Participants will also be able to identify opportunities to minimize the perception of change, achieve the quickest success possible, and ensure long-term process sustainability. We have been extremely successful with our Internal Consultant Certification Workshop, which is designed for organizations that desire to internalize and sustain Behavior-Based Safety capabilities. Additionally, ProAct Safety is familiar with all of the major implementation methods and has developed a collection of best practices through our experience with over 1,000 successful Behavior-Based Safety implementations. 

Because of this unique position, we are able to instruct individuals on specific consultative methods to customize & implement Behavior-Based Safety, and attractive but ineffective approaches to avoid. Companies using this path strategy should have highly qualified personnel and sufficient internal resources. ProAct Safety will certify the selected individuals to return to their location and begin designing and implement a customized Behavior-Based Safety process. This approach is not strictly a train-the-trainer course, nor is it intended to teach individuals to simply deliver training on Behavior-Based Safety. 

Every site will have its own unique challenges and cultures. To allow the internal consultants the most opportunities for success, it is extremely important that they understand and internalize the strategies to identify the site-specific variables that have or could become, problematic barriers. What works at one site will not always work at another. Lean BBS® utilizes aspects of performance and quality systems to drastically reduce the typical internal resource requirements of a Behavior-Based Safety process. Lean Behavior-Based Safety focuses on the leveraged use of resources, resulting in better results in a shorter time, less disruption to operations, and less resistance from workers and unions. 

Multiple Programs In Place: Re-energize Your Existing BBS Process Unfortunately, it is common to see the results from many traditional Behavioral Safety processes plateau after the first two to three years of operation. At that point, the process can become routine and lose the original result-based orientation. The successes that motivated the process early-on disappear and the entire process tends to slowly lose momentum. Successful Behavior-Based Safety processes do not typically fade away, but can be much less effective than they are capable of being. This is the perfect time for BBS process improvement. Improvement strategies can accomplish several important objectives:

·         Attain the next step in accident-reduction results through better targeting

·         Increase the level of expertise in the personnel active in the process

·         Provide new techniques to the observation and data analysis strategies

·         Re-energize the process utilizing Lean BBS® techniques to improve results and increase employee participation

·         Reduce resource requirements to maintain the process

·         Assess the existing Behavior-Based Safety process for foundations to build on

·         Make more efficient use of site leaders and steering teams

·         Narrow the focus of the checklist to improve efficiency

·         Focus observations where they will produce the best results

·         Learn tactics for continuous process improvement to ensure process sustainability

For a list of the dates, cost and materials that will be provided, please visit our website at www.ProActSafety.com 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

ProAct Safety’s Annual Conference

6 - 8 April 2010

Houston, TX

http://www.proactsafety.com/upcomingevents

Based on feedback from previous conferences and over a thousand attendees, we are yet again enhancing the personal experience. 

We are also changing the venue to be closer to the Houston Airport (IAH). The event will be held in a full-service hotel with complimentary shuttle service (so no rental car needed). As always we will continue to work hard to ensure new value, while decreasing the travel expenses.

We hope you know we are here to support you in your efforts to reach and sustain safety culture excellence. There will be more information provided on this event over the next few months. In the meantime, please take advantage of our self-help resources listed below.   If you would like to sign-up to receive updates on this and other self-help safety ideas, please visit: http://www.proactsafety.com/subscribetonewsletter

See you in April 2010

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety

I have personally worked with Greg, he is a great guy a fantastic leader as well.  I was honored when he asked to interview me about my thoughts on leadership. This past Friday when we completed some work at his facility, we sat down for the interview.  For the podcast this week, I would like to share that interview with you. If you would like to see the video portion of that site please visit http://leadership-action.com/?p=334 . Greg has some great thoughts on that site and I encourage you to take a look.

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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.

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

Terry and I have decided to record a special episode live at National Safety Council! The recording will take place on Wednesday the 28^th of October from 9:30 am – 10:30 am. If you would like to find out where this will be held, please stop by booth number #737 on Monday or Tuesday to pick up the information and invite. If you have trouble remembering our booth number, just think of the 737 airplane.  

Terry will be leading a preconference session titled Teaching Supervisors to Be Safety Coaches today, the 25^th of October from 8:00 AM - 4:30 PM in room W108B

Consider that supervisors are probably the most important people in any organization for creating a safe environment. Their impact on safety is exceptional, and when they’re aligned with organizational goals and taught effective coaching skills, the results can be extremely positive. This session investigates why supervisors may not fulfill their potential as safety leaders, and what can be done to remedy the situation.

Terry and Rudy Hagen from Georgia-Pacific will be jointly presenting on a topic titled “Measuring Safety Culture at Georgia-Pacific. This session will be held on Monday, the 26^th of October from 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in room 308A

Sometimes safety training has to be presented differently at various locations. This session will examine why several Georgia-Pacific sites encountered cultural issues with training tools that had been successful at other sites. You’ll see how Georgia-Pacific partnered with ProAct Safety to develop new tools and processes that measure safety excellence. This new analysis helped uncover problems that were not apparent in audits or perception surveys. Learn the methodology, findings, corrective steps and the impact they had on safety at these sites.

I will be speaking about Safety Culture Assessments and Actionable Findings also on Monday the 26^th of October from 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM in room 311C

Until you determine where your safety program is, you can’t determine the best approach to getting where you want it to be. Safety cultural assessments uncover your safety management needs. This session will discuss different approaches to conducting safety cultural assessments, and how to ensure findings are internally actionable and results are sustainable.

Terry will be speaking on Motivation Strategies: Rewards and Incentives on Tuesday the 27^th of October from 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM, in room 307C 

Are you or your team running out of gas? Incentive programs can be tough to execute. This session will examine ways to motivate your team and get everyone involved in the process. You will have the opportunity to share your challenges and ideas you have for engaging people. Bring examples and ideas to share.

So if you are coming out to NSC I hope you will stop by booth #737 to get any further information on either our talks, participate in a podcast recording, or just to stop by and say hello!

Wow I can’t believe it, 100 episodes already. On behalf of all of us here at ProAct Safety we thank you for tuning in each week. It has been a lot of fun recording these podcasts and responding to your questions. By the way thank you for allowing us to use these questions to create podcasts. We promise to continue to bring you fresh ideas each week. If you would like to sign up for our private newsletter so you can be among the first to receive notification about public and private events then please visit www.ProActSafety.com and click on the Subscribe button.

Thanks again for allowing us to share our thoughts with you. I hope you will continue to share yours with us as well. 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 M. Galloway

ProAct Safety

This audio file can be found at www.SafetyCultureExcellence.com

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.

In next week’s podcast we will expand on this topic by discussing a follow-up model that sheds light on the four primary factors that influence risk taking. Thank you for tuning in each week and remember these topics come from the questions we receive while on assignment and from you the listeners. So, keep them coming! 

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.

In the August 2009 edition of EHS Today, Terry Mathis, the Founder and CEO of our firm ProAct Safety, published an article that I would like to share with you today. If you would like to see the actual article, please visit EHS Today’s website at www.EHSToday.com or you can find it on our website at www.ProActSafety.com along with a lot of other free content to improve your safety focus.

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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

Greetings, this podcast recorded in Indianapolis, Indiana. For this week, Terry and I would like to share with you seven principles to consider, when providing training to adults. We will discuss some of the theories and some of the myths, what to ensure and what to avoid. If you would like a copy of a slide that represents the seven principles of Adult Learning please email us. The email address can be found at the end of the podcast.

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

If you have listened to the other 93 podcasts by now you have heard us reference the difference of theory and practice multiple times. When 1998 came about Terry had already customized many different approaches for many of the firm’s first clients and what he was seeing throughout the world when looking at the academic methodologies really concerned him, as did it concern the unions and many executives as well. So terry wrote a white paper in 1998 called, “Why Behavior-Based Safety Must Change Or Perish.” I would like to present that paper to you today. While yes, it is a little dated and our philosophy has greatly been enhanced, I believe it provides some understanding of how our firm’s viewpoint came to be. I hope you enjoy!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

Why Behavior-Based Safety Must Change Or Perish.

And what the new model will look like.

By Terry L. Mathis

1998

Behavior-Based Safety (BBS), as it has come to be called, has been a very successful intervention for reducing accidents.  Many organizations have tried it with success and others would have tried it except for its high costs both in terms of external and internal resources.  Others have chosen deliberately not to use Behavior-Based Safety precisely because of these high costs.

In today’s climate of lean manufacturing and downsizing, Behavior-Based Safety is becoming a dinosaur in real danger of extinction.  Like dinosaurs, Behavior-Based Safety has changed relatively little since its inception in the mid 1980s.  It is artificially expensive to hire expert consultants and the methodology is very liberal with the use of workers who must be excused from their regular jobs to do the “process.” Behavior-Based Safety has been effective but not efficient.

If Behavior-Based Safety is going to survive, must less thrive in the current business environment, it is going to have to change in some real ways.  An examination of current methodology reveals a number of ways in which it could change to better meet the demands of the business world as it has become.

Behavior-Based Safety Must Become “Lean”

The amount of money spent on external consultants often wanes in comparison to the amount spent on internal resources necessary for Behavior-Based Safety.  Sites have calculated as much as 1,000 work/hours of training per 100 employees to get the process started and 100-200 work/hours per month to keep it going.  A typical Behavior-Based Safety process has a steering committee or team which receives days of training and workshop activities to get the process started and several hours per month for the term of the process.  In addition to this team, observers are selected from the workforce who can include as much as 100% of the workforce.  These observers may take from one half hour per week to three hours per week to complete their observations.  Many sites give observers overtime to complete observations.

Lean workforces struggle to spare this many people away from their regular duties.  Experimental sites have been able to accomplish Behavior-Based Safety with far fewer people and still produce dramatic results.  Leadership teams/committees can be downsized or replaced with facilitators.  Observations can be performed in larger blocks by fewer observers which reduces preparation and observation trip time.  Checklists can be focused on fewer behaviors or precautions, which speeds and simplifies the observations.  Feedback can be separated from observations or limited and targeted to save additional time. 

Behavior-Based Safety Must Become Union Friendly

Unions have been among the critics of behavioral safety initiatives claiming that it tends to blame workers for accidents and provide an avenue for management to abdicate its rightful role in safety leadership.  These claims are truer at some sites than others.  Some sites have done remarkably better at making Behavior-Based Safety a fact finding rather than a fault finding process.  Some site leaders have taken an active role in safety leadership and others have stepped back hoping that Behavior-Based Safety would solve their safety problems.

Experimental Behavior-based Safety processes have successfully tried several techniques to win union support: 

•  Omit all behaviors from the checklist that overlap with safety rules and procedures.  This eliminates the danger of using Behavior-Based Safety for disciplinary purposes.  Everything on the checklist is discretionary and non-punishable.
• Separate the observations from the feedback.  Have an observer “sweep” the organization for measurement and use this data to focus peer coaching only in areas where improvements are needed.  Some sites have even used salaried observers in this role to eliminate the perception that a climate of union members spying on other union members would be developed. Union members were used as coaches, but not to gather data.
• Site management only views the identified, prioritized items provided to them by the hourly team members to fix the problems and not just to fix the blame.
• Observations are used to find unsafe conditions as well as concerning behaviors.

Even non-union sites have benefited from these and other techniques.

Behavior-Based Safety Must Become Professional

One of the weaknesses of traditional Behavior-Based Safety is that it uses amateurs to perform expert duties.  This is especially true in the area of data analysis and problem solving.  Employee teams/committees have been charged with analyzing the behavioral observation data (sometimes coordinating it with ongoing accident and near-miss data) and using their findings to continuously improve safety and solve identified problems.  Most employee teams have no expertise in data analysis or training in statistics and fail to accurately identify and/or prioritize their safety problems and opportunities.  Some teams spend hours pouring over data and fail to really understand what they are looking at.  Even teams who identify problems are seldom empowered to solve them and workers hesitate to take issues to managers and ask for help. 

In new Behavior-Based Safety experimental sites where the trust levels and culture supports, the data is analyzed by someone with both the training and the expertise to identify issues and distribute data to the right person or level at the site that can potentially solve the problem.  Most Behavior-Based Safety processes identify a lot more than concerning practices or behaviors.  They identify systems issues, unsafe conditions, training deficits, organizational and cultural issues, problems with management and supervision, and even safety rules and procedures that don’t work.  Much of these issues are never identified or addressed by employee teams and the opportunity costs of such omissions are significant.

The traditional thinking is that the data must been seen only by workers to keep it anonymous and separated from discipline.  Many techniques have been developed to solve this problem and still allow for more expert analysis and use of the observational data.   The same issues that apply to data analysis and problem solving often apply to observation and feedback and innovative sites are finding ways to improve observation and feedback expertise, while reducing resource requirements.

 Behavior-Based Safety Must Include True Safety Leadership

Behavior-Based Safety has focused on changing what it has called the safety “culture“.  The traditional Behavior-Based Safety vision of this ideal culture is at the heart of the problem.  The ideal Behavior-Based Safety culture is self-directed with almost no management intervention and is replete with workers who have time to effectively communicate with each other about safety issues.  Behavior-Based Safety has a leadership team which meets independently and a team or teams of observers who regularly take time away from their jobs.  Managers are asked to support and not interfere with the leadership team or steering committee while supervisors are charged with “empowering” the observers.

In reality, many of the Behavior-Based Safety processes have stopped far short of creating a new culture and have instead produced a new cult.  The workers involved in Behavior-Based Safety create a new clique in the organization that enjoys immunity from normal management and supervisory scrutiny.  Managers find they have diminished ability to influence the safety priorities and activities of the workers.  The gap between leaders and workers widens.

Any safety culture should involve all levels in the organization and use the levels in the way they can best serve.  Leaders should establish goals and direction and workers should use their abilities to find better and safer ways to accomplish organizational goals.  All safety efforts should be integrated and great care should be used not to create separate activities that separate and alienate levels of the organization from each other.  Even some of the Behavior-Based Safety experts who purported the traditional approach are recanting and acknowledging the importance of leadership in successful Behavior-Based Safety processes.

Conclusions

Sites that are looking at implementing Behavior-Based Safety should consider alternatives and not just look at the traditional approaches.  Some of the innovations could make Behavior-Based Safety a viable process for sites where traditional Behavior-Based Safety simply would not work, or fit.

Sites that already have a Behavior-Based Safety process are encouraged to consider putting their processes on a diet.  Even if it currently works, it may be too large and ineffective.  Look at innovative ways to downsize and realign resources.  Use site expertise in data analysis.  Look for innovative ways to streamline observations and make your process more union friendly and supported.  Above all, keep leadership in an active role in the process and make the process integrate into your existing organization and safety efforts. Your Behavior-Based Safety process is not extinct yet!

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

For those of you celebrating, have a great and safe Labor Day Weekend!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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

Is the improvement due to our target observations or is this something that will always be a moving target? Or does it even matter as long as we are communicating?” – Kelly

Thanks Kelly, before we get into the recording, just a quick announcement I’ll be at the Incident Prevention Conference in Louisville, Kentucky the week of 04 October 2009 and Terry and I both will be at the National Safety Council’s Conference in Orlando the week of 25 October 2009. If you happen to be at either or both, please stop by our booth or one of our talks and say hello. So without further delay, let’s jump right into the discussion.

I hope you enjoy this week’s recording!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

There are many processes called Behavior-Based Safety, or something similar, and Unions oppose most of them. When you examine union resistance to Behavior-Based Safety, you find seven primary objections. How did this opposition start, why is it not resolved, and what can you do about it if you want to use Behavior-Based Safety at a union site? This webinar explores the history, the seven key issues, and a detailed plan for Behavior-Based Safety success that has worked at over 600 union sites. So Terry and I sat down to discuss this webinar and what will be covered. I hope you enjoy!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

In the May 2009 edition of Industrial Engineer, another one of Terry’s articles was published. We received some great feedback from the article, including a request to record it here for the subscribers of Safety Culture Excellence. So the podcast this week is a reading of the recent article “Hard Measurements for Soft Science: Behavior-Based Safety Has Evolved” by Terry Mathis. If you would like to see the actual article please visit either the Industrial Engineer Magazine website at www.iienet2.org or our website at www.ProActSafety.com and click on the Insights tab.

If you are interested in a behavioral approach to operational improvement this article will definitely provide a better understanding. So here we go…

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

Here is what I received on my Facebook page…

“I’m familiar with safety consultants.  Some of my best friends are Safety Directors or Regional Safety Managers.  I guess since I had a good buddy fall to his death on a project and witnessed three fatalities on another project I have developed some passion for doing the work right which also means safely.  I’m always a little entertained by safety ignorance especially at the program level where you report the stupid things that produce metrics, but lets you fly under the wire so the managers don’t get all riled up.  I’ve witnessed a safety professional ask a crane operator to wear his safety glasses while operating with a 80–foot long shaft cage being lowered into place not 4-feet from an operating emergency room.  The whole time I’m striving for operational excellence I frequently witness some safety knuckle head locking horns with an hourly meathead over PPE or something that’s pretty insignificant.  Please explain that culture if you can.  I’m all ears.” - Todd

Great comment Todd and thank you! This is a common headache and I agree unfortunately many workers feel that safety is out of touch with the reality of the risks of the job. Some could argue it is because some safety professionals aren’t always familiar with the industry or the way that work is performed. Others unfortunately view safety professionals as the safety police rather than a resource to the job site superintendents or foremen to ensure the work can occur as safe as possible.

I often find there is good intention; the biggest issue I find is there is just not enough attention placed on really talking with the people who perform the work and truly understanding the inherent risks.  Moreover many times the accident investigation following an event becomes a form filling process rather than truly understanding all the contributing factors and influencers.  So with the best of intentions the engineering hierarchy of controls is used and thus Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) becomes a perceived easy fix. Realistically there are still some managers will only support easy to fix issues, or the easiest mitigation opportunity. Sometimes the easiest is not the most risk reducing.

Now consider that all risks cannot be removed in an organization. It is impossible to engineer all danger out so too often PPE becomes a focal point; moreover it is easiest to spot. Plus in some people’s minds it is an easy way to demonstrate that safety is important because it is being enforced. Rather than coaching for safety performance it is easier to manage for compliance. If we are truthful with ourselves we are all susceptible to that.   We are hardwired in the brain to look for exception and manage that exception.  Too often I’ve found an example of that is when someone asks why the requirement is necessary, the response is “because it is a rule”. Rather than explaining the rationale and allowing the workers to discovery learn how this minimizes exposure to risk if there is validity to the rule or discretional request. I’ve also seen examples where the individual enforcing the mandatory behavior, themselves doesn’t understand. When this happens safety becomes a joke.  Management and supervision becomes aligned with the workers and the jokes on the safety person.

I work very hard to ensure safety isn’t driven by extrinsic motivators; it has to be intrinsic at all levels to reach excellence. When it is extrinsic, (pushed by someone to do something for safety that doesn’t make sense) safety becomes “because I have to” rather than “because I want to.” Additionally too often PPE policies are blanket responses to a single event or one person’s undesirable behavior. This often occurs because the ability or comfort level to coach for performance and give helpful feedback is nonexistent. After working at countless locations throughout the world, I’ve found it isn’t only some safety professionals who are guilty of this. It is often many other leaders that fall into this trap.

Regarding metrics, unfortunately we measure often because we have to rather than to gather insight. Thus we fall prey to measurement dysfunction. I agree that PPE is far, far too often the predominant focus of safety improvement. Rather than understanding the job, the risks and the experience of the people doing the work. WE need to involve them to help us collectively understand how to collaboratively improve safety at the job site and everywhere the people are. In other words, the tools in safety should not be solely requirement-based or reside in a gang box (construction site toolbox) at the jobsite. We have to be passionate about improving; otherwise the strong safety foundation we create will crumble under the pressure of other hypercompetitive operational priorities. I believe individual passion at all levels is the only thing that will truly sustain the foundation we work hard to create.  Passion for safety cannot be forced upon an individual.

To get to the level of excellence, those of us trying to help improve safety can’t be only focusing on the easy to see opportunities like PPE; we have to go deeper in the organizational culture to understand the influencers and hidden risks that we miss, even with our own common sense and experience. We have to go to the people who know the jobs and risks best, the people doing the work.  Even if we are passionate about improving safety and have had successes in the past, we can’t be naïve and only leverage only our viewpoint of risk. Sadly in the way we measure, assess and “manage” safety, we often can’t see the hidden things.

It is analogous to telling someone there is fish in the lake you used to fish in as a kid. Standing on the pier a disbelieving individual looks out across the surface and replies, “no there isn’t”. They then dip an empty bucket below the surface, retrieve it and stare at the bucket now full of lake water and reply, “see!” 

Shawn M. Galloway

President and Chief Operating Officer

ProAct Safety, Inc.

1. What are you focusing on?
2. Do people know what the focus is?
3. How does that impact your accident rates?

Key thought here, if you have a focus in safety like items on a checklist, if people haven’t internalized the items or the focus, you will always be relying on observations and reminders. That shouldn’t be the goal in a Behavior-Based Safety process or any other awareness or focus initiative. I believe the goal should be to give people a few key things that they can do to minimize their exposure to risk and help them internalize them and remove the obstacles or barriers that make it difficult or impossible to take those precautions. So for this week’s podcast Terry and will talk about what we call Knowledge of Precautions in Behavior-Based Safety.

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway ProAct Safety

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

·         Intrinsic Motivation At Work: What Really Drives Employee Engagement by Kenneth W Thomas,

·         Your Child’s Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them by Jennifer Fox,

·         Safety 24/7: Building an Incident-Free Culture by Robert L. Lorber, Ph.D. Gregory M. Anderson,

·         Exceptional Selling: How The Best Connect and Win In High Stakes Sales by Jeff Thull

·         The Art of Safety: Breakthrough Techniques For Optimal Safety Performance by Gary Phillips

·         12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and Ph.D. James K. Harter

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway ProAct Safety

This week Terry and I will respond to this question but let me first say that I believe that this message usually is well intended. There are some videos available on the internet that leverages this slogan. Typically the message is positioned to get people to see that all accidents have a prevention opportunity somewhere along the chain of events. The thought is that if you can focus everyone on seeing these prevention points we can often stop the chain of events from resulting in an unplanned outcome. It is often easy to utilize a saying to spread a message as it gives people something to associate their thoughts with. The danger is when posters are hung and slogans are haphazardly used without thoroughly and effectively communicating the message. On another note, please do not forget to visit www.proactsafety.com and click on events to find where we will be speaking at or the dates for one of our public workshops. 

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

Thank you for the comment and question. The more information you provide us the better we can try to answer the questions, so thank you for that. While there are a lot of other questions we typically ask before offering advice, this week we will try to provide some ideas to help with this common challenge. 

Listen in and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

Through this blog and our weekly podcast, I have had the pleasure to “almost meet” passionate people who are interested in safety, from all over the world. It is almost weekly that I am asked if I have any leads on opening for safety professionals. While I am not always able to assist in a search like that, I wanted to somehow be able to try to help my fellow, global colleagues. The blog has thousands of readers and subscribers, so I’m hopeful that this may somehow help.

Please understand that I’m limiting this to facilitate individuals finding their next position, this is not to promote consulting firms, services or products. Respectfully, I do this to ensure that it will be easy for people to view, without being lost in a mass of commercials.

Please provide your information if you would like to promote yourself to prospective companies, who may be searching for their next safety leader. I encourage you to be brief in your description, rather than posting your entire resume/curriculum vitae. If you have a link to your online resume, consider posting, as that would be beneficial!

Do not comment on this post to present your information, click here for the page on this site: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com/safety-resumes/

I truly wish you well!

Shawn M. Galloway

President & Chief Operating Officer – ProAct Safety, Inc.

Founder, Host & Coauthor – Safety Culture Excellence

1. Demonstrate dynamic leadership and support for safety at the management & supervisory level
2. Take a proactive vs. reactive safety role
3. Focus workers on effective accident-prevention strategies (precautions)
4. Provide employees positive reinforcement for using these strategies
5. Use coaching sessions to encourage precautions and address any risky behavior

I hope you enjoy the discussion!

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

“I’m familiar with safety consultants.  Some of my best friends are Safety Directors or Regional Safety Managers.  I guess since I had a good buddy fall to his death on a project and witnessed three fatalities on another project I have developed some passion for doing the work right which also means safely.  I’m always a little entertained by safety ignorance especially at the program level where you report the stupid things that produce metrics, but lets you fly under the wire so the managers don’t get all riled up.  I’ve witnessed a safety professional ask a crane operator to wear his safety glasses while operating with a 80–foot long shaft cage being lowered into place not 4-feet from an operating emergency room.  The whole time I’m striving for operational excellence I frequently witness some safety knuckle head locking horns with an hourly meathead over PPE or something that’s pretty insignificant.  Please explain that culture if you can.  I’m all ears.” - Todd

Great comment Todd and thank you! This is a common headache and I agree unfortunately many workers feel that safety is out of touch with the reality of the risks of the job. Some could argue it is because some safety professionals aren’t always familiar with the industry or the way that work is performed. Others unfortunately view safety professionals as the safety police rather than a resource to the job site superintendents or foremen to ensure the work can occur as safe as possible.

 I often find there is good intention; the biggest issue I find is there is just not enough attention placed on really talking with the people who perform the work and truly understanding the inherent risks.  Moreover many times the accident investigation following an event becomes a form filling process rather than truly understanding all the contributing factors and influencers.  So with the best of intentions the engineering hierarchy of controls is used and thus Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) becomes a perceived easy fix. Realistically there are still some managers will only support easy to fix issues, or the easiest mitigation opportunity. Sometimes the easiest is not the most risk reducing.

Now consider that all risks cannot be removed in an organization. It is impossible to engineer all danger out so too often PPE becomes a focal point; moreover it is easiest to spot. Plus in some people’s minds it is an easy way to demonstrate that safety is important because it is being enforced. Rather than coaching for safety performance it is easier to manage for compliance. If we are truthful with ourselves we are all susceptible to that.   We are hardwired in the brain to look for exception and manage that exception.  Too often I’ve found an example of that is when someone asks why the requirement is necessary, the response is “because it is a rule”. Rather than explaining the rationale and allowing the workers to discovery learn how this minimizes exposure to risk if there is validity to the rule or discretional request. I’ve also seen examples where the individual enforcing the mandatory behavior, themselves doesn’t understand. When this happens safety becomes a joke.  Management and supervision becomes aligned with the workers and the jokes on the safety person.

I work very hard to ensure safety isn’t driven by extrinsic motivators; it has to be intrinsic at all levels to reach excellence. When it is extrinsic, (pushed by someone to do something for safety that doesn’t make sense) safety becomes “because I have to” rather than “because I want to.” Additionally too often PPE policies are blanket responses to a single event or one person’s undesirable behavior. This often occurs because the ability or comfort level to coach for performance and give helpful feedback is nonexistent. After working at countless locations throughout the world, I’ve found it isn’t only some safety professionals who are guilty of this. It is often many other leaders that fall into this trap.

Regarding metrics, unfortunately we measure often because we have to rather than to gather insight. Thus we fall prey to measurement dysfunction. I agree that PPE is far, far too often the predominant focus of safety improvement rather than understanding the job, the risks and the experience of the people doing the work. WE need to involve them to help us understand collectively how to collaboratively improve safety at the job site and everywhere the people are. In other words, the tools in safety should not be solely requirement-based or reside in a gang box (construction site toolbox)at the jobsite. We have to be passionate about improving; otherwise the strong safety foundation we create will crumble under the pressure of other hypercompetitive operational priorities. I believe Individual passion at all levels is the only thing that will truly sustain the foundation we work hard to create.  Passion for safety cannot be forced upon an individual.

To get to the level of excellence, those of us trying to help improve safety can’t be only focusing on the easy to see opportunities like PPE; we have to go deeper in the organizational culture to understand the influencers and hidden risks that we miss, even with our own common sense and experience. We have to go to the people who know the jobs and risks best, the people doing the work.  Even if we are passionate about improving safety and have had success in the past, we can’t be naïve and only leverage only our viewpoint of risk. Sadly in the way we measure, assess and “manage” safety we often can’t see the hidden things.

It is analogous to telling someone there is fish in the lake you used to fish in as a kid. Standing on the pier a disbelieving individual looks out across the surface and replies, “no there isn’t. They then dip an empty bucket below the surface, retrieve it and stare at the bucket now full of lake water and reply, “see.” 

Shawn M. Galloway

President and Chief Operating Officer

ProAct Safety, Inc.

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

ProAct Safety is the only firm experienced with all of the major Behavior-Based Safety methodologies. Unfortunately, it is common to see many traditional Behavior Based Safety processes plateau in their results after the first two to three years of operation.  At this point the process can become routine and the process leaders may go into a holding pattern that loses the original result-based orientation.  The newness and successes that motivated the process early on disappear into the past and the whole process tends to simply go through the motions and slowly lose momentum.  Behavior-Based Safety processes do not typically fade away if they have ever been successful, but they become much less than they are capable of being. This is the perfect time for Behavior-Based Safety process improvement.

Utilizing the best of your existing Behavior-Based Safety 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.  For organizations that have mature and/or established behavioral observation processes, improvement strategies can accomplish several important objectives:

• Attain the next step-change in accident reduction results through better targeting
• Increase employee participation through a narrowed focus
• Increase the level of expertise in the personnel active in the process
• Provide new techniques to the observation and data analysis strategies
• Re-energize the process through improved results and more efficient functions
• Reduce worker requirements to maintain the process
• Assess the existing Behavior-Based Safety process for foundations to build on
• Make more efficient use of site leaders and steering teams
• Narrow the focus of the checklist to improve efficiency
• Learn the benefits of making observations shorter but more effective
• Target observations where they will produce the best results
• Simplify observation data to make it easier to analyze
• Increase worker involvement
• Produce faster, more targeted results
• Truly accomplish the reality of continuous improvement in safety
• Learn tools and methods created to address the site-specific variables, thus ensuring internalization and sustainable success 

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.

Greetings from The Woodlands, Texas. During a recent webinar we received a lot of great questions. By the way the previous webinars we have held can currently be viewed on demand at no cost. They can either be found on the Safety Culture Excellence website or at www.proactsafety.com. We followed up with the individual questions after the events and many asked that we turned them into podcasts as they thought others could benefit from the response. So thank you for that! For this week we will answer the following question: “What do you do if your company is sporadic with its commitment to the safety program and what suggestions do you have for a safety culture where mgmt is not consistent with enforcing its policies?” We will try to offer some guidance on this and also how to understand what might be influencing this for as we all know there are a lot of hypercompetitive priorities in business today, I hope our thoughts help!

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

Attendees will be able to:

·         Better understand and appreciate worker actions through behavioral analysis

·         Identify the factors that influence workplace decisions and learn how to change them

·         Differentiate between policing and coaching opportunities in safety

·         Clearly distinguish work behaviors with low probability risks

·         Focus employees on behavioral precautions that are highly effective and within their power to control

·         Choose the best form of feedback to shape behaviors

·         Motivate employees to encourage superior performance through positive feedback

·         Coach employees effectively to change unsafe behaviors

·         Align leadership coaching with progressive discipline when needed

·         Synergize leadership coaching with employee-driven processes without conflict or redundancy

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.

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.

Greetings this week from Marysville, Kansas! Terry Mathis (the CEO and Founder of our firm ProAct Safety, Inc) recently wrote an article titled ”How Enhancing Safety Improves the Bottom Line” in the March 2009 edition of Textile Rental Magazine. I thought it would be helpful to provide an audio recording of this article in case there are some of you out there that aren‘t in the Textile Industry. A text version can be found at www.ProActSafety.com.

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway ProAct Safety

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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

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!

ProAct Safety

For 25 years, Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) has proven to be an effective tool for the reduction of workplace accidents. With some simple yet meaningful modification, BBS can become an extremely effective tool to create, coach and achieve sustainable safety culture excellence. The great news: This can happen in a short amount of time!

Terry Mathis, author and safety culture practitioner of a thousand safety culture change and BBS initiatives, will provide examples of how to:

1. Develop self-actionable strategies to better understand your safety culture.
2. Implement a new Results-Based (Lean) BBS process, or modify an existing one that directly begins to positively shape and transform your safety culture.
3. Utilize elements of a behavioral-coaching approach to help shape safety culture, without the requirement of a full BBS process.
4. Truly integrate this tool into the culture and thus ensure sustainability of a positive transformation. 

About the Presenter: Terry L. Mathis is the CEO and Founder of ProAct Safety. Prior to starting the firm in 1993, he held the position of Director of Training for Coca-Cola, where he developed several new innovative approaches to safety.

  He is a veteran of over 1,000 safety improvement projects in 23 countries and 21 languages, has spoken at ASSE, NSC, numerous company and industry conferences, and is a regular presenter at Seminar Fest. He is a professional member of ASSE.

Click Here to Register: http://ohsonline.com/Webcasts/2009/03/Proact.aspx

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

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

Based on several conversations with our clients and previous conference attendees, we have modified our typical annual conference.  Therefore, instead of our usual large gathering, we will hold several small, yet more advanced one-day seminars throughout the year.  The first of these events will be the “Advanced Lean Behavior-Based Safety Facilitator” seminar, scheduled for the 30^th of April 2009. 

The other seminar topics for this year are the following:

• Leadership Safety Coaching - Teaching Leaders How to be Safety Coaches
• Assessing & Developing Your Safety Culture

The Advanced Lean Behavior-Based Safety Facilitator seminar will be held on Thursday the 30^th of April 2009 at the Sheraton North Houston Hotel which is located at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental airport. We are limiting the audience size to 50 for this event so we can keep in focused and ensure we can move through the advanced topics at a fast pace. The investment per attendee is $795.

The Seminar will have the following Agenda:

• Assessing Readiness for Improvement
• Existing processes - Critical Questions and Easy to Spot Waste
• How to Ensure Success and Continuous Trust with Labor Unions
• Ensuring Leadership Support
• Practical Application in Logistically Challenging Environments
• How to Avoid Start-Up Failure and Achieve Sustainable Success
• Observer Burn-Out and Motivation
• The Importance of Communication in a Behavior-Based Safety Process
• How to Facilitate Success When Leading Steering Committees
• Continuous Improvement & Maintaining a Results Orientation
• Using Behavior-Based Safety to Improve the Safety Culture

I will be facilitating this event along with Terry Mathis, the CEO and Founder of ProAct Safety and the world’s most experienced practitioner of Behavior-Based Safety. If you are unfamiliar with Lean Behavior-Based Safety, Lean BBS^® 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 1000 successful global implementations; Lean Behavior-Based Safety has proven to be the most efficient and practical approach to an already effective theoretical process.

We are proud of the fact that ProAct Safety  is the only firm who has been called in behind all of the major Behavior-Based Safety methodologies. Unfortunately we have found when auditing existing processes, (if they were initially successful) it is common to see many traditional Behavior-Based Safety processes plateau in their results after the first few years of operation.  At this point the process can become routine and the process leaders may go into a holding pattern that loses the original result-based orientation.  The newness and successes that motivated the process early on disappear into the past and the whole process tends to simply go through the motions and slowly lose momentum.  Behavior-Based Safety processes do not typically fade away if they have ever been successful, but they become much less than they are capable of being. This is the perfect time for Behavior-Based Safety process improvement.This intensive session will enable the participants to create a customized plan, using the latest Lean Behavior-Based Safety (Lean BBS^®) Technologies for spearheading process improvement. Utilizing the best of your existing Behavior-Based Safety process, your site Behavior-Based Safety leaders will explore the options and learn the lean techniques that will successfully breathe new life and efficiency into the existing structure. 

• Attain the next step-change in accident reduction results through better targeting
• Increase employee participation through a narrowed focus
• Increase the level of expertise in the personnel active in the process
• Provide new techniques to the observation and data analysis strategies
• Re-energize the process through improved results and more efficient functions
• Reduce worker requirements to maintain the process
• Assess the existing Behavior-Based Safety process for positive foundations to build on
• Make more efficient use of site leaders and steering teams
• Narrow the focus of the checklist to improve efficiency
• Learn the benefits of making observations shorter but more effective
• Target observations where they will produce the best results
• Simplify observation data to make it easier to analyze
• Produce faster, more targeted results
• Truly accomplish the reality of continuous improvement in safety
• Learn tools and methods to address the site-specific variables, thus ensuring internalization and success 

This will be a fast paced event which again is why we are limiting this to 50 people. If you would like to register for the event please visit www.proactsafety.com for more information. I look forward to seeing you there!

Shawn Galloway

President & Chief Operating Officer – ProAct Safety, Inc

Founder, Host & Coauthor – Safety Culture Excellence

“What are your thoughts on fixing targets on near miss reporting / investigation, as a part of measuring safety performance?

Other question, How deep should the near miss incident investigation go?. Should it be as much as a first aid incident investigation. Thanks”

Thank you for this and the positive feedback! Here are my quick thoughts. I encourage others to “weigh in” as they see fit. To respond to your questions, I would like to first provide some background information.

I’m a believer that history tends to repeat itself and if you aren’t learning from the past, you are as often said “doomed to repeat it”. – Moreover I believe that safety can seem like a numbers game when you look at the severity ratio aspect of accidents/incidents. I am of the school of thought (like Dean Gano) that most accidents have both behavioral/precautionary and conditional prevention opportunities. There are low probability risks that occur daily in the normal work that people do. If a task has a 1 in 1000 chance of resulting in an incident/accident and if several people perform the task 3 times a day for a few years, eventually someone’s luck will run out.

For all of the risks that take place, a percentage of them become near-misses/close-calls/near-hits a smaller percentage turn into first aids and even fewer turn into recordable/reportable types. If you haven’t, I encourage you to listen to the previously recorded podcast titled: The Cliff Analogy.

Consider that some people who are working at the edge will come close to falling and catch themselves (near-miss) some fall off but just receive a bump or minor scratch at the bottom (first aid) and fewer will fall and receive a more serious injury (recordable). Now not everyone who walks out to the edge of a cliff will fall off. However everyone who falls off walked out to the edge. This is what is referred to as a risk pool. Near-miss reporting offers an opportunity to identify the risk pools prior to someone getting seriously hurt. (“Wow someone was working at the edge and almost fell off? Well what can we do to ensure this doesn’t happen again or prevent someone from actually falling off?)

It is important to report this type of information because one can not predict severity in accidents. I have been at sites where a person had fallen off two steps and it resulted in a fatality. I have been at another site where someone fell two stories and only broke a bone. I knew a man that slipped on a magazine that was on his carpet at home and he hit his head. Unfortunately he lost his life. I’m sure there are several of you (admittedly like myself) that have also slipped on something at home and got away injury free. As I’m writing this, one of our associates came in my office to tell me about an accident she saw on the way to the office. She said “had I been 150 feet further up the road I would have been hit by the driver” Sometimes the difference between a near-miss and a serious incident is 150 feet; many times it is just inches.

I do believe that there will always be an element of risk in many things people will do. While I believe zero accidents is a possibility (as I’ve seen it first hand in some very dangerous environments), zero risk isn’t possible. It is impossible to completely engineer out all of the risks so we must continue to work to identify those hidden risks and develop other ways to minimize the exposure. This is why we have to change the definition of “Safe” from no accidents to meaning “not at risk”. The better we can identify those areas without someone getting hurt to tell us, the better off we are. This also creates the necessity to help people understand the precautions they can take when exposed to the different risks in their environment.

As a site gets better and better in safety before the accidents go completely away and you sustain zero accidents the incident data does a nasty thing to you, it loses it statistical significance. It no longer provides trends to respond to, only random data points. This of course is why many sites hit a plateau and experience slight ups and downs over a few years. Moreover this is what has lead to the global popularity of Behavior-Based Safety (BBS). Rather than just relying on “reporting” to understand safety challenges, this process (if done correctly) looks at common practice to better see the hidden dangers and possibility of taking very specific precautions to minimize the exposure to the inevitable risks.

Prior to creating performance targets for reporting near-misses and deeply trying to investigate the almost events; I would first encourage an organization to, as Covey would say, ”Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” It is important to understand what perceptions exist in the organization. Perception surveys can provide you part of this answer. So can simply talking with the population during your normal conversations.

• First understand how people define a Near-miss. I have asked this same question to thousands of employees and have received many different incorrect responses. If you expect a person to report something that falls into a certain category, ensure the expectations are clear. Don’t let incorrect perceptions determine your success.
• Second, I encourage you to understand how population views the context of measurement. Far too often measurement is looked at as a fault finding/blame placing tool, rather than to help understand and improve. A great book for this is called “Transforming Performance Measurement”. A link can be found at:
• http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com/recommended-reading/
• Third I encourage you to look at how people view the current effectiveness of first aid and recordable reporting. If people report something and nothing happens or there is no follow up or communication back… If the system is viewed as a black hole safety system, it will be difficult to get people to report additional things. Unfortunately ineffective employee suggestion systems will have an impact on incident reporting as well. Resulting in both being lumped into the commonly heard perception “why keep telling them about the issues, when nothing is happening to fix them.”  
• Fourth, look at what might demotivate people first and work to remove those demotivators before adding the motivators. The belief is that the motivation is already there, just remove the barriers! Rather than finding ways to motivate reporting, first understand what the barriers to reporting are. As I learned from the teachings of Ferdinand Fournies, people are intrinsically motivated to do the right thing, however barriers exist that end up demotivating the performance. Try to identify what might demovitate someone to report and neutralize those aspects within the culture. Consider that there are three elements of motivation: Reducing de-motivators, adding motivators and rewarding. In looking for the general demotivators, look for: Constant change, withholding information, hypocrisy, dishonesty, unfairness, unproductive activities, internal competition, lack of follow-up, over-control, ignoring input. Conversely for motivators continue providing input, a sense of ownership in safety (programs, processes), involvement, teamwork, a scorekeeping mentality (achieving success not avoiding failure – TRIR), improvement, winning, variety and of course recognition. Lastly, if you want the near-miss reporting to continue, create a positive consequence for the activity.
• Fifth, work to continuously communicate the reason for reporting Near-misses and build in real life examples from both at work and home. Consider how powerful it can be when people understand that they can report an almost event and there would be new insight and a positive outcome. If there are trust issues, consider an anonymous system to build the trust and most importantly demonstrate how the tool will be used. Recognize you might be sacrificing the ability to perform a deep analysis when it is anonymous; sometimes this is worth it in the beginning to build trust in the tool. As a side effect consider that this will help strength the safety culture. Consider communicating examples of how a hidden issue was found and solved, without someone having to get hurt, or in trouble.

I believe having a goal for near-miss reporting can be a great idea, because an organization should measure more than just “did we have fewer accidents this year than last?” We have helped many organizations develop their own custom Balanced Scorecards for Safety (Leading & Lagging, Impacting & Interactive Safety Metrics) and near-miss reporting is a common indicator.

The danger lies in focusing too much on the requested number and not enough emphasis on the rationale and necessity; thus creating a fiction writing contest. Deming once said “the numbers are critical but relatively unimportant”. In other words, the numbers are critical but not the end goal.

Several organizations perform a full root cause analysis on a near-miss to identify the contributing factors and precautionary control points. I always encourage investigators to look beyond employee behavior/actions, if this is found as a “root cause” or contributing factor. Many people will stop there because they can not answer the next “Why Question”. If one person is or feels encouraged to take a risk, usually others are as well. It is important to always look at the cultural aspects during an investigation/analysis. I believe that when the culture supports the measurement and understands why we need to investigate near-misses, an in-depth analysis can be a very positive thing. Consider that if people are fearful of the method and outcomes of first aid or recordable investigations, near-misses reporting will be negatively impacted. If you do not address the perceptions and cultural aspects of performance measurement, you will have little data to analyze; making this post unfortunately, a moot point.

Thank you again for the topic idea, keep them coming!

Shawn Galloway

President & Chief Operating Officer

ProAct Safety

Founder & Coauthor

Safety Culture Excellence

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

Thank you for this and the positive feedback! Here are my quick thoughts. I encourage others to “weigh in” as they see fit. To respond to your questions, I would like to first provide some background information.

I’m a believer that history tends to repeat itself and if you aren’t learning from the past, you are as often said “doomed to repeat it”. – Moreover I believe that safety can seem like a numbers game when you look at the severity ratio aspect of accidents/incidents. I am of the school of thought (like Dean Gano) that most accidents have both behavioral/precautionary and conditional prevention opportunities. There are low probability risks that occur daily in the normal work that people do. If a task has a 1 in 1000 chance of resulting in an incident/accident and if several people perform the task 3 times a day for a few years, eventually someone’s luck will run out.

For all of the risks that take place, a percentage of them become near-misses/close-calls/near-hits a smaller percentage turn into first aids and even fewer turn into recordable/reportable types. If you haven’t, I encourage you to listen to the Cliff analogy podcast

(http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com/2008/04/06/the-cliff-analogy/):

Consider that some people who are working at the edge will come close to falling and catch themselves (near-miss) some fall off but just receive a bump or minor scratch at the bottom (first aid) and fewer will fall and receive a more serious injury (recordable). Now not everyone who walks out to the edge of a cliff will fall off. However everyone who falls off walked out to the edge. This is what is referred to as a risk pool. Near-miss reporting offers an opportunity to identify the risk pools prior to someone getting seriously hurt. (“Wow someone was working at the edge and almost fell off? Well what can we do to ensure this doesn’t happen again or prevent someone from actually falling off?)

It is important to report this type of information because one can not predict severity in accidents. I have been at sites where a person had fallen off two steps and it resulted in a fatality. I have been at another site where someone fell two stories and only broke a bone. I knew a man that slipped on a magazine that was on his carpet at home and he hit his head. Unfortunately he lost his life. I’m sure there are several of you (admittedly like myself) that have also slipped on something at home and got away injury free. As I’m writing this, one of our associates came in my office to tell me about an accident she saw on the way to the office. She said “had I been 150 feet further up the road I would have been hit by the driver” Sometimes the difference between a near-miss and a serious incident is 150 feet; many times it is just inches.

I do believe that there will always be an element of risk in many things people will do. While I believe zero accidents is a possibility (as I’ve seen it first hand in some very dangerous environments), zero risk isn’t possible. It is impossible to completely engineer out all of the risks so we must continue to work to identify those hidden risks and develop other ways to minimize the exposure. This is why we have to change the definition of “Safe” from no accidents to meaning “not at risk”. The better we can identify those areas without someone getting hurt to tell us, the better off we are. This also creates the necessity to help people understand the precautions they can take when exposed to the different risks in their environment.

As a site gets better and better in safety before the accidents go completely away and you sustain zero accidents the incident data does a nasty thing to you, it loses it statistical significance. It no longer provides trends to respond to, only random data points. This of course is why many sites hit a plateau and experience slight ups and downs over a few years. Moreover this is what has lead to the global popularity of Behavior-Based Safety (BBS). Rather than just relying on “reporting” to understand safety challenges, this process (if done correctly) looks at common practice to better see the hidden dangers and possibility of taking very specific precautions to minimize the exposure to the inevitable risks.

Prior to creating performance targets for reporting near-misses and deeply trying to investigate the almost events; I would first encourage an organization to, as Covey would say, ”Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” It is important to understand what perceptions exist in the organization. Perception surveys (http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com/category/safety-perception-surveys/) can provide you part of this answer. So can simply talking with the population during your normal conversations.

• First understand how people define a Near-miss. I have asked this same question to thousands of employees and have received many different incorrect responses. If you expect a person to report something that falls into a certain category, ensure the expectations are clear. Don’t let incorrect perceptions determine your success.
• Second, I encourage you to understand how population views the context of measurement. Far too often measurement is looked at as a fault finding/blame placing tool, rather than to help understand and improve. A great book for this is called “Transforming Performance Measurement”. A link can be found at:
• http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com/recommended-reading/
• Third I encourage you to look at how people view the current effectiveness of first aid and recordable reporting. If people report something and nothing happens or there is no follow up or communication back… If the system is viewed as a black hole safety system, it will be difficult to get people to report additional things. Unfortunately ineffective employee suggestion systems will have an impact on incident reporting as well. Resulting in both being lumped into the commonly heard perception “why keep telling them about the issues if when nothing is happening to fix them.”  
• Fourth, look at what might demotivate people first and work to remove those demotivators before adding the motivators. The belief is that the motivation is already there, just remove the barriers! Rather than finding ways to motivate reporting, first understand what the barriers to reporting are. As I learned from the teachings of Ferdinand Fournies, people are intrinsically motivated to do the right thing, however barriers exist that end up demotivating the performance. Try to identify what might demovitate someone to report and neutralize those aspects within the culture. Consider that there are three elements of motivation: Reducing de-motivators, adding motivators and rewarding. In looking for the general demotivators, look for: Constant change, withholding information, hypocrisy, dishonesty, unfairness, unproductive activities, internal competition, lack of follow-up, over-control, ignoring input. Conversely for motivators continue providing input, a sense of ownership in safety (programs, processes), involvement, teamwork, a scorekeeping mentality (achieving success not avoiding failure – TRIR), improvement, winning, variety and of course recognition. Lastly, if you want the near-miss reporting to continue, create a positive consequence for the activity.
• Fifth, work to continuously communicate the reason for reporting Near-misses and build in real life examples both at work and home. Consider that if people understand that they can report an almost event and there would be new insight and a positive outcome. If there are trust issues, consider an anonymous system to build the trust and most importantly demonstrate how the tool will be used. Recognize you might be sacrificing the ability to perform a deep analysis when it is anonymous; sometimes this is worth it in the beginning to build trust in the tool. As a side effect consider that this will help strength the safety culture. Consider communicating examples of how a hidden issue was found and solved, without someone having to get hurt, or in trouble.

I believe having a goal for near-miss reporting can be a great idea, because an organization should measure more than just “did we have fewer accidents this year than last?” We have helped many organizations develop their own custom Balanced Scorecards for Safety (Leading & Lagging, Impacting & Interactive Safety Metrics) and near-miss reporting is a common indicator.

The danger lies in focusing too much on the requested number and not enough emphasis on the rationale and necessity; thus creating a fiction writing contest. Deming once said “the numbers are critical but relatively unimportant”. In other words, the numbers are critical but not the end goal.

Several organizations perform a full root cause analysis on a near-miss to identify the contributing factors and precautionary control points. I always encourage investigators to look beyond employee behavior/actions, if this is found as a “root cause” or contributing factor. Many people will stop there because they can not answer the next “Why Question”. If one person is or feels encouraged to take a risk, usually others are as well. It is important to always look at the cultural aspects during an investigation/analysis. I believe that when the culture supports the measurement and understands why we need to investigate near-misses, an in-depth analysis can be a very positive thing. Consider that if people are fearful of the method and outcomes of first aid or recordable investigations, near-misses reporting will be negatively impacted. If you do not address the perceptions and cultural aspects of performance measurement, you will have little data to analyze; making this post unfortunately, a moot point.

Thank you again for the topic idea, keep them coming!

Shawn Galloway

President & Chief Operating Officer

ProAct Safety

Founder & Coauthor

Safety Culture Excellence

Have a great week and many thanks!

Shawn Galloway - ProAct Safety

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

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

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

We see a lot of organizations that are putting a tremendous amount of energy into these activities, which obviously should be recognized. We often get called into help companies when this level of activity becomes unsustainable. Many times this is because the results tend to plateau after the benefits from the activities alone are recognized. Generally we find sites struggling with what to do with the data that they have collected, and how to use it to solve safety problems.  

You have probably heard me say it many times, if you don’t understand what you are measuring it is still hard to improve. The activity of measuring by itself will bridge some of the gap to safety excellence, why would you want to stop there? If you really want to positively impact common practice you can’t only look at employee performance trends, or whether the behaviors were safe or concerning. We need to understand what influences people if you really want to get at the root of what might encourage someone to put themselves at risk, whether they know it or not. If you fail to identify the influence, are you really fixing the problem and removing the barriers to sustainable safe performance?

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

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

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

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

The presenter for this event was Terry Mathis, the Founder and CEO of ProAct Safety. Terry is also one of the founders and practical pioneers of Behavior-Based Safety. Prior to starting our firm in 1993, he developed the process in-house at Coca Cola over 20 years ago, where he was the Director of Training. He has direct experience with all of the major methods of traditional Behavior-Based Safety (Behaviour-Based Safety, BBS) and over the past 25 years he has personally been involved with over 700 implementations in close to 30 countries.

In 2000, Terry created Lean Behavior-Based Safety which 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 1000 successful implementations, Lean Behavior-Based Safety has proven to be the most efficient and practical approach to an already effective theoretical process.

The purpose of this event is to provide you with insight and ideas, based on our direct experience with all of the major methodologies, as today; we are the only company who has been called in behind the other approaches to improve their processes at sites all over the world.

I hope you enjoy this event, for more information about Lean BBS please contact us at www.proactsafety.com and visit our audio blog site weekly for more ideas at www.safetycultureexcellence.com

Shawn Galloway

President & COO

ProAct Safety

EHS Today - SC Safety Engineers Caution Employers About Workplace Safety Cutbacks. http://ehstoday.com/safety/management/safety_engineers_workplace_safety_1202

Occupational Health & Safety http://ohsonline.com/Articles/2008/12/Another-Great-Year.aspx

Sites all around the world are facing this challenge. We have to fight that much harder to remind people that safety really is the way we do things, not another thing to do. Consider that we are put to the test during these challenging times – what priorities really do come first, will be the question of many.  It is analogous to swimming in calm waters. As the waves increase you have to swim that much harder to stay afloat. It is my belief that to accomplish this is not necessarily a matter of spending more; you just have to stay that much more focused and results-based on the vision. Lastly you have to demonstrate, demonstrate, and demonstrate the value of safety. As Emerson said - “What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say.”

Shawn Galloway

President & COO - ProAct Safety, Inc.

Founder & Coauthor – Safety Culture Excellence

Length: 60 Minutes

Host:           Shawn Galloway, President & COO - ProAct Safety

Presenter:     Terry Mathis, Founder & CEO - ProAct Safety

What You Will Learn:

1. What is Lean BBS^®? - Lean is not just less
2. Why this approach has become the most successful in the industry
3. What options are available for Behavior-Based Safety in today’s lean atmosphere
4. How Lean Behavior-Based Safety works in logistically challenged organizations
5. The typical results that a company should expect
6. How to identify if your company is not ready for Behavior-Based Safety
7. How to ensure success and trust with represented workforces (Labor Unions)
8. Why customization is vital if sustainability is your goal.
9. Existing processes - critical questions and easy to spot waste
10. What it takes to ensure success of a Lean Behavior-Based Safety approach 

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 1000 successful implementations, Lean Behavior-Based Safety has proven to be the most efficient and practical approach to an already effective theoretical process.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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

Either Download the Video, or stream it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez4WoLJdPXY

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety

Enjoy!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc

Greetings from Indianapolis, Indiana. “Because of the reactive approach to measuring and managing safety prevalent in the world today, the true definition of safety success has been obscured. The surface definition of safety success on most safety professionals’ minds is simply a reduction in the failure rate. We have been so busy avoiding failure that we need to remind ourselves what success looks like. The word “success” tends to surface every time the accident rates go down, but does the lack of accidents really equate to safety success?”  - Terry Mathis

In September’s edition of EHS today another of Terry’s articles was published. We received some great feedback from the article, including a request to record it here for the subscribers of Safety Culture Excellence. So the podcast this week is a reading of the recent article “What Does Safety Success Look Like? by Terry Mathis. It was published on the 1st of September, 2008 in EHS Today. The online article can be found at:  http://ehstoday.com/safety/management/safety_success/index.html

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 

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

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

If you are not familiar with Behavior-Based Safety, it is a systematic method of identifying the precautions most critical to accident prevention and reinforcing and refocusing workers on these precautions through workplace coaching then responding to leading indicator information and common practice data; rather than identifying the holes in your safety system with accident data. 

Since 1984, BBS has proven to be an effective tool for the reduction of workplace accidents.  As we all know, the business climate has changed dramatically; and what people find is that most approaches to Behavior-Based Safety have changed little. Even a proven technology with documented results must eventually evolve or become obsolete.

Lean BBS is a customized approach that utilizes aspects of performance and quality systems to drastically reduce the internal resource requirements of a BBS process. Lean BBS was founded on the business philosophy of achieving maximum results with minimal expenditure of resources. Borrowing proven techniques from Lean Manufacturing™, Six Sigma™, and experiences from hundreds of successful BBS implementations, Lean BBS has proven to be an efficient approach to an already effective process because it is a collaboratively developed results based methodology. Whether you are new to Behavior-Based Safety, or if you have an existing process and you would like to learn some new ideas, check out the webinar at proactsafety.webex.com

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway, ProAct Safety, Inc

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!