I have to give a talk tomorrow to try and motivate our supervisors in being more proactive in safety. They do perform their duties, but they have to be prompted all of the time by me and the management. They know what they should be doing and why, but to be honest, they are just lazy and would rather spend their time on ebay in the office instead of going out on site to do an inspection. Does anyone have any ideas, or even a presentation they would be happy to share? These guys need a bit of a kick up the backside. I have the full support of management and we can go down the disciplinary route if need be, but we want to try something more motivational first before giving them the Alex Ferguson hair dryer treatment.

Incorporate leading indicators into KPIs that affect their bonuses (if this is applicable)? Case study(ies) of why monitoring / checks are important and what happens when people get slack? The disciplinary route should really only be the very last resort (which I'm sure you acknowledge anyhow). Google "conformity not compliance", that should throw up some suggestions. You want the former but have the latter at present.

I reported the results of completed inspections to board each month with a nice colour box - red or green, this started to get the boxes ticked, then the MD started doing checks after the managers! Nothing more embarrassing than sitting in a board meeting and saying all is fine when the MD has some nice photos from 20 minutes after 'your inspection'! To reinforce this - pop out with a camera before the meeting and show some pictures of what is happening in the areas they think they have control over. Carrot and stick jump to mind... don't forget to get them involved in the form design etc etc etc

Seabee1 You state: 'They know what they should be doing and why....' and you allege that the reason why they are not doing as you and management expect is that they are 'lazy". To the extent that this is the real reason, the company appear to have made a seres of major selection errors when they select so many lazy people in supervisory roles. 'Disciplinary routes' cannot compensate for selection errors. It is also possible that you have not established from the supervisors what reasons they see for not doing as you and management expect. Much less time-consuming and far, far more productive to carry out a well-designed survey of supervisors' views of (a) the safety function (which is NOT of you personally); (b) the safety climate of your organisation, for which senior maangement are mainly responsible. Unless data of this kind is gathered and intelligently used, you risk a downward spiral of recrimination.

Surley if management know they are "Lazy" then it should be management dealing with the issue. H&S has to come form the top so if mamangement cannot motivate then perhaps a Director will do the trick.

KieranD has a very salient point regarding in asking WHY? there may be numerous reasons, cultural, organisational, individual ect why the supervisors require such prompting and cajoling in order for them to carry out their responsibilities. I would investigate further down this route to start with.

To be honest I have to question your assumption that they are 'lazy'. There are many reasons that people do not fulfill their roles and often when people are not doing their jobs fully it is because there are much greater company issues at play with an (often) unhappy or disillusioned work force. Rather than assume laziness why not find out (subtly) the actual reason for them not doing their job. If you really do need a way to motivate them then perhaps a little talk on responsibilites of employees and supervisors under the HSWA and the possibility of enforecment action if they are deemed responsible for accident because of their lack of supervision / fulfillment of roles and responsibilites.

Seabee81 A facilitatiion exercise can promote self-regulation, in the short term, to the extent that there is sufficient trust about the safety function. In the light of your own initial assessment - that the problem you descirbe originates in alleged 'laziness', not lack of knowlege - you need to identify whatever problems of trust affect self-regulation on the part of supervisors. Unless you address whatever disrupts such self-regulation on the part of supervisors, no amount of more knowledge can achieve your professional aspirations; each may have different - yet valid - reasons for the 'laziness' you attritbute to them. The risk of not using valid methods of investigation in confident is that there can be so many different valid reasons for alleged lazainess that facilitation exercises simply are not fit for the purpose of controlling for the host of subjective factors involved, however skilfully you conduct the exercises. There's a lot of relevant research avaialble on these critical issues, including a report on trust in relation to safety by Stacey Conchie at Liverpool University, avaiable to download free-of-charge from this IOSH website It may be some help for you to know that the problems you face have been addressed in terms of 'Theory X and Theory Y' styles of leadership, for over half a century. Sometimes very effecively.