Is your company downsizing, upsizing, re-engineering, reorganizing or restructuring? Has the recent turmoil with the economy impacted your business and employees in a negative way? If so, you must recognize that these changes and circumstances will affect the safety, health and well-being of all your employees on and off the job. In this series of articles, I’ll discuss the effects of change and give you strategies to help keep your workplace safe during the transition period.

Change Affects Everybody

There’s an old joke: "Who’s the only person who loves change?" Answer: “A wet baby.”

There’s a lot of truth in that. I’ve asked attendees of my various lectures and workshops for their thoughts on the word “change.” Their answers are mostly negative, ranging from “What will I lose? My job? My seniority? My security? My home?” to “Will this result in more work for me?” to “This isn’t fair!”

The impact of all the changes and circumstances on most workers – both line and management – and on safety, health and environmental performance is overwhelmingly on the downside, resulting in:

• Increased worry
• Frustration
• Resentment
• Stress
• Distractions, and
• Focus on other priorities.

The overall impact often results in lowered productivity and the increased potential for accidents, injuries and environmental incidents.

Keep Safety in Your Vision

If you want safety, health and responsible treatment of the environment to be integral to your organizational culture, then all levels of employees must view these elements as essential to the productivity process – including during times of change.

But, consciously or unconsciously, during a period of transition, the company’s energy, focus, attention and resources are transferred to other priorities. It’s therefore important that the safety, health and well-being of employees be included in a company’s vision or ideal state. And this vision must be translated into everyday activities, so that incidents do not occur during these challenging times.

Effects of Change on Safe Behavior

Keep in mind the following principles:

Change and Disturbing Circumstances Can Be Dangerously Distracting: People don’t want to get hurt, but sometimes they behave in an unsafe manner. Unsafe behaviors are rooted in various human factors, such as an individual’s awareness and attention. The circumstances surrounding transition times, be they positive or negative, can be such a distracting influence that incident rates in your workplace may rise during a transition period.

Priorities Shift: Counterproductive attitudes, beliefs and values (from all levels of employees) can influence an individual to place other priorities first. During times of change safety professionals, managers, supervisors and line/labor leaders take on more responsibility and manage multiple priorities.

Change is Stressful: Stress is another by-product of change and the sources of stress are many, such as:

• Job security
• Work conditions and environment
• Production pressures/quotas
• Internal and external competition, and
• Personality conflicts

Personal issues and concerns off the job can also increase stress levels.

Resistance is Futile

Generally, people tend to resist change rather than welcome it. Why do we resist change? Because we are afraid that we will lose something. We resist change because we don’t like it, don’t want it, don’t agree with it, don’t know what the future will bring and what will happen, are afraid of it, and just don’t know how to deal with it.

When change results in the loss of jobs, those that keep their jobs often resist the changes because they: (a) feel guilty about surviving while their colleagues did not; and (b) fear that they will end up with increased responsibilities. They think they won’t have time or don’t know how to handle their increased workloads. Time and project management skills are needed by all levels of employees.

It’s interesting to note that underlying resistance is the belief some have that if we resist something long enough it will go away or change. What people find out is that resistance doesn’t change the reality of what is happening or cause it to go away or stop. But the resistance creates tension, doubt or uncertainty, resentment and fear, and stress. Resistance is also a distracting factor and, generally, when distractions occur, so do incidents.

Conclusion

Not everyone feels that change is bad. Some see it as an opportunity to advance themselves and believe in their ability to handle the attending challenges. How change is handled depends on the individual’s perspective, self-image and confidence. Next week, we’ll look at how safety leaders can identify and address the negative influences that shape the attitudes and behaviors of different levels of employees.