Canadian Occupational Safety

24 www.cos-mag.com Canadian Occupational Safety leadership level is when you get some- thing like an incident report coming in for a very serious incident, the first batch of information coming in leads to people making assumptions right away," he says. "The course of the investigation, the course of corrective action and maybe even the strategic focus for the organization that gets driven by the senior EHS leader might be derived on the back of that very first email that was sent about some- thing that happened." The puzzle exercise can help organi- zations wait for information, be more patient and have more acuity not just visually, but strategically with infor- mation, Dony says. Masotti recommends showing a safety video with each worker watch- ing a different person or element in the video. "Amanda, you pay attention to the lift truck; I'm going to pay attention to the pedestrian. Frank, can you pay attention to the person on the key- board and tell us what you saw?... You will find things you haven't seen before." COVE offers open two-day work- shops on visual literacy at the Toledo Museum of Art every month. Train- ees spend one-third of their time learning concepts in the classroom and two-thirds participating in exer- cises in an art gallery. "If we do it in the workplace, you still have all this baggage around 'Well, I am used to seeing this' or 'I already know what that hazard is.' You have these expectations, these prior influences, these biases that still hang with you," he says. "Using museum assets is a wonderful experience for people." COVE facilitates company-specific workshops for employers across the United States and Canada, occasionally in partnership with local museums. THE SKEPTICS Implementing a new training program is never without its challenges, espe- cially one that is out of the box. Visual literacy is initially a tough sell because it sounds like a somewhat wild concept, says Dony. "Why would a safety professional care about something that was incu- bated in the art world? A lot of folks in the safety field have an engineering, operations background. It's not often that these two fields have such a Venn diagram overlap," he says. Smith is proof of this. She was not so sure about the idea of visual literacy at the beginning. "When I was first approached with the idea of using art to improve the safety program, the engineering part of my brain said, 'How's this going to work?' I have to admit I was a little bit skeptical on the front end, but as we went through the workshop and started to apply it, I really began to see how beneficial it could be," she says. Additionally, getting worker buy-in might be challenging. But Dony sug- gests telling workers that the training will be something a little different than the all-too-common "death by PowerPoint." "(Tell them) 'We're going to engage your brain in a different way and you will have a little fun, too,'" Dony says. "It's not often we're asked to flex our creative muscles at a safety meeting. It's not often we're asked to do some- thing interactive and engaging like drawing — most of us haven't drawn since we were 10 years old… It's a breath of fresh air." A good strategy is to embrace the naysayers, or late adopters, and make them your champions, says Masotti. Take them for a meal or go for coffee to explain what you are trying to do. It's helpful to have this conversation away from the workplace so they don't have to "posture and look the part," he says. Try to appeal to their personal motivations to help them see the value of the initiative. "Each and every one of us has some- thing that motivates us or makes us come to work every day; we just need to find it," Masotti says. "It is worth the energy and investment of time — whatever it takes." Visual literacy training is especially well-suited for mature, high-perform- ing companies who are looking to move the OHS needle even more. "As you work to improve your safety performance over time, the incremen- tal gains get more difficult and more difficult and more difficult," says Pon- tsler. "High performing companies that have been at this for a while, they are really looking for new and innova- tive solutions to get at issues that are really hard to get at." This was the case for Cummins, which historically had pretty good health and safety performance, says Smith, but all the low-hanging fruit had been picked, so it was looking for another tool to get it towards its goal of zero injuries. Visual literacy helps battle the chal- lenges of complacency, especially for those individuals who have been at the company for a while and think they know it all and have seen it all. "We've had some tough individu- als who have been in the workplace for 30 years — they have been operat- ing equipment or doing maintenance work — and they sit down in that museum and they cross their arms at the beginning and you kind of wonder if you're going to get through to them or not, but it doesn't take long and they are all-in," says Pontsler. After it implemented visual lit- eracy training, Cummins observed an increase in employee engagement. "In the spirit of creating an inter- dependent culture where employees are looking out for themselves as well as each other, identifying hazards and really being able to focus in and see those and communicate them is where we are seeing really good engagement," Smith says. This is one of the reasons why Cum- mins is planning on going global with visual literacy. Most of its workers in Canada are field service technicians and in-shop technicians who often don't know what hazards and risks they will face job-to-job, says Smith. "We are going to be incorporating some of these visual literacy principles into the job safety observation and job safety analysis program that is already a part of their day-to-day work," she says. "I think it's really going to help them be able to see what could be harmful in the tasks that they are get- ting ready to undertake." So far, in the United States, 330 employees have been trained in visual literacy and a further 6,000 will be trained this year. Hopefully, the Cummins global workforce will be as receptive to visual literacy training as those who have already completed the program. The response was so positive, in fact, that workers have actually been asking to participate, says Smith. "That's what really convinced me," she says. "In my career, there are a very limited number of times I've seen employees ask for health and safety training, so that was exciting." COS When I was first approached with the idea of using art to improve the safety program, the engineering part of my brain said, 'How's this going to work?'

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