Safety professionals collect data. It doesn’t make a difference if your focus is general safety, occupational hygiene, or a combination of the two. Performing safety observations, collecting air samples, and contributing data analysis to make inferences on potential hazards are … Read More
Safety
Relationships Are Not Built Behind a Desk
“If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message.” –Kouzes & Posner Much of my career and my writings have focused on building trust and productive partnerships between organizations’ workforce and leadership through personal and adult-to-adult interactions. … Read More
Safety, Commonsense, and Nonsense
Nonsense “Safety is nothing more than using common sense! In the aftermath of accidents, 85% are found to have been preventable.” “According to safety professionals, 4 in 5 serious injuries are the result of workers not being sensible on the job and … Read More
Safety Observation Training – The Feedback Conversation
When a safety system is built around simply observing and recording results, it can create a culture where workers experience inspectors as ‘unwelcome outsiders’ rather than ‘trusted partners.’ In a previous article, Safety Observation Program Defined, certain observation approaches that … Read More
The Importance of Periodic Performance-Based Assessments (PBA)
Are We Safe Yet? How Do You Know? How do you know your company is safe? You should already have some clues beyond your OSHA injury rates and other lagging indicators. A lack of recent (reported) injuries is a demonstrably … Read More
Our Stubborn Problem with Serious Incidents and Fatalities – Part I
In 2011, Terry Norris, then president of the American Society of Safety Professionals, commented on the failure of American companies to reduce the rate of serious incidents and fatalities (SIFs). “A statistical plateau of worker fatalities is not an achievement, … Read More
