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By Propulo Consulting

By Dr. Josh Williams  In 2009, Sandra Bullock played Leigh Ann Touhy in the popular film, “The Blind Side.” The movie was based on her family’s adoption of Michael Oher, an eventual Super Bowl champion who played nearly a decade in the NFL and made more than $32 million. The story begins with Touhy spotting Oher, who was shivering in the rain at night without enough clothes to stay warm or a place to sleep. She offers to let him sleep on their couch – beginning a series of events that ultimately leads to the Touhy family adopting Oher. The story

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By Brie DeLisi When an incident occurs or a particularly hazardous situation is discovered, who participates in remedying the situation? If the safety representative and the supervisor are the only participants, you may want to reconsider your approach to be more collaborative in order to reduce rework, future injuries and creating additional hazards. Who should be included in a collaborative safety approach? For starters, there should be a cross-functional team with representation from anyone who interacts with the hazard and anyone who might have insight into the hazard. The purpose of including this range of individuals is to gain as much perspective as

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation in judgement in which individuals create their own subjective reality that don’t always align with reality. This leads to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, and illogical interpretation of events (Haselton et. al., 2005). In a nutshell, cognitive biases hinder clear thinking and promote risk-taking behavior. Examples may include not tying off at certain heights, entering a confined space area without proper PPE, and grinding without a face shield. The question is why do people ever take these risks? Understanding cognitive biases helps individuals be more mindful of their actions and avoid 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 Madison Hanscom, PhD It is near impossible to change someone’s mind — but this can feel like an important mission for leaders and safety professionals. Some try to convince through arguing, others like to give people options to persuade them, many try appealing to emotions, and others use an ‘information overload’ approach that includes facts and figures. But what really works? How can we convince someone to work safely? How do attitudes really change? To begin, you have to make it about your specific people in their specific situation. (That’s a less direct way of saying “it depends”.) Because there’s not

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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 will be detailed in this 5-part blog series. The first four focused on ways to improve safety leadership, systems, people

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