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Featured Insights

By Propulo Consulting

By Eduardo Lan I often hear clients complain about workers' lack of engagement. It is not uncommon to hear comments like, “we ask them for their feedback and opinions, but they hardly speak up,” “it's like pulling teeth” or “we are afraid to ask them because we´ll get a laundry list of complaints.” Never for a moment do they stop to consider that the problem with communication might have more to do with how they listen than with what workers say. There are many benefits to effective listening. According to the article “Are you Really Listening?”, “When leaders listen in focused, attentive,

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Organizational safety communication is a key litmus test for healthy (or unhealthy) safety cultures. The best organizations have ongoing, open feedback throughout the organization. Weaker organizations have one-way traffic with communications (not getting employee input), insufficient psychological safety, and disorganized messaging. It is common for us to meet with EHS leaders who will provide pages of safety improvements over the last few months. However, when we speak with field employees, many are unable to list a single improvement they’ve seen. The hard work of making changes was made but the (seemingly) easy task of advertising them was not.

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By Eric Michrowski Active care is one of the most critical safety leadership competencies. While most leaders care about their team members’ wellbeing, they often fail to fully reflect this care in their actions. Leaders are busy and have to juggle many tasks and decisions competing for their attention at all times, but the importance of active care should not be swept aside. In fact, research shows that when employees feel genuinely cared for by their management, they demonstrate less risk-taking behavior and have less physical health complaints. Actively caring means showing personal concern and respect for employees on an individual level.

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By Emily Wood With a hiatus from everyday life throughout the past year and a half, it has become evident that proficiency in skills across all aspects of one’s life, from driving to using computer software found only in the office, even our ability to socialize in-person, decreases when done less. This idea highlights people and organizations cannot pick right back up from where they left off in early 2020. Failing to understand the unintended consequence of skill erosion that emerged as people battened down the hatches for months across the world, will increase preventable accidents and incidents in one’s personal

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By Eduardo Lan Raising safety awareness is essential to getting frontline workers to work safely and speak up whenever they encounter an unsafe condition. It is also necessary to generate a strong safety culture where workers actively care for each other and warn their peers when they see them taking an unnecessary risk. However, this level of safety awareness does not usually come naturally to people. As I wrote in my recent blog post “Start With Your Why For Safety”, people aren’t born thinking safety is important. Thus, we need others, typically our leaders, to help us awaken to this importance. Unfortunately, many

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Effective safety training engages employees in safety efforts and improves workplace safety performance. Unfortunately, employees often complain that safety training is boring and repetitive. Effective leaders improve safety training by providing hands-on training (e.g., use actual fire extinguishers during fire safety training), bringing in dynamic guest speakers, hiring training consultants for special programs, and ensuring new employees receive all necessary training before working and more experienced employees get periodic refresher training. Also, webinars are an increasingly cost-effective and convenient way to conduct training. This is especially true during COVID re-entry. Computer-based training programs are also increasingly used. However,

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