Good afternoon all,

I've been with my latest client for a few months and I'm pulling my hair out!

With every client there is obviously some room to improve in terms of health and safety. The exercises and systems I use for improving a clients culture, even when meeting bumps or resistence from difficult individuals, are usually successful in improving engagement and involvement of employees at all levels which previously have had clearly measuarble improvements everytime over the past 12years of consultancy.

However, this is the first time that I've met such resistance and obtuse refusal to engage with reasonable tasks and activities aimed to improve systems and their use. for example a basic SWOT and PESTLE analysis, a commonly used quality management tool was sent out to 14 key managers and supervisors with a reasonable two week lead-time for completion, but three weeks later only 2 managers bothered responding.

I was wondering what successful initiatives people have used to help turn a negative health and safety culture around?

Some of the tools I use include:

-Inital gap analysis and audit of systems and documentation; -SWOT and PESTLE Analysis; -Inter-departmental meetings; -Management meetings; -KPIs; -Employee consultation surveys; -Hazard identification exercises; -Incident/near miss reporting exercises; -Toolbox talks; -Team-building exercises; -Communication exercises; -Health and safety Committees and representatives; -Health and Safety Newsletter/bulletins; -Rewards and incentives; -Formal training e.g. first aid, mental health, fire marshal etc.; -Intra-company work experience (departments working days or part days in different departements/roles); -Employee interviews; health and safety focused job description reviews;

I've not tried all these methods with this client yet but I'm a bit bamboozled with how toxic and apathetic this environment is, especially when the managment appear to be on board, want improvement and have invested resources in third party consultancy (me) to help improve the identified issues... yet the usual initiatives I use are meeting dead-ends and unreasonable resistence.

Any advise or recommended intiatives to help improve engagement, understanding and ultimately the culture as a whole whould be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

I'm 6 months into a role & in a similar position, so far I've found the most effective method was carrying out an internal audit, and then presenting it to Top Management as part of our ISO Management review (this was their first one ever) & getting feedback from them as to why we had things like documented processes that were not being followed, I made it clear that employee involvement was key.  Most of our employees sadly don't understand the basics about working safely on site.  Just before I joined two long-term workers had fallen off ladders in seperate incidents, both preventable. 1 used his own ladder which wasn't suitable & the other used another ladder which wasn't suitable for the task.  They had never had any formal working at height training, and do it all via e-learning.  I've since sent them on external training, set-up ladder check systems etc.  I'm at the point where I think no matter what I do this culture won't change because of the people in the roles.  Family ran business, low skills, no formal training provided, blame culture.. I won't go on.

Whilts the senior management may be on board how many other externals have they parachuted in to take (parts of) the business forward? It could be a simple case of consultant fatigue - at one employment we had a standing joke that every time there was a new CEO (typically a 3 year cycle) three months later there would be a wave of consultants followed by a new business mantra (don't worry if you are struggling to understand the current mantra there will be another one along shortly...).

One thing I find personally annoying is questionnaire presumption where the issuer sets what they consider to be a "reasonable" time frame in which to get responses back assuming and often forgettting:

1) I am not just sat waiting for the questionnaire to arrive

2) I may have to research answers with others who similarly are not just waiting for the call

3) I/they may actually have other things to do for my/their employment

4) There may be other higher business priortities in my/their in-box to process

5) That I/they do not take holidays

6) That as a human being I/they (or family) may fall ill

Originally Posted by: achrn

I don't need stupid management-twaddle acronyms to know what I (and my team) are good at, bad at, and what we should be doing.  Stupid management parachuting in some externmal consultant who thinks filling in questionaires is a sensible use of time (and especially when they have silly acronyms - did I mention that friendly acronyms automatically get my back up?).

So it depends how you presented it - if it was a case of "I'm trying to understand how the business works, please will you help by giving your views on these topics" (in English - no acronyms) I would probably engage.  If it was "I'm here to fix your broken systems, complete this SWOT analysis so I can tell you what you're doing wrong" I'm pretty sure I know where I'd file it.  Obviously, I don't know which extreme (or middle ground) applies here.

Also, don't assume that anyone else knows what your favourite 'analysis' acronym means.  I had to look up PESTLE (I didn't have to look up SWOT - but I already know it's management-consultant-drone flimflammery and why can't they just speak English?)  Again, I don't know if that's relevant or not in this case.

Ha! I hate acronyms too, but there are so many in Health and Safety! 

I understand your points though, I think I sit somewhere in the middle-ground with my approach, identifying issues and getting the responsible people engaged in rectifying the gaps together. not blaming or saying 'your doing it wrong' but reasonably identifying the issues, backing it up with legislation, governement and governing body regs, guidance and ACOPs, giving reasonable actions and timeframes and offering support to those designated to action them.

 I started with a gap analysis, presented that to senior managment and department heads back in May, (not a single one of the actions have been closed) identified plenty of positives and lots of negatives and non-compliance.

I use the SWOT and PESTLE Analyisis tools as they are very simple, don't take much time and get people thinking about how different aspects affect them, their work and to generate a manager led improvement to-do list to focus on for the business, this usually gets good engagement because it's so simple and then managers see what needs to be focued on and feel invested in making those changes.

It may be seen as jargon or needless acryonms but the benefits (usually) are well worth it. often people don't see what a fresh pair of eyes may see as obvious, they've always done it this way etc... 

I did send out the template with a instruction document giving examples, explaining the usefulness of the exercise etc. but still terrible engagement.

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Whilts the senior management may be on board how many other externals have they parachuted in to take (parts of) the business forward? It could be a simple case of consultant fatigue - at one employment we had a standing joke that every time there was a new CEO (typically a 3 year cycle) three months later there would be a wave of consultants followed by a new business mantra (don't worry if you are struggling to understand the current mantra there will be another one along shortly...).

One thing I find personally annoying is questionnaire presumption where the issuer sets what they consider to be a "reasonable" time frame in which to get responses back assuming and often forgettting:

1) I am not just sat waiting for the questionnaire to arrive

2) I may have to research answers with others who similarly are not just waiting for the call

3) I/they may actually have other things to do for my/their employment

4) There may be other higher business priortities in my/their in-box to process

5) That I/they do not take holidays

6) That as a human being I/they (or family) may fall ill

Absolutely, I understand all of this, That's definitely the case here, the complaints from the 'shop-floor' were all about the fact the risk assessment and procedures were all gone through for an update with a consultant pre-pandemic who ended up not finishing the work, so they didn't see any output despite putting into the project. So even though the scraps left by the previous consultant are unusable irrelevant copy and pasted crap, the clients employees are of the opinion they did it before so why should they do it again, I've managed to improve that outlook with the warehouse and production staff, but I still lack the managerial involvement.

I made an assupmption that 2weeks for a 30minute exercise would be reasonable for managers and supervisors. Am I off there?

Originally Posted by: Self and Hasty

I made an assupmption that 2weeks for a 30minute exercise would be reasonable for managers and supervisors. Am I off there?

Just working on an educational briefing to our managemnt with HR - trimmed the topic to one hour which training are now making in to four 15 minute bite-size sessions because of "attention span" considerations which will likely be rolled out independently so no one gets a hint it is being serialised.

If it looks to be any longer they put the subject off to another day and then never manage to complete.

This is another aspect of culture within a business when you overload managers with various IT tools (HR systems, payroll, expenses, ERP, mileage, CRM) top it off with a multitude of communications platforms - phone, mobile, email, Teams, Meet, Messenger, chat apps, web media (LinkedIn, Meta etc.) it is no wonder attention spans become short and there is never enough time to complete everything.

Originally Posted by: Pirellipete

It's sounds to me as though you're a 'Tick in the Box',  'Yes we have/do Safety' thing.

And I thought I could be a bit harsh at times. I too am not a great fab of all these “tools” but I get it as a new consultant/H&S person you need to establish what the base line is. I think some of the problems can be if this kind of questionnaire/survey has been done before but no changes or benefits are perceived by the shop floor. Also you say the top managers are on board – but do you mean they are willing to listen and make changes or because they have brought you in they think their work is done?

I would always try and find a few key people through the organisation – some who seemed keen on H&S input and some who were hostile and have a conversation with them about what has gone wrong in the past. If you can win a few hearts and minds over and even get a few minor changes made could smooth the process of an in depth review later.

Originally Posted by: Brian Hagyard

Originally Posted by: Pirellipete

It's sounds to me as though you're a 'Tick in the Box',  'Yes we have/do Safety' thing.

And I thought I could be a bit harsh at times.

LOL Brian,  all taken in good spirit,  It's probably an 'Age' thing, I can't blame it on any specific medical condition, but I seem to be having trouble with a lower tolerance levels these days.. 

I'll admit, I've been lucky for many years, with appreciative clients and bosses, but I'm starting to think that less work and more fishing might be the better option.   :)

“Someone once said to me if you can't change the people - you need to change the people”-  I can’t really see ‘Self And Hasty’ turning up at board meeting and saying that they only way to sort of the company’s approach to H&S is to sack everybody including the senior management!

What you need to do is to find out what the actual culture is, and you can do that  using  the formal  techniques mentioned but you should back this up by going around and showing your face and listening to people. You will then find out thinks like:  that section A would like to do better but they are prevented by section B who are still angry that they didn’t a new piece of kit due to perceived interference from section A. You can’t actually change culture simply by telling people it’s my way or the highway. The culture is largely determined  by factors which the individuals concerned probably are not even aware of.