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Safety Communication

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 Martin Royal The Visible Leadership Paradox Over the years, I've had the opportunity to interview many workers in various industries, and a common theme often emerges: Executives are a significant source of distraction and, as a result, a potential safety liability when showing up at the work site. Some crews even stop work entirely when a manager, especially a senior or executive-level leader, arrives, creating a dilemma. On the one hand, we encourage leaders to be more visible, to prioritize site visits, and to conduct safety observations. Conversely, many leaders are hesitant because they've bought into the narrative that "managers are a

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By Josh Williams, Ph. D. Much of the focus on improving organizational safety today focuses on influencing safety behaviors (e.g., Behavior-Based Safety) and improving organizational systems to reduce human error (e.g., Human Performance). These are both critically important to advance safety culture and prevent serious incidents and fatalities. But what about employee safety attitudes? During training sessions, I’ve often asked employees to tell me which of the following is most important with their coworkers: experience, intelligence, or attitude. Initially, I expected that most employees, especially those with more tenure, would tell me “experience.” However, employees have overwhelmingly said “attitude” regardless of their

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Over the last few years, we’ve been hearing over and over how hard it is to find high-quality employees for physically taxing jobs. In some cases, it’s difficult for employers to substantially raise wages and stay competitive. This leaves them in a position where candidate pools have shrunk and, in many cases, people applying for jobs have little hands-on experience. “We’re hiring people who don’t know how to use a shovel.” This creates insufficient personnel and the people that you do have are often stretched thin, which leads to a host of complications that compromise safety like

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By Julia Beckel Due to the dispersed nature of their work, lone workers are largely responsible for their own health and safety, and often are needed to assess and identify a variety of occupational hazards such as heat exhaustion, fatigue, and environmental distractions. While modern research has shown a number of mechanisms for supporting the health and safety of traditional workforces, organizations are increasingly tasked with understanding how to translate these support systems for their dispersed workforce.   A particularly relevant challenge is how to extend and promote a strong safety culture among workers who are not co-located – keeping mobile

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. There is a large body of evidence showing the benefits of safety culture advancement including improved: safety motivation and participation (Neal & Griffin, 2006), employee commitment (Clarke, 2006), perceptions of leadership buy-in (Brown & Holmes, 1986), and other organizational factors like job satisfaction, likelihood of staying with the job, and decreased stress (Morrow & Crum, 1988). I would like to share a few examples of client case studies showing why safety culture improvement matters. Improving safety culture is also associated with fewer workplace injuries (Barling et al., 2002; Clarke, 2006; Gillen et al., 2002; Zohar, 2000, 2002).

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