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Reducing Injuries

By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Organizational leaders are understandably frustrated sometimes when employees are injured on the job. Of course, their primary concern is the well-being of the affected individual. However, they may also feel like they have policies in place which, if followed, would have prevented the incident. This leads to a common occurrence where an injury is almost immediately followed by a new rule or blanket policy that applies to everyone. Sometimes these policies make great sense as people were unaware of a risk. It may even save a life. Too often, however, these policies are applied poorly and don’t

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By Brie DeLisi At Propulo, we understand that emergency preparedness is one of the most important indicators of organizational safety culture maturity. Emergency preparedness includes several aspects including: Identification of risks (fire, medical, natural disasters, loss of power, security, etc.)Written plans to address those risks with actionable itemsConducting drills of those plans and testing systemsApplying continuous improvement to update and validate the plans when gaps are exposed Why does this make such a big impact on safety culture? Emergency preparedness is the most basic implementation of a safety program. Without a strong understanding of potential catastrophes and how to react, there is an incredibly

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. In of the most famous psychological experiments in history, Stanley Milgram set up a situation in which participants believed they were providing electric shock to a perfect stranger (who was actually a paid actor) as part of a study on memory and learning. Participants were told to shock the person, who was in another room, when he or she gave incorrect answers to various word pair questions. In some cases, the actor made a point to say he had a heart condition. In reality, the person was not being shocked. However, the participant didn’t know this. In fact,

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By Eric Johnson One of the biggest elements of a good safety program is the ability of employees to feel free to both own their safety to protect themselves from hazards and to then report safety incidents, close calls, as they happen within the workplace. Within groups that exhibit private compliance and higher maturities, the workforce feels comfortable and duty-oriented to enforce safety. But as we all know, safety is a journey, not a destination, and elements of a safety culture can quickly erode if not deliberately maintained. The canary in the coal mine for a decline in safety culture is the

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By Dr. Josh Williams VIRGINIA BEACH — The resignation email arrived in the morning, and the gunfire started in the afternoon. DeWayne Craddock, an engineer who had worked for the City of Virginia Beach for 15 years, notified his superiors on Friday that he intended to quit. Then at around 4 p.m., he embarked on a rampage in Building No. 2 of the Virginia Beach Municipal Center, turning its offices and corridors into a battleground. When it was over, 12 people lay dead and Mr. Craddock was fatally wounded.(1) The Virginia Beach shooting, the nation's deadliest of the year, unfolded when the

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By Brie DeLisi How many times have you seen a sign that says: “XX days since our last injury”? Or a pizza party, awards, or bonuses for no injuries? These celebrations are commonplace at businesses across the world. The original purpose of celebrating a lack of injuries is that it seemingly demonstrates that we kept our employees safe and to keep it up! It is an admirable and noteworthy accomplishment to keep employees safe for a whole year, or even years. However, there is an unintended consequence that has a tendency to rear its ugly head when this is our only

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