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August 2020

By Brie DeLisi One of the main concerns we hear from our clients is that they want their employees to be accountable when it comes to safety – to follow the safety requirements, to own their mistakes, to speak up in unsafe situations, to look for opportunities for improvement, etc. Accountability and safety ownership is, after all, a sign of very mature safety cultures. In these cultures, there are typically fewer injuries and increased levels of productivity. What does it take to get your culture to drive accountability? Systems The most important aspect to drive accountability is to ensure the systems are built to

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Peer-to-peer safety feedback is an integral way to improve safety culture and prevent serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs). Unfortunately, employees often fail to speak up when they observe coworkers’ risky behaviors even though they want to. Survey research shows that more than 90% of respondents believe employees Giving and receiving peer-to-peer safety feedback can be difficult. Employees may be reluctant to give safety feedback because they’ve never done it before, think it’s a supervisor’s (or safety person’s) job, question their own knowledge of the coworker’s job, lack confidence in their ability to provide good feedback, or because others may

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD When it comes to doing the job well, people need to know what is expected of them. Ambiguity can be a very stressful experience, and a great deal of individuals are in a working situation where they would like to know precisely what they should do to be considered a high performer. Unfortunately, for those working in remote positions, this is particularly difficult. A team of researchers recruited 1135 participants to take place in a study that collects information on their work experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic over time. The data collection began in April of 2020 and

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By Brie DeLisi In any strong safety culture, both positive recognition and discipline are valuable. However, often organizations find the discipline piece is often considered an ‘easier’ method to drive change. Unfortunately, a focus on discipline without positive reinforcement and recognition will keep an organization at a ‘Compliant’ level of maturity – in which employees will solely focus on how to avoid punishment, rather than owning safety to keep themselves and others injury-free. You may wonder, what’s so bad about a motivation to avoid punishment? It is similar to only following the speed limit when you know there is radar and police monitoring,

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD Attitudes influence behavior. There are a host of reasons why justice perceptions should be of concern to companies. They influence the employee experience, the brand, the reputation of the company, and the customer experience. Justice perceptions are also related to important organizational outcomes like job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, citizenship behavior, trust, turnover intentions, health and stress (1,2). This begs the question — Researchers were interested in this question. In order to examine these relationships, they collected data from over 300 mine and factory workers (e.g., textiles, food processing, breweries, timber and sawmill plants) (3). The researchers were interested

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD The boundaries between work and home can sometimes feel blurry. For instance, it is not uncommon for us to bring work home with us — whether it is psychological or physical. If you have a negative confrontation with a manager, you might come home in an awful mood to your spouse. If you pull your back picking up something heavy on the job, you might not feel well enough to toss the ball with your kids on the weekend. This also happens in the opposite direction of course, too. If you are stressed or hurt at home,

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