Safety Culture Excellence®

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Bangkok, Thailand. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published April 2014 in OH&S 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

The late Stephen Covey said that one of the habits of highly-effective people is to “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood.”  Most safety programs do exactly the opposite and are therefore not highly effective.  Leaders and safety professionals decide what is needed and deploy new programs and processes without consulting the very people who know the issues in the field, and will ultimately determine the success or failure of new initiatives.  Organizations regularly hire consultants to analyze their problems and the consultants get the information to do so directly from the organization’s employees.  A good consultant is a good listener first and a good problem solver second.
 
But listening is more than just hearing sounds.  It begins with setting the right tone for the conversation.  There must be a non-threatening and respectful atmosphere in which the listening can take place.  There also needs to be an honest and frank expectation of how the information will potentially be used.  Skepticism often arises from past interviews or surveys from which no action has been taken.  Enough of this kind of skepticism can render the conversation useless.

Sometimes, the right questions need to be asked to spark the right discussions and discover the underlying issues.  When issues emerge from the discussions, they need to be probed and understood more fully. That means that the right questions need the right follow-up questions as well.  The whole process can build upon itself once those interviewed realize that their input is being valued and can potentially lead to improvements.  Listening is ultimately empowering people by taking them seriously.

-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 Bangkok, Thailand. I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote that was published March 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 Morgan City, LA. I’d like to share an article Terry L. Mathis wrote that was published February 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

When safety practice ignores the facts it’s no wonder why things don’t work well.  Research has shown and re-affirmed several facts that have escaped attention or reaction from common safety practices.  The following is only a short list of examples:

Fact:  People react emotionally before they react rationally.
Practice:  We try to convince people first with logic and then get them involved and bought in.

Fact:  People remember concrete facts better than abstract concepts.
Practice:  We generalize about safety and then (maybe) back up our generalization with specific examples.

Fact:  The messenger is often as important the message.
Practice:  We send out safety messages via email or ask whoever is available to deliver the message.

Fact:  Discovery learning is best.
Practice:  We tell everything rather than letting people extract lessons from stories.

As long as safety practices ignore the facts we can expect them to produce less than stellar results. What other facts do you see safety practices ignore?

-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.

There is an old saying that “Talk is cheap because supply is greater than demand.”  In safety, we find that leaders all too often talk and don’t talk at exactly the wrong times.  So what are the right and wrong times to talk about safety?

Wrong Time to Talk:  When you don't plan on taking action.  Talking about safety issues when no action is being taken damages credibility about as much as anything leaders can do.  Have you ever heard a whole work force say “They don’t put their money where their mouth is!”?  When talk is not paired with action, there isn’t much to talk about except future plans, and that conversation will set a future trap for leaders if they fail to follow through.

The second worst time to talk is when leaders urge workers to improve safety but have no solid plan for doing so.  Saying the awful generalizations like “be careful” and “think before you act” are insulting and meaningless.  

Right Time to Talk:  When leaders have invested either money, resources or time in safety and have made a difference, it is time to make sure everyone knows.  This should not be boasting or grabbing credit, but simply stating that the organization has addressed a safety issue.  Failing to let the workers know about significant progress or effort, perpetuates the perception that talk doesn’t match action.  It can also ambush workers with unexpected changes in their work place.

Leaders can also set specific behavioral targets and create true talking points.  While the tired approaches of preaching generic safety to the troops are often counterproductive, setting improvement goals and defining individual roles and responsibilities in achieving them can truly rally people to meaningful action.

The best safety leaders have learned when to talk and when to shut up.

-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 Canmore, Alberta. I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote, published October 2013 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

We have been told that the first step of doing any job is showing up.  This is equally true of the job of leading safety.  Leaders who are noticeably absent lose opportunities to effectively lead.  Obviously leaders cannot be everywhere every time; but they can pick and choose key opportunities to emphasize the importance of safety with their presence. 

When tragedies happen and leaders don’t show up, what is the message sent to the troops?  When major new safety initiatives begin without the in-person support of key leaders, how official and important are they.  When organizations have safety teams or committees which oversee safety efforts, how do they proceed when leaders fail to attend?

The physical presence of leaders must be accompanied by their involvement and attention as well.  A worker commented recently, “There was a serious safety incident and none of the leaders got mad.”  He reflected that at his last job leaders showed emotions when safety efforts didn’t go well and caused heated discussions and decisive actions.  In short, he equated emotion with caring.  Leaders show they care when they show up and participate.  What they do in their offices and the boardroom will not have the necessary impact if they are not present and engaged at key happenings in the workplace.  Leaders, start with step one.

-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.

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.

How many of your employees brag about the safety program and are excited about their participation? How many would rather pay their own money to not participate in or attend safety events? Engagement is accepted as an important indicator of the culture and the shared priority or value of safety. How many excited and willing participants do you have in your safety culture? How many individuals are eager to create and star-in a video to show precisely how proud they are? Weatherford found some.

As I’m currently traveling the many global oil fields to assess the major contractors' cultures of a major Oil and Gas Operator client, I’m exposed to some similar and some radically different approaches to safety. All of the organizations I’m interviewing have mature safety programs and evolving cultures around safety. Not all have videos they can point me to that outlines an approach they are proud of.

In some recent interviews, several individuals directed me to a video to learn more about a particular approach within their company, Weatherford. When the video was first brought to my attention in 2012, I was impressed, but not as impressed as when over a year later, across the world from the group that created it, others were bragging about it. To see this video, visit this YouTube link: http://youtu.be/i1yJgRJ4za4

I should point out that other organizations have videos created to highlight the pride in safety and accomplishments. Not all have reached a point of becoming viral. On a side note, I find it shameful that the majority of videos having to do with safety that become viral, are injury-related. I received one today that was intended to (according to accompanying message) provoke laughter. I stopped it half-way through as it was questionable whether the Darwin-award winners survived or not. I’m surprised people find decisions that led to major injury or death, funny.

Do your safety programs, videos and information make people smile, create interest and facilitate engagement? Or, do they prompt cringing, create disengagement and turn people off to the message? Safety should be viewed as more than a condition of employment. Safety adds value to the job site, personnel involved, and the families they are working to support. When people enjoy the content, they might (but rarely) share if they have the extra time. When they are a part of the content and it is entertaining and adds value, they make time to share.

- Shawn M. Galloway

Shawn M. Galloway is the President of ProAct Safety and the coauthor of two books, his latest published Feb 2013 by Wiley is STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence. As an internationally recognized safety excellence expert, he has helped hundreds of organizations within every major industry to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture.  He has been listed in this year’s National Safety Council Top 40 Rising Stars, EHS Today Magazine’s 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS and ISHN Magazine’s POWER 101 – Leaders of the EHS World and again in the recent, elite list of Up and Coming Thought Leaders. In addition to the books, Shawn has authored over 300 podcasts, 100 articles and 80 videos on the subject of safety excellence in culture and performance.