You probably don’t need to be told that one of the most difficult challenges a leader faces on a regular basis is trying to get people to engage with safety. It’s one thing to have the best training programs and meticulously planned procedures, or the most advanced technology and PPE. But getting employees to care about all of that stuff is something else entirely. You can enforce rules all you want, but making employees genuinely care takes something special: soft skills. 

As the guide Essential Soft Skills for Hard Workplace Safety Problems explains, soft skills “are the many ways that we interact with other people.” And while some of those soft skills can come naturally, the ones listed in the guide need to be actively developed and practiced. And that’s important because the right soft skills can make the technical systems and procedures you already have in place more effective by boosting employee engagement.  

Each soft skill has its own strengths when it comes to building engagement. But one of the great things about these holistic tools is how they can work together to reinforce those strengths, even when they might seem a little contradictory. A great example of this is the interplay between the soft skills we call “consistency” and “reading the room.” 

Great expectations 

It’s easy to take it for granted, but expectation plays a major role in our daily lives, especially when it comes to how engaged we are at work. When people wake up in the morning, they have an idea of how their day will be—what they will eat for breakfast and how they take their coffee, what the commute will be like, and who they’ll see at work and what they’ll be doing. When they arrive at work, they know where to go and what to bring with them so that they can do their job effectively. But when that routine is interrupted, extra time and energy needs to be expended to course correct and get things back on track.  

As a leader in safety, it is crucial to maintain workers’ expectations, minimizing uncertainty. That’s where the consistency soft skill comes in. When ambiguity and volatility are removed from an employee’s day, they are primed for engagement. And leaders can practice this with some easy-to-perform strategies: 

• Apply rules equally – Make sure the rules are clearly communicated with everyone and apply them equally across roles and contexts. This demonstrates that no one is above safety. It also establishes a strong expectation that safety is the way things are done. 

• Recognize employees for doing something safely – Catching people acting safe and offering positive reinforcement is a highly effective safety strategy. Make sure you define what qualifies as being safe from the outset and dole out praise equally when you see it. 

• Communicate regularly – Communication is a core component of safety, and when we’re talking about consistency, that means sticking to a reliable cadence. Pick specific days of the week to have safety talks with certain shifts and remind folks when you’re going to have group conversations in advance. And don’t forget to make a point of regularly walking the floor—consistency doesn’t always have to be something you set your watch to; it can be part of who you are. 

• Use a common language – All of this consistency can be supported with a widely understood vocabulary. Be sure that, when safety is being talked about, you are regularly using the same terms to mean the same things. And encourage others to use those terms too. That way, safety isn’t getting lost in translation as contexts change. 

Building consistency into work culture takes time, but it’s worth the effort. When workers don’t need to constantly redefine how safety fits into their lives, they can actually engage with it as a solid concept. But as helpful as consistency is, a workplace should still have some flexibility, and that’s where reading the room comes in. 

A room of one’s own 

We’re all human, and the reality is, circumstances change despite even the best efforts of leaders that prioritize consistency. Group dynamics are highly reactive, and factors like turnaround, crunch time, weather, the introduction of new processes or even the mood of a few individuals can change the way work happens on a given day.  While a consistent foundation can often keep teams grounded in the face of those chaotic elements, sometimes the best move a leader can make is pivoting in the name of maintaining engagement. 

Reading the room is a skill that helps a leader intuit group dynamics and understand when it’s time to deviate from business as usual. Are workers unusually quiet during a toolbox talk? Does everyone seem distracted? Is frustration spreading through the crew because production is running behind schedule or they’ve been dealing with organizational change like new leadership or time tracking protocols? These are clues that something may be affecting engagement—and potentially increasing risk. 

Learning to read a room takes practice. A good way to develop this soft skill is to run through a mental checklist in group settings: 

• What is the collective attitude like and is it different than usual? 

• Are there any deviations from typical social interactions? 

• Are there any signs of human factors or other issues being exhibited by multiple people? 

When you run through those questions and come up with a list of human factors like fatigue or frustration, it could be time to break with expectation and intervene. Are folks low energy and yawning? Lead a group stretch or initiate a coffee run. Are you hearing frustrated comments? Have a meeting for some storytelling and venting. Is everyone feeling rushed and overwhelmed? See what you can do to offer support and check in regularly with reminders to keep eyes and mind on task. It’s important to be pre-emptive in these cases—reading the room before demanding tasks, during shift changes and at the start and end of the day—because there’s little use in offering support after an incident occurs. 

A tale of two soft skills 

At first glance, consistency and reading the room might seem like opposites. One is about doing things the same way, while the other is about changing your approach depending on the circumstances. But that contradiction is what makes these tools so complementary. Consistency gives employees a dependable foundation. Reading the room helps you recognize when they need a little extra support, a different conversation or a timely intervention. By reading the room, a leader makes consistency more flexible and accommodating, showing a personal commitment to the people side of safety. 

What’s more is that over the long term, reading the room becomes a consistent element of culture and a sign of active leadership. Employees come to expect more than just consistent rules, language and communication, they begin to count on the active engagement of leadership when human factors start complicating things. 

By now you might have guessed, this isn’t the only synergy between soft skills. Other skills like empathy can help with reading the room, and consistency can help your storytelling abilities, which are another great tool in managing human factors. Speaking of which, human factors management is a whole soft skill on its own, with wide-ranging applications in operations, quality control, human resources and 24/7 safety. A great place to start is the Essential Soft Skills for Hard Workplace Safety Problems, which will provide you with a crash course on complimentary soft skills and tips for practicing them in ways that are sure to increase safety engagement.