In the article “What are Safety Leading Indicators?”, published in National Safety Council’s Safety+Health magazine, a case is made to adopt leading safety indicators instead of relying solely on lagging safety indicators (e.g. injury rates). The reasoning is sound but creating and sustaining ...
In our last blog article by Dr. Timothy Ludwig, “The Anatomy of Pencil Whipping”, the idea of safety observer quality was introduced. This article, originally published in the VPPPA Leader magazine in 2012, further expands the subject by introducing quantitative measures of observer quality that ...
An Introduction to Behavioral Safety Programs Behavioral safety observation programs are a mainstay in many safety systems that are looking to move beyond compliance and get employees involved. The idea is pretty straightforward – have employees observe other employees performing job tasks. The ...
The recent Ohio State Fair ride collapse is still being investigated but the tragedy reminds us of two important key concepts in your approach to safety observations - Risk can be difficult to manage and it is critical to document the work you are doing.
According to OSHA, more than 840,000 construction workers are exposed to respirable crystalline silica levels that exceed the new permissible exposure limit (PEL). To save an estimated 600 lives annually and prevent 900 new cases of silicosis each year a new rule was scheduled to go into effect to ...
An effective safety professional can exist in any industry, under any management style. What matters most is the manager. Managerial effectiveness varies, but it comes down to three components: Technical proficiency Teamwork Character
You are heading down the highway driving over the speed limit and you see a police car at the side of the road. Your reaction? Slam on the breaks and slow down. You pass the police car hoping they don’t pull you over; to your dismay, you see lights in your rear view mirror and a few minutes later ...
Management commitment is a term we hear frequently from regulatory agencies, in forum discussions, in training and from our peers and mentors. I often wonder if we really understand how to define it and the steps required to incorporate it into our safety programs. We should first preface this ...
Greetings, and welcome to the year 2016. In case you missed it, we have self-driving cars, performances by holographic Tupac, and a new Star Wars movie with CGI that you swear you could reach out and touch. What a time to be alive! So, I’m asking you as a friend, why are you still performing safety ...
As safety professionals, we want employees to go home as healthy as they came in. As such, we adopt methodologies that aid in incident and injury prevention. Usually, these methods are detailed in a company’s health and safety plan. Follow the plan and nobody gets hurt, right? Suffice it to say ...
