Safety Culture Excellence®

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

This is a follow-up to a previous blog that can be accessed here: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com/2013/09/18/more-is-not-better-only-better-is-better/

There seems to be naïve assumption that if training does solve a problem the answer is more training.  It is NOT!  The answer is better training.  Overtraining is a serious problem in the safety programs of several industries.  Workers are literally bombarded with information that is not sticky.  They leave training sessions confused instead of enlightened.  They feel like they are trying to drink from a fire hose.

One problem is that training is designed to limit legal exposure rather than effectively improve safety.  New employee orientation on project jobsites is often a massive information dump, rather than a focused effort to eliminate the most common safety challenges.  In fact, most safety training takes a blanket vs. a focused approach.  The training tries to cover every possible risk rather than focusing on the risks that have historically caused the most injuries.  

Blanket-type training is notoriously non-memorable.  Effective training creates awareness that is sticky, (easy to remember) so that workers can easily carry the knowledge in their memory until it becomes habitual.  Test or ask your trainees if they can recite from training what they should do to improve safety.  Ask them again a week or a month after training.  If they can’t remember, the problem lies in the quality, not the quantity of training.

-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 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

When you drive down the highway your eyes perform two distinct, but related functions.  You look at the entire roadway in front of you (scan) and you often glance at the stripes that line your position on the highway (focus).  Both of these functions are crucial to safe driving.  You need to know the entire path you are traveling, but also need to stay within your land to avoid other vehicles.

Most safety programs have a scan but lack a focus.  Workers are admonished to “be careful” and “think before you act” but are not focused on specific improvement targets.  Safety improvement is an elephant that must be eaten a bite at a time.  Scanning may maintain the status quo, but it will not lead to significant improvement.

The best-performing organizations in safety constantly target specific improvements while maintaining the emphasis on the big picture.  Workers are careful but also focused on specific improvement targets that can be transformational for the organization.  Safety cultures form around their ability to solve safety problems and move on to other targets.  They become a “can do” culture and thrive on conquering specific safety challenges.  Excellence is not one-dimensional.  It is a combination of scanning for all risks while focusing on overcoming specific risks.  The journey to safety excellence is taken a step at a time and these steps are the focus that complement the scanning of the road ahead.

-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 Decatur, AL. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published September 2013 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

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Austin, TX. I’d like to share an article written by Terry L. Mathis, published August 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

It is logical to begin a safety effort by addressing the risks with the greatest probability for causing injuries and the highest severity potential.  However, it is imperative that when the greater risks are addressed that the next ones in line get the new focus.  If an organization ever develops the mindset that they have handled the big things and all that is left are little things, not worth the bother, this is a formula for disaster.  Many rude wake-up calls have come via a rash of accidents caused by these “little things.”

Accidents are, after all, ambushes.  If we saw them coming we would have avoided them.  So it logically follows that anything we don’t keep our eyes on has the potential of ambushing us.  Some experts suggest that workers get injured when they fail to recognize the risk.  But underestimating the risk is equally dangerous.  

Many have adopted a goal or vision of “zero injuries.”  If properly explained and implemented, such a goal can keep organizations continuously addressing smaller risks as they successfully eliminate or manage larger ones.  When accident rates go down, the effort does not stop; it simply refocuses itself on the next tier of risks.  True excellence in safety is quite different from simply pretty good.  No risk should ever be considered a “little thing.”

-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 Covington, KY. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published August 2013 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

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.

An expert on team-building once suggested that an excellent team member may occasionally break a rule but would NEVER violate a principle.  At first, these two concepts seem incongruous.  How could someone break a rule without violating a principle as well?  The simple answer is that rules are incomplete and imperfect.  They are often made with good intentions but seldom completely address all contingencies or always achieve the goal for which they were created.  Principles, on the other hand, are more universal.  They apply to all or many situations whereas rules are often specific to a particular task or circumstance.  Also, a few principles can replace a lot of rules making it easier for workers to internalize them.  

For example:  A rule might be “Never walk underneath a suspended load on a crane” or “Never walk into the path of an oncoming fork truck” or “Always walk through the pedestrian doors and not through the equipment doors.”  The principle behind these and many other rules is “Always avoid placing yourself in the path of moving or potentially moving objects.”  The more often you are in the path, the more likely you will be struck by a moving object.

Teaching workers safety principles prepares them to meet a variety of risks and to creatively apply what they have learned.  Rules tend to be “one rule to one risk” and teach workers to be mindlessly compliant.  What do they do when they face a task for which the organization has no rule or is an exception to the rule?  If they know the principle, they tend to assess the situation and devise a strategy to address it.  

Rules are guidelines to play a game.  Too many rules can make safety seem like an artificial activity governed by arbitrary guidelines.  Principles are strategic values that offer knowledge and wisdom to apply to the variety of situations we face in life and work.  They guide thinking rather than replacing it.

-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.