What Exactly Is Happening During Those First Five Minutes of the Day?
November 1, 2019/by Barry Nelson
The first five minutes of the day are the most important investment you make in your people all day. During these five minutes front line leaders and those closest to the work plan and think through how to get home safely. These 300 seconds are too important to squander.
That may sound harsh, but I needed to get your attention.
Lack of Daily Safety Planning is a Big Problem
Every morning your front-line leaders probably have a conversation with those closest to the work about what’s happening today, what may cause severe injury or harm, and what might require special attention. You probably call this a JHA or PTP, THA, Daily Huddle, Tool Box talk… or something similar.
The activity makes sense, but it would be great if it happened the way it was actually meant to: A leader does an excellent job of planning, really cares about the guys, thinks through the risks, and gets the team talking and thinking.
The problem is that many JHA/PTP conversations are not good, and frankly many are simply not happening.
When they do occur, they may or may not be well-planned. The foremen may be talking to 40 guys at once. Maybe, some of those guys are paying attention. Others may be kicking dust with their boots, praying for this meeting to get over so they can get to work. Maybe your front-line leaders truly reflect your business’ safety culture, your crews know key safety or production priorities, and discuss how to get better at what they do every day. The problem is there are too many “maybes” and not enough “certainty”.
If you did know for certain, you’d probably do a lot of things differently, because good leaders know what to do and how to do it. You’d coach your leaders specifically to their needs. You’d make different hiring and training decisions. You’d reward the behaviors you like, and discourage the behaviors that don’t align with your culture.
You might think you don’t have the information needed to get this done, but the good news is that it has never been easier to know.
The SmartTagIt Solution
Over the past 24 months, we at SmartTagIt have partnered closely with dozens of operational and safety teams to improve their PTP/JHA processes.
At first, users of SmartTagIt thought that improvement only meant saving time on all the paper shuffling associated with this activity. But then they learned that by amending the JHA process with two-minute videos of the conversation of their crews held, the JHAs got better and people felt more engaged in the activity.
That’s when the big “aha” moment came.
Using SmartTagIt to capture and review daily conversations as a valuable visual resource, those organizations found that the 5-minute activity they were already paying people to conduct held the answers to many—if not all— of the questions and “maybes” mentioned above. All it took was the right tool to harness and analyze that information.
Now our comprehensive SmartTagIt mobile-application continues to help project and safety leaders learn that by simplifying their JHA/PTP process and capturing conversations, they can build a real-time cultural map of their organization without anyone having to do any extra work.
Plus, with the aid of machine learning and natural language processing, CEOs and corporate executives can literally hear what their front-line managers are talking about every day.
Here’s a 2-minute video on how it works.
Bringing the Value of SmartTagIt to your Teams
Your front-line leaders are your competitive advantage.
The more they’re aligned with, and reflect your priorities, the more efficiently your organization can execute on your advantages to establish a competitive edge. You’re already investing at least five minutes a day in this activity, so why not get the most out of it?
There’s simply no reason not to know what you need to know in order to drive a deeper wedge between your organization and your competitors who have yet to engage their field with this powerful tool.
