industry to manufacturing to
mining, gave rise to an observation
that was underscored time and again:
When it comes to safety practices,
what worries me most are the
superstars who have the attention of
the masses and the blessing of
confident but inattentive leaders.
Sydney Finkelstein, Professor at
Dartmouth College’s Tuck School
of Business, conducted a six-year
study of 51 notorious business
failures. Detailed in Why Smart
Executives Fail, the study delved
into tendencies or behaviors that
led to failed organizations under
top executives and managers. The
results showed that not only are
intelligence, experience and
confidence not enough to
succeed, but they also can create
a refusal to value outside input,
cause red flags to be ignored and
create a reliance on past success
models that may not apply to a
modern problem. The study’s
focus on the organizations’
well-qualified leaders and their
influence on employees would
suggest that we’re dealing with
more than just the blind leading
the blind. It would be more
accurately described as people
with 20/20 vision leading those
who don’t seem to even know the
value of eyeballs!
Strategic commentary
DOI 10.1108/SHR-08-2017-0049 VOL. 16 NO. 6 2017, pp. 291-292, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 291
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