Blog

Do Your Leaders Understand How Safe Decisions and Safe Behaviors Work Together? COVID-19 as an SIF Issue

Categorized under: Behavior-Based Safety, Safe Decision Making™ Articles

Tagged as: Insight 7

Within the network of causal factors underlying incident causation are two points of intersection: the safety related decisions that are made, and the safe behaviors performed. This applies across levels, from the board of directors to the front-line worker, but the dynamics change depending on level and role. In order to craft and execute optimal SIF prevention strategies, including COVID-19, our leaders need to understand the dynamic relationship between decision making and behavior, at all levels.

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The COVID-19 Challenge — When Complexity Overcomes Capability

Categorized under: Improvement Strategy, Safety Culture, Serious Injuries & Fatalities

Tagged as: Insight 4

Overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly disrupted the balance of every organization’s capability and complexity pushing them to the left. Complexity has increased exponentially as companies are faced with never seen before dangers. Current capability to fully address the challenge is lacking…

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Tribute to Paul O’​Neill

Categorized under: Other

Tagged as: Insight 1

The greatest and most effective safety leader of our time (and hero to me) died this morning in Pittsburg. It is a huge loss to the community of people who value organizational leadership, and in particular, workplace safety.

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The Five Rs of Effective Leadership for COVID-19 Prevention

Categorized under: Improvement Strategy

As a nation, we are great at responding to catastrophic events: we have systems in place that allow us to react to large- and small-scale incidents and near misses.  In an event’s aftermath, leaders will typically attempt to learn as much as they can about how, why, and lessons learned in an effort to prevent future occurrences with like and similar potential.  With COVID-19, prevention requires ongoing learning by keeping up with a variety of sources of data and expertise.  Having a prevention plan in place for your organization is probably already done, but how has your actual COVID-19 response...

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Making Good Decisions in a Sea of Statistics

Categorized under: Safe Decision Making™ Articles, Safety Leadership

Tagged as: Insight 7

We think we know things we really don’t know, and as a result our decisions are comprised. Effective decision makers are willing to apply some rigor. The deeper our commitment to objective, honest, non-politicized information, the better our decisions will be, and the sooner we will find ourselves back on terra firma.

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How COVID-19 Might Kill People in Ways You Didn’t Expect

Categorized under: Other

Tagged as: Insight 7

What if our attention to COVID-19 makes us miss information that we would otherwise notice immediately?
What if we ignore risks that we would typically capture under normal circumstances?
What if some of those measures create new risks that we fail to see?

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Making the Workplace Safe from COVID-19

Categorized under: Safe Decision Making™ Articles, Serious Injuries & Fatalities

Tagged as: Insight 2

Mitigating the impact of COVID-19 is of special interest to every organization but of even greater significance for organizations that rely on people to prevent SIF events. Fortunately, these organizations can apply learnings from SIF prevention in their approach to maintaining business continuity. This is important to everyone, but crucial to those organizations that are deemed essential.

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What does it take to be an effective EHS leader?

Categorized under: Safe Decision Making™ Articles

Tagged as: Insight 3

Executives don’t select people outside EHS to lead the EHS function for no reason. They do it because they need a sufficient level of skill, knowledge, and attributes to play at the necessary level. Organizations that attain real safety excellence are aware of this issue and taking active steps to address it.

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Why End Meetings with Safety

Categorized under: Safe Decision Making™ Articles

Tagged as: Insight 7

Most of our clients make a great effort to start meetings in a meaningful way with respect to safety. Many enjoy collecting relevant safety topics for easy reference at the beginning of meetings, and we’ve seen countless humorous videos that illustrate critical risks and risk reduction activities. We’ve admired highly engaged employees who talk about the exposures they expect to encounter during the next few hours and how they intend to ensure the right safety controls are in place. As important as starting a meeting with meaningful safety moments is, we believe it is even more important to end your meetings...

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3 Questions Board Members Should Ask About Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention

Categorized under: Serious Injuries & Fatalities

Tagged as: Insight 2

It was 1993 and Paul O’Neill was attending his first board meeting as a Director at one of the largest companies in the world. Just as the meeting was coming to a close, O’Neill asked, “Where is the safety report?” As the story goes, no safety report was planned but the question had profound effects. It set the company on the path to creating safety excellence and embedding safety as a cultural value. Board member influence can do that — uniquely — and it saves lives while creating business value.

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