Engaging humans: employees and contractors alike

A reflection on engagement, collaboration, and shared responsibility for prevention among employees, leaders, and contractors.

Over the past twenty years, occupational health and safety has shifted markedly toward human-centered approaches. Faced with a landscape filled with laws, systems, rules, spreadsheets and tools, yet confronted with stagnant performance, the world turned its attention back to humans. By seeking to understand human behavior more deeply, examining human error and recognizing the influence of culture, the human element has been studied and practiced.

Engagement became an important focus. Some organizations required employees to formally commit to prevention, while others attempted to compel executives to show commitment through signatures and policies, as if people could be motivated through legal or administrative threats.

Our combined experience, with one of us having spent forty years supporting leaders and organizations globally and the other dedicating the early part of a career specifically to contractor engagement, leads to a central idea: Leaders at every organizational level, workers, managers and directors are strategic actors.

Their engagement cannot be forced. Their decision to engage involves multiple stakes and motivations. If we accept this idea, rooted in Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg’s « L’acteur et le système » from 1977, then we can use it to improve prevention.

The question becomes “what should be done concretely?”.

Our answer is partnership.

Partnership between actors fosters discretionary effort, creative ideas and the willingness to accomplish difficult, complex or exhausting tasks while giving one’s best technically and in matters of safety and quality.

Before returning to our proposition for partnership, one question must be addressed.

An essential question

Human-centered initiatives have progressed significantly within organizations, which is positive, but have all actors truly been included?

Are contractors treated with the same attention as employees?

In many cases, the answer is no.

Key point: Human-centered approaches must also include contractors, who play a determining role in prevention.

This is why we propose extending human-centered approaches to all contractual forms. In the construction industry, one of the most dangerous worldwide, this means approaching prevention through genuine collaboration among all actors.

Partnership with contractors

To illustrate this, we created The Partnership Forecast. On the vertical axis appears the attitude of the owner. At the top stands the owner who relies on hierarchy, imposes rules and prevention structures, positioning himself as superior to contractors. At the bottom is the passive owner who claims to outsource prevention along with the work and does not get involved. In the middle is the owner who sees contractors as equals. He maintains systems he values but remains open to their expertise and willing to work collaboratively.

On the horizontal axis is the contractor and his level of engagement. On the left is the disengaged but compliant contractor who waits for directives and shows little initiative. On the right is the engaged contractor who has his own prevention goals, ambitions and practices.

Each combination shapes prevention differently, and the visual highlights these differences.

The green zone shows where clients and contractors meet as equals and create effective prevention, while the red zone reflects conditions in which prevention suffers.

We invite you to realize that actors need to meet in the middle to foster engagement and move toward the green partnership zone without too much bureaucracy (upper right corner) a false sense of control (upper left corner), or a lack of coordination between all actors (lower right corner).

The partnership forecast

Conclusion and solutions

To conclude, we encourage dedicating time to creating a prevention system built through collaboration among all actors.

Co-constructing prevention at the start of each project by identifying preferred ways of working, learning from past experiences and defining the frequency of prevention activities and indicators allows prevention to be custom-built before construction begins.

Rejecting copy-and-paste practices and beginning with a single co-constructed activity can be the start to strengthening engagement.

What if you started with just one of your prevention activities?

Perhaps you will discover that this approach is worth extending.

Authors : Myriam Perrier (VP research and development) and Gérald Perrier (President)

This article is based on the chapter written by Myriam and Gérald and published in the second edition of the One Percent Safer book.

As the Canadian Ambassador for the international One Percent Safer movement, Groupe-conseil Perrier invites everyone to reflect on the place that health and safety hold in both their professional and personal lives, as well as on how each of us cares for our loved ones and colleagues.

In a world of work where people are called upon to collaborate and communicate more effectively, Groupe-conseil Perrier believes that the quality of work and performance can contribute to healthy and safe work environments.

Learn more about our commitment to the 1% Safer movement: One Percent Safer | Perrier Consulting