Safety Culture Excellence®

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Kissimmee, Florida. I’d like to share an article written by Terry Mathis, published May 2013 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, Sticky Stories are Safety Savvy.  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

When we talk to most executives about effective safety communication, they instantly focus on the vertical information (i.e., what flows from leaders to the workers and what workers send back to leaders).  Vertical communication can happen directly, through various communication media, or through the usual organizational levels person-to-person.  While this vertical information is important, so is lateral communication: what goes between workers and other workers.  

Safety engagement and behavioral programs often attempt to increase and/or improve lateral communication.  Regardless of whether you are using such a program or simply wanting to improve, if you want your workers to talk effectively to each other about safety, you should address the following issues:

1) Conversations between workers should be focused on improvement targets, not just common practice.  Targeted improvements create legitimate talking points and create discrete dichotomies of “did you do this” or “did you not do this?”  Having workers simply evaluate each others performance more often leads to disagreement than improvement.  Remember to consider targeting improvements in safety culture as well as accident prevention.

2) The model for conversations should be one of coaching rather than confrontation.  Confrontation creates enemies who disagree.  Coaching creates allies in change.

The goals of lateral conversations should be to, A) Encourage those working toward improvement, or B) To discover what is influencing or blocking improvements in those observed not meeting improvement goals.  

Often the best way of discovering such issues is simply to ask “Why?” or “Why not?” when a fellow worker is not doing the targeted precaution. Approaches that follow these guidelines more often prove successful.

-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, this podcast recorded while working in College Station, Texas. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published in the March 2011 edition of Canadian Occupational Safety Magazine. It was titled “I Had Your Attention, Now What? Ensuring Communication Effectiveness”. The published article can either be found at www.COS-MAG.com 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

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc

Greetings, this podcast recorded while working in El Paso, Texas. For the topic this week I’d like to share an article written by ProAct Safety’s Founder and CEO, Terry L. Mathis. It was published in January 2011 by Safety.com. It was titled “Preparing Workers for Safety Improvement” The published article can be found at www.Safety.com 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

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc

Greetings, this podcast recorded while working in Las Vegas, Nevada. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published in November 2010 by Canadian Occupational Safety Magazine. It was titled “Communicating Safety: Can I Get A Receipt?” The published article can either be found at www.COS-Mag.com 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

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc

Greetings, this podcast recorded while working in Newburg, New York. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article I wrote called “Black Holes of Safety: Gain Visible Progress Through Identification and Prevention” published October 2010 in Facility Safety Management Magazine. The published article can either be found at www.fsmmag.com 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

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.

Greetings from Gien, France. For the podcast this week, I’m privileged to share with you an interview between EHS Today’s Associate editor Laura Walter and Terry Mathis (the Founder and CEO of ProAct Safety).

The title was “Assessing the Safety Culture.” In the interview, Terry shares his 25 years experience working with safety cultures, including how it can be created, defined, measured and maintained. The interview was recently released by EHS Today as part of their great podcast series. Which I encourage you to subscribe to either on itunes or visit their website at http://ehstoday.com/podcasts/

Thanks and have a great week!

Shawn Galloway

ProAct Safety