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Safety Systems

By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Forward thinking leaders are continually searching for ways to advance safety culture and prevent serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs). Several years ago, I published a book with Government Institutes entitled, “Keeping People Safe: The Human Dynamics of Injury Prevention.” The book was designed to be a user-friendly guide for leaders to improve safety culture and performance. Here are key takeaways from the book that may help your safety improvement efforts. Each of the five sections in Figure 1 are detailed in this 5-part Blog Series following with Systems. Safety Systems One of the challenges with safety change efforts is

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Effective safety leaders have self-motivation styles that help them accomplish organizational goals. Four self-motivation styles (Steers & Porter, 1991) are relevant for understanding the self-motivation of safety leaders. • Need for Affiliation (nAFF) - Leaders high in nAFF are motivated by group cohesion and healthy interpersonal relationships. They often attend to the emotional needs of others and have a strong desire to be liked by individuals in their group.• Need for Achievement (nACH) - People with a high nACH take responsibility for solving problems, are often competitive, and are extremely concerned with successfully completing their tasks.• Need to

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. One of the most important aspects of safety leadership is providing effective safety management systems and a safe work environment. Employees are more likely to be injured if the organization has safety management system failures such as inadequate manpower, unreasonable production pressure, excessive overtime, faulty equipment, insufficient safety training, unclear safety policies, non-existent safety meetings, poor safety communication, and blame-oriented discipline procedures. Leaders improve safety culture by optimizing these key safety management systems: • Close Call Reporting: Close call reporting should be encouraged in a learning environment. Close calls help people learn from each other to prevent serious

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By Brie DeLisi Creating and implementing safety changes in an organization is no easy task. There are so many opportunities for failure – not having a thorough plan, unanticipated roadblocks, a lack of resources, ill-suited programs and procedures. Even if all of those items are covered, the most impactful is whether or not there is buy-in from the greater employee population. Below, we’ll cover tips on how to generate employee buy-in when making changes to organizational safety. Employee Involvement – perhaps one of the most critical steps is to actually involve employee representatives in the change process itself for a number of

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Effective leaders continuously look for ways to increase employee safety commitment. Employees who feel committed to the organization are more likely to work safely, caution others for safety, and get actively involved in safety efforts. Those who aren’t committed rarely go beyond the call of duty for safety or anything else. In fact, they may have more serious issues such as non-compliance, absenteeism/tardiness, and confrontations with others. Organizational commitment consists of (Saal & Knight,1995): Strong support and acceptance of the organization’s values and goals. The willingness to put forward considerable effort for the organization. A strong desire to maintain membership

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By Josh Williams, Ph. D. Leaders need to make sure they set intelligent safety goals to improve performance and prevent SIFs. Proper goal setting helps field leaders and employees understand the value of a unified greater purpose. They also set objective, actionable behaviors which should be integrated into daily activities. Research demonstrates that there is a statistically significant reduction in injuries when leaders effectively articulate a compelling vision and inspire employees to work towards goals that meet that mission (Hoffmeister et al., 2014). Also, a 10% improvement in employee’s understanding of organizational values and goals results in a 12.7% reduction in

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