The Real Importance of Regular Safety Meetings

Many years ago working with a very successful safety manager, we asked the question “what is the single most important thing you can do to reduce accidents and injuries”.  His answer was simple:

“Communicate, Communicate, Communicate”

He went on to say that if every employee could have a safety supervisor with him every step of the day, your safety performance would approach perfection.  Safety is about communications, starting with training and then all the strategies you put in place in reinforcement of training, especially safety meetings.  The more and better the communications, but better the results. 

Safety meetings are ubiquitous, when done correctly they have a high return on the investment. The primary criteria when evaluating any safety tool should be… “Does this help keep my employees safe from injury on the job?”   Safety meetings are the front line of your communications strategy.  They improve communications in a number of ways:

Increase Awareness

They prepare the employee for hazards they may face the potential danger and proper safe practices and help them to avoid a preventable incident.

Supplemental Formal Training

Safety meetings can be a great tool to remind employees about certain hazards and safe work practices that they have previously learned.

Increase Vigilance on the Job

Regular safety meetings means employees are reminded on a regular basis to remain vigilant, avoid hazards, and employ safe practices.

Create Open Dialogue

Safety meetings are the next best things to face to a face conversation.  They are more than one-sided lectures from supervisors to employees.  They open a dialogue that allows employees to participate in the conversation and learn more about the current state of your safety program.

Effective Communication and Influence

When you choose memos, emails, and bulletin boards as your main form of safety communication you are choosing efficiency over effectiveness.

The best form of communication regarding effectiveness is face to face, and when not done person to person, the safety meeting serves that purpose. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

The Essential Elements of a Behavior Based Safety Initiative

It is evident by years of working with safety professionals that BBS means many different things to many different people…and that BBS programs always vary.

In doing a Google search for “developing a behavior based safety program” we came up with 125 million results in less than a second!  Every conceivable type of safety training company, software company, safety consultant and safety award company seem to have an answer.  The most common form of program appears to be those that encourage management and workers to evaluate their own behaviors with some kind of measurement and communicate between themselves. 

As BBS is essentially a human behavior issue, we went to a reliable resource on the subject, Dr. Aubrey Daniels, who has been researching human behavior of the
American working for decades.  His emphasis and experience has been about performance improvement in both safety and other corporate objectives.  We found, that Dr. Daniels had set forth a structure of the essentials necessary to make a BBS program effective.  We thought you might find this list informative.   His essential steps are:

To implement a BBS you must use a process grounded in the science of behavior, which include understanding antecedents,  behaviors, consequences and feedback

Carefully choose those observable behaviors that have a significant impact on safety in your company. 

You need targeted checklists of a few behaviors at a time to increase frequency of observations and feedback reinforcement

You must have trained and knowledgeable observers, those who are expert in doing do similar work and can provide quality feedback

Record all hazards (large or small) on checklists to ensure they get reported, and to generate conversations about hazard remediation.

Identify critical behaviors at each level, including managers and supervisors, to ensure everyone is working in concert to improve safety performance

Be able to analyze the system impact on safety. Organizations that understand behavior scientifically can detect and correct system issues that influence behavior adversely, the more you ask about what is observed, the more you learn how to set up others for success.

Use positive reinforcement correctly, and it strengthens safety behaviors and builds an engaged, reporting culture.

Of this list, the item that we find is the most misunderstood is the use of positive reinforcement.  Everyone has their own idea of what positive reinforcement should be, and it runs the gamut from just saying thanks, well done, to a sweepstakes program for the use of a new pickup truck for a year, or ($1 million to the winner…yes this really happened!)

Regardless of what you do, you need to do it. The more continuous and consistent the reinforcement you do, the more likely you are to build habits of the right behavior.  And experience has shown us that  it doesn’t take large awards to get this done. 

How much of your budget is devoted to safety training?  Doesn’t it just make sense to spend part of it on awards the reinforce this training?

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net