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Organizational Learning

By Emily Wood When it comes to improvements in safety, few industries have done as well as aviation, particularly when it comes to embedding organizational learning. Throughout the 1970s, the aviation industry saw a decline in aviation accidents resulting from failures in technology, however, little improvement was seen in the decrease of accidents resulting from flight crew performance. At the time, flight crew performance was listed as a causal factor in more than 70% of all aviation accidents. By focusing not only on technological improvements but organizational culture and human performance, learnings from near misses, incidents and accidents have decreased aviation

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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 Eric Michrowski As the new year rolls around, top safety leaders look for ideas to level up their safety strategy to ensure that all their team members come home safely to their loved ones. I recently sat down with Eduardo Lan, Dr. Josh Williams and Martin Royal on the Safety Guru Podcast to explore with them the top four safety megatrends that, in our collective opinion, deserve our attention in 2022.  #1 Returning to the Workplace while Factoring Mental Health, Stress, and Fatigue into your Safety Strategy The pandemic has caused immense pressure on mental health and sleeping patterns as 2 in 3

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Many years ago, we visited an Ohio steel mill to conduct safety culture training for hourly employees. To our surprise, people were excited to see us and anxious to get started on the training. This is not always the case with an 8-hour safety training class. I asked one employee why people seemed so enthusiastic and he replied, “30 minutes with Bob!” A Case Study in Smart Leadership: “30 minutes with Bob!” “30 minutes with Bob” was a program implemented by their new plant manager (named Bob). He replaced the outgoing plant manager who was recently fired. His predecessor was

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. There are no shortcuts to safety culture improvement. However, if there was a safety culture improvement ‘hack’ it would be getting and using more employee input for safety. One of the best ways of doing this is through safety suggestions from front-line employees. This should be done both formally (e.g., peer checks, safety committees) and informally (1-1 conversations). Many of the best and most practical safety ideas come from front-line employees. Also, getting more employee input leads to better decision-making and increased front-line discretionary effort for safety. For example, at one manufacturing facility in Southwest Virginia, the safety

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By KyoungHee Choi As leaders, have you ever felt that you are carrying too many heavy bags on your shoulders? Felt overwhelmed by circumstances around you? Often, leaders are trying to fill in their busy life with more than they can carry or don’t feel comfortable to be in a “Comfort Zone” position. While the concept of “Minimalist Leadership” is relatively new, the word and principles of “Minimalism” has been around for quite a while. We have all heard the saying “Less is more” popularized by minimalist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. I personally love his architectural style and this principle. In Asian

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