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Safety Training

By Josh Williams, Ph.D. We are continually asked by leaders some variant of the question below: “We provide all the PPE and safety policies for our employees and they still get hurt. What else can we do?” One way to address this issue to use the HAT principle which involves Hearing your people, Addressing their concerns, and Telling everyone improvements you’ve made based on their feedback. Sounds simple, right? Unfortunately, many leaders have not fostered a learning environment within their organizations. Getting and using employee feedback is simply not a cultural norm. As a result, important organizational decisions are often made in a

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By Dr. Josh Williams & Eric Michrowski Recently, on the Safety Guru Podcast, we identified our Top 21 predictions on what to look out for in Safety in 2021. Our list is based on emerging themes in all our interactions with senior leaders. We’ve republished the high-level themes regarding Safety's Top 21 for 2021 in this article, and encourage you to listen to our podcast for more details. Safety’s Top 21 for 2021 1. Mergers and Acquisitions: As the pace of mergers and acquisitions is likely to pick up in 2021, there will be increased attention on integrating Safety Cultures and conducting Safety

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD As we know in safety, formal training is incredibly important for employees to learn the practices, procedures, values, norms, and behaviors surrounding safe work. This provides the foundational knowledge for employees to do their jobs safely. Another important component to learning safety best practice is less official – it’s referred to as informal learning. Informal learning happens outside of official instructional efforts like training. Because we only spend a small amount of time in training compared to normal operations on the job, it makes sense that the majority of workplace learning takes place informally (about 80%) (1). This

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Soft skills training is needed at all leadership levels to improve communication, listening skills, and empathy. It also involves increasing the quality and quantity of safety recognition which is often found to be one of the lower-scoring items on our safety culture survey. Increasing recognition improves safety culture and increases the probability of safe work practices in the future. This reduces the risk of serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs). Leaders should also promote psychological safety so that employees feel comfortable speaking up. Creating an open culture encourages field-level communication which helps leaders better understand and resolve system weaknesses. People

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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 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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