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Safety Leadership

By Eduardo Lan Leaders play a crucial role in the success of an organization. It is they who set the standard for what is acceptable and desirable within the group and the criteria by which you can get promoted or fired. As such, team members look to their leaders to gauge expected behavior. As the saying goes, “that which my boss finds interesting, I find fascinating.” Unfortunately, these expectations are not always clear, leaving team members confused and guessing. According to a Gallup study, 50% of managers don’t set clear expectations, which ultimately has a negative impact on productivity and results (Holland,

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Football coaches like the Patriots’ Bill Belichick make more than $10M per year trying to guide their teams to an NFL championship. Ridiculous sums of money? Maybe. But there are lessons learned from elite coaches that can be applied to safety culture improvement.   Coaches spend countless hours preparing their weekly game plans. This includes reviewing past game tape to identify strengths and shore up weaknesses and properly preparing for next week’s opponent. It’s an ongoing process of performance review, planning, execution, and re-evaluation.  Safety culture assessments and strategic planning are similar processes (minus the game tape and weekly schedules).

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By Eduardo Lan Many organizations seek world-class safety performance, which is the result of robust safety systems, effective safety leadership, and a safety culture that elevates individual safety awareness, accountability, and ownership. An important part of this, particularly as it pertains to safety leadership, has to do with both psychological safety and straight talk. Defined by Simon Sinek, “as an environment created by leaders in which people feel safe enough to speak up without any fear of humiliation or retribution (Sinek, 2021),” psychological safety is brought about through caring leadership. Psychological Safety Unleashes Discretionary Effort When we feel safe with others, particularly our leaders, we let our guard

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By Eduardo Lan Safety moments are quite common in organizations with an established safety program. These begin some meetings with the intent of focusing on safety, elevating its importance and ownership. Usually, a recent safety incident is reviewed, statistics are shown, or a general message around safety is presented. Unfortunately, these safety moments don´t always generate the level of engagement required to make them meaningful, wasting a precious chance to drive the desired safety culture and sometimes even diminishing its importance in the minds of those attending. Call to Action: To elevate the importance and ownership of safety, we must involve people in a

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By Eric Michrowski As the new year rolls around, top safety leaders look for ideas to level up their safety strategy to ensure that all their team members come home safely to their loved ones. I recently sat down with Eduardo Lan, Dr. Josh Williams and Martin Royal on the Safety Guru Podcast to explore with them the top four safety megatrends that, in our collective opinion, deserve our attention in 2022.  #1 Returning to the Workplace while Factoring Mental Health, Stress, and Fatigue into your Safety Strategy The pandemic has caused immense pressure on mental health and sleeping patterns as 2 in 3

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By Eric Michrowski When it comes to culture change, people often reference a ‘concrete middle’, which is the idea that senior leadership’s desire for change doesn’t pass through middle levels of management to reach the front line. It’s essential that safety culture changes pierce through this potential resistance, as safety is a primary concern, especially for front-line team members. Driving Safety Culture Across Your Organization Once training has clearly communicated leadership expectations around culture change to your team members, it’s time to turn these expectations into actions so that change momentum drives through your entire organization. Themes such as Psychological Safety (comfort speaking

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