Almost every operation has said it at some point. It's probably on a poster in the break room. It gets implied in the Monday meeting, in the safety huddle, in the onboarding package. We're like a family here.
If your safety meetings are falling apart - employees interrupting, side conversations, someone hijacking the agenda - you've probably already tried the obvious fix.
Your safety numbers are connected to your turnover numbers. Your engagement numbers are connected to your absenteeism numbers. Quality issues are connected to your succession planning. With apologies to Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics, there is a single thread that connects them all. Find out why your individual initiatives are only getting modest results.
Your supervisors work hard. No one is questioning that. But hard work and effective leadership are two different things, and confusing them is costing your operation. This post breaks down the gap between a busy supervisor and an effective one, and what it takes to close it.
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.
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.
You can't build a safety culture by only focusing on safety. Here's the leadership problem that's driving your incident rate, AND turnover, AND productivity, AND engagement, AND a dozen other problems ... including safety.
