Sometimes, a supervisor gets priorities skewed. At one facility, the plant engineer pushed the maintenance manager relentlessly, insisting on insanely long hours. This lasted until the day the sleep-deprived maintenance manager suffered a serious injury.
Other ways supervisors can put their subordinates in danger include:
- Failing to emphasize safety, in hopes the employee will cut corners just a little.
- Actively encouraging unsafe acts for the purpose of speed.
- Rushing through the job briefing or other preparatory work, rather than proceeding methodically.
- Distracting employees by repeatedly asking them for progress updates.
Of course, most supervisors aren’t like this. The best ones put safety first and make sure their subordinates know this. Actually, they make sure everyone around them knows this.
But job pressures can cause some people to seek speed that simply isn’t there. If that person is a supervisor, pushing his subordinates can seem like the way to find that speed.
If your supervisor confuses you with a robot or perhaps Superman, don’t let that be your problem. One way many people handle this is to just smile, agree to go faster, and then just go at their regular pace. That’s deceptive and can lead to problems.
A better way to deal with an unsafe supervisor is to initiate a conversation. Keep it positive and non-threatening. You want to confront the issue, not have a personal conflict. Start out by agreeing that there’s a lot of schedule pressure (or whatever the driver seems to be). Then ask the question, outright. “You do care about my safety, right?”
Then ask the supervisor how the work can be performed safely if you do X as instructed. Or say something like, “Remember what you said about taking your kids on vacation, and they kept bugging you with the question ‘Are we there yet?’” A knowing smile should make the point.
If you feel an argument coming on or hear defensiveness, bring the discussion back to the issue of safety. That is your concern, not winning an argument or making your supervisor feel bad.
Nearly everyone responds favorably to this kind of respectful pushback. But if your supervisor isn’t one of those people, your safety still comes first.
