Safety Culture Excellence®

Greetings, recording this week in Saratoga, New York. For the podcast this week, Terry and I answer the following client’s question: “We had a Steering Team meeting last week and a concern about data analysis was raised and I have an action item to contact you for your thoughts. During our previous data analysis the least percent safe days of the week were Thursday and Friday, and the least percent safe times were between 6 am and 9 am. So as a Steering Team, we communicated this and tried to target observations during those days and times. During this past data analysis, the least percent Safe days were Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and the least percent safe time was 1 pm. So this is where we are focusing our observations.

Is the improvement due to our target observations or is this something that will always be a moving target? Or does it even matter as long as we are communicating?” – Kelly

Thanks Kelly, before we get into the recording, just a quick announcement I’ll be at the Incident Prevention Conference in Louisville, Kentucky the week of 04 October 2009 and Terry and I both will be at the National Safety Council’s Conference in Orlando the week of 25 October 2009. If you happen to be at either or both, please stop by our booth or one of our talks and say hello. So without further delay, let’s jump right into the discussion.

I hope you enjoy this week’s recording!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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

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

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

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...

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety

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

Greetings from Tampere, Finland. Whether you are gathering data from Behavior-Based Safety (Behaviour-Based Safety, BBS) observations, work place audits, safety blitzes, Kaizens, whatever you want to call it; many companies struggle with creating action plans that truly have an impact on operational risk.

We see a lot of organizations that are putting a tremendous amount of energy into these activities, which obviously should be recognized. We often get called into help companies when this level of activity becomes unsustainable. Many times this is because the results tend to plateau after the benefits from the activities alone are recognized. Generally we find sites struggling with what to do with the data that they have collected, and how to use it to solve safety problems.

You have probably heard me say it many times, if you don’t understand what you are measuring it is still hard to improve. The activity of measuring by itself will bridge some of the gap to safety excellence, why would you want to stop there? If you really want to positively impact common practice you can’t only look at employee performance trends, or whether the behaviors were safe or concerning. We need to understand what influences people if you really want to get at the root of what might encourage someone to put themselves at risk, whether they know it or not. If you fail to identify the influence, are you really fixing the problem and removing the barriers to sustainable safe performance?

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

Happy Holidays! For the podcast this week, I would like to provide the audio only portion from the recent video, "Intro to Lean BBS (Behavior-Based Safety)". If you would like to view the full video, please visit www.safetycultureexcellence.com and click on the videos category. Remember to visit the site often as we post new ideas and tools weekly.

The presenter for this event was Terry Mathis, the Founder and CEO of ProAct Safety. Terry is also one of the founders and practical pioneers of Behavior-Based Safety. Prior to starting our firm in 1993, he developed the process in-house at Coca Cola over 20 years ago, where he was the Director of Training. He has direct experience with all of the major methods of traditional Behavior-Based Safety (Behaviour-Based Safety, BBS) and over the past 25 years he has personally been involved with over 700 implementations in close to 30 countries.

In 2000, Terry created Lean Behavior-Based Safety which 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.

The purpose of this event is to provide you with insight and ideas, based on our direct experience with all of the major methodologies, as today; we are the only company who has been called in behind the other approaches to improve their processes at sites all over the world.

I hope you enjoy this event, for more information about Lean BBS please contact us at www.proactsafety.com and visit our audio blog site weekly for more ideas at www.safetycultureexcellence.com

Shawn Galloway

President & COO

ProAct Safety

Intro to Lean Behavior-Based Safety

Length: 60 Minutes

Host: Shawn Galloway, President & COO - ProAct Safety

Presenter: Terry Mathis, Founder & CEO - ProAct Safety

What You Will Learn:

What is Lean BBS? - Lean is not just less

Why this approach has become the most successful in the industry

What options are available for Behavior-Based Safety in today's lean atmosphere

How Lean Behavior-Based Safety works in logistically challenged organizations

The typical results that a company should expect

How to identify if your company is not ready for Behavior-Based Safety

How to ensure success and trust with represented workforces (Labor Unions)

Why customization is vital if sustainability is your goal.

Existing processes - critical questions and easy to spot waste

What it takes to ensure success of a Lean Behavior-Based Safety approach

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.

Watch Now:

 Podcast Video [7:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (1907)

Terry Mathis (Founder and CEO of ProAct Safety) lead an online webinar recently for Occupational Health & Safety titled “Building Your Bridge to Safety Culture Excellence” Is an excellent safety culture the chicken or the egg? How do you truly weave safety into the fabric of cultural activities? How do you integrate safety initiatives so they synergize rather than compete for resources? How do you ultimately build the bridge between your current results and true world-class excellence? “The last frontiers of safety excellence can only be crossed by organizations with mature and highly functioning safety cultures.” – Terry Mathis

This seminar explores the integration of cultural formation in the overall picture of safety excellence efforts. The webinar will provide actionable strategies gained from experience innovating safety excellence with more than 125 organizations and 900 global engagements. Learn how to define the tools, the processes, the timetables, and the range of options for creating a truly exceptional safety culture, which produces truly excellent safety results.

The webinar can now be found and played on demand by navigating here: http://ohsonline.com/Webcasts/2008/09/Proact.aspx