Safety Culture Excellence®

Technology and Safety Culture

Trucking companies are beginning to address driver behaviors with new technologies.  Several companies make tracking devices that monitor drivers and photographically capture their behaviors and the road conditions in which they are operating.  Post trip, these companies can know how many times drivers hit the brakes hard, changed lanes suddenly, exceeded speed limits, and exhibited other behaviors critical to driving safety.  Many of these organizations are also monitoring driver cell phone calls and texting while driving.

All this information is supposedly designed to prevent accidents by changing driver behavior.  But how these technologies impact organizational safety culture seems to be an afterthought.  If used to coach drivers into better driving habits they can potentially create super safety cultures in which drivers strive for more excellent performance.  If used as an advanced way to police and punish drivers for offenses previously undetectable, they could seriously destroy safety culture and create a police state in its place.  

It is not technology that impacts safety culture, but the way in which organizations implement technology.  We have NEVER seen a safety culture punished into excellence.  We have seen many cultures coached into excellence.  How you use technology is up to you, but consider the culture you will create as well as the behaviors you will identify.  A degraded safety culture can quickly erase gains made through policing safety technologically.  

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Safety: Well, DUH!

When my kids were young and I said something they thought was obvious, they would say, “Well, duh!”  I think this same attitude is prevalent today when we talk about safety strategy.  Most organizational leaders and safety professionals seem to think that safety strategy is either extremely obvious or unnecessary.  When we ask about an organization’s safety strategy we get a list of either safety objectives or safety activities.  Neither of these are strategies.

Most organizations we work with are doing almost identical safety activities.  They have a safety mission and/or vision statement, safety training, meetings, stand downs, rules, procedures, posters, JSAs, and safety supervision or oversight.  Leaders try to say the right things about safety to demonstrate their commitment and safety professionals try to make a showing in the workplace to dispel the concept that they are paper pushers only.  

But few organizations have thought about safety strategically as they would think about a new-product rollout or a merger or acquisition.  Safety is not simply activities that limit risks.  Safety performance is impacted by the organizational climate, chemistry, culture, management practices and a host of other influences.  Strategy is creating a framework that guides decisions about activities and evaluates their contribution to the overall goals.  Few organizations have a safety strategy and literally all of them need one.

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

309 – The Ideal Safety Career Path

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Pensacola, FL. I’d like to share an article written by Terry Mathis, published July 2013 in EHS Today Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.

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

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety

308 - The Perceptions That Shape Safety Excellence

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Starkville, Mississippi. I’d like to share an article written by Terry Mathis, published June 2013 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, The Perceptions That Shape Safety Excellence.  The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety

More is Not Better: Only Better is Better

When safety results are unsatisfactory, managers tend to say, “We are not doing enough for safety.”  There is an assumption that more effort will produce better results.  In the short term this often seems true.  When leaders focus on one priority over others, followers tend to direct their efforts accordingly.  Leaders assume that their additional activities produced the desired results.  Often, it was not the effort but simply the priority that drove the improvement.  However, such knee-jerk reactions rarely work long term. Sustainable results depend more on the quality rather than the quantity of effort.  

One organization increased the hours workers spent in classroom training because they discovered knowledge deficits had contributed to accidents.  Accident rates reduced in the short-term, but knowledge levels did not rise.  The emphasis on reducing accidents had focused worker efforts, but the training had not been effective in improving knowledge.  Leaders realized after some investigation that the problem was the quality of the training.  The training did not address the most critical knowledge needed.   Increasing the quantity of the poorly designed training had simply subjected workers to more meaningless and ineffective activity.  When the quality of the training was improved, more quantity was not needed.

Many organizations purchase the latest fads in safety training and programs in hopes of improving results.  Again, there is this assumption that more is better.  Rather than improving existing programs and training and aligning them with a better safety strategy, let’s simply do more.  Unfortunately,” more” doesn’t fix ”poor.”

Very few organizations are failing to dedicate enough effort to safety, but many are not using that effort to its maximum effectiveness.  The answer is not more effort; but better effort.

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

307 - You Need to Manage Strategically

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Orange, Texas. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published June 2013 in ISHN Magazine.  It was titled, You Need to Manage Strategically. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

306 - Overcoming invulnerability to strengthen safety culture

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Bethesda, Maryland. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published June 2013 in BIC Magazine. It was titled, Overcoming invulnerability to strengthen safety culture. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.

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

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc

Cultural Compliance: A Step Short of Excellence

What if everyone in your organization obeys the rules, follows the procedures and wears their PPE with a minimum of supervision or management?  Is this safety culture excellence?  NO!  This is a culture of compliance, not excellence.  Certainly, it is a move in the right direction and is a desirable accomplishment.  It is a step above command-and-control but still a number of steps short of true excellence.

Excellence is well above and beyond simple compliance.  Most rules and procedures are minimal standards for safety and only address the most common and obvious risks.  Even organizations which reach high levels of compliance still have a level of accidents untouched by their efforts.  As organizations begin to plateau in their compliance efforts, they often look for advanced strategies to help them accomplish the next step change.  

Beyond compliance, workers must think and act intelligently; not just mindlessly comply.  Organizations must examine their influences on workers to make sure they reinforce safety and not shortcuts or acceptance of risks.  When all factors, both individual and organizational are aligned to go above and beyond compliance, the potential for excellence begins.  At this level of performance, compliance is so basic that is expected of everyone all the time. The new measure of success is repeated victories, not simply playing a decent game.

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Lateral Communication

When we talk to most executives about effective safety communication, they instantly focus on the vertical information (i.e., what flows from leaders to the workers and what workers send back to leaders).  Vertical communication can happen directly, through various communication media, or through the usual organizational levels person-to-person.  While this vertical information is important, so is lateral communication: what goes between workers and other workers.  

Safety engagement and behavioral programs often attempt to increase and/or improve lateral communication.  Regardless of whether you are using such a program or simply wanting to improve, if you want your workers to talk effectively to each other about safety, you should address the following issues:

1) Conversations between workers should be focused on improvement targets, not just common practice.  Targeted improvements create legitimate talking points and create discrete dichotomies of “did you do this” or “did you not do this?”  Having workers simply evaluate each others performance more often leads to disagreement than improvement.  Remember to consider targeting improvements in safety culture as well as accident prevention.

2) The model for conversations should be one of coaching rather than confrontation.  Confrontation creates enemies who disagree.  Coaching creates allies in change.

The goals of lateral conversations should be to, A) Encourage those working toward improvement, or B) To discover what is influencing or blocking improvements in those observed not meeting improvement goals.  

Often the best way of discovering such issues is simply to ask “Why?” or “Why not?” when a fellow worker is not doing the targeted precaution. Approaches that follow these guidelines more often prove successful.

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

304 - Should the Safety Department Manage Safety?

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Clinton, Tennessee. I’d like to share an article written by Terry Mathis, published May 2013 in IndustryWeek Magazine.  It was titled, Should the Safety Department Manage Safety?  The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety