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Safety Culture

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 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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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Cognitive biases are systematic errors in thinking that occur as we process and interpret the world around us. In our increasingly fast-paced world, our “need for speed” from a mental processing standpoint is necessary. In fact, it’s an advantage and a sign of intelligence. However, it also causes problems because our big brains have limitations.1 We’re making up to 10,000 decisions every day and our brains use shortcuts to avoid being overwhelmed. Also, we make mistakes when we’re in a hurry. So, we fall back on what’s worked well in the past and make quick decisions

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Since COVID, employees are working from home now more than ever. There are many benefits to this arrangement and people often report how much more productive they are now compared to working in a designated office (plus no rush hour traffic). However, there can be disadvantages as well. People may feel increasingly isolated and may also be less vigilant when it comes to their own physical safety. Here are some reminders for working from home…safely. Set aside a specific place to work. Having a designated work area helps compartmentalize work and minimize home distractions. It also sends a

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