Safety Culture Excellence®

Culture and Customizing

Some of the old safety programs and processes are still alive and well in certain organizations.  When I examine how they have survived so long I almost always find that the program has been modified and customized.  The organization is not still doing the process like they were taught, they have “made it their own” over the years using the basic concept(s) but modifying the details.
 
Another term for customizing might be “culturizing.”  When a group of people not only use a methodology but modify it to fit their specific needs and standards, it truly becomes a part of the organizational culture.  It is no longer solely the brainchild of the originator, but the adopted child of the group.  As it permeates the group it becomes a part of the culture that is shared and handed down.
 
Such processes never become outdated because they are fluid and the group can evolve them to meet changing needs and challenges.  Perhaps it should be the goal of every safety program or process to have this kind of flexibility built in as a sustainability tool.  If this were the case, there would likely be fewer flavors of the month and more tools to build strong safety cultures.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

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.

345 - When Site Managers Undo Corporate Safety

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Banff, Alberta. I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote that was published May 2014 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

342 - Is Winning or Losing a Safety Culture Habit?

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Auburn Hills, MI. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published May 2014 in Occupational Health & Safety 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

340 - STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence Workshop

A workshop about developing and executing against a comprehensive strategy to significantly enhance injury prevention efforts and measurably evolve the culture, by the thought-leaders at ProAct Safety

Based on the recent book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, the authors will lead this workshop and provide a detailed roadmap on how to develop a three to five year safety excellence business plan. This two-day workshop is limited to ten participants. It would be helpful if each attendee read the book prior to the event to escalate the discovery process.

For more information visit: http://proactsafety.com/events/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence-workshop

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

Who is Driving Safety?

The leaders of an organization who were asking for my help to improve their safety efforts told me that they were all pushing safety as hard as they could.  I asked them who was driving safety and how long it had been stalled and needing to be pushed.   Almost every leadership team is either neglecting, pushing or driving safety.  Neglect brings on disaster.  The need for pushing often results from previous neglect.  Driving safety almost always results in progress and improvement.

Just as the term implies, driving is giving direction, speed and stability to the safety effort.  Stalled efforts may require some pushing, but well-running efforts simply need drivers.  The most recognized drivers of safety are leadership, supervision, guidelines, and training.  Leaders need to give safety strategic direction.  Supervisors need to steer and correct the daily efforts.  Guidelines, such as rules, procedures, and P.P.E. requirements should provide a road map for the workplace decisions that impact safety.  Training should ensure that everyone knows the guidelines and can also recognize and manage the risks in the workplace that may not be fully covered by the guidelines.

Safety efforts that are strategically driven shape the perceptions and culture of the safety efforts.  The perceptions and culture combine with the training to shape the daily performance.  Supervision keeps the daily performance on track.  The daily performance produces the results that are measured by the lagging indicators of safety.  If your lagging indicators indicate you are not at your desired destination, ask yourself “who is driving?”

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

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.

338 – Creating a Culture of Have to or Want to?

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Clinton, IA. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published April 2014 in BIC 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

337 – To Delegate or Not to Delegate Safety?

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Bangkok, Thailand. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published April 2014 in OH&S 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

The Lost Art of Listening

The late Stephen Covey said that one of the habits of highly-effective people is to “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood.”  Most safety programs do exactly the opposite and are therefore not highly effective.  Leaders and safety professionals decide what is needed and deploy new programs and processes without consulting the very people who know the issues in the field, and will ultimately determine the success or failure of new initiatives.  Organizations regularly hire consultants to analyze their problems and the consultants get the information to do so directly from the organization’s employees.  A good consultant is a good listener first and a good problem solver second.
 
But listening is more than just hearing sounds.  It begins with setting the right tone for the conversation.  There must be a non-threatening and respectful atmosphere in which the listening can take place.  There also needs to be an honest and frank expectation of how the information will potentially be used.  Skepticism often arises from past interviews or surveys from which no action has been taken.  Enough of this kind of skepticism can render the conversation useless.

Sometimes, the right questions need to be asked to spark the right discussions and discover the underlying issues.  When issues emerge from the discussions, they need to be probed and understood more fully. That means that the right questions need the right follow-up questions as well.  The whole process can build upon itself once those interviewed realize that their input is being valued and can potentially lead to improvements.  Listening is ultimately empowering people by taking them seriously.

-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 as a Split Job-Title

Many organizations, especially smaller sites, are making safety part of someone’s job title.  It may be HR/Safety, Plant Engineer/Safety, Environmental/Safety, Health/Safety or some other combination.  I seldom see “safety” listed first on such combined titles.  Is that intentional or do the words just sound better in that order?  In the majority of cases, it is the safety responsibility that is the “add-on” and the person assigned is another kind of professional and a part-time advocate of safety.

Having even a part-time safety point person can be better than having none; but there is a definite downside to this arrangement as well.  It can send the message that safety is not important enough to dedicate a professional to it.  It can also suggest that safety is not all that complex and a little attention is all that is needed.  Not everyone takes these kinds of inferences from such an arrangement, but it often happens.

The most common problem with such assignments is that safety is seriously subjugated to the other job because that is where the expertise and interest lies.  Safety is more or less a hobby that gets whatever extra time is available.  Communications from the safety person are less than expert and less than official. 

If your organization has such dual functions, carefully define the division of responsibilities, provide professional development for the safety function, calendar the first year’s safety activities and follow-up to see that they are accomplished, and periodically ask the personnel at the site how the safety function is going and how it could be improved.  Today’s economic reality calls on many individuals to wear multiple hats.  Just be sure one hat, doesn’t wind up in the closet.

-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.

Can-Do Safety Cultures

It is important to define the desired capabilities of a culture instead of simply the desired characteristics.  What a culture “can do” is much more crucial than what it “is like.”  That said, some cultures become can-do cultures without internalizing safety as a part of what they can do.  Such cultures become “get it done at all costs” cultures.  The members of the culture become willing to give their bodies up for the team.  They put job completion ahead of all other priorities.

The history of a site can be a major influence in developing such a culture.  Sites that have experienced multiple downsizing or threats of closing tend to develop work groups that perform for survival.  The constant threat of being laid off or having your workplace closed tends to outweigh the threat of personal injury.  If managers and supervisors constantly use these threats to motivate or hurry workers, the perception that production trumps safety is constantly reinforced.

When companies downsize, reorganize or otherwise disrupt site cultures, they should anticipate and manage the safety aspects of the change.  Survival is an economic necessity, but poor safety can impact a site’s viability as much as ineffective or incomplete work.  Survival mode should include both surviving the economic challenges and the safety issues.  Again, it is not a dichotomy between production and safety, but addressing the need for safe production.

-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.