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By Propulo Consulting

By Eduardo Lan As a safety leadership and culture consultant with Propulo Consulting, I am often asked by our clients to focus our efforts on the workforce to support them in shifting their safety mindset and behaviors. The logic behind this approach is based on the belief that changing how workers work will solve the problem. This approach is useful, but doesn’t always work long term, particularly if workers’ actions and behaviors are being driven by external forces, such as organizational culture, systems, and leadership.  Building a worldclass safety culture has everything to do with how leaders show up and choose to lead. It is leaders

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. It’s tough being a new employee. There are procedures to learn, relationships to build, and new skills to figure out. On top of that, many jobs are full of hidden (and not so hidden) hazards that make people nervous. Proper onboarding helps acclimate new hires to their novel environment. Supplementing your safety onboarding with a formalized “buddy for a week” program accelerates this acclimation and gets employees up to speed more quickly and more safely.    Real-life example:  To formalize mentoring with new hires, an energy company in Tennessee implemented a “buddy for a week” system. Essentially, experienced employees (with high job knowledge and

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By Eric Michrowski Speaking up saves lives. Looking back on the series of events that led to an incident, most people will recall something “off” – a gut feeling that they shouldn’t have proceeded as normal. Unfortunately, people usually don’t feel comfortable raising issues or sharing bad news. One of the most critical levers for leaders to drive is increasing team members’ comfort with speaking up, stopping work, and escalating issues. Feeling comfortable enough to raise issues without fear of negative repercussions is also referred to as psychological safety. Leaders often inadvertently encourage their teams to get the job done at all costs by praising a rapid

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By Josh Williams, Ph.D. Providing effective peer feedback for safety is one of the best ways to prevent serious injuries and fatalities. Employees understand the job and generally know when someone is putting themselves at risk. Plus, supervisors and managers aren’t always around when people are doing something dangerous.   Unfortunately, giving and receiving peer-to-peer safety feedback can be difficult. Employees may be reluctant to give safety feedback because they’ve never done it before, think it’s a supervisor’s or EHS’s job, lack confidence in their ability to provide good feedback, or worry that employees will be offended. Too many people take safety

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By Eric Michrowski When it comes to culture change, people often reference a ‘concrete middle’, which is the idea that senior leadership’s desire for change doesn’t pass through middle levels of management to reach the front line. It’s essential that safety culture changes pierce through this potential resistance, as safety is a primary concern, especially for front-line team members. Driving Safety Culture Across Your Organization Once training has clearly communicated leadership expectations around culture change to your team members, it’s time to turn these expectations into actions so that change momentum drives through your entire organization. Themes such as Psychological Safety (comfort speaking

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Dr. Josh Williams and Emily Wood On July 2nd of 2021, two people at the University Hospital Cleveland Medical Center were undergoing surgery to receive new kidneys to save their lives. And then something went wrong. “The health system confirms a kidney meant for one patient was mistakenly transplanted into the wrong person. Now we’re told the mistake wasn’t noticed until the second operation. UH won’t confirm how far along the surgery was when the transplant team realized they had the kidney intended for the first patient. Two “caregivers" — UH would not disclose if they are doctors, nurses, or other staff —

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