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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

If they don’t believe in safety in the first place, then all of the safety training in the world isn’t going to help.

Challenges with workplace incidents can be traced right back to Day 1 - safety training. Training is the basics that workers need to do the job today. There is no personalization or customization of the training based on either aptitude, attitude or comprehension. Basically, people are trained in safety on a schedule, and it is expected that they will all “get” it at the same time. Training’s fatal flaw is an assumption that everyone starts from the same place.

When you don’t ask your people to do anything with the information you are giving them, you are creating the same safety apathy you say you want to overcome.

Are you asking your safety meeting attendees to be participants or spectators? Just because the bodies show up at the safety meeting doesn’t mean that their minds do. They might look like they’re paying attention, but you really can’t tell. It must be OK. You’re not asking them to do anything except sit there.

200 people will die in workplace incidents this year - one every 43 hours. Every second day, someone is going to die.

The roofer stood 3 stories up on the roof and surveyed his work. On his back was his fall-arrest harness. At his feet was the clip supposed to be connected to his harness. I called the company OH&S Manager. He explained he would take action immediately and mentioned that any contractor in contravention of OH&S regulations are fined $100.

If you want to change the culture of safety within your company, start not with how you DO safety, start with how you celebrate safety.

We've all been to safety meetings that missed the mark—topics irrelevant, sessions too long, disorganization was the rule.

In safety, there is a mistaken belief that in order to motivate employees to buy-in to safety, you have to “go negative.”

After delivering a keynote presentation at a safety meeting of electrical linemen, I ended up chatting with Don, a veteran of electrical installs. At one point, Don made a laughing reference to the fact that he had lost his right thumb in a farm accident many years before.