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Operational Performance

By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Since COVID, employees are working from home now more than ever. There are many benefits to this arrangement and people often report how much more productive they are now compared to working in a designated office (plus no rush hour traffic). However, there can be disadvantages as well. People may feel increasingly isolated and may also be less vigilant when it comes to their own physical safety. Here are some reminders for working from home…safely. Set aside a specific place to work. Having a designated work area helps compartmentalize work and minimize home distractions. It also sends a

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Create a poster campaign with small rewards to raise safety awareness in a fun, fresh way.  Safety initiatives that include employee participation help develop a stronger safety culture and increase operational performance. Strive for more than just compliance – make safety personal, so that people are using their better judgement to make safe decisions instead of just following orders. How do you make safety personal? One simple way is to use employees’ own words and images. Make posters! Giving employees the opportunity to create their own safety posters makes them more likely to care about the posters and the messages

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Musicians like The Eagles, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder and even the Beatles put out greatest hits albums. This 100th blog represents a compilation of key themes from the first 99 blogs I’ve written with Propulo. Hopefully a few of these summaries will spark ideas to help you improve your safety culture and prevent serious incidents and fatalities. Here are a few snippets from the vault:  RIP Paul O’Neill: Executive Safety Commitment Recently, the world lost a great safety champion in former Treasury Secretary and Alcoa Chairman Paul O’Neill. O’Neill was a fierce advocate of employee safety and took big

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By Emily Wood It is, once again, that time of year. The time where we set personal and collective workplace goals for the next 12 months. Whether it be to implement new safety initiatives, improve productivity or improve our own skills and knowledge, we sit for hours planning our yearly goals. Even though we all have the best of intentions, for many of us, only a few weeks later these goals go out the window, never to be thought of again until someone requests an update or the next year rolls around. In fact, studies show that 80% of annual goals

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By Eric Michrowski At the end of the day, every operation needs to deliver a product or service at a certain cost and quality level in order for the business to succeed. Improvements in productivity have a direct impact on the ultimate success of a business. The flip side is that most incidents tend to happen because of unsafe shortcuts due to the pressure of meeting customer or productivity needs. So what is the solution? It’s not about choosing between productivity and safety. Instead, it’s about creating a solid balance where people drive results and continuous improvement but don’t feel pressured to

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By Eric Michrowski and Emily Wood We often communicate to employees through trainings, weekly email updates and with posters plastering the walls, that safety must always be our number one priority. But, when our words and actions during times of high pressure emphasize production and on-time performance, the message surrounding safety is lost. It must be acknowledged that production pressure, much like the stress of completing work on time within an office, is inevitable within any industry and cannot be eliminated. However, achieving a balance between production pressure and safety by establishing standard procedures that build a resilient workforce and capture

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