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May 2021

By Josh Williams Ph.D Background Organizational leaders are increasingly turning to Human Performance (HP) principles to improve safety culture and performance. Unlike the old “command and control” engineering approaches, HP emphasizes the importance of improving environmental contingencies to encourage safe work practices. In fact, HP philosophy holds that human error is inevitable and is a predictable outcome of human beings operating in flawed environments (Conklin, 2012). Basic HP tenants include (Williams & Roberts, 2018): Error-likely situations are predictable, manageable, and preventable. Most incidents are influenced by system factors like confusing procedures, excessive production pressure, faulty tools/equipment, insufficient personnel, and ineffective training.When SIFs occur, workers

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By KyoungHee Choi “What is the Flip side?” This is a great question, designed to get us thinking about things in a different way. Flip side leadership is looking at problems and solutions through a new lens by considering a different or opposite aspect, possibility, situation, or result. For leaders, it is a powerful catalyst for integrating creative thinking and new insights into your organization culture. Business leaders recognize the creativity gap in their organizations: While roughly 82% of companies connect creativity with strong business results, only 11% agree that their organizations implement creative thinking as a core element in their business

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By Eric Michrowski Observations have been and continue to be a powerful tool for improving safety performance – especially when they are used to their full potential. They allow leaders to recognize good safety behavior and opportunities for improvement. Unfortunately, in too many cases, the focus is placed on the volume of observations instead of the quality conversations taking place. People get stuck in a loop of filling out paperwork for the sake of meeting a certain quota, forgetting to take the quality of observations into account and losing sight of their ultimate goals: preventing injuries and saving lives. In fact, in

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By Eduardo Lan When it comes to assessing an organization’s safety culture, we often look at the organization’s leaders, the behaviors of workers and employees, and the rules, policies and procedures. These are all important pieces of the puzzle, but they do not paint a full picture. According to Michael D. Watkins (2013), “While there is universal agreement that (1) it [organizational culture] exists, and (2) that it plays a crucial role in shaping behavior in organizations, there is little consensus on what organizational culture actually is, never mind how it influences behavior and whether it is something leaders can change.” When working

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D Improving safety culture should be an ongoing mission for leaders. In the last blog, best practices from the field were shared regarding minor injury reporting, employee input with rules, active caring messaging, proper incentives use, wellness, and mentoring. In this blog, “not so best” practices will be presented. These are pitfalls to avoid based on real-world examples, including misapplied blanket policies, complacency issues, setting poor safety examples, outcome-based incentives, and sapping personal control. Misapplied Blanket Policies Some corporate safety policies are critical to prevent SIFs. Others may seem frivolous and non-applicable. For example, one auto manufacturing facility over-reacted to

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