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December 2019

By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Organizational leaders make two common errors when trying to improve safety performance and culture. First, they overemphasize safety statistics to the point that employees believe the safety “numbers” trump genuine caring about their well-being. Second, they stress compliance with rules, to the point that employees may feel like their job is to avoid breaking any rules so they don’t get fired. Clearly, rules compliance and safety statistics are important. However, leaders should spend more time showing genuine caring for employees. This is an investment in your people as well as your culture. Increasing active caring increases the

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. For years, organizational leaders have used incentives to try and motivate safety. The rationale is that providing financial rewards for not getting hurt will get employees to “try harder” to stay safe. In reality, it simply encourages non-reporting which is why OSHA now frowns upon outcome-based incentives. It can also create other problems. As an example, we worked with a Canadian company where a woman slipped on the ice outside of her building in front of a group of coworkers. The person in charge of clearing the ice hadn’t done it. In addition to her embarrassment, the woman

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By Eric Michrowski The research is very clear on the value of diversity in the workplace. And when leaders think of diversity, it shouldn’t be limited to only 1 or 2 dimensions. The goal should be to bring as many perspectives and viewpoints to the table. In addition to being fair and a good corporate citizen, the purpose of diversity is to stimulate better debate when decisions are being made. When the right culture is in place, this helps improve the quality of solutions. In turn, this drives improved business performance. With tomorrow’s challenges and organizations becoming more global and diverse, those

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By Maggie Carey So you’ve uncovered the root cause of a problem in your organization, and you’re ready to plan and implement change. Improving organization performance and effectiveness can be a very exciting time period, but there are also many barriers that can be quite daunting. Whether you are planning for a simple change in a small group or implementing an enterprise-wide business transformation, keeping these five steps in mind can help you to effectively manage change. 1. Motivate change. One of the most important elements to managing change is motivating those involved in and affected by the change. The two significant ingredients

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By Margaret (Maggie) Carey Motivating change is a crucial element of change management. It is human nature to be resistant to change, especially as organizational change can often pose a threat to an employee’s job security, competencies and skills, and overall perceived worth. Two ways to motivate change are: 1) to proactively combat resistance to change and 2) to create change readiness. Proactively Combatting Resistance to Change As an organization begins a change management process, employees must go from the certainty that they currently work in, to the uncertainty and ambiguity that lies ahead. This uncertainty and ambiguity may cause anxiety and resistance

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