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Safety

By Josh Williams, Ph.D. In Part 1 of this blog, active steps were addressed to reinvigorate your behavioral safety program with BBS 2.0. This included transitioning from lengthy (often pencil whipped) checklists and quotas to a more robust program focused on: Conversations over cardsPeople over paperQuality over quantityHigh leadership and employee engagementFixing problemsAdvertising improvementsShowing appreciation for involvement Setting up BBS 2.0 involves shortening and redesigning your card to promote better safety conversations and to address identified problems, involving employees in process design to increase discretionary effort, simplifying how cards are managed and analyzed (more focus on SIF potential), and creating or rebooting

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By Eduardo Lan Organizations and their leaders often work on improving safety culture and safety performance by means of tightening up safety systems and providing both technical and non-technical training. They also engage in safety coaching focused on observing and correcting unsafe behavior and conditions. Although all of this is necessary and important, it is insufficient to generate a safe workplace. Ultimately, it is people who choose to follow rules and procedures and engage in safe work. Thus, no amount of safety training, system improvements and/or behavior management will be sufficient if people don’t want to work safely. Making a Safety Connection:

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By Josh Williams, Ph. D. Is your BBS process stale? Do these symptoms of a flailing program sound familiar? Overemphasis on quotasPencil whipped formsFocus on quantity but NOT qualityOverly long checklistsNo open-ended questions on card; few meaningful comments providedNo conversations following observationsObservations only being done by a select groupWeak analyses of observation data and commentsCards going into a “black hole” with little feedback share back to employeesFew improvements based on observation feedbackLow interest from employees and supervisors If this sounds like your program, it’s time to level up with BBS 2.0. BBS 2.0 focuses on the quality of conversations with observations and making tangible

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By Emily Wood Many high-risk industries have carefully studied thousands of near miss, accident, and incident reports, finding most were very similar. Investigations found the same causes of error influenced people to make mistakes, and if they changed the date, location and employee names, the same accidents and incidents were seen again and again. This blog speaks to five of the most common preconditions for human error (in no particular order) and identifies some countermeasures various industries have identified to combat such error. The American Institute of Stress found 83% of US workers suffer from work-related stress and US businesses lose $300

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Leaders demonstrate true safety ownership by spending time in the field asking safety questions with employees. This practice should be formalized across leadership groups, from supervisors to the C-Suite. These “listening tours” involve two-way dialogue to better understand employees’ safety suggestions, concerns, and opinions. The purpose is to bolster relationships and actively listen. It is not an enforcement activity or traditional safety audit.  When done effectively, these tours create more frequent and higher quality leader-field engagement. This leads to better relationships with workers, improved overall communication, better decision making with safety, higher morale, and additional discretionary effort with less division between the office

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Three-way communication is a technique used to ensure the reliable transfer of safety information in dangerous situations like confined space entry or working at heights. With these tasks, human error or poor communication may lead to serious injuries or fatalities. Use three-way communication when providing and receiving critical information in error likely situations, directing equipment operations with dangerous tasks, and instructing others when they are performing high-risk jobs. As an example, mountain climbers regularly use three-way communication with each other using carabiners to ensure they are properly tied off so that they don’t fall off the mountain. They are continually checking, verifying,

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