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Safety Systems

By Josh Williams, Ph.D. In Part 1 of this blog, active steps were addressed to reinvigorate your behavioral safety program with BBS 2.0. This included transitioning from lengthy (often pencil whipped) checklists and quotas to a more robust program focused on: Conversations over cardsPeople over paperQuality over quantityHigh leadership and employee engagementFixing problemsAdvertising improvementsShowing appreciation for involvement Setting up BBS 2.0 involves shortening and redesigning your card to promote better safety conversations and to address identified problems, involving employees in process design to increase discretionary effort, simplifying how cards are managed and analyzed (more focus on SIF potential), and creating or rebooting

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By Emily Wood Many high-risk industries have carefully studied thousands of near miss, accident, and incident reports, finding most were very similar. Investigations found the same causes of error influenced people to make mistakes, and if they changed the date, location and employee names, the same accidents and incidents were seen again and again. This blog speaks to five of the most common preconditions for human error (in no particular order) and identifies some countermeasures various industries have identified to combat such error. The American Institute of Stress found 83% of US workers suffer from work-related stress and US businesses lose $300

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Three-way communication is a technique used to ensure the reliable transfer of safety information in dangerous situations like confined space entry or working at heights. With these tasks, human error or poor communication may lead to serious injuries or fatalities. Use three-way communication when providing and receiving critical information in error likely situations, directing equipment operations with dangerous tasks, and instructing others when they are performing high-risk jobs. As an example, mountain climbers regularly use three-way communication with each other using carabiners to ensure they are properly tied off so that they don’t fall off the mountain. They are continually checking, verifying,

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Consider this true-life story. “Bob” works for a soft drink bottling company and part of his job is making sure the production lines keep running. A very large, heavy labeler automatically cuts labels and affixes them to the bottles. However, the labeler gets glue caked up on it which makes cutting the labels impossible. One day, he attempts to remove the glue with a rag without first locking out the line. He mistimes it and loses a finger and a half. Finish this sentence: Bob is  _____________. And now for the rest of the story… There were a number of

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By Emily Wood When it comes to improvements in safety, few industries have done as well as aviation, particularly when it comes to embedding organizational learning. Throughout the 1970s, the aviation industry saw a decline in aviation accidents resulting from failures in technology, however, little improvement was seen in the decrease of accidents resulting from flight crew performance. At the time, flight crew performance was listed as a causal factor in more than 70% of all aviation accidents. By focusing not only on technological improvements but organizational culture and human performance, learnings from near misses, incidents and accidents have decreased aviation

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By Eric Michrowski Observations have been and continue to be a powerful tool for improving safety performance – especially when they are used to their full potential. They allow leaders to recognize good safety behavior and opportunities for improvement. Unfortunately, in too many cases, the focus is placed on the volume of observations instead of the quality conversations taking place. People get stuck in a loop of filling out paperwork for the sake of meeting a certain quota, forgetting to take the quality of observations into account and losing sight of their ultimate goals: preventing injuries and saving lives. In fact, in

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