Safety Culture Excellence®

Trucking companies are beginning to address driver behaviors with new technologies.  Several companies make tracking devices that monitor drivers and photographically capture their behaviors and the road conditions in which they are operating.  Post trip, these companies can know how many times drivers hit the brakes hard, changed lanes suddenly, exceeded speed limits, and exhibited other behaviors critical to driving safety.  Many of these organizations are also monitoring driver cell phone calls and texting while driving.

All this information is supposedly designed to prevent accidents by changing driver behavior.  But how these technologies impact organizational safety culture seems to be an afterthought.  If used to coach drivers into better driving habits they can potentially create super safety cultures in which drivers strive for more excellent performance.  If used as an advanced way to police and punish drivers for offenses previously undetectable, they could seriously destroy safety culture and create a police state in its place.  

It is not technology that impacts safety culture, but the way in which organizations implement technology.  We have NEVER seen a safety culture punished into excellence.  We have seen many cultures coached into excellence.  How you use technology is up to you, but consider the culture you will create as well as the behaviors you will identify.  A degraded safety culture can quickly erase gains made through policing safety technologically.  

-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 Starkville, Mississippi. I’d like to share an article written by Terry Mathis, published June 2013 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, The Perceptions That Shape Safety Excellence.  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 Bismarck, North Dakota. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published March 2013 in Occupational Health and Safety Magazine.  It was titled, Stop Trying To Create A Safety Culture. 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, available through WILEY (publisher), Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

The fact that perceptions affect safety cultures is undeniable, yet the best intending organizations often pay little attention to perceptions and the conditioning affect they have on new employees or the company. Whether accurate or not, perceptions become culturally-norming beliefs. When these common beliefs are combined with unclear values, potentially negative attitudes, and hypercompetitive priorities, a dangerous mixture of influences is placed on individuals attempting to solve problems in day-to-day operations. The need to understand perceptions and what drives them is critical.

Many organizations measure perceptions, but few effectively manage them. There are two types of perceptions: accurate and inaccurate. Which ones are you responding to? Perceptions are influenced by multiple sources, both internal and external. Unmanaged perceptions negatively affect safety communication. Even worse, they have been identified as contributing factors in multiple catastrophic incidents.

Culture is made up of common practices, attitudes, and perceptions of risks that influence behavioral choices at work and away from work. Culture is also influenced by management, leadership, supervision, workplace conditions, and logistics. Measuring a culture involves a complex metric of perceptions, workplace realities, past accident history, and inter-connectivity of the people.

Perceptions are an important consideration when determining methods to improve safety or other aspects of performance. Perceptions affect behaviors, and they should be measured to determine a starting place for cultural modification efforts. Perception surveys can help identify areas for improvement and can serve as a baseline for measuring the effectiveness of improvement efforts.

The workshop focuses on how to measure, understand, and manage the perceptions that either facilitate or impede achieving and sustaining safety excellence. Attendees will be provided with extensive examples of perception survey report templates and detailed examples of different reporting styles.

During this workshop you will learn how to:

• Build Support
• Define the scope
• Determine the goals
• Define the users and audience
• Define terminology
• Determine categories and appropriate statement
• Tools to analyze and categorize findings
• How to administer electronically and manually
• How to maintain trust in the survey process and hidden pitfalls to avoid
• Categorize the results by focusing on internally-implementable action plans

For more information contact ProAct Safety at 936.273.8700 or info (at) ProActSafety.com

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety

www.ProActSafety.com

www.SafetyCultureExcellence.com

As a leader, you may have heard someone at your company say something like the following - usually after an accident or near-miss: "We need to improve our safety culture." The problem is, a "safety culture" isn't something you can just pick up like a new batch of hard hats or ear plugs. It's something that needs to run deeply through your organization at all levels - something that goes beyond mere lip service and inspirational "safety first" posters. So how do you go about getting, or improving, a true culture of safety at your workplace? In this workshop you'll learn how.

For more information contact ProAct Safety at 936.273.8700 or info (at) ProActSafety.com

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety

www.ProActSafety.com

www.SafetyCultureExcellence.com

Use the latest Behavior-Based Safety Technologies for spearheading safety process improvement, borrowing proven techniques from Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and experiences from over 1,500 successful implementations.

Create a customized plan to assess and improve site and/or organizational safety culture. Common myths about safety culture will be dispelled and a good working definition will be developed to empower understanding and customization. Assessment methodologies will be discussed and compared and each participant will see how to best determine the cultural strengths and improvement opportunities.

Based on the assessment findings, plans will be formulated to find the most practical and effective strategies to build on cultural strengths and address weaknesses. Opportunities will be investigated to utilize other site improvement initiatives to aid in the cultural improvement plans. All plans will conclude with measurement strategies to ensure long-term change viability and early identification of problems.

For more information contact ProAct Safety at 936.273.8700 or info (at) ProActSafety.com

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety

www.ProActSafety.com

www.SafetyCultureExcellence.com

Greetings, this podcast recorded while in Indianapolis, IN. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote that was published in April 2012 in his column in EHS Today Magazine. It was titled, Step 1 of a Safety Excellence Strategy. The published article can either be found at www.EHSToday.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. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store.

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc

Greetings, this podcast recorded while in Soda Springs, Idaho. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published in March 2012 in my column in BIC Magazine. It was titled, Perception Surveys: Myths and Managing Results. The published article can either be found at www.BICAllliance.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. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store.

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc

Greetings everyone, I wanted to share with you a new workshop we have created to help you further improve your safety culture and performance and achieve safety culture excellence. To see the currently scheduled dates and locations around the world, please visit www.proactsafety.com and click on the events tab. If you would like information on a private workshop, seminar, keynote speech or consulting, contact us at info @ proactsafety.com This particular workshop is titled: Developing and Administering a Custom Perception Survey.

To register: http://proactsafety.com/events/developing-custom-perception-survey

I hope to see you there!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.

Greetings, this podcast recorded while in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published in the December 2011 edition of BIC Magazine. It was titled “Do-It-Yourself Safety Perception Surveys: Six Important Steps”. The published article can either be found at www.BICALLIANCE.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 podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc