Kevin Burns Blog

Seven out of eight people don't believe their employers care about them. That's not a soft number. That's the statistic that convinced the CEO of a $3.3 billion company to write a book about it. And the same problem is sitting inside your operation right now. Here's the part nobody in your industry talks about: the word "care" makes senior managers nervous. Say it in a safety meeting and watch the room tighten up. Suddenly everyone's worried they're going to have to look each other in the eyes and talk about their feelings. But you already feel it instantly when someone doesn't care. About you, about the work, about anything. It makes you bristle. So why are we pretending care has no place on the floor? In this week's video, I get into what care actually is. And it's not soft, it's not touchy-feely, and it's not optional. I also get into the three kinds of care every CareFull Supervisor brings to the job. And why the one kind that gets left out of every training program is the one that moves every metric you measure.

There's a high cost of personal relationships you're asking a newly promoted supervisor to give up, but you're not compensating them for it. And it may be the one thing that costs you the most in productivity, safety, and engagement.

If you ask most operations managers why they can't find anyone ready to promote, they'll tell you it's a people problem.

Ask most senior managers whether their employees trust their supervisors, and you'll get one of two answers. Either a confident yes or a long pause.

In nearly 30 years of working with industrial companies, almost every single one has admitted the same thing. They have a communications problem, a departmental silo problem, or heaven help them, both.

There's a mistake that almost every industrial operation makes when they promote someone to supervisor.

Your supervisors work hard. No one is questioning that. But hard work and effective leadership are two different things, and confusing them is costing your operation. This post breaks down the gap between a busy supervisor and an effective one, and what it takes to close it.

The safety program doesn't build a safety culture. Only your supervisors can do that. And they can only do it when they have the right foundation. Here are the four pillars that make the difference.

Most companies treat safety culture like it is its own separate problem. It is not. It rises and falls with every metric on your dashboard. And every one of those metrics has the same root cause.

Your company has a detailed plan for maintaining every piece of equipment on your floor. You schedule it, budget for it, and treat it like a non-negotiable. But the people who oversee the operation of that equipment? They get nothing. Here's why that has to change — and what it costs you every single day that it doesn't.