Safety Culture Excellence®

I thinned some trees in a thick, forested area on my lot hoping the remaining trees would grow more wide limbs and spread their canopies.  It didn’t happen.  I asked my tree expert why not and he explained that new limbs on a mature tree were only growing out of the bark and not the core of the tree trunk.  They were weak and seldom reached large size without breaking off in the first strong wind.

Many safety programs likewise are add-ons and have no real connection to the core values and strategies of the organization.  We hope they will provide extra coverage and fill the gaps, but they seldom survive for very long.  The strong limbs of our safety programs are connected to a solid strategy and designed to provide specific coverage.  They are not afterthoughts, but the result of solid planning.

It is crucial for organizational leaders to think of the tree and the limbs as one unit.  If safety is a core value of the organization, there are no safety goals; only business goals related to safety.  The strategy of the organization includes safety-related strategies that connect to the core.  Leaders might fertilize the soil and stimulate the roots, but they don’t try to artificially graft on limbs that aren’t firmly connected.

Many safety programs and processes are attempts to compensate for a lack of core strategy and seldom survive the winds of change.

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS’ in both 2010 and 2011. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Topeka, Kansas. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article written by Terry Mathis, published in January 2013 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, Zero Accidents Does Not Equal Safety Excellence. The published article can be found under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.

I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, available through WILEY (publisher), Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

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Many organizations have adopted Computer-Based Training (CBT), especially for the OSHA-required annual training.  It has some advantages but also has some very serious disadvantages.

Advantages:  CBTs provide exactly uniform information to each worker.  The learning is self-paced so each worker can complete it at their own learning and comprehension speed.  It allows workers to take training a few at a time to minimize interruption to normal work flow.  It does not require a classroom or meeting room; only a computer work station.  If a worker can demonstrate competence through a test, they don’t have to take the training again.  It allows for easy record keeping to track who has taken the training and who has not.

Disadvantages:  It tends to foster cheating.  Workers can keep their answers and skip the training all together.  In some cases workers pass the answers to newer workers who never take the training.  It can become extremely repetitive, monotonous and boring.  However, the most serious disadvantage of CBT lies in the fact that it isolates workers for training and denies the interaction common in traditional classroom training.

It completely eliminates discussion of topics and collaboration among employees.  Best practices cannot be shared during training and real questions about application to the workplace cannot be adequately answered.  Training becomes a lonely process and the opportunities to build culture around learning and application are lost.

Organizations can compensate for CBT with other culture-building activities, but training becomes an anti-culture activity.  The acquiring and renewing of key workplace skills becomes a siloed and isolated individual process.  The opportunities to build a “can-do” culture are largely lost.  Smart managers will consider these advantages and disadvantages and decide if CBT is a good decision for their organization or not.

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS’ in both 2010 and 2011. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Are All Accidents Preventable? Terry L. Mathis, CEO of ProAct Safety shares some very important thoughts on this subject as well as some strategies and language to address this vital perception within your safety culture. ProAct Safety provides more strategies in the area of safety culture and safety excellence in the public domain than any other firm, organization or association. For access to increased, advanced value in the form of videos, podcasts, public workshops and seminars, please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store

This video can also be watched on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGJ-gK6x0WM

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I recently heard a supervisor say to a manager, “Do you want me to knock out this job or do you want to play the safety game?”  Is that really the choice that leaders have to make in the workplace?  Is safety something that gets in the way of productivity?  I believe that people who think safety and productivity are the two opposite sides of a coin, don’t really understand safety. Safety isn’t simply doing a job more slowly and it is not other things you do besides the job; safety is the way you do the job.

It is not just the safe way to do the job; it is the RIGHT way to do the job.  Almost anything that increases the chance of an injury also increases the chance of a defective job.  Failure to plan, short cutting steps, rushing and all the things that make a job unsafe, also make it a poor quality job.  We don’t design processes to produce defects or accidental injuries.  When they do, our processes have failed and need to be modified.  When we think about safety correctly, it almost disappears into the real issue; how to do our work right.

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS’ in both 2010 and 2011. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

1. Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change by Timothy D. Wilson
2. It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership by Colin Powell

And of course please consider adding our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence (WILEY, 2013) to your reading list. - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence

Happy reading! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc.

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article written by Terry Mathis, published in December 2012 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, Is Safety Mandatory or Discretionary? The published article can be found under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.

I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, available through WILEY (publisher), Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

Listen Now:

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There are two strategies in safety that don’t work; one is doing nothing and the other is trying to maintain the status quo.  The sad truth is that safety is constantly either getting better or getting worse.  It would seem logical that keeping a constant level of effort toward accident reduction would result in a relatively constant result.  While this can be true in the short term, it seldom continues for multiple years.  Many organizations get a wake-up call when, after a few years of relatively low accident rates, they have a rash of accidents they didn’t expect.

Much of this thinking is the result of relying too heavily on lagging indicators to evaluate safety performance.  Periods without accidents can appear to be the result of safety efforts when in fact they are simply luck.  Low-probability risks do not cause accidents with every incidence, and it can take time to play out the results of such risks.  Lagging indicators will accurately reflect the risk level over time, but usually too late to respond effectively.

The two ways to overcome this problem involve developing leading indicators and implementing continuous improvement.  Leading indicators help to evaluate the amount of effort and change that is happening in safety activities.  Continuous improvement simply means that the organization must maintain a healthy sense of vulnerability and constantly target new safety improvements.  The journey to safety excellence is long, but can be effectively taken a step at a time.

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS’ in both 2010 and 2011. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Using incident data to improve safety is nothing new. However, when the goal is attained and your accident data starts to lose its statistical significance, what can be done? Near-miss data can help fill in gaps left by dwindling incident rates, and provide clear information with which to focus. But near-miss data is problematic to gather and often misinterpreted. Learn how to avoid common problems and take an important step toward more proactive safety metrics.

Learn to: • Achieve accurate near-miss reporting • Determine the most effective accident prevention strategies • Use your data to its fullest potential • Develop a standard term and definition for a near-miss • Review examples of the best reporting systems and forms in safety • Enhance motivators and reduce demotivators that impact reporting

For more information contact ProAct Safety at 936.273.8700 or info (at) ProActSafety.com

Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety www.ProActSafety.com www.SafetyCultureExcellence.com

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Certainly the average person desires to be both liked and respected. While a gross oversimplification of behavioral sciences, we behave in a way consistent with seeking out what we desire and avoiding what we don’t. Leaders of all kinds are often put in positions to make decisions that impact the lives of others. If our primary goal is to be liked, we act, or decide in accordance. The same is true if our goal is to obtain or preserve respect.

Earlier this month the world lost Margaret Thatcher, the previous Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. She was once quoted as saying, “If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”

I’m sure we have all worked for people that we personally liked, but didn’t respect the professional position, with the opposite also being true. With leaders seeking out both hearts and minds and hands and feet, what should the primary focus be? Ultimately, we need to look at what the role of a leader should be (e.g., thought leader, challenger of status quo thinking, advancer of performance and culture)?

Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author once wrote, “Among physicists, I'm respected I hope.” During a recent dinner conversation on this topic with very well liked and publicly respected CEO, he commented, “Being liked is more about an individual’s self-esteem.” I tend to agree.

Being respected comes from accomplishing what needs to be done and through creating the desire among others to do so without question, due to regard for the person and position. I’m very happy if those I work with and lead like me. More important, do they respect what I do and what I’m trying to influence them to do without my direction or oversight?

What are your thoughts?

Shawn M. Galloway is the coauthor of two books: STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence and The Hazardous Materials Management Desk Reference (3rd Edition). He is also the President of ProAct Safety.  As an internationally recognized safety excellence expert, he has helped hundreds of organizations within every major industry to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture.  In 2012, ISHN Magazine listed him in the POWER 101 – Leaders of the EHS World. He has authored over 250 podcasts, 100 articles and 30 videos on the subject of safety excellence. Shawn is the host of the highly acclaimed weekly podcast series, Safety Culture Excellence and a columnist for several magazines.