Leadership Development Archives

Frontline Fundamentals: Responsibility for Safety

Written by David McPeak, CUSP, CIT, CHST, CSP, CSSM on June 7, 2017. Posted in Leadership Development, Frontline Fundamentals.

You are responsible for your own safety and the safety of others. Most people would say they agree with that statement, but do their actions reflect their agreement? Let’s consider that question in the context of the following incident investigation. The IncidentBob, who works in shipping and receiving, has just cut himself with his pocketknife while attempting to cut a zip-tie off a package. Randy, the shipping and receiving manager, is Bob’s immediate supervisor. Pam is Bob’s co-worker. Ron is the facility’s safety supervisor and is interviewing Bob, Randy and Pam as...

Frontline Fundamentals: Risk Tolerance

Written by David McPeak, CUSP, CIT, CHST, CSP, CSSM on April 18, 2017. Posted in Safety Management, Leadership Development, Worksite Safety, Frontline Fundamentals.

A fundamental premise of working safely is that hazards must be identified and then controlled. Too many incidents occur because hazards are not identified, or worse, they are identified but ignored or tolerated. One of my favorite ways to introduce the concept of risk tolerance is to ask a Frontline class this simple question: “What are some things you might hear someone say before something really bad happens?” It always amazes me – and scares me – how open participants are when I ask this question. Typical responses I have heard include:• “We’ve done this a thousand times and no one has ever...

The Silent Secret About Successful Safety Communication

Written by Mark J. Steinhofer, CHST, CSP, CUSP on February 15, 2017. Posted in Safety Management, Leadership Development.

It’s a chilly morning, and the crew is eager to make progress on the substation upgrade before tomorrow’s snow. A shiny pickup truck pulls up to the job site, the driver’s door opens and out walks a good-looking guy in neatly pressed khakis, a white button-down shirt and highly polished lace-up shoes. He stops a couple yards away from the crew, looks at everyone, breaks into a cheesy smile and makes a joke about his golf game. Nobody laughs or even snickers. After an awkward pause, “Joe Office” tells the crew that fall protection is the day’s safety discussion topic. He points to one of the...

February 2017 Q&A

Written by Jim Vaughn, CUSP on February 15, 2017. Posted in Safety Management, Leadership Development, Worksite Safety, Q & A, Equipment Operations.

Q: We are a small, distribution-only municipal utility that has been looking into human performance. We are having some trouble understanding it all and how it could benefit us. Most of the training resources are pretty expensive. Can you help us sort it out? A: We can. Human performance management (HPM) has been around in various forms and focuses since before the 1950s. Throughout the ’50s and ’60s, it seems the focus was on companies performing functional analysis and correcting issues that created losses, thereby promoting more efficient and error-resistant operations. In the ’60s and ’70s,...

Frontline Fundamentals: Controlling Hazards

Written by David McPeak, CUSP, CIT, CHST, CSP, CSSM on February 15, 2017. Posted in Safety Management, Leadership Development, Frontline Fundamentals.

“Get us a bucket truck, a rock and a hard hat. The rest of the class and I will meet you outside in 10 minutes.” Those were my instructions to a participant who, during a recent Frontline program session, challenged me as I was teaching the hierarchy of controls and explaining why PPE should be considered the last line of defense. The participant was adamant that he had always been trained that PPE is your primary protection and that if you are wearing it, you are protected and can work as you want. The rest of the group validated that was how they understood their training. This put us at...

Assimilating Short-Service Employees Into Your Safety Culture

Written by Phillip Ragain on October 12, 2016. Posted in Safety Management, Leadership Development, Worksite Safety.

Culture is one of the most significant drivers of an organization’s safety performance. It can take time to build a safety culture, and it also takes time for employees to assimilate into an existing culture after beginning work for an organization. This poses a serious challenge for organizations that regularly scale to meet project demands. An influx of short-service employees (SSEs) often coincides with an increase in incidents. While there are a number of reasons for this – such as poor hazard recognition – one significant reason is that SSEs have not yet assimilated into the existing culture’s...

Does Your Company Have an Effective Safety Management System?

Written by Pam Tompkins, CSP, CUSA, CUSP on October 12, 2016. Posted in Safety Management, Leadership Development.

Your safety program can have fully developed rules and procedures, a top-notch training program and the best safety equipment and tools money can buy – and there is still the possibility that it may not be successful. Although these things are extremely important and necessary, safety success will not occur until your safety program becomes a fully functional safety management system. This means that everyone in the organization is actively pursuing the same safety goals and working together in a synchronized manner to achieve those goals. A fully developed and well-executed safety management...

Optimizing Your Safety Observation Program

Written by Thomas Arnold, CSP, CUSP on August 22, 2016. Posted in Safety Management, Leadership Development.

World-class organizations do not achieve sustained safety excellence without a process in place that identifies risk exposure well before an incident or injury occurs. Yet countless companies have established observation programs without measurable success. In the paragraphs that follow, my goal is twofold: to provide readers with a greater understanding of the importance of employing a proactive safety observation strategy in the workplace, and to offer a step-by-step guide to ensure its effectiveness. Broken WindowsTo begin, I want to provide two examples of a topic that has significant influence...

The Road to an Innovative, Award-Winning Safety Program

Written by Brad Stout and Jesse Gibbon on August 22, 2016. Posted in Safety Management, Leadership Development, Worksite Safety.

Monday mornings at Coutts Bros. – an electrical line construction and maintenance contractor – begin the same way they have for more than 50 years. The crew meets on the old Coutts family property in Randolph, Maine, before 6 a.m., coffee and lunchboxes in hand, wearing shirts and hats that sport a variety of company logos from the last few decades. Conversations are lighthearted; depending on the season, discussions range from the weekend’s Red Sox, Bruins or Patriots game to embellished fishing and hunting stories, complete with cellphone pictures to prove the tales are mostly true. This...

Tag: Leadership Development