Safety Culture Excellence

Greetings, recording this week from East Brunswick, New Jersey. This week I’d like to provide an overview of an upcoming free webinar scheduled for the 24th of September 2009. The webinar will be hosted by EHS Today. You can find a link to enroll at either www.ProActSafety.com or www.EHSToday.com if you are reading this after the live event, a link should be available to watch it on demand at www.ProActSafety.com.

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

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Greetings recording this week in Omaha, NE.  “In the early 1980s many safety professionals were excited about the possibilities of using new advances in the behavioral sciences to improve organizational safety. Among the technologies being investigated was the idea of behavioral observation. Behavior is by definition “an observable act” and therefore measurable by workplace observation. If a statistically-significant connection could be made between certain behaviors and accident probabilities, measuring these behaviors through observation might provide a more accurate measurement of workplace safety.” – Terry Mathis

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

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Greetings from Canton, Ohio. Whenever we are called in to audit an existing observation or behavioral safety (Behavior-Based) approach, we always ask a lot of questions but we often start with three simple ones.

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

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Greetings from Dublin, Ireland and podcast number 82! This week will be focusing on answering a subscriber’s question about observations in a Behavior-Based Safety process. We received the following email: “An issue we are having at our plant is our behavioral observation program is turning in results of 99% safe from month to month now but the injuries are still occurring.  We have greatly reduced our safety measures since implementing the program in late 2007.  We currently only have one for this fiscal year and we have had zero lost time injuries since implementing the program as well. The minor first aid injuries are greatly reduced as well, but the ones we have seem to be behavioral related and are trying to figure out how to get to the zero injuries stage.  I guess where we need to get to is a point where the employees are not just “pencil whipping” the observations so they can get credit for doing them.  I’m wondering how you get from point A to point B.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.”

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

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This intensive one-day session will enable participants to create a customized plan, using the latest Lean Behavior-Based Safety (Lean BBS^®) Technologies for spearheading 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 1000 successful implementations; Lean Behavior-Based Safety has proven to be the most efficient and practical approach to an already effective theoretical process.

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.

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Greetings recorded while in Omaha, Nebraska! We have received a lot of feedback about an article (Building a Bridge to Safety Excellence: The Role of Culture) that was published in EHS Today in the Feb 2009 edition. For this week I have recorded the article so it can be listened to at your leisure. You can find all of our published articles at www.ProActSafety.com Enjoy!

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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Can you teach an old dog a new trick?

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

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Hello everyone! It is with great pleasure that I announce that we will be hosting a one day event titled “Advanced Lean Behavior-Based Safety Facilitator Seminar”.

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

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Greetings from The Woodlands, Texas. We have had several requests asking us to provide our thoughts on this week’s topic. It is sometimes difficult to provide a blanket answer to questions such as this. I have seen in practice this strategy work very well and conversely I have seen it very quickly destroy a culture and undo years of hard work. Every site is unique. I believe you have to ask yourself “what am I trying to accomplish?” Most people have good intentions when asking injured employees to help out with safety tasks, whether it is administrative in nature, training or simply communicating lessons learned. Most often where the danger lies is when the injured party or anyone else for that matter, feels that participation is forced. What typically follows is a belief that this is a punishment for getting hurt. When a culture believes that punishment will follow injury, well I think we will all agree that it doesn’t take much to suppress reporting; or worse drive it completely underground. That is not the path to zero we are looking for…

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

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Greetings from Helsinki, Finland. As we all try to improve the safety of our people and work sites, we are always looking for better data, systems and ways to measure and improve safety performance. Thankfully many sites have passed the point of placing blame and using fault finding data (which is an easy trap to fall into),  and are now focusing upstream to understand their culture and the influencers on organizational risk taking. Yet there still lies the question of what and how to measure? Moreover what if you have no accident data, perhaps you are a new site, or you are multiple years with no accidents. Are you safe or sometimes lucky?

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

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