Kevin Burns Blog

Safety Starts With Attitude

Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024

Until you start addressing the underlying attitudes of your people, you will always struggle with compliance, behaviors and communication. This week, here in Calgary, we experienced our first blizzard of the season. It’s not winter yet but we have experienced plenty of blowing and drifting snow. My three appointments on Monday all got canceled. No one wanted to venture out. Can’t say I blame them. I am an Alberta Safety Speaker. Be safe right?

3 Strategies For Small-Scale Monthly Safety Meetings

Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024

Any safety meeting, large or small, must start with two basic purposes: to get your employees’ attention and their participation. My newest book (in e-Book format), The Perfect Safety Meeting, is being downloaded around the world. Since safety never seems to get a big budget for learning and development, I made the e-Book free.

Always Be Improving In Safety

Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024

When you tweak job performance in small chunks, little by little, safety performance improves. Back in a former lifetime (20 years ago), I made my living as a radio announcer. Radio is a cut-throat game that depends on ratings. Take a tumble in the ratings and you can start looking for another job. To stay on top in the ratings requires constant monitoring, adjustment and improvement. That means weekly airchecks.

Create The Perfect Safety Meeting

Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024

Safety Meeting attendees think the meetings are boring because it seems no one cares enough to put them together well. "The Perfect Safety Meeting" webinar (based on my new book of the same name) on November 13, 2013 had over 750 registrations from safety professionals in 18 countries, 42 US states and all ten Canadian provinces. It is apparent that a lot of people working in safety management and supervision want to get a lot better at running safety meetings. On the other side, there are probably a lot more employees who are hoping that their safety people get better at safety meetings.

Go Positive To Motivate In Safety

Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024

In safety, there is a mistaken belief that in order to motivate employees to buy-in, you have to “go negative.” The focus of safety marketing has been wrong. How do scare tactics, gruesome photos and videos and data and charts provide inspiration, motivation and encouragement to buy-in to safety directly?

Procrastinating The Safety Meeting

Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024

Throwing together a safety meeting at the last minute does not inspire confidence or preparedness. Safety Managers stress about organizing safety meetings and annual stand-downs. They struggle with the organizational aspect and so they end up leaving much of it to the last minute, scrambling just enough to pull something off that looks like there may have been a rudimentary amount of thought put into the meeting.

Are Your Safety Meetings Preventing Buy-in?

Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024

Your job is to change the perception from HAVING to attend safety meetings, to WANTING to. Imagine receiving a pair of tickets to the best seats in the house to watch your favorite sports team play. You’re primed and excited for the event but once you get there, you find out that there is no game. There are only stats, and numbers, and data and reports and transactions. Sure, stats and numbers and data are a part of sports but it’s not the enjoyable part.

3 Tips To Revolutionize Safety Meetings

Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024

The Safety Meeting is the most important tool in helping employees to buy-in to safety, quickly. Stop thinking that safety meetings are a legal requirement. It's bigger than that. How your people approach safety meetings is the same way they approach safety. How you approach safety meetings is evident to in how they are perceived.

Why Safety Meetings Are Boring

Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024

Safety meetings are not supposed to be boring. People, more specifically presenters, make them that way. Talks from the TED conferences are engaging. If you are not familiar with TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), they are a global set of conferences that bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes or less.

Safety Isn’t A Process Problem - It’s A People Problem

Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024

There is a people problem in safety, a mindset problem in safety and a decision-making problem in safety. Four workers were attempting to lift the fourth wall into place on a home construction project. The wall was too heavy for the four to lift and so three let go crushing the fourth under the weight. The worker died.

Leadership for frontline industrial supervisors.

Safety Starts With Attitude

3 Strategies For Small-Scale Monthly Safety Meetings

Always Be Improving In Safety

Create The Perfect Safety Meeting

Go Positive To Motivate In Safety

Procrastinating The Safety Meeting

Are Your Safety Meetings Preventing Buy-in?

3 Tips To Revolutionize Safety Meetings

Why Safety Meetings Are Boring

Safety Isn’t A Process Problem - It’s A People Problem

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