Safety Culture Excellence®

Awareness vs. Performance

When my staff wrote a training objective that contained the word “awareness” I made them re-write it.  Why?  Because it is not a performance term!  Awareness is simply a cognitive function.  All it requires is being awake and paying a modicum of attention.  Do you want your children to be aware of traffic or stay out of it?  Do you want your workers to passively be aware of risks or actively take precautionary measures? 

Training objectives need to be performance-based, i.e. “Given this training, workers will take these precautions regularly within 20 days.”  Performance-based objectives are observable in the workplace and can be measured. But training is not the only realm in which performance should the objective.  In safety, all communication, leadership, supervision, coaching, and peer interaction should be aimed at improved safety performance.

Yes, awareness is important; but it is a step toward a goal, not the goal itself.  If safety-improvement efforts stop at awareness, they will result in a mental state, not a performance step change.

-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.

Outsourcing Leadership Training

Today’s economic realities have necessitated a great deal of outsourcing.  Organizations are clinging to their core competencies and value potential and hiring out peripheral tasks.  In safety, more and more of the training function is being outsourced.  This can be a good approach to some types of safety training but is definitely not for others.

Definite YES:  Skills training by technical experts is almost always more effective.   If the organization cannot justify keeping such an expert onboard full-time, outsourcing makes good sense and is often quite effective.

Definite NO:  Training that establishes official management style or organizational philosophy.  If you want your supervisors to coach safety or your leaders to stay on message about organizational mission and vision for safety, outside trainers are definitely not the way.  Specific skills such as coaching or communications can be taught by outsiders, but the deep-rooted organizationally-specific style training is best done by an insider with recognized ties to the organization and specific information to answer questions on strategy and tactics.

Maybe with Qualifications:  Training that is required for regulatory compliance can often be outsourced effectively.  The one nuance is that much of this type of training is very generic and may not be easily or directly applied by workers to their specific tasks.  Training that is too theoretical may lose its effectiveness if the link between the theory and workplace reality is not clear.
Outsourcing the right training and keeping the right training in-house can be a key to success in safety.

-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.

Safety Overtraining

The medical profession is concerned that the overuse of antibiotics is causing strains of bacteria to become resistant and patients to be less receptive to the most-used medications.  The same thing can happen to safety when training is overused or misused.  Workers can tune it out and workplace accidents can become resistant to it.  

Regulatory mandates require a quantity and content of safety training, but more or less neglect the quality of that training.  This has resulted in some of the dullest, most monotonous and least-effective safety training that the world has ever seen.  The use of Computer-Based Training (CBT) has further aggravated the problem.  Required safety training in many organizations is viewed at best as a necessary evil by any worker who has taken it more than two times.  When safety training quits being an asset to the organization, it can damage the effectiveness of other safety-improvement efforts as well.

If this state of safety training were not bad enough, some organizations actually use training or re-training as a punishment.  When a worker is injured or is caught failing to follow a safety rule, they can be sent back to training.  The assumption that the training did not impact worker behavior is valid enough, but the assumption that more of the same, ineffective training will magically work the second time is borderline absurd.  Also, if safety re-training is viewed as a form of punishment, how will that impact the overall perception of the value of safety training?

Organizations need to view safety training as a tool to meet worker needs rather than a painful requirement that can be re-used as punishment.  The opportunities for good quality safety to improve safety performance has been demonstrated.  It is time to use it to its full potential instead of going through the motions!
-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.

339 - Conquer Distracted Driving by Becoming an ACE

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Lake Charles, LA. I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote that was published April 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

Heads and Habits

I recently attended a safety training session in which the three types of distracted driving were being taught and discussed.  I stood outside the door after the training and asked the departing trainees if they could name the three types of distractions.  Only one of ten could name two of the three, three more could name one and the rest could not remember any of the three.  If those being trained cannot remember the training on the way out of the classroom the chances of them adopting the safety practices and turning them into safety habits is virtually non-existent.

The principle is this, “If you don’t get it into workers’ heads, you won’t get it into their habits.”  Training that isn’t memorable or sticky is not effective training.  Safety training that does not utilize mnemonic devices, repetition and post-testing may meet legal requirements, but it won’t improve safety performance.  Even with such training techniques, too much training material can create overload rather than internalization of the materials. 

Remember the principle. Before taking workers away from work and putting them in classrooms or in front of computers, consider rethinking your training strategies to make the most effective use of the time and a greater return on investment.

-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.

Is This Really Safety Training: Checking for Understanding

There is an old saying, “I can explain it to you but I can’t understand it for you.”  Like communication, training is a two-part process.  Part one is delivering the training.  Part two is learning what is being trained.  In a perfect scenario, the trainer does the first part and the trainee does the second.  In too many scenarios, the first part is attempted and the second part simply does not happen.

Much classroom training is simply delivered and evaluated.  No learning is measured.  Even in Computer-Based Training which includes testing, many of the lessons are repetitive and the answers can often be memorized without being understood.  Most organizations feel pressured to deliver the quantity of training required and largely neglect the quality of the training.  This has created a workforce of over-trained and underperforming workers in regards to safety.  Much of our improved safety performance has resulted from worker experience rather than formal training programs.

The bottom line is that training is not really happening if learning is not taking place.  Learning can be measured and verified both formally and informally through open questioning, role playing, or through testing.  Every safety program should question whether they are just going through the training motions, or truly developing safety competence in their workers.

-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.

Leading vs. Lagging Indicators in Safety

As more and more leaders and safety professionals realize the limitations of reactive safety, they search for leading indicators to help them manage safety more proactively.  This thinking fueled the concept that lagging indicators alone, are not truly representative of safety performance, nor are they predictive or prescriptive.

 The first round of so-called “leading indicators” was little more than a measurement of safety-related activities: hours of safety training, attendance at safety meetings, participation in safety programs, etc.  OSHA’s crackdown on incentives that could potentially suppress reporting of accidents drove many organizations to base their incentives on these activity metrics rather than simply not having an accident.  

When behavior-based safety became the rage, the measurement of behaviors from observations came to be thought of as a leading indicator. As safety culture became a buzz phrase, perception surveys gained in popularity and came to be considered another potential leading indicator.  The search for meaningful leading indicators goes on because no one of these has proven adequate in predicting and preventing injuries.

Where none of these alone succeed, all of them together potentially can.  A balanced-scorecard approach in which the metrics not only complement, but predict each other has proven quite effective in proactively predicting how to prevent accidents.  When you measure how much activity it takes to change perceptions, how much of a change in perceptions it takes to change behaviors, and how much behavior change it takes to change the lagging indicators, you begin to truly measure the effectiveness of safety efforts.  Just as balanced scorecards have revolutionized strategic management, with our most successful clients, balanced scorecards for safety have proven to have a transformational impact on safety management. How balanced are your measurements? 

-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 You Do Too Much Safety Training?

This is a follow-up to a previous blog that can be accessed here: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com/2013/09/18/more-is-not-better-only-better-is-better/

There seems to be naïve assumption that if training does solve a problem the answer is more training.  It is NOT!  The answer is better training.  Overtraining is a serious problem in the safety programs of several industries.  Workers are literally bombarded with information that is not sticky.  They leave training sessions confused instead of enlightened.  They feel like they are trying to drink from a fire hose.

One problem is that training is designed to limit legal exposure rather than effectively improve safety.  New employee orientation on project jobsites is often a massive information dump, rather than a focused effort to eliminate the most common safety challenges.  In fact, most safety training takes a blanket vs. a focused approach.  The training tries to cover every possible risk rather than focusing on the risks that have historically caused the most injuries.  

Blanket-type training is notoriously non-memorable.  Effective training creates awareness that is sticky, (easy to remember) so that workers can easily carry the knowledge in their memory until it becomes habitual.  Test or ask your trainees if they can recite from training what they should do to improve safety.  Ask them again a week or a month after training.  If they can’t remember, the problem lies in the quality, not the quantity of training.

-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.

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.

219 - 11th Annual Behavior-Based Safety Conference Video - April 2012

Greetings everyone! I’m excited to announce the release of our video promoting our upcoming 11^th Annual Behavior-Based Safety Conference in Houston, Texas this April 2012. You can watch or download the video here or stream it from YouTube

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQjeQFImEgo]

Pre-Conference: April 16, 2012 General Conference: April 17-18, 2012 Post-Conference: April 19, 2012

For the brochure, detailed agenda or to signup, please visit:

www.BBSConference.com

I hope to see you there. Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.