Safety Culture Excellence®

It is amazing how many workers view safety as a form of Voodoo.  They know they can do a job hundreds of times accident-free, then suddenly get injured.  What is the difference, and how can you prevent such random events? 

To begin de-mystifying safety, you must first define it.  Safety has three parts:  1. Identifying and recognizing risks, 2. Addressing risks through conditional changes or behavioral precautions, and 3. Developing consistency in risk control.  In short, workers have to know what can hurt them, know how to keep these things from hurting them, and consistently do those things.

Internalizing such a definition tends to take the mysticism out of safety.  Each time an accident happens, workers analyze which of the three steps didn’t happen, and understand the causation of accidents.  There is no Voodoo, only cause-and-effect.

-Terry L. Mathis

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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).

A worker using the wrong tool for a job injures his hand.  Another worker has used the same wrong tool numerous times with no injury.  One worker retires having used this tool his whole career with no injury and another retiree has had three injuries related to using that tool.  Each experience is different, and thus, each perception of the risk is different.  Some think the practice is dangerous and some think it is not.  Who is right and who is wrong?

We express a range of experience mathematically by calculating probability.  With enough data points we can establish a pattern to this risk that may not be obvious to anyone who is a data point, but is accurately describing the experience of the large group.  Sharing the findings of a probability study can actually change and norm the perceptions formed by differing experiences within the group.  This new perception can more accurately describe the risk and encourage taking precautions against the risk even among those whose experience hasn’t detected the possibility of accidental injury.  Perceptions, if not thus managed, will vary by experience.  Managing the accuracy of perceptions is a powerful tool for improving safety performance that many organizations have not utilized.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit 

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).

Many sports teams who have a good season develop high hopes for a good play-off performance only to be badly disappointed.  It seems that play intensifies in the post-season when only the best teams are left and winning is contingent on more than the basics.  Safety has some similarities:  going from poor performance to better performance comes with the basics and reasonable effort.  But when only a few accidents remain per year, preventing them takes a whole new level of effort.

The biggest mistake in both these scenarios is assuming that the strategy that got you to this point will get you the rest of the way to top.  The problem is that the tools of “bad-to-good” don’t work on “good-to-excellent.”  That game plan and those tools must form the basis of your effort, but winning will take a dose of “above and beyond.”  The last remaining risks aren’t always visible to the naked eye and a whole new level of analysis is needed.  When you get rid of the obvious risks, the next level is less obvious.  When you eliminate the high-probability risks, the remaining ones are lower probability and harder to detect.  Excellence is a whole new game overlaid on the old game.  When you get to the playoffs, develop a new game plan. 

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit 

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).

When you discuss the findings from recent accident investigations either in safety meetings, stand downs, or via email, what is the focus?  Do you determine the root cause and describe the corrective action taken by the organization to avoid repeat injuries?  If so, that is good but incomplete.  You should also discuss risk awareness techniques to help workers recognize developing at-risk situations and precautions that workers can take to minimize the probability of such accidents.

It is not enough that organizations learn from their accidents; workers should learn as well.  When root causes lead to corrective action, risk awareness should also lead to safer behaviors and better hazard recognition.  If you only do one of these, you are missing half or more of the potential improvement that could result from your findings.  Don’t settle for simply improving conditions or improving behaviors.  Always look for opportunities to improve both!

-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.

Awareness is an important part of safety, but it is not the only part.  Awareness is simply a step in the right direction that produces nothing without the other steps.  Further, there are also two types of safety awareness:  awareness of risks and awareness of how to manage those risks.  So, when people say that safety is all about awareness, they are missing the big picture.

Consider the following illustration:  Two people are traveling in a car and one is aware of the need for seat belts and the other is not. Neither of them buckle their seat belts.  They have a head-on collision.  Which person hits the windshield hardest, the person who is aware or the person who is not? 

The true definition of safety includes two types of awareness and one type of action.  Awareness of risks is first.  In business we call this risk assessment.  Awareness of the ways to address and reduce the risks is second and we call these mitigation and precautions.  The third step is the action step.  Awareness does not improve safety unless it results in action.

Leaders must mitigate risks where possible.  Workers must take precautions where risks still exist.  Failure to be aware results in inaction.  But inaction can occur even with awareness and can render awareness inadequate to prevent accidents.

-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.

When you think about the title of this piece, the first thing that comes to most people’s minds is an accident that produced property damage but no injuries.  While that is a common example of this principle, it is not the only one.  Virtually any undesired, unplanned, unexpected result of a work process is accidental.  It could be argued that anything that did not turn out as planned is an accident.  

When you think about it this way, people invest in the wrong stocks, elect the wrong people to office, and marry the wrong spouses from time to time.  We don’t blame such accidents exclusively on the stock market, the government, or dating services.  Likewise when an organization has a rash of injuries, it might not be exclusively the fault of the safety programs and specialists.

The real key to understanding and applying this principle is simply that good management must anticipate the multiple ways that processes can produce unwanted results and prevent them from doing so.  When you think this way, safety is not a touchy, feely specialty to be delegated.  It is a principle of good management.  

Managers must constantly be on guard against the ways in which their processes can fail or go awry.  Such events can be caused by people, machines, conditions, process flaws or combinations of these.  Designing and constantly improving all the aspects of business processes is the job of leaders, managers and supervisors.  Blaming workers or delegating problem areas seldom creates organizational excellence.  It is crucial to remember that when the goose quits laying golden eggs, you need better goose management: not an egg specialists.  

-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.