The Lab Safety Gurus
Discover the secrets to enhancing laboratory safety without the hassle of navigating complex regulations and modifying established practices.
Tune in to the enlightening discussions led by the knowledgeable Dan the Lab Safety Man and infectious disease behaviorist Sean Kaufman. Together, they explore a wide range of lab safety subjects on a weekly basis.
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The Lab Safety Gurus
Nurturing a Culture of Compliance and Care in Laboratory Settings
Have you ever wondered how a sprinkle of positive reinforcement can ignite a rigorous safety culture in a laboratory? Prepare to be enlightened as your Lab Safety Gurus, Dan Scungio and Sean Kaufman, unveil the pivotal role of accountability and compliance in fostering a dynamic lab environment. In our latest episode, we dissect the art of encouraging positive safety behaviors, where observation meets opportunity for immediate course correction. With an intriguing look at how a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative feedback can revolutionize staff performance, we promise you'll walk away with actionable strategies to uplift and inspire your team to maintain the highest safety standards.
Step into the world of compliance as an attitude, not just a checklist, and grasp the profound power of trust in shaping a lab's ethos. We, along with our guests, delve into how a simple phrase, "we don't do that here," can cement a shared dedication to safety protocols. As we explore the nuanced dance between mentoring and disciplinary action, gain insights on how to deftly handle non-compliance. By emphasizing mentorship and positive reinforcement, we show you how to nurture a culture of safety that upholds integrity and excellence. Join us on this journey, and together let's pledge to a future where every lab is a bastion of safety and responsibility.
Welcome to the Lab Safety Guru's Podcast. I'm Dan Scungio.
Speaker 2:And I'm Sean Coffin, and together we're providing safety insights for those working in laboratory settings, doing safety.
Speaker 1:Together.
Speaker 2:Okay, Dan, so I've got a couple questions for you. Oh, I'm afraid, Sean, but you go right ahead, Alright. So we're talking about safety, but let's talk a little bit about the behaviors of safety and how do we motivate people to actually behave. And so here's my question you ready? I'm ready. How do you hold somebody accountable to a safety expectation?
Speaker 1:I would say that I hold somebody accountable by observing and correcting when I see something that's not correct, when I see something that's not safe. That's part of my job. I feel like I hold people accountable as I do site visits, as I go through laboratories, as I talk to them, when I see something that puts them into a situation of immediate danger. If you're pouring chemical and you're not wearing any kind of face protection or using a face shield of some sort, I'm going to talk to you about that right away. I'm going to try to hold you accountable for your safety's sake.
Speaker 2:Okay, let me ask you this, Dan If you see someone following the rules and actually even exceeding expectations, do you hold them accountable?
Speaker 1:In a different way, but I do. There's actual science behind that. So if you, the listener, have not heard this, there's actual science that will tell you that it's better to give people positive feedback, which is another type of accountability, than it is to give the negative feedback. So, in other words, the ratio should be 5 to 1. Yes, so there was a study done with school children.
Speaker 1:This was in Hampton, virginia, not too far from where I am in Williamsburg, and they split a first grade class like into two groups. In the first group they just kind of sort of criticized when they got something wrong, did something wrong. In the other group, they complimented, they gave props to, they built them up all the time. What a great job you're doing. This is great. A 5 to 1 ratio of positives to any kind of a negative statement. And that group that got the 5 to 1, their grades were so much higher, the work they put out was so much better. It was an amazing difference. And they teach that when you're talking to people in laboratory safety and I do it all the time If I see somebody wearing a lab coat and maybe once in my career with them, I had to tell them to put on a lab coat, I said oh my gosh, you look great in white. That is a good color on you.
Speaker 1:And make sure I make positive comments about what they're doing and doing and some people. You know one of my jobs, one of the things I do as a lab safety officer, is I look for issues and I'll take pictures of them, because I always collect my safety eyes pictures, as I call them so people can look at them and identify the issue. But when I see somebody doing something right, sometimes I'll just take a picture and say, hey, can I get your picture? This is the exact correct way to do this. You look great doing it and I'd love to have your picture in. My safety eyes count and they do that. So that's just another positive you give. So definitely. I don't know if I ever looked at it as holding someone accountable but in a way, you are.
Speaker 2:It is, dan, it is. It's a positive way to do it, absolutely so the three types of accountability, I really promote the very first one. Like you said, you've got to have positive accountability, and that's one of the hardest things to teach people Certainly leaders is listen. If we've set expectations, you should actually be giving, like you said, on a ratio of five to one, because that is exactly what the science says. For every five, or for every one, what we call constructive accountability, for every one, you should be giving five positive accountabilities. You know, supportive, affirmative accountability is really what we call it. Now, dan, when you give accountability and you're talking about identifying a behavior that's not living up to expectation, there are two types of accountability associated with that. One is constructive and one is destructive. How would you separate those two?
Speaker 1:I think constructive accountability is something that doesn't hit the person where it hurts, so to speak. So a destructive comment would be something like you know, I wish you could be smarter about your job and protect your eyes while you're working with open specimens or chemicals. That's not a very helpful comment. You're actually attacking the person's. You know intelligence. It's just not the way to go about it. I think there are constructive ways to say it. I think you have to be really careful when somebody's in the middle of their work and you're trying to talk to them about safety, and you have to have the right tenor to what you're saying in order to make it positive and constructive. You want them to remember the interaction and you want them to think that it was a positive interaction and constructive means they understood why you said something, they understood why you felt the need to say something and they remember it and then, hopefully, they follow through and continue with the safer behavior that you've introduced to them.
Speaker 2:We're talking about that. No, everything you said I like. Look, constructive accountability has one goal, in my opinion, dan. First and foremost, I have to tell you, sometimes constructive accountability is going to be like throwing a grenade and saying it's not going to hurt. Even when it's done tactfully, it could still hurt because people may take it in a way that challenges their credibility, their competency, their proficiency. So, even when you do it tactfully, it may not be as painless as you want it to be, but here's the goal. This is the goal of constructive accountability. You ready, dan, I'm ready. The person leaves the conversation eager and motivated to continue to try again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot.
Speaker 2:That's got to be the goal, because destructive accountability is when they leave the exchange. Giving up. That's destructive accountability. Yeah, that's it. I have literally destroyed their motivation of even wanting to try again.
Speaker 1:And I think people do that. I think they do that with the mode of approach that they have in a situation. It takes tact, it takes a certain personality to be able to coach people regarding safety and to walk away from that with success and with the ability to come back to that person again at a later time. It's not easy. That's all relationship. And putting money in their bank, that's part of that. Five to one, but putting money in their bank so that they remember that you're on their side and not an enemy.
Speaker 2:That's so important. Yeah, now let me tell you we're going to go to the phase two part. I wanted to talk about accountability and compliance, and a lot of people confuse those two and we've got to separate them. They are so it's so important. Now we've talked about three aspects of accountability Affirmative accountability, where you should be doing that more often than constructive accountability, and then what we would consider destructive accountability. So again, affirmative, constructive and destructive. But here's my question to you, dan you ready? Mm-hmm, what does compliance mean to you?
Speaker 1:I think, simply put, compliance is following the rules. Very good, it's following the procedures and the rules.
Speaker 2:So what if I were to tell you that compliance, from a psychological standpoint, isn't an outcome of behavior. It's not whether or not you're doing the behavior or not. That's accountability. What if compliance is a attitude? What if it's actually a commitment to actually sacrificing self-autonomy for the betterment of the organization or the betterment of the collective group? That compliance is understanding the expectation and saying I'm willing to follow that expectation.
Speaker 1:That makes me wonder doesn't there have to be an element of trust in that?
Speaker 2:Well, yes and no, if I'm paying you to do a job and that's what I'm doing I'm paying you to really truly sacrifice personal autonomy. That means that when you come to this job, you are being asked to participate according to a specific set of guidelines, and compliance is not whether or not you do it, because then no human being is going to be perfect. We're never going to have a human being that does everything perfectly. That'll be a robot that's programmed and then, even then they may break down. But here's my point If we separate compliance and accountability into two different aspects, the person who says I am willing to try is a person you hire. It's the person you bring in, it's the person that you provide both affirmative, constructive feedback or accountability to. But the one big concern I have, dan, in organizations specifically that are working in high risk and high hazard environments, is when the organization doesn't ensure compliance. And what I mean by that is if somebody comes in and says I don't care what the rules are, I'm going to do my own thing.
Speaker 1:When you talked about compliance that way, it made me think about you're doing it, because it's the way it's done here and I actually like that statement as a I'll call it a power tool. In the laboratory, if you're somebody who's working alongside somebody who isn't being compliant, you can use the phrase we don't do that here as a powerful compliance tool. I want you to do this behavior because this is what's expected here. I guess that's why, through and trust when you ask the question, because the compliance guidelines or procedures and policies you won't necessarily all in a laboratory. You may not learn that from one person. You may be learning it from several teammates and you sort of have to trust that they're all teaching you the correct ways to do those things.
Speaker 2:And I see compliance as a promise, a promise that you're going to do the best that you can to follow the rules. That's compliance, and it doesn't mean you're always going to be able to do it, it doesn't mean that you may succeed in it. But if you're going to flip what you said, so you say you see someone who's not following an SOP, you could say to them remember, we promised, we've made. And if you're in research, for example, you've made a promise to the humans and the plants and the animals outside of the containment walls that you're going to do everything you can to keep what you're working with within your institution.
Speaker 2:When you're working in a clinical lab, dan, you've made a promise to a patient that we're going to do everything we can to ensure the quality processing of your sample to get as accurate of the. We're not going to contaminate, we're going to get an accurate result. We've made a promise to follow rules. We're going to remain in compliance. We made a promise and to me, compliance is an attitude. Are you willing to sacrifice your own risk perceptions, risk appetite, risk tolerance, your own, sometimes even, experiences? Because you know, dan, sometimes when we hire new staff, staff are like well, I've never done it this way, right, this way, this way stupid. I'm not doing it this way.
Speaker 1:I actually like that, Sean. I think it's more powerful, I think that when you get to the point. So I'm going back to my reading of Crucial Accountability, that great book.
Speaker 2:Oh, it is a good book, absolutely.
Speaker 1:But one of the things they teach in there is when you get to the second level of disappointment or people continuing to do the wrong thing, once you've had that first conversation, you're asking for a promise to do it right next time. And the second conversation you have about it to me seems like a much more powerful conversation, because now you can talk to them about their broken promises.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And so, and their broken commitment, and the same thing with what you're just talking about with compliance, you've broken that commitment to the patient. You've broken that commitment to the environment, to the people outside your four walls. That gives you a little more strength in what you're trying to say to them about compliance. Yeah, that's good. Well, yeah.
Speaker 2:I tell you I have heard of times where people have been banned from the laboratory and that breaks a lot of people because they made a mistake or something. The only time, dan, that I honestly think that people should be completely banned, it doesn't mean sometimes I think people should be escorted or mentored additionally and trained additionally, but any time I think somebody should ever be banned from the laboratory environment, whether it's diagnostics, public health research, whatever is. When the person says I don't care what the organization says, I'm going to do what I want to do, that that to me is a huge risk. I don't know. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have to agree with that. I think people always should be given more than one chance when something goes wrong with safety. But also, you need to look at the system first before you look at the person, Make sure that the system didn't fail them, and if somebody's failing something on purpose, then then yeah, it's time for them to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it's sad because that individual is like cancer in the human body, because if you don't address it, what happens?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to spread and you don't want that in your laboratory.
Speaker 2:It will destroy your culture. It's one of the worst things that can happen.
Speaker 1:So, again.
Speaker 2:just to summarize absolutely before you get somebody into the job, make sure that they know the promises they're making and then, once they have made those promises, remind them, when they keep those promises, that they're doing a great job. That's affirmative accountability. If they don't live up to that promise, hold them accountable constructively and never, ever, destroy the motivation of trying to get people to keep their promises. We are the Lab Safety Gurus Dan Scungio and Sean Kaufman.
Speaker 1:Thank you for letting us do Lab Safety together.