Video: Are You Putting Your People At Risk?

Are You Actively Putting Your People At Risk? from Kevin Burns on Vimeo.

Workplace Expert, Kevin Burns argues that companies who do not care about their people enough to ensure that they follow safe procedures it could be argued do not care about their customers either. How you do one thing is how you do everything. How can you say you care about your customers but not the people who serve your customers?

Parents Influence With Unsafe Actions

Safety Attitude extends beyond the company walls and far beyond the 8-4 workday. Safety Attitude is what you need to help your people develop so that they can go home and stress the importance of a Safety Attitude amongst their family members.

I followed a car on the highway for about 20 miles last weekend. The car had originally passed me while a 30-something female driver was text messaging on her phone. Once past me, she pulled into the lane in front of me and drove the same speed as I was driving. I watched her SUV sway from side-to-side in the lane, occasionally hitting the shoulder or putting two wheels over the line. After witnessing this stupid behavior for some 20 miles, I pulled alongside (never exceeding the speed limit since in addition to side-to-side driving, her speed was erratic) and finally blew my horn while wagging my finger at her. She finally put her phone down because she knew what she was doing was wrong and she had been caught.

Yep, she's going to be a great mom - showing her children the unsafe way to drive. Any advice she gave to her children to the contrary would be hypocritical.

Please, please, please start an initiative at your workplace to educate your people about the dangers of texting while driving as well as the dangers of talking on the phone while driving. Teenagers don't normally use their phones for talking - unless they're driving. If they need to talk with someone so badly, encourage them to travel with a friend who can text for them. Do something to help the kids understand that they're flirting with disaster.

Suggest to your employees to check their kid's phones and to be diligent about matching up texting times with driving times and to take their phones and car privileges away if they break the rules. 

The last thing your workplace needs is to be attending the funeral of a co-worker whose child was tragically killed while texting or talking on the cell phone in the car.

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Kevin Burns - Corporate Safety Attitude/Culture Strategist
www.safety.kevburns.com
Toll Free 1-877-287-6711
Creator of the 90-Day System To Improve Safety Culture!

Self Absorbed Drivers and Optional Signal Lights

Spend a little time in malls these days and you will no doubt hear it too: the cacophony of whiny children crying when they want something, crying when they are denied something, crying because it gets them attention. See the parents of children trying to control their kids (or not) at Starbucks as they attempt to enjoy their lattes while their kids, who need constant stimulation, get bored with a grown-up's coffee shop.

It exactly the way the parents of these children were raised too. They were told they were special and that the world revolves around them. Now they drive. Now they influence how their kids will drive. There are no consequences when they see their kids behind the wheel with phone glued to their ear, or worse, texting while they drive.

Signal lights have become an option in cars or maybe it just seems that way since it's impossible to signal a lane change while holding a phone in your left hand. Courtesy for other drivers is not taught. Hell, courtesy for others is not taught to these little self-absorbed teen and twenty-something drivers who have never been given consequences.

Perhaps mandatory sentences of one year license suspensions to any driver caught texting while driving and perhaps 3-5 demerit points to the parents of new drivers (under 21). Safety on the road is EVERYONE's responsibility, especially the parents of new drivers. Maybe it's time to get tough to ensure parents get their priorities straight, intervene and force courtesy and safety in their children and stop being so self-absorbed themselves.

If it were a job-site and a worker was injured due to the negligence of another worker, that second worker would face charges. So should parents of cell-phone-talking and texting teens while they drive.

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Kevin Burns - Corporate Safety Attitude/Culture Strategist
www.safety.kevburns.com
Toll Free 1-877-287-6711
Creator of the 90-Day System To Improve Safety Culture!

Security, Safety and Middle-Age

How old is Middle-Age? Is it 40 or 45 years-old or even 50? Isn't middle-age supposed to be the mid-point of your life? If you die in a car accident at age 40, was your middle-age then twenty years ago at age 20?

I ask this question because I was recently driving along a busy four-lane roadway with plenty of traffic signals and a lot of traffic. Traffic was moving at just under the posted speed of 60 kmh but there were lots of vehicles making lane changes, turning onto and out of side streets and, as a driver, you had to pay close attention.

Scanning my lane and the other westbound lane on my right, I caught a flash of a cell phone being used through the driver's window. As I pulled up alongside, the woman driving was texting on her phone. She was about 40 years-old - middle age.

I laid on the horn in an effort to scare her into paying attention to her driving. She got the message right away, dropped her phone into the passenger seat and shielded her face with her hand.

C'mon folks, safety isn't just a discussion for "boots" (people who wear work boots), safety is a discussion for "suits" too. Your family's future security depends upon your safety attitude in this moment.

How ironic would it be to be killed in a car wreck because you were texting new instructions to your Financial Planner about your retirement security?

Smarten up. Stop thinking safety doesn't affect you because you wear a suit to work.
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Kevin Burns - Corporate Safety Attitude/Culture Strategist
www.safety.kevburns.com
Toll Free 1-877-287-6711

Creator of the 90-Day System To Improve Safety Culture!

Safety Professionals Must Raise The Bar

I got the opportunity to join nearly 100 safety professionals for lunch Monday. The Calgary Chapter of CSSE invited me to speak on Attitude of Safety.

Calgary went face-to-face with Old Man Winter on the weekend and so the remnants of over a foot of snow combined with blustery cold temperatures of minus 20 Celsius made for tough driving conditions. But the room was filled to capacity regardless.

The weather provided a perfect example of an Attitude of Safety. The "Safety Professional" who preaches safety on the job yet drives to the safety meeting on all-season radials does not possess an Attitude of Safety.That is a Tolerance of Safety - and there's a huge difference.

Ensuring one's family members are driving on winter tires in frigid temperatures and snowy and icy conditions means that they display an Attitude of Safety.Not ensuring that family vehicles are not outfitted with winter tires sends a strong message: unfortunately the wrong message.

It is incumbent upon every safety professional to do everything within their power to ensure that seemingly ordinary daily tasks are conducted safely. All season tires harden like hockey pucks below -7 degrees. There is virtually no traction and consequently, less safety on all-season tires in cold and snowy weather.

Here's a novel idea for companies to help their people think safety: search out a tire shop willing to offer a volume discount for employees to purchase winter treads. Then give the employee an hour or so to have the tires installed.Let them ride one winter on snow-grips and they'll never drive on all-seasons again. You've, in fact, raised their standard of acceptable safety.

As a safety professional, demonstrate your Attitude of Safety by making sure your people are safe both on and off the job. It will go a long way to getting your employees to think about safety for themselves. In fact, winter tires might just be the catalyst that kicks your safety program into high gear.

Demonstrate your Attitude of Safety whenever possible. The difference you make impacts not just your workplace but your community as well. And isn't that really what safety is about? Safety for everyone?

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Kevin Burns - Corporate Safety Attitude/Culture Strategist
www.safety.kevburns.com
Toll Free 1-877-287-6711

Texting While Driving Studied

It seems incredible that people still don't think that the safe operation of a vehicle is compromised while texting. In fact, just this past week I witnessed three separate incidents of excessive speed, swerving and lane-creep while texting at highway speed.

So when I read an article on just how distracting texting is, I felt it just had to be shared. Here is the link http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/technology/28texting.html
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