Kevin Burns Blog

When your safety numbers are bad, you blame the safety system. When productivity drops, you blame the equipment. When good people quit, you blame the job market. But you're looking in the wrong place. Here's the truth: your operational, safety, and retention problems aren't systems problems. They're relationship problems. And the person who creates or destroys those relationships is your supervisor.

Your safety programs are well-designed, but they're missing crucial advocates. While most training budgets focus on safety professionals and managers, the real leverage point is developing the one person who either champions or undermines every initiative you launch. It's time to create safety allies where culture is actually made.

Most industrial companies think their biggest expenses are equipment, materials, and labor costs. They're wrong. There's a hidden expense bleeding millions from their operations every single year—one that never appears on financial statements and rarely gets discussed in board meetings. This silent profit killer is operating right under management's nose, creating chaos in productivity, safety, and morale. The companies that have identified and eliminated this hidden cost are dominating their markets while their competitors struggle to understand why they can't keep up.

Every senior manager knows the pain: you promote your best technical worker to supervisor, then watch helplessly as good employees underperform, then eventually quit, because your new supervisor doesn't know how to lead. The trial-and-error approach to supervisor development isn't just inefficient—it's destroying your teams and killing your safety culture. It's time to identify your real enemy and fight back with proven leadership development that works from day one.

Most companies standardize everything except the leadership skills of supervisors who actually run operations, creating costly performance variations.

Even the best safety programs can fall short of their potential when frontline supervisors lack proper development. Discover how strategic investment in supervisor leadership skills creates a foundation for exceptional safety performance, increased employee engagement, and a thriving safety culture that extends beyond compliance.

Want to know how top companies get better work from their teams? Supervisors who build real connections with team members create safer workplaces, higher productivity, and employees who stay longer. Learn simple ways to help supervisors move beyond just giving orders to building relationships that help the whole business succeed. (Bonus: download a free resource, Supervisors & Safety Culture ebook)

Provide a clear and concise vision of where your crew is headed. What's your vision for safety? And don't say "no one gets hurt." That's not a vision - it is a hope strategy - fingers crossed that no one actually does get hurt. Face it, if you're a supervisor, foreman, manager or executive, you're in a leadership role. You're in charge. That means the responsibility for the performance and safety of the team is yours. As a leader, there is one thing you need to get right, and it will solve problems in so many other areas: you need to provide your people with a clear vision and direction. You need to tell them where you're headed. Every member of your team wants to know where the team is going.

You may cover the check-boxes but you need to ensure employees are going to give safety their attention and focus. Is yours a check-box safety culture? Or a check-in safety culture? What’s the difference? A check-box safety culture is just what the name implies. You go through the checklists and check off the items that you have completed.

Have you fallen into the trap of making statements instead of asking questions? Selling safety to crews can seem overwhelming. Getting your people to see and understand what you see and understand can be frustrating, especially when you don’t achieve the success you think you should have.