Safety Culture Excellence®

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Indianapolis, Indiana. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published May 2013 in Occupational Health & Safety Magazine.  It was titled, LIVE Our Own Health and Safety Advice.  The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

The US Census Bureau estimates that 35 million Baby Boomers will be leaving the workplace over the next 10 years or so.  If you have these individuals in key positions and lose them all at once, how will that impact your organization?  Will they take key safety information with them or will they pass it on before they retire?  The answer to that may depend on your planning and the results may be significant.

Many Boomers have been in the same position for years; some for their whole careers.  They have knowledge that is not always captured in operating manuals or other documentation.  They also have developed judgment about how to handle certain situations based on their years of observation and experience.  How can you keep this knowledge and judgment when you lose the people?

One answer is a mentoring program in which experienced workers train new workers.  New workers can be asked to capture the tips and procedures they learn and share them with the next generation of workers.  Another approach is to have experienced workers hold formal training, develop training materials, or lead JSA or JSOP teams.  Still other organizations hire key retirees as part-time consultants or on-call resources for the new employees.  

Whatever your plan, your goal should be to spare your organization from oozing out needed expertise as the new generation of workers replace the old.

-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.

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Prattville, Alabama. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published April 2013 in Occupational Health & Safety Magazine.  It was titled, Accountability: A Dirty Word in Safety.  The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

Almost all jobs involve multiple priorities. If you have one boss who helps you balance these priorities, it becomes more and more clear how to do so.  When workers see how their boss handles multiple priorities and get feedback on their own handling of them, they get a feel for the relative importance of each.  

However, when different aspects of business are managed or supervised by different people, there will inevitably be a conflict of priorities.  If one person supervises production, another supervises quality, and another supervises safety, there is not only a conflict of three priorities, but of three people.  Workers now must juggle multiple priorities as well as multiple personalities and relationships.  It is difficult to see the unity of priorities when the organization divides them into different departments and personnel.  The big picture tends to be a divided screen with three pictures.  The worker can only watch one at a time.

It is critically important for organizations to balance and unify, not divide priorities.  Most organizations want safe, quality production, not three conflicting aspects of work.  It is fine to have experts in each field who advise and serve as resources.  It is not good to try to make such experts partial supervisors on the shop floor.  One supervisor can better manage the whole process and unify the aspects of the process where workers view their role as doing the work, rather than refereeing their multiple bosses.

-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.

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Missoula, Montana. I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote, published April 2013 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, Leadership Support for Safety: A Self-Contradicting Term. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Nashville, Tennessee. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published April 2013 in BIC Magazine.  It was titled, Misunderstanding Safety Leading Indicators.  The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

One of the most common mistakes organizations and safety professionals make is to try to do too much at once.  It seems logical that more safety-related activities should create better safety awareness and thus result in improved safety performance.  This is seldom what happens.  Too much at once results in overload and also blocks internalization of important safety principles and practices.  Trying to eat the elephant in one bite chokes the eater and aggravates the elephant.  

Human attention, like the internet has limited bandwidth.  It can only handle a certain amount of information at once.  More is not better, it is lost.  When organizations and safety professionals focus on specific and well prioritized improvement targets, the human attention machine works well.  New precautions are understood and internalized.  As the new safety habits and thinking progress, new targets can be added.  The organization sees the elephant disappearing a bite at a time and that further motivates progress.  

It requires discipline and clear thinking to realize that more is not better and that slower can actually be faster.  But keeping safety efforts within the proper bandwidth of the human brain is the best and ultimately fastest path to safety excellence.

-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.

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Shreveport, LA. I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote, published March 2013 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, Who Says "Go"? Is Safety Led or Abdicated? The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Bastrop, Texas. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published March 2013 in QHSE Focus Magazine.  It was titled, Challenging the Goal of Safety. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

A person who has a ready-to-use safety program or process and wants to convince you to use it is a salesperson, not a consultant.  Sales is a matter of creating a sense of need that fits the product and closing the sale.  It involves a compelling story of past successes and value for the money and creating a desire to join the club of successful users.  It might include a profile of other clients broad enough to help you find parallels between them and you.  The salesperson must convince you to buy.  Then, you seek to make your organization fit the product or process you just purchased.  They sell it to you and now you must sell it to the organization.

A consultant is someone who seeks first to understand your unique needs or problems.  They then explore what you might have already tried and analyze why it did not produce the desired results.  Then, a collaboration begins to find the best strategy for success and the best tactics to make that strategy work.  There is no need to sell anything because it has been mutually created.  It is customized to fit your organization so there is no need to try to change the organization to fit it.

The difference between these two is profound.  The salesperson is often finished with you unless he can sell you something more or gouge you for ongoing royalties or licensing fees to continue using the program or process.  The consultant becomes a partner and adviser and only costs more if he adds more value.  The program or process your purchased gets used but remains the property of the salesperson. The strategies and tactics you mutually develop with the consultant are your own.

-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.