Safety Culture Excellence®

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Episodes

Safety Culture Excellence is a weekly series designed to support your efforts towards excellence in performance and culture. For more information or to contact the host, visit www.ProActSafety.com.

Episodes

Nov 12, 2014

The Magnitude of Change

Nov 12, 2014

A lot has been written lately on the weaknesses of many change-management strategies and why many change projects fail. One simple guideline that can avoid many of these problems is simply to make the change in easy steps and to manage the perception of the magnitude of change.

Fact is, too much change too fast overloads people and systems. Overload causes inefficiencies and other problems all of which demotivate the change effort and the people involved. This does not mean that massive changes are impossible, it simply means that the change has to be divided into bite-sized pieces. Each piece has to be palatable and not prompt the overload mentality.

So if you want to change your culture or employee behavior or perceptions, pick out a few and give them the old “sell it to yourself first” test. If thinking about the bite makes you nervous or fearful, take a few items off the list till it seems easy to do. People don’t inherently resist change as much as they resist force and overload. All change strategies should mapped and each step should be relatively easy to do and not create negative emotions. How effective are your change strategies?

-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.

Nov 10, 2014

361 - Safety Culture: The Second Level of Leading Indicators

Nov 10, 2014

8 min

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in New Orleans, LA. I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote that was published 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 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

Nov 5, 2014

Where is the Safety Expertise in Your Organization?

Nov 5, 2014

Who is the safety expert in your organization? The larger the organization the more people should have safety expertise; but at what level does the expertise reside? Certain types of safety expertise can be limited to one or a few individuals at the mid-management level.

Regulatory compliance issues in detail can easily be referenced when needed from a centralized source near the top of the organizational chart. Expertise on daily safety issues should be located nearer to the job. This expertise can reside in the safety manager or supervisor if there are enough of them. If there are not enough safety managers or supervisors to adequately oversee the jobs, the expertise should reside in the crew lead or the workers themselves.

Many organizations are in the process of driving expertise down to the lower levels and most are finding great value in doing so. When every employee at every level becomes a safety expert at their particular job, organizations find their safety performance greatly improves. The old reliance on the boss telling the worker what to do and how to do it safely is changing to the boss becoming the coach who teaches the worker to direct his or her own efforts and to do them safely. Performance coaching skills are the vehicles that transfers safety and job-specific expertise to where it does the most good. Does your culture have this crucial capability?

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

Oct 29, 2014

The Most Expensive Way

Oct 29, 2014

My great grandfather used to joke that every time he trained a mule to plow without eating hay, the darned animal up and died on him. A lot of organizations starve their safety efforts and still expect them to produce results. There is nothing wrong with being frugal or financially conservative, but there is a point at which lack of funds or lack of support will actually be fatal.

Many leaders still think they can decide between a more expensive or a less expensive approach when, in reality, they are really choosing between success and starvation. Safety efforts should be analyzed to find which are effective and which are not; but those that are successful and efficient should be adequately funded and supported. Smart leaders realize that ultimately the most expensive way to do anything is the way that does not work.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

Oct 27, 2014

359 - How Do You Define Safety Excellence?

Oct 27, 2014

14 sec

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

Shawn M. Galloway
President, ProAct Safety

Oct 22, 2014

Milestones: The Tendency to Think Backwards

Oct 22, 2014

A client recently emailed me about a celebration his organization had held to recognize the workforce for reaching a “milestone in their progress towards safety excellence.” I asked if the “milestone” was something identified on their road map to safety excellence. After some hesitation he admitted that it was not on the road map but that they had recognized a significant achievement that they believed would be sustainable and wanted to celebrate it.

There is nothing inherently wrong with looking backwards and realizing you have accomplished something worthwhile, but there is a missed opportunity. Mapping out a journey and identifying milestones in advance does not detract from the satisfaction of reaching them. In fact, it reinforces the feelings because there was a clear plan to get there and accomplishing the goal is even more satisfying than accidentally realizing success. Clarity of purpose and direction creates milestones in the road ahead and not just in the rear-view mirror.

Visible progress toward goals is one of the cheapest and most effective motivators available. Use it deliberately, communicate your progress continuously, celebrate successes earnestly and motivate your workforce toward safety excellence relentlessly.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

Oct 20, 2014

358 - Hands and Feet or Hearts and Minds?

Oct 20, 2014

15 sec

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

Shawn M. Galloway
President, ProAct Safety

Oct 13, 2014

357 - The Four Levels of Training Effectiveness

Oct 13, 2014

14 sec

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

Shawn M. Galloway
President, ProAct Safety

Oct 6, 2014

356 - Focus on Value Not Tasks

Oct 6, 2014

15 sec

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

Shawn M. Galloway
President, ProAct Safety

Sep 24, 2014

Awareness vs. Performance

Sep 24, 2014

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.