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.
You've tried the workshops. You've run the surveys. You've rolled out the initiatives. Employee engagement still isn't where it needs to be. And you can't build your safety culture without engaged employees. Here's the question nobody in the engagement industry wants you to ask.
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.
I've been sitting on this for months. Something that's been bugging me about who gets access to our programs — and who doesn't. Today I did something about it.
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.
Frontline supervisors want to succeed — but they can't do it without their employer. Here are five things your supervisors actually need from you to build stronger teams, better safety culture, and more consistent production.
Your safety messaging is failing because you're committing marketing's biggest sin: trying to talk to "everyone." When you aim for everyone, you reach no one. The solution? Identify the critical 10% who actually influence your safety culture, and it's not who most safety departments think it is.
Every safety program talks about "people" doing things right. Procedures target "people." Behavior-based safety observes "people." The hierarchy of controls protects "people." But ask any anyone to identify exactly which people have the most control over safety culture, and they'll talk about engagement, systems, and culture—anything to avoid naming the specific person who determines whether safety works or fails. And that avoidance isn't accidental. It's deliberate. Because naming that person means admitting your approach has been wrong.
