Kevin Burns Blog

Are You Running Safety Meetings Like A One-Room Schoolhouse?

Posted by Kevin Burns on Jan 30, 2014 3:48:00 PM

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.

Shorten Safety Meeting Presentations

Posted by Kevin Burns on Jan 20, 2014 11:51:00 AM

Safety meetings are NOT about filling time. They are about ensuring that you engage your attendees in safety and help them to make better choices.

(An excerpt from my free e-book, The Perfect Safety Meeting)

10 Things Safety Is Not

Posted by Kevin Burns on Dec 30, 2013 11:21:00 PM

Safety is not a discussion of logic. People don’t choose to be unsafe logically. They do it illogically.

I got my start as a professional speaker very early on. I entered radio when I was fourteen years old; my father owned a small-town radio station. Some refer to radio as the media. But radio is only a part of media as is television, newspaper, bus benches, billboards, Yellow Pages and on the list goes.

Safety Meeting Video As Insurance

Posted by Kevin Burns on Dec 17, 2013 6:36:00 PM

Video creates a public record of your safety meeting, aids investigations, removes ambiguity and makes a safety meeting rock solid.

Last week, while preparing to deliver a safety keynote presentation, I was testing the rented cordless lapel microphone at a community hall. My client was hosting their Safety Awards Banquet that night, and I had been chosen as the keynote speaker. The HSE Manager suggested that perhaps they should buy a microphone system like the one I was testing because it was so compact. It would allow them to have some flexibility in their safety meetings by not always having to seek out a vendor to rent A/V equipment from.

3 Strategies For Small-Scale Monthly Safety Meetings

Posted by Kevin Burns on Nov 27, 2013 4:55:00 PM

Any safety meeting, large or small, must start with two basic purposes: to get your employees’ attention and their participation.

My newest book (in e-Book format), The Perfect Safety Meeting, is being downloaded around the world. Since safety never seems to get a big budget for learning and development, I made the e-Book free.

Always Be Improving In Safety

Posted by Kevin Burns on Nov 20, 2013 11:41:00 PM

When you tweak job performance in small chunks, little by little, safety performance improves.

Back in a former lifetime (20 years ago), I made my living as a radio announcer. Radio is a cut-throat game that depends on ratings. Take a tumble in the ratings and you can start looking for another job. To stay on top in the ratings requires constant monitoring, adjustment and improvement. That means weekly airchecks.

Create The Perfect Safety Meeting

Posted by Kevin Burns on Nov 14, 2013 2:01:00 PM

Safety Meeting attendees think the meetings are boring because it seems no one cares enough to put them together well.

"The Perfect Safety Meeting" webinar (based on my new book of the same name) on November 13, 2013 had over 750 registrations from safety professionals in 18 countries, 42 US states and all ten Canadian provinces. It is apparent that a lot of people working in safety management and supervision want to get a lot better at running safety meetings. On the other side, there are probably a lot more employees who are hoping that their safety people get better at safety meetings.

Procrastinating The Safety Meeting

Posted by Kevin Burns on Oct 28, 2013 4:52:00 PM

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.

Are Your Safety Meetings Preventing Buy-in?

Posted by Kevin Burns on Oct 22, 2013 5:13:00 PM

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.

3 Tips To Revolutionize Safety Meetings

Posted by Kevin Burns on Oct 15, 2013 6:21:00 PM

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.