In 2002, a preferred client of a large Louisiana-based shipyard informed the shipyard's management that it would henceforth require shipyard employees to participate with its vessel engineers in a joint pre-task job safety analysis (JSA) before the beginning of each work shift. While the concept of pre-task planning was not new to the shipyard, participation in a routine JSA with the customer was revolutionary. To the defensive eye, the requirement could have easily been interpreted as the customer's doubt about the safety capabilities of the shipyard's workers. Nonetheless, the shipyard had to comply or risk losing the business of a preferred customer. That resignation, however, did not prevent the shipyard's supervisors from resisting the customer's request.
The author and his associates were employed to quickly develop and implement a training program to teach the shipyard company's +500 supervisory personnel how to conduct a job safety analysis. Included in the training program was the effective use of interpersonal communication skills and participatory leadership. As with other hard-to-change industry sectors, though, the key to training success lay in how to transform a change-resistant, hardnosed workforce into teachable workers, ready and willingly to change.
The examination of how this transformation through training is accomplished is the purpose of this paper. Included in the examination will be the answers to practical questions asked by every supervisor and manager-insight that should be incorporated into any training effort that involves change-resistant workers.
What makes a worker hardnosed?
What is the definition of a hardnosed worker?
What overriding behavioral challenge does a hardnosed worker present to safety management?
What is needed from a training program in order to overcome the challenges of a hardnosed worker?
What results can be expected from a training program tailored to a hardnosed worker?
The debate over what creates a hardnosed, change-resistant safety culture focuses on two causes: the worker himself and the management system in which he works. While it may be convenient to infer that a change-resistant safety culture is a cumulative product of its individual workers, and thus lay blame almost totally on the worker, research data presented later in this paper indicates that management of the worker bears much of the blame for the creation of both a hardnosed worker and his change-resistant safety environment.
Typically, the cycle of management missteps that creates and reinforces a safety-resistant hardnosed worker is as follows.
Revelation - Often using poor and impersonal communication, management tries to educate the worker with bits and pieces of the safety puzzle, typically the minimum requirements of compliance training that involve what to do and how to do it-the policies, practices, or procedures that the worker is expected to obey/follow.
Response - The worker does not respond to poor communication and remains largely unresponsive to safety initiatives. The worker equates poor communication with perceived neglect or non-communication from management; therefore, over the long term, he develops an attitude of skepticism/pessimism towards management.
