LeDuc: Safety Leadership Culture, the Southwest Way

Nov. 17, 2014
Gary Keller, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, promotes a culture of safety for all employees of his airline.

I recently read a letter to the editor of Spirit Magazine, the official publication of Southwest Airlines on a recent trip to participate in technical peer review of FEMA research and development grants. In that letter, the writer was describing how shocked they were to recognize Gary Keller, chairman, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Southwest Airlines sitting beside him in “regular” class seating to witness the experience of Southwest like any our customer or airline employee.

I also remember Southwest Airlines being discussed at a National Firefighter Near-Miss Reporting System symposium in San Diego some five years ago. The point made was, that as an airline, they made all their flight crew members study “near miss” encounters when they begin service to a new airport. Southwest also is well known for its relentless focus on a culture of safety. The correlation to the fire service is simple - that successful safety cultures begin with the CEO making safety their priority for their organizations, members and communities.

If the fire service leader is focused on making safety a priority then so will their organizations, their people and their communities.

Recent research has continued to identify serious threats to firefighter health, safety and wellness. Some of these include obesity and other related, modifiable factors that contribute to cardiovascular line-of-duty disabilities, deaths and injuries. Recent, well designed and executed federal level research with 35,000 firefighters across three metropolitan departments demonstrated an occupational link with specific cancer types. Despite this growing body of research demonstrating continued threats to the safety of firefighters, published reports demonstrate only approximately 30% of departments have formal wellness programs in place.

Leaders build teams and teams build success. It is the responsibility of fire service leaders to invest in the health, safety and wellness of their employees and teams and those investments yield tremendous dividends. Many studies have demonstrated a 3-to-1 return on investment for health and wellness programs. Furthermore, healthy employees who operate within a culture of safety are typically well motivated, demonstrate great commitment to their team, organizations and its goals and vision much as those who serve at Southwest Airlines are notoriously known for within the airline industry - one time performance, safely and with exceptional customer service. Are those not the same deliverables every fire service organization is striving for?

Business guru Peter Drucker once said that leaders can  be either “the architects of change or the tenets of the results”. I challenge every fire service leader to be the architect of change within their organization to lead by example making health, safety and wellness their overriding first priority.

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