Safety Culture Excellence®

Is safety excellence a matter of stopping risks or starting precautions?  Should we focus on the “thou shalt nots” of safety, or encourage positive action?  This topic directly impacts the question we have discussed before, “Is safety excellence a matter of achieving success or avoiding failure?”  But beyond that philosophical point, let’s discuss the tools used for starting and stopping human behavior and their side effects.

The ultimate behavioral stopping tool is punishment.  In the behavioral sciences, anything that tends to stop behavior is consider punishment and what makes it effective is the timing and probability.  Negative consequences for behavior that are certain and timely tend to stop, or “extinguish” the behavior.  But punishment does not automatically start another behavior in its place.  Artificially-imposed punishment can also damage relationships and culture.  It can be important to stop certain behaviors that present unacceptable risks or damage safety culture, and punishment might be the right tool for that job.

Starting tools for behavior include positive reinforcement and motivation.  If the safety challenge is getting workers to identify risks, take precautions or participate in safety activities, these starting tools can be invaluable.  Starting tools also are relationship and culture builders.  Workers who help each other start better practices and improve performance tend to strengthen the bonds between themselves. 

Determining the right tools for safety excellence involves accurately identifying exactly what behaviors need to be stopped or started.  An effective safety strategy should include these distinctions.

-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.

The emphasis on the concept of confrontation in safety is epidemic.  Consultants, books and articles taut the virtue of teaching workers to confront each other over safety issues.  They claim that the willingness and ability to confront may be the key competency of safety.  They argue that it must become unacceptable to see a risk being taken and not confront the individual taking the risk.

The basis of this misguided concept goes back to two core misconceptions of safety thinking, (i.e. the idea that the goal of safety is to fail less and that all risk-taking is a matter of worker choice).  When one worker sees another being bad there must be a confrontation to make the worker less bad.  The worker taking a risk simply made a bad choice and confrontation will result in less-bad decisions in the future.  The truth is that safety excellence is about achieving success, not simply avoiding failure and that there are organizational influences that impact workers’ decisions that need to be discovered and addressed if lasting change is to be made.

The alternative to the concept of confrontation is the concept of coaching.  Coaching is a way to achieve success rather than simply avoid failure.  It involves workers building on each other’s strengths rather than simply trying to correct their weaknesses.  It is built upon a vision of success in which everyone helps each other reach a goal. It necessitates a vision of success and helps to identify organizational influences on workers’ behavioral choices.

Confrontation weakens relationships and culture and seldom results in lasting change.  Coaching builds relationships and culture and almost always results in improved performance.  Workers listen to their allies differently than they listen to their critics.  Confrontation creates either enmity within the safety culture or avoidance behavior that has the appearance of confrontation without the reality.  Either damages the very fabric of what it is supposed to improve.

-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.

The last several times I have asked clients what they are doing to make workers safer, they answered with a list of safety programs.  There is an underlying assumption that programs can shape people.  While training, meetings, onboarding and communication are definitely influences on behavioral choices, they are far from the only ones. 

I have witnessed situations in which such programs were doing mortal battle with the workplace, the culture, production pressure and other powerful daily factors which influenced workers to take risks.  The poor programs were outnumbered and overpowered.   These other influences were not being addressed in the safety efforts except through trying to strengthen the programs.

The recent emphasis and popularity of focusing on safety “culture” is, in part, an admission that people-to-people influences are important and must be addressed.  However, most organizations attempt to improve the safety culture by using what?  MORE PROGRAMS!  Again, this assumption that programs shape people and even the way people shape each other. 

Many organizations are attempting to program the seeds of culture while ignoring the climate and chemistry in which they want the seeds to grow.  Exactly the opposite approach is what most often brings success.  People respond to the environment in which they work which includes physical design, leadership, supervision style, respect for lifestyle issues, and being treated like an adult. 

For a brief moment, forget what your programs should be and focus on what your people should be.  What influences will make them feel good about becoming such a person and how can you create these influences in your organization? 

-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 Clinton, TN. I’d like to share an article Terry L. Mathis wrote that was published January 2014 in EHS Today Magazine. 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

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Grapevine, TX. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published December 2013 in Occupational Health and Safety Magazine. 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

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Roosevelt, UT. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published November 2013 in BIC Magazine. 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

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Mineral Wells, WV. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published October 2013 in BIC Magazine. 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

As more and more leaders and safety professionals realize the limitations of reactive safety, they search for leading indicators to help them manage safety more proactively.  This thinking fueled the concept that lagging indicators alone, are not truly representative of safety performance, nor are they predictive or prescriptive.

 The first round of so-called “leading indicators” was little more than a measurement of safety-related activities: hours of safety training, attendance at safety meetings, participation in safety programs, etc.  OSHA’s crackdown on incentives that could potentially suppress reporting of accidents drove many organizations to base their incentives on these activity metrics rather than simply not having an accident.  

When behavior-based safety became the rage, the measurement of behaviors from observations came to be thought of as a leading indicator. As safety culture became a buzz phrase, perception surveys gained in popularity and came to be considered another potential leading indicator.  The search for meaningful leading indicators goes on because no one of these has proven adequate in predicting and preventing injuries.

Where none of these alone succeed, all of them together potentially can.  A balanced-scorecard approach in which the metrics not only complement, but predict each other has proven quite effective in proactively predicting how to prevent accidents.  When you measure how much activity it takes to change perceptions, how much of a change in perceptions it takes to change behaviors, and how much behavior change it takes to change the lagging indicators, you begin to truly measure the effectiveness of safety efforts.  Just as balanced scorecards have revolutionized strategic management, with our most successful clients, balanced scorecards for safety have proven to have a transformational impact on safety management. How balanced are your measurements? 

-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 Fredericksburg, TX. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published September 2013 in ISHN Magazine. 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

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Craig, CO. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published September 2013 in BIC Magazine. 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