Safety Culture Excellence®

Greetings all! I’m excited announce the agenda for this year’s Behavior-Based Safety Conference. The ProAct Safety’s 11^th Annual Conference is scheduled for 17-18 April 2012. There are pre-conference events on 16 April and post-conference session on the 19^th.

If you would like more information on the event or would like to register, please visit: http://proactsafety.com/events/annual-conference

Session Descriptions 17-18 April 2012:

The Big Picture: BBS’ Role in Safety Culture Excellence

Every organization should have a strategy for safety improvement that includes creating an excellent safety culture. What part can a Behavior-Based Safety process play in the execution of this, and what are the potential benefits of using BBS in such a strategy? This session explores the big picture of safety strategy and the specific role of BBS.

Deadly Sins & Vital Signs: Killing & Reviving Processes

BBS processes have some extremely vital “do’s and don’ts” that can determine success or failure. Learn how to recognize the deadly sins and the vital signs that reflect these critical elements so you can reassess your process to make sure you are doing (and not doing) these critical things.

Observation & Feedback: Cop or Coach?

Still focused on the number of observations? It is time to help observers really make a difference, not just hit target numbers and go through the motions. Turning observers into effective safety coaches is the key. Moreover, it might set a great example for managers and supervisors who could use a change in style!

Process Indicators: Quality, Quantity or Transformative?

What are the metrics that tell you if you are working your BBS process effectively? Are you measuring the right things in your own BBS process? Learn what they are and how they are best measured for both quantity and quality.

On the Horizon: What Lies Ahead for Behavioral Safety

No one knows for sure what the future holds, but it is important to look forward and predict what BBS will look like in the future and what role it will continue to play in safety and culture improvement. Preparing for inevitable changes will make your future smoother and more successful! Listen to the experts who have successfully predicted most of the changes in BBS for the past 18 years.

Company Politics, Snipers & Lessons Learned

Almost every BBS process has been held hostage or misused for some kind of company political goal. There are even people in organizations who worked to make BBS fail. Most processes survived these attacks and kept on improving safety. Learn some stories from the past from other organizations that will help you not let this kind of history repeat itself in your organization.

Motivating & Managing Support: Incentives & Rewards

How can your BBS process actually manage the level of support it receives from supervisors and managers? How can you change incentive and reward systems to align with BBS and avoid the pitfalls most programs experience? Listen to and participate in this lively discussion of the issues and opportunities.

Open Q&A with Terry L. Mathis and Shawn M. Galloway

This last session of the conference is an opportunity to address questions directly to the Principals of ProAct Safety in an open forum. This is an excellent chance to finalize your plans to utilize what you have learned at the conference, get answers to any remaining questions, and bounce your plans and ideas off the experts.

PRE-CONFERENCE SESSIONS – 16 April 2012

Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) 101 for Workers

This session is designed to be an introduction to the rationale and practice of BBS for newcomers and a thorough review for participants at the workforce level who have already implemented a BBS process. Being well grounded in the principles and practices is a basic need for success to both those who are implementing or renewing BBS processes. The course will cover every major facet of BBS including the following:

· The philosophy and science behind BBS

· What leads to union resistance

· Functions of a BBS Steering Team/Committee

· The role of an Observer in a BBS process

· Manager’s and Supervisor’s support roles

· The responsibilities and benefits of employees in a BBS environment

· How BBS impacts safety culture

· How to keep the process results oriented

· How to guarantee process sustainability

· How to refresh and renew an existing BBS process

Attendees will be thoroughly versed on the basics of BBS to either return to a project or attend the Annual BBS Conference with purpose and focus.

Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) 101 for Management

This session covers the same basic concepts as the “BBS 101 for Participants” course but from a management and supervisory perspective. The support roles in BBS are less active than the participants’ roles, yet more critical for success and sustainability. In addition to understanding what BBS is and how it works, managers and supervisors need to know the rationale for having a process and the strategies for ensuring that it is successful. The course will cover these facets and will include the following:

· The rationale and ROI (return on investment) of BBS

· Selection criteria for Steering Team/Committee members

· Time-away-from-work requirements of Steering Team members and Observers

· Key roles, responsibilities, and expectations (RREs) of those participating in the process

· Start-up cycles for BBS from implementation to maturity

· Support and resources needed by the process to ensure success

· How to involve unions for support

· How to communicate BBS to the workforce

· How to utilize BBS as a safety culture building tool

· How to posture BBS in relation to other safety efforts and programs

· How to pump new life into an existing BBS process

Attendees will be thoroughly versed on the basics of BBS to either return to a project or attend the Annual BBS Conference with purpose and focus.

POST-CONFERENCE SESSIONS – 19 April 2012

Advanced Cultural & Behavioral Tactics – Guaranteeing New Results

Use the latest Behavior-Based Safety Technologies for spearheading safety process improvement, borrowing proven techniques from Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and experiences from over 1,500 successful implementations.

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.

Teaching Supervisors to be Safety Coaches (Train-the-Trainer)

Supervisors constantly communicate priorities and strategies to their workers, whether they intend to or not. With training, supervisors can take active control of the messages they send to promote safety as an organizational value. They can set levels of expectation that point everyone in the direction of safety excellence and exert a positive influence on the formation of safety culture.

Most supervisors don't have the latest training and tools for coaching workers to perform their jobs safely. Becoming an effective coach can leverage a supervisor's influence to make significant gains in accident reductions. Coaching skills also improve other areas of performance including quality and productivity as well as safety. The benefits to the organization impact almost every area of human performance.

The training contains the latest behavioral coaching techniques and directly applies them to improving safety. A model for counseling problem employees or addressing serious safety situations is also included. The design of the training utilizes advanced learning techniques and helps attendees to apply the models in the classroom to reality-based scenarios right out of the workplace.

If you would like more information on the event or would like to register, please visit: http://proactsafety.com/events/annual-conference

I hope to see you there!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.

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Greetings all! For the video podcast this month, I'm sharing strategies on how to develop and the key considerations when deciding to carry out self-observations. This can be a great supplement to a Behavior-Based Safety process, or simply as an effective self-coaching tool. As always, customization is a critical first step to ensure sustainability; so take these ideas and make them fit your group. You can either watch the video here at www.SafetyCultureExcellence.com, at www.ProActSafety.com/Insights, or directly on the magazine’s site at: http://cos-mag.com or you can watch it below from YouTube.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRVnyvRe4rg]

I hope you enjoy and have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.

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In 1990 there were certain beliefs and practices that were viewed as state of the art and acceptable. I’m sure in 2030 we will look back at 2011 and challenge much of what is said today on the topic of behavioral approaches. Here in lies the criticality of never accepting a one-size-fits-all methodology to injury prevention and remaining continuously searching for a better approach. No one has the silver bullet, yet we all together can contribute to making this a safer world by striving for a better way to accomplish our goals through dialogue such as this.

My research and experience with hundreds of global projects in every major industry leads me to believe that the vast majority of incidents (injury, process, equipment damage, etc.) have a conditional, behavioral, organizational, and cultural contributing factor. Now the question is, contributing factor to prevention, or causation? The latter leads people to feel a greater sense of blame than the former. Blame isn’t beneficial for anyone other than those placing it. Moreover, it doesn't facilitate ownership in prevention.

It is my belief that behaviors can indeed prevent and cause an event to occur, they can also be the reason an event was avoided. We must look beyond the behavior and remind ourselves people do things for a reason. If we only address the behavior, without addressing the reason, the sustainability of our intervention strategies will be limited at best. Certainly focusing on behaviors in a vacuum might produce faster results, but is it fast or lasting improvement we want? A little of both would be ideal indeed. I prefer sustainable value-add.

What are your thoughts?

I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.

Listen Now:

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In 1990 there were certain beliefs and practices that were viewed as state of the art and acceptable. I’m sure in 2030 we will look back at 2011 and challenge much of what is said today on the topic of behavioral approaches. Here in lies the criticality of never accepting a one-size-fits-all methodology to injury prevention and remaining continuously searching for a better approach. No one has the silver bullet, yet we all together can contribute to making this a safer world by striving for a better way to accomplish our goals through dialogue such as this.

My research and experience with hundreds of global projects in every major industry leads me to believe that the vast majority of incidents (injury, process, equipment damage, etc.) have a conditional, behavioral, organizational, and cultural contributing factor. Now the question is, contributing factor to prevention, or causation? The latter leads people to feel a greater sense of blame than the former. Blame isn’t beneficial for anyone other than those placing it. Moreover, it doesn't facilitate ownership in prevention.

It is my belief that behaviors can indeed prevent and cause an event to occur, they can also be the reason an event was avoided. We must look beyond the behavior and remind ourselves people do things for a reason. If we only address the behavior, without addressing the reason, the sustainability of our intervention strategies will be limited at best. Certainly focusing on behaviors in a vacuum might produce faster results, but is it fast or lasting improvement we want? A little of both would be ideal indeed. I prefer sustainable value-add.

What are your thoughts?

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.

www.ProActSafety.com

Greetings, recording this on the road in Cheswick, Pennsylvania. We receive a lot of calls from organizations looking to purchase software for their behavioral safety processes. So for the podcast this week, I would like to provide some independent thoughts on this. There really are several software options available to an organization looking to implement a Behavior-Based Safety process. 

They range from spreadsheet tools to installed or online databases. Our firm (ProAct Safety) is familiar with all major methodologies and applications currently in use throughout the world. Due to this unique position, our firm has often played a support role in identifying, selecting and utilizing the most effective application that fits each organization’s needs. Many companies choose to internally create an application. This can be a good strategy. We have helped several organizations by providing the critical functional guidance necessary, to ensure a successful outcome.

A key success factor in any implemented Behavior-Based Safety Process is data management.  The data is what enables continuous improvement and helps the observers keep score.  Sometimes the reason workers are not improving in safety is because something is getting in the way.  Identification of safety obstacles and barriers, and measuring their impact is a powerful tool in improving safety.  Traditional safety tends to only focus on lagging indicators and failure rates.  The percent safe provided by a behavioral safety approach, is a great leading metric for comparison to the downstream metrics of accident rates, severity rates, costs of accidents etc.

It is critical for a steering team to design an effective data management and problem-solving technique, in conjunction with their behavior-based safety efforts.  This data flows to the steering team and helps them to remove barriers to safety and change the influences that could tempt workers to take risks.  Additionally, the ability to isolate problem areas increases the ability to focus corrective effort reducing wasted resources.  The observations are most definitely a great tool for beginning the creation of a culture of safety awareness and development of a personal safety focus; however without a good Behavior-Based Safety data management strategy, the process may not be sustainable.  

The data usually reveals first the weaknesses of the data, i.e. too little, not representative, not complete, what’s and no why’s on comments, etc.  Once the data gathering process is adjusted, the data starts to reveal where the greatest risks are and why workers are taking them.  The observation data combined with the original Pareto Analysis data helps to prioritize the risk issues for the team to address.  

The steering team will need to be able to identify trends in the performance.  It is important to know if risk taking is increasing, decreasing, or remaining relatively constant.  Since the observers in a Behavior-Based Safety process cannot see every precaution taken or not taken at the site, it is important that the behaviors sampled are representative of what is happening across all times and locations at the site.  If data is bunched into certain times or locations, the data may not be reliable.

Behavior-Based Safety Process considerations when determining software needs:

• First define the (paper) trail of how the completed checklists get to the data entry person
• Determine who the data entry person(s) will be
• Does the application need to be within the corporate infrastructure, an installable application, or online?
• How will the steering team/committee retrieve the data from the computer for their meetings (printed copies of reports vs. access to computer and projector to see the data in real time)
• What data will be posted and shared, and how will this be accomplished
• Will the team require support in understanding data and trends and the ability to create action plans to address them?

 We recommend the following types of reports for Behavior-Based Safety Data Analysis:

Report:  Overview

What to look for:  Low % safe, high # of concerns, adequate sample size

Use: Select areas that need improvement or attention

Typical Distribution: Steering Team

Report: Overview chart

What to look for: Safe vs. Lucky

Use:  Feedback to workers

Typical Distribution: Post and share with everyone

Report:   Trends

What to look for: Is percent safe increasing, decreasing, or staying the same?

Use: Track the effectiveness of the process and specific action plans

Typical Distribution: Steering Team, Workers in areas of action plan focus

Report: Observer Progress

What to look for: Has observer completed assignment and what is the quality of the data

Use: Manage the observation process and give feedback and recognition to observers

Typical Distribution: Steering Team

Report: Comments

What to look for: What is influencing a person to take a risk:  perception, habit, or barriers

Use: Develop steps of action plans to improve safety

Typical Distribution: Steering Team

Report: Additional Comments or Best Practices

What to look for: Suggestions or concerns about the process from observers or workers

Use: Continuous improvement of the process and safety

Typical Distribution: Steering Team

Report: Breakdown Reports

What to look for: Are the areas of concern concentrated by location, time, day, or other variables

Use: Target areas of concentration for action plans

Typical Distribution: Steering Team

Report: Action Items

What to look for: Any activities that are a result from this initiative that are: Actionable and within the team’s control (if not, who will manage follow-up?) and focused on measureable results

Use: Manage activities, follow-up, focus efforts and continuous improvement to ensure a results orientation

Typical Distribution: Steering Team

I hope I have provided a couple of ideas that are useful for you. 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...

Have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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