Saturday, January 2, 2010

What are the key elements of effective Supervisor Leadership training?

With so many options available today, how do you know what leadership training will
translate to successful safety leadership and injury reduction at your facility? How will the leadership skills be transferred to the shop floor or field? Will your investment actually pay dividends of reduced injuries, and higher quality and productivity or simply empty your wallet? Team Safety, Inc. has developed a list of the top ten characteristics of effective safety leadership programs.

1. Supervisor classroom training must include: Supervisor as Trainer, Scorekeeping,
Giving Positive Recognition, Team Building, Setting Tolerance Levels, Giving
Constructive Feedback, Suggestions for Continuous Improvement, and Team Goal
Setting.

2. Provide a daily forum for safety activity. Team Safety, Inc. uses strength and
flexibility exercises (SAFE) routine to assemble the team.

3. Provide a “script” for leadership skills application, such as the Back Synergy FlipBook Training System.

4. Audit the supervisor frequently to provide feedback on application of the leadership skills and deployment of the safety systems.

5. Senior managers must review the safety scores and supervisor audits with the
supervisor on a regular basis to demonstrate management commitment and support
supervisor efforts.

6. Design a scoring system that measures supervisor engagement, and use it to certify
your supervisor safety leaders.

7. Set standards for supervisor performance and hold supervisors accountable for their team’s safety performance.

8. Publicly display team performance data.

9. Reward supervisors for leadership excellence.

10. Make the safety leadership certification program part of the supervisors performance evaluation

As a facilities manager, you must ensure your supervisors meet the challenges of OSHA
compliance, eliminating unsafe acts, and keeping employees healthy, while upholding plant wide performance in quality and productivity. While you are ultimately responsible for any failures in this area, your employees view the supervisor as their first line communication with the company.

Training supervisors in these six safety leadership skills and ensuring they apply them on the job is a proven “best practice” in injury prevention, and can also pay big dividends in quality and productivity improvement.

No comments:

Post a Comment