I see more and more safety procedures written by corporate attorneys and their staff.  While legal exposure is a real business consideration that deserves attention, so is safety.  If the procedures are written in language the average worker can’t understand, or are too complex to remember, they have little chance of actually being implemented.  What corporate attorneys need to understand is that a written procedure is not an insurance policy against government regulators, especially if the procedure doesn’t become common practice.  Stiff fines have been given to organizations with excellent documentation but common practice that doesn’t match.  The people in the field need to walk the talk or the exposure is still there.

Sometimes all that is needed is a shorter version of the procedure aimed at worker terminology and mapped out into an implementation plan.  The legal document can still be in place as the organizational goal, while the shorter document is a practical attempt to turn the goal into reality in the workplace.  I have found regulators much more understanding of performance that falls short of the ideal if there is a plan in place to make it happen.  Attorneys: work with the safety staff to make procedures practical and applicable as well as liability limiting.

-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 three consecutive times. 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).

W. Edwards Deming urged organizations to establish relationships with suppliers and stick with them, even when they could save a few pennies by changing to another.  He knew that the reduced price was usually a loss leader and that the changeover would cost more than the savings.  We have not yet learned this lesson in safety.  We farm out services and products to the lowest bidder, assuming the quality is the same and that continuity of provider has no value.  We also assume that a consultant who specializes in one service, or a manufacturer who specializes in a particular product, is superior.  These assumptions are not necessarily so.

The relationship with a provider can make them more valuable than price, product or service.  Someone who really takes the time to understand your business can often tailor to your needs much better than a subject-matter expert who doesn’t know or understand your organization.  The relationship is often what gets you superior support, preferential treatment and customized solutions.  Look for someone who cares for you, not just who gives you the lowest price.  Quit trying to save pennies and concentrate on saving lives.

-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 three consecutive times. 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).

Sometimes in safety, it can seem impossible to fix a problem or identify the cause of a rash of accidents, or find the best way to get workers more engaged.  Safety people are problem-solvers, and unsolved problems are a thorn in their side.  It helps to remember that everything is impossible until we figure it out.  It was once considered impossible to split an atom, run a mile in less than four minutes, or even for human beings to fly. 

Many organizations that strive for safety excellence keep a “temporarily impossible” file in which they list issues and problems that have not been addressed or solved.  They pull it out from time to time and review the issues and problems in light of recent changes and advances.  A few each year get removed from the list and out of the file.  The world is full of miraculous possibilities patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

-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 three consecutive times. 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).

Hello all, recording this podcast while in Philadelphia Pennsylvania at the 2011 National Safety Congress and Expo. I’m sure you will all agree that we all appreciate positive feedback, if only we would give it more often. The goal of this podcast is to hopefully and sincerely provide you with thanks from me. I have been very fortunate to be on the receiving end of some great feedback over the past few months. I started this podcast in January of 2008 with the goal to share some thoughts with some specific clients around the world. The purpose was to help them with reinforcing strategies we had previously trained them on, and share new ones we had discovered as well. Quite quickly we started receiving questions and comments from places in the world we knew we hadn’t worked.

Quite frankly we had some initial concerns that we were sharing our intellectual capital and intellectual property with people who hadn’t compensated us for it. This conversation lasted about five minutes before Terry Mathis and I came to the conclusion that sharing our thoughts, strategies, lessons learned and new ideas was in the best interest of global safety efforts. Within months of this decision we started receiving feedback from subscribers on how they appreciated the strategies we had shared and how they were already seeing progress from implementing our ideas and models. This makes it all worthwhile.

At least once a month I receive detailed emails outlining the progress experienced from either implementing all or some of the ideas. As Terry and I regularly speak at private and public safety conferences and events throughout the world, we are very fortunate to meet many of our subscribers. To see a list of our public events (which updates monthly) where we will next be speaking visit www.ProActSafety.com. If you would like to contact us about a private workshop or consultation, there are ways to do that there as well.

As I’m recording this at the 2011 National Safety Congress and Expo in Philadelphia I was both speaking and moderating at NSC and just happened to be in our booth in the expo area talking with some clients and as I turned around I had the honor of meeting meet another of our subscribers, a gentleman who is the Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge for a United States Air Force Base in a European Country. He shared with me how they have had significant improvement in safety at the base after listening to all of these podcasts and implementing the strategies. As he shook my hand he handed me his Air Force Unit Coin. Being prior military myself, I know what an honor that is. Thank you for that. I’m not sharing his name or base in this story as I want to respect his privacy and that of others who share their stories with me.

It is important that we all receive positive feedback. The feedback provided to me by one of our nation’s heroes makes these podcasts worthwhile. I travel a great deal. I write these podcasts and articles while on the road in different countries and cities. Truthfully had I know what a commitment this would be, providing weekly content, I’m not sure I would have made the decision to start this podcast. But, the feedback I hear from you all, makes it all worthwhile.

Like many of you have taken time to thank me, be sure you take the time to thank the employees and leaders in your companies that have helped you achieve improvement. We can all use a little more positive feedback.

Sincerely, thank you for all that you do and for taking the time to share your thoughts with me, I truly appreciate it. If we haven’t had the opportunity to connect and you have been a long-time subscriber, please feel free to drop me a note at podcast @ proactsafety.com and say hello, I’d love to hear your story.

A quick business note:

This is the 207^th podcast that we have released, at no cost to the subscribers. We will continue to release our podcasts at no charge, however maintaining the availability of previous ones from years past is becoming difficult with the platform we are using to publish them. They only provide us a limited amount of space, which we are getting close to maxing out. With over two hundred podcasts, audio and video that range between a few minutes to sixty minutes each, I guess this should be no surprise. In the next few months we may be forced to remove the public access to some of our earlier posts, so I encourage you to remind others to download them all now while they are still available. If we have to remove these older posts for the purpose of space, we will still make them available to send to you on a memory stick or CD for a small fee to cover these new costs we will incur.

Again, thank you for your dedication to safety excellence on and off the job and thank you for taking our strategies and making them fit your operations; this is after all why we provide these podcasts. Best of luck taking them forward within your company.

Warm regards,

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety