Ronnie Meyers
“In the pyramid of culture, everybody goes straight to actions,” stated Ronnie Meyers, principal health and safety professional at Axiall Corp. “When they don’t get the results they want, they start changing the organization of their people — getting more safety people or less safety people. They have action plans, but oftentimes the results don’t change. There’s nothing wrong with changing the action. Instead of changing the action, though, you’re going to have to start changing your cultural beliefs if you want long-term sustainability. When you make a commitment to change people’s actions, you have to make a commitment to go from changing people’s heads to changing their hearts and minds.”
Meyers believes this commitment requires a conscious effort on the part of all parties involved — craftspeople, supervisors, project managers and high-ranking company leaders. He elaborated people’s attitudes determine how they approach safety.
“Safety culture refers to how we act and think in regards to safety; it is our attitudes,” said Meyers in an interactive presentation at the Louisiana Governor’s Safety and Health Conference, which the Alliance Safety Council organized. “When people say it’s about the culture and we have to change it, they’re referring to the way we act and think. The results you get from your health and safety program come from the culture you have.”
In Meyers’ presentation, titled “Hazardous Management: Leave No Hazard,” he explained safety culture is something that can’t be changed overnight or with easy fixes. Despite people trying to sell “magic bullets” at conferences on how to change culture, Meyers noted managing risks is a full-time job that must be worked on each day.
“Managers have to manage risks, and workers have to manage hazards every day,” stated Meyers, who earned his master’s in education from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “And health and safety professionals have to give them the tools to do that. We can’t get rid of all the hazards. The hazards are here to stay. Exposures to hazards occur, too. Managing safety hazards seems really simple, but it’s something we have to work on every single day.” He provided an example of how a safety incident occurred just that morning. An employee driving a pickup truck backed up and hit one of the company’s operators. The operator was looking up at a jobsite and didn’t see the truck backing up. However, it was the pickup truck driver’s responsibility to assess the area around him before he backed up. Luckily, the operator was only left with minor bruises.
“I find that to be lucky,” asserted Meyers. “That injury was preventable. If someone gets hit by a pickup truck, then something went wrong. The driver had a large piece of equipment where he could not see behind him. In that case, a spotter would have helped. That’s important.
“Or a 360 approach would have helped. A 360 approach entails the driver getting out of his vehicle to look 360 degrees around it before he backs up. Apparently he didn’t do that. He didn’t really understand what was behind him; he didn’t have a spotter. There was no backup alarm on the vehicle. Our policy’s safety requirement is that you either have a backup alarm or you blow the horn before you back up, and he failed to do either. We’re asking people to protect other people. Is it that big of a deal? Yes.”
Meyers said health and safety professionals can protect their employees and teach them how to protect each other by exemplifying the behavior they want.
“Focus on the things you can control,” he advised. “Ask for feedback, too. People will give you more feedback if you thank them for it.”
For more information, visit www.axiall.com or call (225) 685-2500.
