Transcript: Picking the right safety speaker for a safety meeting is a serious responsibility, and there's a lot of pressure to get it right. Not all safety speakers are the same. Not by a longshot. That's why I've made this video, to help you understand what I stand for and what I believe in. In the next five minutes, I am going to state my case as to why I think I am the right choice for your safety meeting.
Safety incidents are rising.
People are getting hurt because of decisions they make. Oh you can try to reduce the numbers through compliance but compliance alone doesn't work. If it did, every workplace would be at Zero all the time.
Right now, a good portion of YOUR people don't actually believe in safety. Oh sure, they may wear PPE and play by your rules but that's only because you make them as a condition of keeping their jobs. I mean, how many unsafe things do you think your people did this morning to get to work on-time to a job that calls for safety? Speeding, distracted driving, cracks in the windshields and lights that don't work. They don't really buy-in to safety. They just tolerate rules.
Safety is something you choose.
That's why some people choose to drive the speed limit, and some don't. Some choose protective gear to cut the lawn at home, and some do it in flip flops. Not everyone buys into safety.
How Safety Makes You Money
It's been proven that when employees buy into safety, turnover drops, production goes up and ultimately, it makes the company more money. Here's how. For every dollar spent on direct costs as the result of an accident, another $2.12 gets spent on indirect costs: lost production, disruption and downtime, worker replacement, re-training, legal fees, and of course the big one that keeps on costing, increased insurance premiums.
But it also turns out that for every dollar invested in improving workplace safety, up to $4.41 comes back to you in increased productivity, reduced operating costs, greater retention of employees, better morale and greater job satisfaction. A workplace with safety issues will keep turning over staff. But demonstrably safe workplaces keep their staff and get better production. (Source: American Society of Safety Engineering)
So, you can waste $3.12 by cleaning up after an incident or you can keep $4.41 by...
Getting Employees To Buy Into Safety
And that's what I do. I make employees want to buy-in safety for themselves. I go to work in a way that makes them become more accountable and responsible and to take a leadership role for their actions in safety. What really sets me apart from other safety speakers is that to me, safety is an attitude - not a thing you do and certainly not a thing you enforce. It is a thing you believe.
There's no on and off switch in safety.
It's either on or it's off. Either you consciously embrace safety as a personal value or you unconsciously fight it and resist it.
I have worked in human performance and motivation for over 15 years. I've written and published seven books on the subject. I understand how people work and how they think. And for the past 10 years, I have been working with safety managers, safety supervisors and front-line staff to help them buy-in to safety as a lifestyle choice. I can get through to your people by saying what you and your safety supervisors may want to say, but really can't say.
Some companies still treat safety like it's something they're forced to do. And some think insurance premiums are just a money-grab. But drivers with clean records pay less in premiums than drivers with accidents. The same rules apply in safety. Keep your people safe, get your incidents down and you'll pay less too.
Let's work on keeping your people safe.
But make it appealing. If you want people to engage in safety, you have to make it engaging. People learn more and retain more about safety when they're having fun. So when I talk about safety, I make it fun - and high energy. No boring PowerPoint Corporate Karaoke speeches. No tedious numbers. No embarrassingly uncomfortable exercises for your people to do. No, I tell stories, and make people laugh, and think, and engage and most of all, I make them want to be better.
You want your people to do one thing, and one thing only - that's to choose safety. Getting people to buy into safety - is what I do. Speaking to groups like yours at safety meetings - is how I do it.
