Director of Safety, Rian Martinsen (right), has been integral to the company’s deep commitment to maintaining a safe work environment for all O’Brien employees and subcontractors.
Why TRUST Is So Fundamental for Safety
At O’Brien, we’re proud of the culture we’ve created. It takes time and effort to develop and support a working culture, and we’ve accomplished just that through the implementation of our core values: Trust, Collaboration, and Innovation.
Our core values don’t only ensure a positive culture, they also play a vital role in maintaining a safe and healthy work environment for all of our team members.
The simple truth is that most organizations will never achieve their safety and health goals if their leadership does not support the culture of safety necessary to to make real change. Culture is a product of all our shared values, beliefs, customs, and behaviors. It’s a way of life that shapes how people think, act, and understand the world.
Culture is engrained in us from birth. Our family, our neighborhood, our schools, our friends, our hobbies and interests, our work—every experience we have informs that culture. From these experiences we form our own values, which are the core beliefs and ideals that define a community or society. But the misunderstood part is that you can’t force someone to take on cultural values, they have to take it one themselves. So how do you get employees to buy in to your company’s culture and core values?
According to Stephen Covey, “values” in a company are essentially the guiding principles based on universal and timeless truths like integrity, fairness, honesty, and respect, which should be deeply ingrained in the company culture and reflected in the behavior of all employees; essentially aligning with a “Character Ethic” where actions are driven by these core principles rather than just external motivators.
Culture and values influence everything we do and hot we do it; it is an invisible force shaping people’s actions, attitudes, and beliefs. It serves as our moral compass to distinguish right from wrong. It is the foundation on which we operate, and affects every choice we make. That is why it is essential to support culture and emphasize the importance of our shared values.
Building a safety culture is not easy, and it takes time. So, let’s dig into one of O’Brien’s core values—Trust—to understand why it’s vital to the success of our safety program and ultimately our safety culture.
Why Is Trust Important?
One of the most important concepts for any business owner to understand is that you must know where you are to get where you want to be. Every one of us is on our own path and has our own goals.
We have many metrics to measure where we are on our commitment to safety, in the form of deliverables. Each one of these documents is a leading indicator of proactivity in ensuring a safe project. Another indicator is how much time you are spending behind a computer versus walking the project site. What are the barriers to achieving a balance between both of these priorities? Holding up a mirror can be hard, and requires a great deal of trust, but knowing our strengths and weaknesses can provide insight into achieving our goals.
Deliberate and truthful acknowledgement is essential. Unfortunately, many of us do not truly know where we stand with safety and health, because people are not reporting issues. Surely some simply forget, but others choose not to because they fear the repercussions of reporting near misses, subcontractor issues, accidents, and injuries. This shows both a lack of trust and a lack of awareness as to how vital all these components are to our safety culture and safety program, not to mention risk management.
Trust requires vulnerability. Trusting someone means that you are relying on them to act in your best interest. When someone violates your trust, it feels like a violation of your good nature. Learning to trust can be very difficult, as many of us have been burned when our trust has been violated. So, taking steps to build good relationships helps to foster and rebuild our trust. When we build good relationships, it makes it easier to trust one another, it also makes it hard for someone to violate that trust.
Breaking ground at OSU’s new Hatfield Marine Science Center student housing.
“There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world—one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love. On the other hand, if developed and leveraged, that one thing has the potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. Yet, it is the least understood, most neglected, and most underestimated possibility of our time. That one thing is trust.”
Stephen M.R. Covey, The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything