Greetings everyone! Recording this week in Belle Fourche, South Dakota just outside of Sturgis. When asked how long it takes to change a culture, the predominant answer most of our fellow experts provide, is anywhere from five to seven years. Moreover it is often said that it takes time because you have to implement resource intensive methodical change process and lots and lots of patience. From this you will be able to improve and change the safety aspects of a culture. Well, perhaps if you want to completely change every element of your culture, it could take quite a while, that is true. In this podcast we would like to offer some suggestions of how to go out and have a fast positive impact on and within your safety culture.
Now consider we are not talking about bad to perfect overnight. We are also not talking about band aid fixes or Hawthorne flashes in the pan. We are talking about getting turned around and facing the right direction and making progress in the direction in a relatively short amount of time. The business realities of today’s world dictate a results oriented approach to change. Respectfully, most business leaders do not have the luxury to recognize a return on investment after patiently waiting for multiple years. I have personally seen multiple sites experience dramatic improvements in both performance and culture within 6 months. Then sustain that improvement and success-seeking mentality, by developing cultural systems to do just that, sustain! If you think about it, early successes themselves creates the drive for continuous improvement, not programs. Programs after programs have effectively created the program of the month perception. Success after success creates what we are after, what we call a Results Driven Change Philosophy.
There is nothing wrong with the models of positive change over multiple years to create new cultural norms. We just think they need to be tweaked to fit the business realities. So today we would like to share with you what we have been using in practice in over a thousand projects to experience FAST culture and safety improvement. FAST is an acronym that stands for: Focus, Architectural Structure, Skills of Interpersonal Communication and Transformational Results Orientation. When we look at cultures we often find these four elements are lacking. This is the topic of the podcast this week. I hope you enjoy!
Have a great week!
Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety, Inc.
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Greetings recording this podcast in Atlanta, Georgia. I’d like to share with you some information about an upcoming event. We are holding a public workshop titled “Safety Culture Excellence Seminar”. These are events that we have been holding privately for organizations for many years. After the request of many, we have decided to take these events on the road and open them for the public. This will be a three day series held at locations around the world, however you do not need to participate in all three days, you can pick and choose from the three different topics if you would like.
Day 1 will be Advanced Tactics for Behavior-Based Safety: Applying Lean Principles and Ensuring Results. This session will enable participants to create a customized plan, using the latest Lean Behavior-Based Safety (Lean BBS®) Technologies for spearheading safety process improvement. Lean Behavior-Based Safety is based on the philosophy of achieving faster accident reductions with the minimum internal resources and external cost requirements, ultimately achieving a more sustainable internalized continuous improvement process. Borrowing proven techniques from Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and experiences from over 1,000 successful implementations; Lean Behavior-Based Safety has proven to be the most efficient and practical approach to an already effective theoretical process. Utilizing the best of your existing Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) process, your site or committee leaders will explore the options and learn the lean techniques that will successfully breathe new life and efficiency into the existing structure.
Day 2 will be Leadership Safety Coaching: Teaching Your Supervisors to be Safety Coaches. This seminar will give managers and supervisors the background and tools to become effective safety coaches. They will learn how to focus workers on the most effective accident-prevention strategies, discover and manage influences on workplace behaviors, measure the progress of cultural changes, and coach and counsel effectively to address safety-related behavioral issues with workers. The use of these skills will greatly improve safety, but more importantly will, make managers and supervisors more effective in all dealings with workers and each other.
Day 3 will be Assessing and Developing Your Safety Culture: This session will enable participants to create a customized plan to assess and improve site and/or organizational safety culture. Common myths about safety culture will be dispelled and a good working definition will be developed to empower understanding and customization. Assessment methodologies will be discussed and compared and each participant will see how to best determine the cultural strengths and improvement opportunities. Based on the assessment findings, plans will be formulated to find the most practical and effective strategies to build on cultural strengths and address weaknesses. Opportunities will be investigated to utilize other site improvement initiatives to aid in the cultural improvement plans. All plans will conclude with measurement strategies to ensure long-term change viability and early identification of problems.
If you are interested in participating in one of these events please visit www.ProActSafety.com and click on events for the schedule. I’d like to close with this, if you only have time to do one thing in safety today, what would it be and how will it contribute to making this a safer world for us all? Thanks for tuning in…
Shawn Galloway
ProAct Safety
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Welcome everyone recording in The Woodlands, Texas. For this week’s topic I wanted to share with you a recently recorded interview with the two presenters of an upcoming talk at National Safety Council’s 2009 Conference in Orlando Florida. Terry Mathis of our firm ProAct Safety and Rudy Hagen of Georgia-Pacific, LLC will be co presenting a case study titled Measuring Safety Culture at Georgia-Pacific: Methods, Findings, & Results
The talk will take place on the 26th of October 2009 in the 1:30 time slot.
Terry and Rudy will discuss how several Georgia-Pacific sites encountered cultural issues that did not respond to tools that had been successful at other sites. To address this, Georgia-Pacific partnered with ProAct Safety and developed entirely new tools and processes to measure for safety excellence. This new analysis helped to identify problems that were not apparent in audits or perception surveys. By attending this live case study discussion you will learn the methodology, findings, corrective steps, and the impact they had on safety results at these sites. So without further delay, let’s listen in to the recorded interview…
Have a great week!
Shawn Galloway
ProAct Safety
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Assessing And Developing Your Safety Culture: This intensive session will enable participants to create a customized plan to assess and improve site and/or organizational safety culture. Common myths about safety culture will be dispelled and a good working definition will be developed to empower understanding and customization. Assessment methodologies will be discussed and compared and each participant will see how to best determine the cultural strengths and improvement opportunities. Based on the assessment findings, plans will be formulated to find the most practical and effective strategies to build on cultural strengths and address weaknesses. Opportunities will be investigated to utilize other site improvement initiatives to aid in the cultural improvement plans. All plans will conclude with measurement strategies to ensure long-term change viability and early identification of problems.
Attendees will be able to:
· Define the true nature and characteristics of safety culture
· Know where to start and what tools should be used to assess culture
· Identify the weaknesses and strengths within your safety culture
· Examine the trust between workers, union, supervisors and management
· Examine what is or is not working in your current safety efforts
· Identify what the workers/ union will or will not support
· Identify the formal/ effective communication strategies to facilitate change
· Learn how to measure cultural change
For more information including the dates, cost and locations please visit www.ProActSafety.com
I hope to see you there!
Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety, Inc.
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The fact that perceptions affect safety cultures is undeniable, yet too often organizations pay little attention to existing perceptions and the conditioning affect they have, when new employees become a part of the safety culture, and tenured employees are trained in new jobs.
Very often perceptions become culturally norming beliefs, whether they are valid or not. When these common beliefs are combined with values, attitudes and hypercompetitive priorities, a potentially dangerous mixture of tools are used to solve problems in day to day operations. In addition the more uniform the perceptions are, the more likely they will both positively or negatively, encourage individual and organizational tendencies.
For a systematic approach to safety culture improvement or behavioral change to work effectively, it is important to understand what common perceptions exist within the organization. Moreover if the perceptions are inaccurate, the approach should consider opportunities to change the experiences that create the perceptions, for the safety cultural change or improvement to be sustainable.
A safety culture is made up of common practices, attitudes, and perceptions of risks that influence behavioral choices both at work and away from work. A safety culture is also influenced by leadership, management, supervision, workplace conditions and logistics. To better understand your safety culture, (certainly a complex metric of perceptions are important) consider also assessing the workplace realities, past accident history, and inter-connectivity of the people at all levels.
Shawn Galloway
President & COO - ProAct Safety, Inc.
Founder & Coauthor – Safety Culture Excellence
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Greetings from Portland, Oregon. Over the years millions have participated in safety perception surveys. Some have tried a customized safety perception survey, some have bought the packaged products and others are only able to get a few safety statements squeezed into an annual HR (Human Resource) Perception Survey. There is nothing wrong with perception surveys, if they are used correctly. In this podcast, Terry and I discuss the positives and negatives or hidden dangers if you will, of safety perception surveys and how to ensure they are used correctly.
If you are listening to this file through streaming media and would like to download it for later use. All files and other ideas to help you bring positive improvement in your safety culture can be found at www.safetycultureexcellence.com or you can visit our consulting firm’s website at www.proactsafety.com
Thanks and have a great week!
Shawn Galloway
ProAct Safety
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Greetings from Gien, France. For the podcast this week, I’m privileged to share with you an interview between EHS Today’s Associate editor Laura Walter and Terry Mathis (the Founder and CEO of ProAct Safety).
The title was “Assessing the Safety Culture.” In the interview, Terry shares his 25 years experience working with safety cultures, including how it can be created, defined, measured and maintained. The interview was recently released by EHS Today as part of their great podcast series. Which I encourage you to subscribe to either on itunes or visit their website at http://ehstoday.com/podcasts/
I hope you enjoy! If you would like to download this audio file, it can be found as well as our others at www.safetycultureexcellence.com
Thanks and have a great week!
Shawn Galloway
ProAct Safety
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