Episodes
-
www.KevBurns.com
Why aren’t production and safety working out of the same office yet? Start with the common ground between safety and production. On this Episode 51, how production and safety can work better together.
Companies associate the success of the operations department with efficiency, productivity and profits. But, in safety, success is determined by a complex formula ending in TRIF rates and with the prevention of occupational injury and illness. How do you make these two necessary parts of a company work together if they are not even measuring the same things?
Here are five ways to marry safety and production.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.
-
www.KevBurns.com
Be positive about your safety program and the way it helps to protect and value your good people. On this Episode 50, four ways to promote your safety program positively.
To promote something is to advance a cause or a program; to support it or to actively encourage. So, when you tell your people to be safe, you are promoting safety. When you pepper your workplace with posters as safety reminders, you are promoting safety. When you hold a safety meeting, you are promoting safety. When you recognize good behaviors, you are promoting safety. And in order to build a solid safety culture, you can't do it without promoting safety.
But how do you ensure that you are doing it positively in a way that doesn't undermine the safety program? Here are four key areas to promote your safety program and employee safety and make sure that you're doing it in a positive way.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.
-
Missing episodes?
-
www.KevBurns.com
Good employees who have special skills and talent take pride in their work and they protect that pride by engaging in safety. Here on Episode 49, 3 Ways to Improve the Effectiveness of Your Safety Program.
Without getting into long descriptions, good workplace safety culture is the result of attitudes and personal and corporate values aligning. If there's apathy in the workplace, very little attention and care will be given to safety. You can't change the safety culture without addressing the underlying attitudes and values.
To be an industry leader, to have an engaged workforce, you will need to do three things to improve the effectiveness of your safety program.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.
-
Effectiveness in safety is about how little effort it takes to inspire people to do the right things. On this episode, 3 key tips to help you become a more effective safety leader.
As a safety person, manager or front-line supervisor, you already know that your work can be thankless. But you still have a responsibility to drive down the best practices and advice onto those employees at the front-line.
Just because you may have the position or title doesn’t mean that you’re effective at what you do. Being effective is not about being armed with a set of clever quips to trot out, or an ability to use guilt or threat of harm to make your point.
Let’s assume that you already have a working safety program in place and that yours is a workplace that hires good people to do good work; work that has earned you a decent reputation of quality performance.
Here are the top 3 strategies to help you, as a supervisor, manager or safety person, become more effective in safety.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. www.KevBurns.com -
Safety is a shared responsibility with each individual being accountable for their actions. On this weeks episode, how safety leaders define responsibility and accountability.
On a recent LinkedIn post about accountability, I was asked to explain the diiference between responsibility and accountability in safety.
I too, used to think they were two interchangeable words. In fact, the dictionaries interchange them at least once on each word. So, it's not surprising that your clients and colleagues struggle with it. But to me, they are not interchangeable at all. In fact, each word has very specific differentiators.
Be forewarned, these definitions may not be the classic dictionary version of the words.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. www.KevBurns.com -
Stop discussing the negatives of not being safe. Instead, focus on the positives of buying-in to safety. On this episode, 4 ways to make your safety program more positive.
Ask employees about how they perceive the safety program and they will most likely answer that it's dull, boring, repetitive, mind-numbing, disengaging, and it tries to scare you into compliance. That's because safety has been focused on following rules and avoiding injury or accidents. But like everything else in life, safety evolves.
As organizations are becoming more people-centric, they are integrating people-development programs. You cannot develop your people without including safety. The best-managed companies and employers-of-choice still value a profit but not at the expense of their good people. They are organizations that attract the best employees and hang onto them. As I say regularly, the best place to work is always the safest place to work.
Here are the four most important ways to focus your safety program on positives.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. www.KevBurns.com -
www.KevBurns.com
Data is not how you build a safety culture. Leadership is. On this episode, 4 things that employees need most from safety.
--
Safety is about preparedness - yet most times even the safety meeting does not meet that standard. Seriously. How many times have you seen your own safety meetings get thrown together at the last minute, start late, run long and be so full of stuff that it left attendees wondering what was the important stuff?
Every part of safety needs to be engaging. Yes, even the mundane stuff. Employees take their cues, not so much from what you say in meetings, but from what you do with them and your level of conviction about safety.
You need conviction when it comes to organizing and executing the safety program - including the meetings. If you want to engage employees to participate in the safety program and to own safety as one of their guiding principles, you have to give them what they want by delivering the example that you want.
Here are the four things that employees want from the safety program.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.
-
On this episode, we are going to look at four different ways that you can connect safety to leadership. Leadership is not forced or thrust upon anyone. It’s voluntary. And personal safety leadership builds great teams.
A commitment to teamwork and safety. It’s all you need to go from newbie or lowly front-liner to leader. To become a safety leader requires a commitment to the welfare of your teammates. You can't build a strong team without caring about the safety of the members of the team. In this way, you can use safety build leadership in safety and teamwork.
Here are four ways that you can connect teamwork and leadership to safety.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.
-
www.KevBurns.com
To be a safety leader, you have to be not only better at the job than the others, but willing to pick yourself up when you stumble. Coming up, three reasons safety leaders stumble.
The best organizations give world-class safety performance. They don't do it with a mediocre effort, mediocre standards or mediocre supervisors and safety people. They do it by surpassing industry average targets, a focused engagement with employees and with safety people and supervisors on top of their game.
You don’t build championship teams by shooting for the middle of industry averages. You don’t instill a positive safety culture by settling for average performance. World-class safety is not achieved by a mediocre effort, standards or people who don’t seek to be exceptional.
Here's the problem. Not every safety person is a high-performer.
Here are three main reasons that many stumble in their pursuit of becoming safety leaders.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of |PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety.| He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.
-
www.KevBurns.com
You may not be talking about it, but you have to. On this episode, get your people engaged in safety by talking about four things at your safety meeting.
Safety meetings started out as a legal requirement. You had to have them, they had to be recorded and the subject matter had to satisfy the Code. But nowhere does it state that you can’t add items to the safety meeting or that you can’t have fun and to speak-up in the meetings.
The problem is, safety meetings traditionally focus on meeting the legal requirement of the code. That's it. No more. So, to make sure they meet the bare minimum of the code, companies buy templates for their safety meetings that are white-bread and innocuous checklists because they’ve been dumbed-down to appeal to as many industries as possible.
Employees don’t buy-in to the safety program because it is presented as a set of rules and policies. Employees resist anyone who appears to want to force them to comply. And it's tough for employees to warm up to someone who incessantly talks about procedures, processes, inspections, and incidents.
To change the perception of safety, you must change the conversations. Here are 4 things you should be talking about in safety meetings.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.
-
www.KevBurns.com
On this episode, we are going to tackle complacency creep as we look at the Top 4 Strategies to Stop Safety Complacency Creep before it takes hold in your workplace.
Who could have ever foreseen that you could get so good at your work that complacency would become a safety issue? Safety processes and procedures are done so well that your crews have become exceptional safety performers. And because they do work they can be proud of, they take satisfaction in how well they do the job. That satisfaction can create complacency.
The longer crews work on the job together, the more they get into a kind of rhythm working together. But that rhythm can become a routine. And where there is routine, there is rote: doing the job robotically. “Auto-pilot.”
Complacency is not something that is fixed or repaired or even addressed at the senior management level. Complacency is addressed at the ultra-local level; at the front-line between supervisor and employee. That’s where the complacency takes place. That’s where it gets fixed.
To effectively take on complacency-creep, here are four strategies to arrest it before complacency begins to creep in.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. -
www.KevBurns.com
Safety leadership is not just for those with a title. On this episode, we will talk about 6 Ways To Become A Respected Safety Leader.
To become a safety leader, you have to first understand what safety leadership is not: it is not safety management. Since there is no requirement to be in management to be a leader, then it only makes sense that you don’t have to be in safety management to be a safety leader.
Safety leadership is not just for those with a title. Safety leaders can be found on the front-lines too. They are willing to coach and inspire better safety performance through mosty, their example. You see, being a leader starts with being willing to go first. The first person to do something is the leader. Everyone else follows. But to go from safety person to safety leader, requires a mindset shift.
So with that in mind, let's explore six mindset shifts that can cause you to become a better safety leader:
-
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. -
www.KevBurns.com
Safety is fast-becoming the new leadership. So consider this a primer. On this episode, we will connect safety to leadership in seven different ways.
Leadership has nothing to do with management. Safety leadership, therefore, has nothing to do with safety management. You don’t have to be in management to be a leader.
Leadership is not a position. It is an attitude - management is the position. One has nothing to do with the other.
Companies are waking up to the fact that people who blindly follow orders on a job site still get hurt. Helping people to connect with their own leadership abilities can help people to think more clearly on the job. It is for this reason that in the workplace, safety is fast-becoming the new leadership.
Look at any list of leadership traits and you will see a direct relationship to the list of traits of outstanding safety performers. So let's explore those. Here are the list of 7 character traits that solid safety leaders will possess.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety. He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.
-
www.KevbUnrs.com
Safety meetings are not supposed to be boring, but they are. So, on this episode, we'll explore two big problems with boring safety meetings and three strategies to fix them.
Safety complacency is a big problem today but never moreso than safety meeting complacency: the lack of focused engagement in preparing engaging safety meetings. Safety folks don't invest any time or effort into fixing their meetings. They are complacent with the way things are. Attendees are bored and disengaged in safety meetings but nothing seems to change. Isn't that the very definition of complacency.
But the whole conversation about complacent safety people will have to wait for another episode. This episode is going to focus on the 2 problems and real reasons safety meetings are traditionally so boring and then follow up with three strategies to overcome the problems and help you build better, engaging and focused safety meetings.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. www.KevBurns.com/peoplework
-
www.KevBurns.com
On this episode, we're going to arm you to get ready to have those one-on-one Conversations with your crews that help you better influence them to buy-in to the safety program.
The one thing that will connect your continuous-cash-flow, your long-term investments and and the kind of legacy you leave behind, is safety. Without safety, everything is at risk.
The safety department complains that it’s difficult to get workers to buy-in to safety. But really, is it any wonder that employees don't want to buy-in? I mean, safety has been positioned and promoted as an exercise in paperwork, rules and regulations. And if that's how it's been presented, it should be no surprise that employees resist buying-in to a program of checks, forms and paperwork. Especially the paperwork.
To change that, go to Leadership 101; basic values-based conversations with employees. So, how do you have those conversations that lay out the framework for buying-in to safety? Here are three compelling conversations for supervisors and safety people to have with their crews one-on-one. The purpose of these conversations is to influence better buy-in to safety.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.
-
www.KevBurns.com
On this episode, we are going to test your People-View: how you talk about your crew to other supervisors or even your buddies behind the crew members' backs.
People-view is how you view people. Plain and simple. It's the way that you pre-determine the quality of the people you are working with.
People-view is how you talk about your crew to other supervisors or even your buddies behind the crew members' backs. People-view is the predetermined opinions you have about either the people you work with or those you do business with. That includes job site contractors and subcontractors.
So, how do you view your crews and employees? Here are four self-test questions to help you identify your own people view.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.
-
www.KevBurns.com
If you won't engage crew members on a human level, you will limit both yourself and your crews. On this episode, three places to start to switch your focus from process to people.
Safety people and supervisors who lack a healthy dose of willingness to engage crew members on a human level will limit both themselves and their crews. It doesn’t happen on purpose, but it happens. The inexperienced supervisor who doesn’t know how to motivate and develop individuals on the job, ultimately has a harder time getting the job done. If there is no strategy to continuously improve employees, there’s little chance of improving the organization as a whole, and that includes safety.
How do you as a supervisor or safety person begin to integrate the human factor? Here are the first three areas to set your sights.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. www.KevBurns.com/PeopleWork
-
http://www.kevburns.com
Downloading generic safety messages from the Internet can undermine your own safety program. On this episode, why the phrase "be safe" is a terrible safety message.
Safety people and supervisors get concerned when their employees won't buy-in to safety. They also complain about employees' lack of engagement and a lack of accountability in the safety program. But what if the safety messaging is aimed below the intellect of the same people you're trying to reach? What if you've dumbed it down too far? What if you've underestimated your own people?
Communications that miss the target can undermine your efforts in safety. Generic slogans and feeble safety campaigns downloaded from the Internet do not resonate with most people (Hint: there's a reason they're free for the taking on the Internet). And people do not connect with anything that doesn't resonate with them. A slogan for a slogan’s sake can do more harm than good.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. www.KevBurns.com/PeopleWork
-
http://www.kevburns.com
If you want to improve safety meetings, you have to improve the level of respect you have for your people first. On this episode, three east steps that can transform your safety meetings from boring to engaging - and build respect.
Safety people would make a bigger effort if they got paid for the quality of their safety meetings. But that’s not happening anytime soon. So, for now, you will have to accept that safety meetings are notorious time killers.
How about you invest a few minutes and give some consideration to some new ideas. Like a good safety meeting, it’ll be short and to the point.
Here are three easy steps that can transform your safety meetings from boring to engaging - and build respect.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. http://www.kevburns.com/peoplework
-
http://www.kevburns.com
The biggest roadblock to safety culture improvement is a lack of focus on safety. On this episode, three ways you can begin to shift the level of focused attention.
Lack of engagement is a problem in every corner of every organization. Safety calls this problem complacency. The biggest roadblock to safety culture improvement is a lack of purposeful focus on safely doing the work.
Here are three ways you can begin to shift the level of focused attention on safety with your crews and employee teams.
--
Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. http://www.kevburns.com/peoplework
- Show more
