Kevin Burns Blog

If you want to cut expenses, don't slash the safety budget. Get rid of injuries and incidents. That's where the real expenses are. There used to be a time when safety was considered an expense (if you’re still thinking this way, it may be time for you to retire). The days of “we don’t have to the budget to spend on safety” are quickly coming to an end. Safety is not an expense - it’s an investment. And simply put, the better you get at safety, the better your company will do financially.

Can you convince someone to buy-in to safety without management being on-board? Of course you can. It’s not impossible. It’s just harder. I have deep convictions for safety. It doesn’t matter to me what others think about my safety values. I will do what I want as long as it keeps me and those around me safe. I have been scolded and chastised to just relax when it comes to safety. I turn a deaf ear to that suggestion. I drink the Kool-Aid. I have bought in. And honestly, my convictions for safety don’t change based on whom I work with. Some companies hire me to consult about improving their safety meetings. Others hire me to speak on personal leadership in safety. My values on safety stay the same.

In the workplace, safety is fast-becoming the new leadership. I say it in my keynote speaking presentations: leadership has nothing to do with management. Safety leadership, therefore, has nothing to do with safety management. You don’t have to be in management to be a leader. Leadership is not a position. It is an attitude - management is the position. One has nothing to do with the other. Safety too is an attitude. It is a state of mind and a way of living your life. Safety is the result. Safely is the choice in every moment of every day. Those with a safety leadership attitude, will choose to do the job safely in every moment. Companies are waking up to the fact that people who blindly follow orders on a job site still get hurt. But safety leaders who choose safety in every moment save themselves from harm by the choices they make. In the workplace, safety is fast-becoming the new leadership.

Employees don’t want your smartest person to run the safety program. They want the one with the best leadership skills. Historically, Google has been the catalyst of many changes in how we view and access the knowledge of the world. But it was in 2009, in a study that Google did internally in an effort to develop better managers, that they made a finding that every single safety manager should be paying attention to.

If you’re handling crisis after crisis, you’re not leading your safety program - it is leading you. You might be in charge, but you’re not in command. You’ve seen it: construction material plastics and debris flying through the air in high winds or caught in the protective fencing because the garbage bin was overstuffed. A disorganized, garbage-strewn work site is indicative of two things; apathy of construction site management and a poor safety culture from workers. But question a site manager on why there’s so much garbage, and you’ll hear that there are other crises to deal with.

Safety meetings have the tendency to be a one-room schoolhouse: too many subjects all at once. I have been the featured keynote speaker at a lot of safety meetings over my twenty years in safety management consulting. I have witnessed some meetings that created incredible focus for attendees and other meetings that were attention-deficit disasters. In safety meetings, it’s not uncommon to see 18 year-old first-time workers sitting alongside 3-more-months-until-retirement seasoned veterans - very similar to the one-room schoolhouses of old. Children of all ages would gathered under one roof to be taught by one teacher across all learning levels.

Until you start addressing the underlying attitudes of your people, you will always struggle with compliance, behaviors and communication. This week, here in Calgary, we experienced our first blizzard of the season. It’s not winter yet but we have experienced plenty of blowing and drifting snow. My three appointments on Monday all got canceled. No one wanted to venture out. Can’t say I blame them. I am an Alberta Safety Speaker. Be safe right?