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Employee Engagement

By Eduardo Lan Many organizations seek world-class safety performance, which is the result of robust safety systems, effective safety leadership, and a safety culture that elevates individual safety awareness, accountability, and ownership. An important part of this, particularly as it pertains to safety leadership, has to do with both psychological safety and straight talk. Defined by Simon Sinek, “as an environment created by leaders in which people feel safe enough to speak up without any fear of humiliation or retribution (Sinek, 2021),” psychological safety is brought about through caring leadership. Psychological Safety Unleashes Discretionary Effort When we feel safe with others, particularly our leaders, we let our guard

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By Eric Michrowski The true implication for an organization that isn’t seeking every opportunity to learn is to accept to operate with a certain level of ignorance. Such comfort with organizational ignorance is one of the biggest barriers to success for businesses and is particularly dangerous when it comes to organizational safety. Companies need to, without compromise, learn from small events, near misses and injuries in order to systematically remove potential risks and reduce SIF potential. This is why leading organizations work to create an environment where workers are comfortable reporting close calls and incidents.  By focusing on using near misses and even

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Leaders need to get more input from employees about safety. Better decisions are made and practical improvements are made when employee input is solicited and used. Participation rates are also higher. Years ago, a behavioural safety process was implemented in a manufacturing firm as part of a NIOSH grant. Half of the group designed their own card and rules for use (“participation group”). The other half were given a card with instructions to follow (“compliance group”). The participation group that designed their own process completed 7 times as many observations as the passive compliance group. And employees

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Improving safety culture requires a lot of time, effort, and energy…plus a LOT of employee participation! One powerful way to get employees involved in safety is to advertise all the good things you’re doing to keep them safe. This is especially important when improvements are made based on employees’ suggestions. When workers bring up concerns, report close calls, and provide safety suggestions it’s extremely important to listen and respond well. Otherwise, people’s opinions go into “a black hole” and employees shut down. There’s little point providing your safety input if no one is listening. Strong leaders share safety successes

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Sometimes safety can feel like a drag. Leaders are constantly reinforcing safety meetings, rules, policies etc. These are critical safety accountabilities but aren’t always fun. Here are two quick ways to add a little spice to your safety programs. Safety Fairs Fairs aren’t just for kids. Establish annual employee safety fairs to reinforce safety and have some fun. Provide speakers, health tests, music, food, and giveaways (like first aid kits) and invite employees’ families to join in on the fun. Forward-thinking organizations emphasize wellness programs to promote employee health and safety. Hosting events centered around safety shows that your

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Strong safety rules, policies and procedures are integral to incident prevention. While the topic of “rules” isn’t scintillating, it’s extremely important to get it right with procedures. It’s also easy to mess up if you’re not careful. For example, one auto manufacturing facility over-reacted to an employee eye injury by mandating safety glasses in all areas of the plant even where glasses really weren’t needed. This is sometimes called the shotgun effect. Although most employees begrudgingly wore their safety glasses, several employees got creative and popped the lenses out of their safety glasses and simply wore the

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