Kevin Burns Blog

Focus on the plan to improve the things you're not already doing. Not the goal. Once upon a time, in the mid-90’s, I was working in a sales job. At the start of each month, our sales manager would assemble all the sales reps in a room and ask each of us for our specific sales goal for the month. He wasn't asking us what our plan was to make more sales. He was asking for a number.

What if your "one thing" was to make a difference? There are no such things as priorities. You can have a priority; one. But you can’t have more than one priority. Besides, it’s not a priority if it competes for attention with other priorities. You can have a lot of things that are important, or urgent or critical. But there is room for only one priority. It is that one priority that you can build a company, an ideal or a movement around.

A safety system by itself doesn't make the organization any safer. Driving instructors have a system for teaching people to drive. Sports coaches have a system for improving player performance. Almost everything in this world has a system. There’s even a system for generating your paycheck. But, the system doesn't pay out unless someone tells it to.

To improve employee participation in the safety program, clear communications are key. If you are going to communicate something in safety, what do you want to have happen? How exactly do you want your people to participate? Informing people isn’t enough anymore. Your people are already bombarded with, on average, four thousand marketing messages each day. Everywhere they look, they are getting access to another message – competing with your safety message - even as recently as this morning. But let's say that you are above-average in compelling and engaging your people’s attention during a morning safety meeting, as soon as they leave the meeting, they are faced with hundreds more messages that all compete for attention. So, to combat this, you have to be clear.

If you want people to care about safety, you have to first care about them. I was working with a group of minesite supervisors and we were discussing the needs of employees and how a supervisor can make sure that employee needs were being met. I asked this question: how can you show your employees that, as supervisors, you care? Here are some of the responses: Give good communication Improve your listening skills Be respectful of their needs Demonstrate persistence Engage them in problem-solving Recognize employees for their good work Take a time-out with employees Help employees to re-focus Show support for your people especially when they need it. All good answers. In fact, a lot of necessary answers. But the answer that wasn’t mentioned was, perhaps, too obvious. It is the one thing that supervisors, managers, safety people, executives, and even fellow workers must do to show their fellow employees that they care.

Are you meeting the needs of your people in safety meetings? How many times have you seen presenters, with 10 minutes of solid information, stretch it into a 90-minute presentation? How does that happen? Here’s how. The person organizing the safety meeting is trying to fill blocks of time instead of developing content that will make a difference to their people.

If you want to change safety performance, you have to change the approach and the conversation. In safety, there are no trade secrets. The same set of rules apply to every company within an industry. Construction safety applies to all builders. Mining safety is the same for every mine. Electrical safety is the same for every electrician. Whatever your industry, your competitors don’t get a leg up because they have different rules to play by. Everyone has the same rules and the same code.

It seems like your people don't care about safety, but they do. Yes, your people do care about safety. They just don't care the way you care about it, because they see safety differently than you do. Everyone cares about something. However, what's appealing and motivating to you is not always appealing and motivating to someone else. Your goals for safety improvement may be important to you, but your people need to have a benefit in working harder to reach those goals.

There are two approaches taken to safety meetings and usually both are wrong. This video explores the two most common forms of ineffective safety meeting ... and what to do instead. In this video, you will learn:

Good team members are reliable. They do the right thing at the right time for the good of the team. And, their co-workers can rely on them to do the right thing always. That goes a long way in building your reputation. When you're at work, your team members want to be able to rely on the other members of the team. All of them. Would the people you work with, if they had to pick out three employees, name you as one of the top three most reliable team members in safety and who consistently look out for the welfare of others?