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Reducing Injuries

By Martin Royal Serious incidents rarely occur because people “don’t care about safety.” They occur because decisions are made in contexts that differ sharply from the conditions under which safety policies, procedures, and commitments were designed. This gap between intention and action, planning and execution, is best understood as the Emotion–Context Disconnect. For senior leaders, this is not a frontline issue. It is a governance, system design, and leadership challenge that directly affects operational reliability, workforce trust, and enterprise risk. Safety Risk Is a Leadership Problem, Not a Compliance Problem Modern organizations operate in environments defined by competing priorities: productivity, cost control, customer demand, regulatory

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Previous blogs have focused on core leadership competencies to fuel felt leadership and drive safety excellence. There are also key actions and programs that leaders should implement to improve safety culture and reduce the potential for serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs). Part 1 of the blog focused on tightening up current processes you likely already have to improve safety. Part 2 will (hopefully) provide some new ideas to demonstrate leadership commitment to safety. 1. Optimize performance management with more proactive focus on safety. To do this, develop and use Critical Leadership Observable Actions with behavioral anchors to measure

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Previous blogs have focused on core leadership competencies to fuel felt leadership and drive safety excellence. There are also key actions and programs that leaders should implement to improve safety culture and reduce the potential for serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs). Part 1 of the blog focuses on tightening up current processes you likely already have. Part 2 will (hopefully) provide some new ideas demonstrating leadership commitment to safety. Here are some guidelines for activities you’re likely already doing:   1. Improve near miss reporting. Many organizations struggle with getting close call information from the field. This often

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. For more than 25 years, I’ve heard senior leaders speak passionately about having zero incidents. This is often done with heartfelt messages and personal commitments to make it happen. This is a good thing in many ways: It’s aspirational to strive for zero incidents. This fosters a mindset of internal control and taking charge of your own destiny, which should be reinforced by leadership. This often leads to the development of leading indicators like leader time in the field and action items completed (from worker feedback) to prevent incidents. Incidents typically drop if proper actions are taken on the front end. However,

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. For many years, there was a powerful stigma associated with mental health issues. If someone had a physical injury, the question was, “What happened to you?” If there was a mental health concern, the question was, “What’s wrong with you?” Fortunately, this is beginning to change. There is a growing awareness of mental health concerns

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. For too many organizations, safety is reduced to a scoreboard of recordable rates. Life is good when rates are low. The sky is falling when rates are high. The absurdity comes in when comprehensive root cause analyses are done with recordables like bee stings and tick bites. Employees have to figure out how they could have prevented it. Managers get worried that their numbers will go up and that may put them on the radar screen with executives. What are we doing here? When everything is important, nothing is important. Leaders need to better distinguish between incidents with serious

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