Encouraging a Culture of Safe Production
A healthy dose of performance pressure is crucial for maintaining optimal levels of production. It motivates teams meet their KPIs, deliver on production targets and stay on-task. Problems arise when levels of production pressure increase to the point that the focus on production starts to overshadow the importance of safe behaviours. Especially if your leaders […]
From Policing to Partnering: The Power of Coaching Conversations
Many safety leaders dream of a workplace where individuals are willing to go above and beyond the base expectation to achieve exemplary safe work performance. But how do we make that dream a reality when so many of us are struggling just to gain compliance with safety policies and procedures? Research at Sentis has revealed that 86% […]
Techniques for Managing Challenging Safety Conversations at Work
As humans, we’re generally a socially conscious species. We try to avoid negative situations, smooth over uncomfortable interactions and generally try to get along with others in social situations. The problem is that when it comes to our safety efforts, this deeply rooted notion of “playing nice” can backfire and hold us back on our […]
Building Trust in Teams: 4 Tips for Effective Safety Leadership
When thinking about how to develop a strong safety culture, it’ll come as no surprise that it’s heavily reliant on the relationships between your workers and your leaders. Even if leaders are actively striving to promote safe behaviours, one aspect of effective safety leadership is often overlooked—the importance of building trust. Unlike more tangible efforts […]
Why Not All Workplace Safety Assessments Are Equal
When trying to improve your organisation’s safety results, the first step is to gain a strong understanding of the current state of your workplace safety by assessing your existing safety climate and culture. That’s because trying to improve your organisation’s safety results without a clear understanding of the current state of your safety culture is […]
Safety Onboarding and Induction: What’s Said vs What’s Done
When it comes to safety onboarding and induction, it’s easy to pinpoint initiatives like compliance training and familiarisation with policies and procedures. But how often do we consider the implicit safety onboarding and induction activities in our organisation? New employees aren’t just in the process of becoming an expert in their role, they’re also in […]
How to Empower Employees to Speak Up For Safety
Psychological safety is critical to achieving a positive safety culture and minimising unwanted safety behaviours—including underreporting. With a strategic focus on creating trust, security and learning, organisations can empower employees to speak up for safety. Isaac is using a piece of heavy machinery when he notices it isn’t working like it usually does. Something feels […]
The Dangers of a Compliance-Only Approach to Safety
Safety seems to be looking good. As you walk around site you notice people wearing PPE, procedures being followed, hazards being reported and teams mentioning safety during pre-starts. You stop to check the incident rate. It hasn’t changed. Team members are still getting hurt. You can’t remember the last time someone provided a suggestion to improve […]
Measuring Safety Excellence: Lead vs Lag Indicators
In pursuit of safety excellence, businesses invest huge amounts of money, time and energy in safety improvement initiatives. However, relatively few can pinpoint the positive effect of these on their safety culture. So, how should you track the effectiveness of safety interventions and improvement in safety culture? Previously, focus has been on the reduction of lag […]