Safety Culture Excellence®

Greetings all, here is a short video for this week's podcast. I hope it gets you thinking!

Shawn M. Galloway
President, ProAct Safety

Greetings all, here is a short video for this week's podcast. I hope it gets you thinking!

Shawn M. Galloway
President, ProAct Safety

Greetings all, here is a short video for this week's podcast. I hope it gets you thinking!

Shawn M. Galloway
President, ProAct Safety

Greetings all, here is a short video for this week's podcast. I hope it gets you thinking!

Shawn M. Galloway
President, ProAct Safety

When my staff wrote a training objective that contained the word “awareness” I made them re-write it.  Why?  Because it is not a performance term!  Awareness is simply a cognitive function.  All it requires is being awake and paying a modicum of attention.  Do you want your children to be aware of traffic or stay out of it?  Do you want your workers to passively be aware of risks or actively take precautionary measures? 

Training objectives need to be performance-based, i.e. “Given this training, workers will take these precautions regularly within 20 days.”  Performance-based objectives are observable in the workplace and can be measured. But training is not the only realm in which performance should the objective.  In safety, all communication, leadership, supervision, coaching, and peer interaction should be aimed at improved safety performance.

Yes, awareness is important; but it is a step toward a goal, not the goal itself.  If safety-improvement efforts stop at awareness, they will result in a mental state, not a performance step change.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

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.

A business unit manager who was frustrated with a bottleneck in his operations took over a job for several hours from an operator to speed up production.  His regional manager walked in and found him there and asked what he was doing.  When he explained that he was doing the job of an operator, his boss asked him, “While you are doing that, who is running the unit?”  He was working “IN” his unit and not “ON” it.

Many safety professionals are entirely too bogged down with day-to-day busywork to work “on” safety.  Others choose to roll up their sleeves and jump in rather than to stand back and strategically evaluate what really needs to be done.  Even corporate safety leaders often choose to do work rather than to manage safety strategically.  The net result is that many safety efforts are strategy-less, leaderless balls of energy being hurled at the big problem of accidents.  The underlying premise is that somehow more effort will win the day.

Often what is needed is not more but better effort.  Better effort is accomplished strategically.  When everyone is putting forth effort for the sake of effort and no one is working on strategy, that just doesn’t happen.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

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 Auburn Hills, MI. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published in the August 2014 edition of 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 Eunice, LA. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published in the July 2014 edition of 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