Safety Culture Excellence

Greetings, this podcast recorded in San Antonio, Texas. Both of my parents were born in San Antonio and I still have a lot of family here, including a family ranch with Texas Longhorns on it. Go figure I’m from Texas and my family has a Longhorn Cattle Ranch, who would of thought. Moreover I bet you wouldn’t be surprised to find my family runs a horse farm and my sister is a Equestrian Hunter/Jumper horse trainer. What is this a Dallas Episode? Anyways sorry for the digression, back to the topic here in San Antonio.

Wikipedia defines a black hole as “a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, including light, can escape its pull. The black hole has a one-way surface, called an event horizon, into which objects can fall, but out of which nothing can come. It is called “black” because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing…” 

In a previous podcast I referred to how a black hole could apply in safety, calling this phenomenon a “Black Hole Safety System”. This is where safety information goes in and nothing comes out. For this week, Terry and I will talk about this topic in more detail. We will provide some examples of what this looks like in an organization, and steps to correct and avoid such an undesirable element of any organizational systems.

I hope you enjoy this week’s podcast!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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Greetings, recording this week in Marysville, Kansas. Just a quick note about some upcoming public events: On the 15th and 16th of September Terry Mathis will be in Seattle, Washington leading two one-day public sessions that are part of the Safety Culture Excellence Series. On the 15th he will be leading a seminar titled Advanced Tactics for Behavior-Based Safety: Lean Principles & Results Orientation. The following day will be covering Leadership Safety Coaching: Teach Your Supervisors to be Safety Coaches. 

Then on the 28th and 29th of September I will be conducting two one day workshops for the Saskatchewan Section of American Society of Quality. Each One-Day Workshop is titled: Lean Behaviour-Based Safety & Safety Culture Excellence. If you would like more information about these workshops or other upcoming events, please visit www.ProActSafety.com and click on the events category at the top.

So on to this week’s topic. “Most people view perceptions as something to be measured; not managed. But I have found that if perceptions are not managed, they will have variance that can cause lack of correct focus in safety efforts. Workers who do not accurately perceive their greatest risks often waste their limited safety efforts on ineffective strategies. Correcting perceptions can direct safety efforts for maximum effectiveness.” – Terry Mathis.

 In the June 2009 edition of EHS Today, Terry Mathis, the Founder and CEO of our firm ProAct Safety, published an article that has created quite a buzz among safety professionals and executive leaders. For this week, I’d like to share a recording of that article and challenge you to consider if the message applies to your company. If you would like to see the actual article, please visit EHS Today’s website at www.EHSToday.com or you can find it along with a lot of other free content to improve your safety focus on our website at www.proactsafety.com. So without further delay, let’s get to the article…

 Thanks and have a great week!

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 26^th 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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Greetings from The Woodlands, Texas. This week I would like to share a recording of another article by Terry Mathis, recently published in EHS Today in their April 2009 issue. The article can either be found on the EHS Today website – www.ehstoday.com or on the ProAct Safety website – www.ProActSafety.com 

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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