Page 74 - Advances In Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

60 Advances in Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

A fourth stop on the leadership roadmap involves a commitment to organizational
values and vision. Although leaders are responsible for enforcing policies and ensur-
ing compliance to regulations, they are also most effective when they demonstrate the
vision or values of the company. Front-line employees are constantly observing the
behavior of leaders, no matter how “visible” those leaders are. In turn, employees
are more likely to feel committed to the organization when they believe that their
leaders are committed to the company. When employees feel committed to the orga-
nization, they perform better and take increased responsibility for their decisions and
actions. When leaders visibly commit to the organization’s values, they regularly
communicate those values to employees, and they also live those values on a daily
basis.

4.7 Summary

Although organizations are commonly structured in traditional top-down chains of
command, the responsibility to ensure safe work is shared among everyone involved
with a mining operation, from front-line workers and supervisors to upper manage-
ment and even external stakeholders. When the responsibility to ensure safe work
is shared, safety becomes more ingrained within an organization’s culture. The
resulting emergence of a strong safety culture pays dividends that directly influence
an organization’s bottom line—namely, its safety record, productivity, and opportu-
nities for growth.
As part of a strong safety culture, visible safety leadership can transform safety-
related issues and concerns into opportunities for communication and collaboration
that can improve the safety system, rather than be occasions for mandated and imme-
diate refresher training and reprimand, which do little, if anything, to improve the
system. Safety leadership becomes more visible and therefore valuable when safe
work is ensured through consistent safety-related communication, where safety is a
core value of the organization and thus an intrinsic aspect of its culture.
A significant part of this leadership visibility is quite literal—front-line employees
prefer to see their managers and supervisors regularly in the workplace, taking an
interest in the worksite environment, and experiencing front-line job tasks first hand.
The familiarity and rapport that results from these personal interactions and direct
observations helps engender trust among the different levels of the organization’s
members. Further, showing interest in employees’ first-hand experiences can help
safety leadership improve the safety system in ways that realistically reflect what
front-line employees see and do while performing their job tasks. When employees
have an active role in fashioning and improving the safety system, adhering to safe
work procedures becomes a matter of self-accountability rather than a matter of
merely following the rules to avoid punishment.
Because it is human nature to resist being pushed or pulled toward any rule, policy,
or idea aimed at influencing one’s behavior, it is key that safety leaders empower
front-line employees with the ability to affect the safety system within which they
operate. This helps inspire reciprocal pressure between employees and their