{"id":4042,"date":"2021-08-30T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/?p=4042"},"modified":"2021-12-10T15:20:33","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T21:20:33","slug":"can-technology-spur-culture-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/index.php\/2021\/08\/30\/can-technology-spur-culture-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Technology Spur Culture Change?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BY DAVID COBURN<\/span><\/div>\n
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Link to digital version of article in MHI Solutions.<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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BBSTUDIOPHOTO\/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

N<\/span>obody would argue that new technologies haven\u2019t played a role in enhancing safety on the job, but the ability of technology to take a company\u2019s culture of safety to the next level might be open to debate.<\/p>\n

In some ways, new technology can present a cart-before-the-horse quandary: How much can new systems improve culture if the company hasn\u2019t already committed to creating a culture of safety excellence?<\/p>\n

Katherine Mendoza, environmental health and safety director for the National Safety Council, differentiates between a company\u2019s adoption of highly specific technology that enhances workplace safety\u2014forklift proximity detectors, for example\u2014and a more mature, strategic approach to capital investment in systems that collect and utilize data to produce measurable changes in behavior contributing to a strengthening of the culture itself.<\/p>\n

“How an organization approaches technology is going to have a significant impact on the culture of safety because it says a lot about the organization on how they approach capital investment and also it says a lot if your organization is willing to adopt technologies for the specific purpose of safety,” Mendoza said.<\/p>\n

\u2018You didn\u2019t just buy technology\u2019<\/h2>\n

MHI member Crown Equipment Corp. has learned from experience that technology can only go so far in moving the needle on culture\u2014especially when the customer isn\u2019t quite ready or willing to embrace change.<\/p>\n

The lift truck manufacturer makes InfoLink, a system that collects real-time information on safe and unsafe forklift operator behaviors, providing a baseline that operators and their supervisors could use to benchmark future improvements. The company discovered early on that some buyers just weren\u2019t ready to leverage the system\u2019s capabilities.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019d go in and recommend technology, the customer would sign off, we\u2019d install it, and do some quick training,” said Dan Zinn, Crown\u2019s director of sales. “And then we\u2019d come back, and there was really no tangible benefit. The culture hadn\u2019t changed as a result of the technology; the technology at best was co-existing.”<\/p>\n

Crown now has a large team of specialists exclusively focused on helping customers adopt the system and configure it to their own needs\u2014in some cases, even helping customers develop key performance indicators (KPIs) that they never had before so they can make data-driven decisions.<\/p>\n

Customers with a lower-maturity safety culture just need to understand what they\u2019re getting when they sign a purchase order, said Zinn: “You didn\u2019t just buy technology. What you really bought was culture change.”<\/p>\n

For companies with a firmly established culture of safety excellence, adopting the new technology is a more natural step on the path to continuous improvement.<\/p>\n

“It really comes down to visibility and accountability. How do they make things that happen at the floor level visible to the leadership in the building and beyond? If they\u2019re sophisticated enough that they have KPIs and metrics for everything they do already, it\u2019s pretty easy to go to them and say, \u2018I\u2019m capturing data for your traditional metrics, plus providing you with KPIs and metrics that you never had before. All you have to do is figure out how to plug them in,\u2019” Zinn said. “That\u2019s when we know it\u2019s a relatively easy move to get them into this, because they\u2019ve already quantified safety, quantified productivity, they\u2019ve made it visible to their employees, and people are held accountable.”<\/p>\n

Balancing cultural imperatives<\/h2>\n

In addition to being an important ally in key culture-building tasks such as influencing employee behavior and driving employee engagement, technology can also help companies struggling to balance competing goals such as productivity and safety.<\/p>\n