Kevin Burns Blog

You wouldn't run a sports team without a coach. So why do you think you can run your industrial operation that way? Every sports franchise spends big money on scouting, medical, equipment, and facilities. They want to find the best players, give them the best development, give them the best care, and let them play in the best facilities. And then they go out spend a huge amount on coaching — because that's the investment that makes everything else pay off. Your company has the equivalent of every one of those departments. HR is your scouting department. Safety is your medical sciences team. Maintenance looks after the gear. And your frontline supervisors ARE your coaching staff. So, why treat that budget like an afterthought? When you take your best player (employee), make them a supervisor overnight, and 'hope' they figure out the people part — that's a Hope Promotion. They're going to struggle. And you're going to lose while they do. Expect it. The best players want to play for the best teams. The best employees want to work for the best companies. The best companies in your industry have the best frontline supervisors. Let me show you what I mean. Watch the video.

There's a proliferation of safety posters and safety-related infographics making their rounds on LinkedIn recently. Clearly, safety people have figured out how to make more AI-generated materials.

Turnover. Absenteeism. Rework. Near misses. Grievances. Quality issues. Up to 12 important metrics that matter to your success. And there are problems with every one of them at some point.

A safety manager asked me this week: "How would you create a world-class safety program?" I have to admit I was both excited and daunted by the question. Excited because this is exactly the kind of thinking that separates exceptional operations from average ones. Daunted because safety managers rarely get to think this way. They're too busy administering the program they already have.

You'll approve $50,000 for a CEO executive coach without blinking. The same $50,000 could develop 100 frontline supervisors with the people and leadership skills they need to be successful. So why doesn't it?

Seven out of eight people don't believe their employers care about them. That's not a soft number. That's the statistic that convinced the CEO of a $3.3 billion company to write a book about it. And the same problem is sitting inside your operation right now. Here's the part nobody in your industry talks about: the word "care" makes senior managers nervous. Say it in a safety meeting and watch the room tighten up. Suddenly everyone's worried they're going to have to look each other in the eyes and talk about their feelings. But you already feel it instantly when someone doesn't care. About you, about the work, about anything. It makes you bristle. So why are we pretending care has no place on the floor? In this week's video, I get into what care actually is. And it's not soft, it's not touchy-feely, and it's not optional. I also get into the three kinds of care every CareFull Supervisor brings to the job. And why the one kind that gets left out of every training program is the one that moves every metric you measure.

There's a high cost of personal relationships you're asking a newly promoted supervisor to give up, but you're not compensating them for it. And it may be the one thing that costs you the most in productivity, safety, and engagement.

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 company has wellness programs. EAPs, stress reduction platforms, mental health resources, maybe even resilience training.