Kevin Burns Blog (33)

Kevin Burns Blog

Leadership for frontline industrial supervisors.

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5 Ways To Improve Your Own Safety Leadership
Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024
5 Ways To Improve Your Own Safety Leadership
A safety leader is someone who influences good decisions and positive behaviors. Safety leadership has nothing to do with being a manager or supervisor. You don’t have to hold a safety management position to be a safety leader. A safety leader is someone who influences good decisions and positive behaviors. Anyone can do it if they are willing to put the work in. And the benefits are huge: to you and the people you lead. Here are five ways that you can start to improve your own safety leadership skills right away.
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5 Positive Ways To Deal With Choices, Mortality and Safety
Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024
5 Positive Ways To Deal With Choices, Mortality and Safety
Help people develop a plan to positively embrace safety instead of negatively avoiding injury. Safety has done a terrible disservice to itself. It has aligned itself with gruesome scare tactics in the hopes of getting workers compliance. “Fail to follow protocols,” you hear them say, “and you too could lose a body part.” What-if’s and maybe’s don’t sell safety. And safety needs to be sold.
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Safety Investment Improves Reputation During An Economic Slowdown
Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024
Safety Investment Improves Reputation During An Economic Slowdown
Companies that invest in safety during economic downturns fare better, lower costs, reduce turnover and build a reputation as an employer of choice. When the economy lulls and work slows down, the first reaction may be to slash expenditures. That includes the safety budget. And, on paper, it may look like the right move. But it is a predictable move - one that research does not support as being successful long-term.
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Top 10 Reasons Why Employees Need To Buy-in To Safety
Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024
Top 10 Reasons Why Employees Need To Buy-in To Safety
Let’s count down the Top 10 reasons why every employee should buy-in to the safety program and to own safety as a personal value. There are two ways to do every job: safely or unsafely. That is the choice in every moment of every day. It’s a simple choice. It’s the same choice as voluntarily buying-in to the safety program and being forced to comply against your will.
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5 Things Employees Need To Buy-in To Safety
Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024
5 Things Employees Need To Buy-in To Safety
You don’t need to harass your employees into improving safety. Once they own it, they will do it willingly. When professional athletes buy-in to the team’s vision for success, they become unstoppable. An excellent coach who touches his players one-on-one each day can help the players buy-in to the team vision and plan. When the coach gets buy-in from his players, they are more willing to do the right things more often and are less likely to do the wrong things. After all, it’s a team and every team member has a role and importance.
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Top 3 Roadblocks To Safety Supervisor Success
Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024
Top 3 Roadblocks To Safety Supervisor Success
It’s called “safety management” for a reason. It’s made up of two parts: safety and management. You can’t do one without the other. Being a safety supervisor is a thankless job. It’s tough when it seems like the only one who loves you is mom - and even she has her days. Experienced safety supervisors can recall how tough it was to get crews to warm up to the new supervisor those first few months on the job.
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Safety Buy-in Removes Enforcement
Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024
Safety Buy-in Removes Enforcement
There are 4 levels of safety buy-in you must progress through before safety becomes a personal value. Like most people in the safety industry, I came to safety from somewhere else. Twenty years ago I was selling photocopiers and fax machines. But, I preferred the idea of training salespeople more than the idea of being one.
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The 3-Step Plan To Improve Safety Buy-in
Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024
The 3-Step Plan To Improve Safety Buy-in
When employees buy-in to safety, you focus less on what they do wrong and expect more that they will do right. It’s a fairly simple argument: when employees buy-in to the safety program, you no longer need to police them. All they need is a little coaching and mentoring. When employees buy-in to the safety program, they don’t forget their PPE. They engage in safety meetings. They demonstrate courtesy and respect for their fellow employees. In other words, policing, compliance enforcement and “gotcha” management goes right out the window. Those become archaic, cumbersome, outdated practices that slow down safety performance.
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The 3 Agreements For Improved Safety Culture
Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024
The 3 Agreements For Improved Safety Culture
It is never the safety position or title that gets respect: it is the person in the position. Don Miguel Ruiz authored the book, The Four Agreements in 1997. It spent seven years on the bestseller list. The book is an inspiring read and could easily teach about safety and the building of a safety culture. Ruiz’s four agreements are as follows:
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Stop Doing Negative Things To Your Safety Culture
Posted by Kevin Burns on October 1, 2024
Stop Doing Negative Things To Your Safety Culture
Here are 7 changes you must make immediately to begin to shift away from a negative-based approach to safety. The headline to this post is negative. Stop, never or don’t are not positive. Telling people what not to do isn’t a plan for positive action because it’s not a complete set of instructions. It’s like scolding. It’s easy to point out what not to do. A successful trip to the grocery store doesn’t include a list of what not to buy. Focusing on what-not-to-do is not a blueprint to safety success.
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