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?

How To Tell If Your Foreman Is Paying Attention

As a Safety Professional, I know that you can have tough days. How about a few "head-shaking" moments to consider not just the safety violations in the following photos, but the incompetence of the job-site foremen. Oh, and once you stop laughing, feel free to pass these along.

One last thing, I apologize if any of this work is yours....

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

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!

Worker Charged In Co-Worker's Death

I have said it time and again at each and every Safety Attitude presentation: workers are just as responsible as employers for the safety of their fellow workers.

Reading in the Calgary Herald today that the death of a worker in High River two years ago has created a new charge to be filed against the deceased's co-worker for failing to ensure the safety of his co-worker.

Pay attention Safety Supervisors. This has dire effects on how your crews look out for each other. In Alberta, the OH&S Act clearly states that a worker can be held responsible for the safety of their co-workers. Failure to do so will result in a charge. And the fine cannot be paid by the employer - the employee is on the hook for fines and jail time.

If you want to get the message across at your tailgate meeting today, here's the link to the story. Print it, make as many copies as there are crew members and make them read it in front of you. Then talk about it.

Do not let this opportunity to develop a Culture of Safety pass you by today. This is too important.

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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!

Necessary Part of Doing Business?

The recent West Virginia coal mine disaster has some serious implications - even more far-reaching than the deaths of the miners. The mine at Montcoal, West Virginia, is owned by Massey Energy. As reported recently by the New York Times, Massey Energy is one of the leading violators of safety procedures in the coal industry.

In fact, Massey CEO, Don Blankenship, was recently quoted as saying, "Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process."

Did you get that? Safety violations are a normal part of mining? It is unbelievable that a CEO holds so little value in his people that he doesn't care that his operation will break safety rules? People die as a result - and yet he is still CEO and there seem to be no consequences.

According to Blankenship's words, if he has to risk lives to get the job done, he will choose chunks of rock over human life.

Is your safety program really based on protecting your people or are you just giving an illusion of safety?

Safety Attitude starts at the top and makes no room for "necessary" violations.

But it raises this question: how would you like to be the Supervisor of Safety working under this guy?


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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!

Embrace Life - Wear a Seatbelt - Video

Absolutely brilliant video for wearing a seatbelt. Safety Attitude begins at home - with family who want you to come home at the end of the day.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-8PBx7isoM
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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 Culture By Fear is a Waste of Time

You will never achieve a Culture of Safety by attempting to scare the crap out of your people. That means that pictures of dismembered bodies, videos of workers with missing limbs and even bringing in speakers who have had terrible accidents happen (mostly through carelessness) does not create a Culture of Safety.

If you want to create a Culture of Safety you have to change the varying opinions of the workers. Culture is nothing more than a collection of attitudes within an organization. If you want to really develop a Culture of Safety, then you have got to change the attitudes that are driving your organization right now. Shocking and scaring your people into a safety mindset never lasts or ever takes off for that matter.

No safety program has had success because your employees were once shown a picture of a guy losing his arm in a machine. No safety program has ever had success because your employees watched a video of someone in the midst of a reportable incident. No safety program ever succeeded because you hired an accident-victim-turned-motivational-speaker to teach your people, "don't do what I did."

No, if you want to instill a Culture of Safety, you need to get the majority of your people on-side and create a self-policing, peer-based safety culture that looks out for each other, makes sure that everyone is working safely and chastises and ridicules those who chose to operate outside of the safety program. You need to find a way to get your people to make those who don't follow the safety culture to feel like outsiders and to be ostracized.

"We operate with a safety mindset around here," your people need to say. "If you don't want to play the way we play, then we don't want you around here. We're going to get you fired. Either get in line or get a new job."

That's the Culture of Safety you want. If that's not the culture you have right now, then your safety program isn't working.

Zero is real on every job site. There are no excuses - unless your culture accepts excuses.
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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!

Build Safety Culture - Not Just Safety Programs

Is your safety program addressing responsibility, accountability, leadership and values?

Why not? I mean, come on, you look for these traits when you hire someone don't you? What do you look for on a resume? Accountability, responsibility, leadership (personal), initiative, values and history. The very things that you choose to hire someone on are the very things that are absent from your safety program.

If they are not important enough to address in your safety program then why don't you just hire based on the employee's past safety record? Why do you need a model employee when you could just have some safety cowboy who has somehow managed to remain unscathed over his lifetime of safety infractions? No, you want responsible people who are able to think outside of themselves. But you don't train them in how to do that do you?

You say you want your employees to watch out for each other and to take responsibility for keeping the job site safe. You want your employees to be accountable when they mess up as well as when they act proactively. You want your people to be present on the job so that they can provide for their families. You want all of these things from a good employee and yet you leave the soft-skills training right out of your safety program. Well that's not a safety and wellness program then - it's a compliance program.

Maybe you just want your people to blindly follow the rules. Maybe you just don't trust them enough to be able to think on their own - and I'm sure we've all worked with with one or two people like that but let's not penalize the whole crew because one or two have a hard time locating their backsides with both hands.

The problem is that the vast majority of safety programs were written in reaction to dumb things people have done on the job. Safety programs, by their very nature, are reactive. Incidents have happened in the past and that's why there are now new rules and procedures. But is that how you want your safety and wellness program to work - constantly reacting to incidents?

A successful safety culture needs to be built - not just a safety program. A safety culture can only be erected on a foundation of responsibility, accountability, leadership and values. Once you've established the big four, then, and only then, can you build your successful safety and wellness program.

It may mean that you stop hiring the "accident-survivor-turned-safety-speaker" who can not clearly demonstrate their accountability, responsibility or leadership by their past actions.  If your culture is one of "this could happen to you," then it probably will.

Be careful of the message that remains top-of-mind for your people. Talk about "leadership" and watch your people become leaders in safety. It's why I choose to work in building safety culture and safety attitude - not just safety programs.
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Kevin Burns - Corporate Safety Attitude/Culture Strategist
www.safety.kevburns.com
Toll Free 1-877-287-6711

Get Tough: Cell-Phones And Snow Tires

Employees driving a company vehicle from Steels Industrial Products can be fired if they are caught using any kind of cellphone or texting device while driving -- period. Hooray. Steels president Jim Sidwell laid down the law to his 180 workers in British Columbia and Alberta a few weeks ago. Similar policies are in force at large companies such as Finning Canada, Husky Energy, Halliburton and ConocoPhilipps.

Studies show that drivers who talk on cellphones are six times more likely to be involved in dangerous collisions. And they are 23 times more likely to have a crash if they're texting and driving, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. People who chat on cellphones or text are 10 times more likely to run a stop sign.

It's a safety issue. And personally, I would like to see a way to enact legislation to company employees who freely chat or text on the cell phones while OFF the job too. Hey if they only do it while on the job, it's proof positive that those people do not possess a Safety Attitude. They just tolerate the rules at work. And they will cut corners in safety.

Oh, and speaking of Safety Attitude, let's make sure that if you really want to walk the safety-talk, let's make sure that there are winter tires on those company vehicles if they run where there is snow on the ground for long periods of time.

It's December and snow is falling. There is no comparison between driving on all-season tires and driving on winter tires. People though, whine about the additional expense. There is NO additional expense. Running winter tires for six months extends your all-season tires by six months every season. So a set of tires that may have lasted three years should last six by rotating all-seasons and winter tires.

Sorry but if you're in Safety and you don't have winter tires on your company vehicle AND your personal vehicle, then you're a hypocrite and as a safety supervisor, you don't walk your talk. Safety is an Attitude. Safety is more than just wearing your PPE on the job. Safety is about protecting yourself, your family and the general public off the job too.

I would encourage organizations to find a way to get personal vehicles outfitted with winter tires in snow-belt areas. I'm not saying that companies should pay for winter tires for their employees but make a deal at a tire shop and offer your people an hour off to get them changed over. If you preach safety, then make off-the-job-safety a part of your safety culture.

If you've never thought that way, then you aren't going to convince others of a safety attitude - and you could use my help to shift your culture to a Safety Culture.
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Kevin Burns - Corporate Safety Attitude/Culture Strategist
www.safety.kevburns.com
Toll Free 1-877-287-6711

When Workers Hate Their Bosses

When workers hate their bosses, you can't always openly tell. Some have disliked their bosses from Day 1. Others learn to increasingly disrespect their bosses and begin to shut down over time - eventually arriving to that point where they actually, in their minds, resign from the job. They end up doing just enough to not get fired.

Now before you go thinking that as long as they continue to do their jobs all is OK, let me clue you in. The levels of employee motivation have tangible ramifications for your organization:

• Rates of jobsite theft will rise.
• Quality of work will drop creating unsafe conditions.
• Safety incident numbers rise.
• Turnover and absenteeism both increase.
• Profitability of the department drops.

If you've got any of these issues, then you've got a group of workers who have become disillusioned with their immediate boss. People who shut down like this don't have it in for the company (in most instances), they have it in for their immediate manager. It's not the corporate culture that irritates people over time, it's usually an immediate supervisor. Once an employee loses respect for their boss, good luck getting them motivated and engaged again. If they're not engaged and motivated, they are cutting corners - safety corners.

Stop buying the excuses of department managers who always have an excuse for why theft is up, safety incidents are up, reports are late, turnover is high or why so many people seem to be sick. They're sick alright - sick of their boss.

Act quickly when you see the signs.
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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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140 Character Safety Meeting

I keep hearing from Safety Supervisors how the new Gen Y workers seem to have a great distaste for safety manuals. And they should. They've never really had to read anything over 140 characters long in the last few years. Oh sure, there was that University thing, but other than that...

Gen Y is the interactive, YouTube-video, short-burst, short-attention-span, make-it-entertaining generation of workers. The old binders full of pages and dividers aren't going to do it for this group.

You have a problem: you need to get what's in those manuals into their heads. They have a problem: it's freakin' boring.

SAFETY ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: How about doing what they're doing? Use the technology they're already using to get them where they are. How about text-messaging (SMS) a safety regulation in under 140 characters? Or how about setting up a Twitter account for your safety regs and force them (as a condition of employment) to subscribe to your Twitter feeds. Set up a "hashtag" like #yourcompanysafety and get your Gen Y's to get on board.

Every time they check their cell phones for either text messages or Twitter, you will have placed at least one new safety regulation/tip and it will help them to develop that Attitude of Safety that they need to help get your company to Zero.

Sample ideas:
PPE check. Hat, boots, gloves, eyes, hearing, all good? Look around. Who isn't good? What can you do to fix it right now? (124 characters)
Stop. Look up and all around. There's a potential hazard somewhere. Are you going to ignore it or address it? You choose. (125 characters)
Toolbox meeting at 3pm today. Just inside front gate of site. John has new info on yesterday's near gas breach. (111 characters)

Safety Attitude is about doing what's necessary to make sure crews are safe. Do what you've got to do. And stop thinking about how you've always done it. That's not working anymore.

Scary Survey Numbers Impact Safety

Do you think that just because your people are still employed in a down economy, that they’re adhering to safety procedures? Don’t bet your life on it. In fact, in desperate times, employees are resorting to desperate measures and are doing desperate things to hang onto their jobs.

According to a recent survey by Adecco, one of the world’s leaders in human resource solutions, an incredible 28 percent of respondents would do something dishonest in order to keep their jobs. These behaviors include blaming coworkers for mistakes, setting up situations for co-workers to fail or even blackmailing colleagues. Gen Y’s numbers are even scarier with 41 percent saying they would do something dishonest.

In the same survey 20 percent of currently employed individuals say current economic conditions have a negative affect upon their mental health.

Finally, 82 percent of respondents said their employers are not paying more attention to performance even as layoffs reduce payrolls to essential employees.

SAFETY ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: If you think that simply maintaining your current OH&S program is going to get you to Zero as the world changes – think again. As these times in our economy take their toll on your people, they are willing to sabotage other workers to save their own jobs. IS your OH&S program ready to address this? Seriously?

Twenty percent of your people are feeling that you’re not paying enough attention to their mental health on the job. What are you doing to address this? Someone with mental health problems on the job can be a walking hazard.

The world is changing. The worker on the job is changing. The numbers of Gen Y’s on the job are changing how you handle your safety program. But are you trying to manage the potential fallout using last year’s OH&S model in this year’s economic reality?

Look, if you’re not addressing Safety Attitude on the job, you’re missing a potentially fatal hazard. Workers who are prepared to blame co-workers to simply keep their own jobs are loose-cannons on the job site. You don’t have enough supervisors to watch everyone all of the time. You need to do something different.

Don’t wait until it’s too late. The numbers speak for themselves. You do the math. If you don’t address these new realities now, your safety numbers are going to take a nosedive and your LTI’s are going to cost you a lot of money.

“Safety Attitude” Includes Money and Security

Safety Attitude is just like it reads: an Attitude of Safety. An Attitude of Safety transcends the workplace. An Attitude of Safety doesn’t only work between certain hours. That would be a Tolerance of Safety. Someone with a Tolerance of Safety might be heard saying, “I know the rules and I abide by them at work but after work I’m on my own time and you don’t own me after work. And so I get to choose how I act off the job, not you Mr. Employer.”

Safety, though, transcends personal injury potential. Safety is not just about whether people find a way to avoid being injured physically. It’s not just about finding fire exits in an emergency or wearing a hard hat on a construction site or owning safety gloves and glasses. But safety really is also about how people might avoid being injured - financially and emotionally too. The problem is that current Occupational Health and Safety programs don’t address Safety Attitude. OH&S programs really only address rules and procedures and adherence to those same rules and procedures. OH&S does not address the underlying attitudes that determine how the rules come about. A really successful Attitude of Safety program must include the elements of not just personal safety, but personal security and even money.

Here’s why. You go to work to earn money so that, over time, you can provide some security for your family like a financial nest-egg, life insurance, disability insurance, retirement planning and investments to help take the “living paycheck-to-paycheck” frustration away from your loved ones. When you develop your security strategy, you take the pressure off of your family. They are secure in knowing that if tough times befell you, they would be alright.

When you put together your security strategy, you are, in fact, looking for safety for your family. You have something precious to live for and that one precious thing, your family, is counting on you. When you have something to live for, like a good family life, you won’t take unnecessary risks on the job. You won’t do anything that would jeopardize you or your family’s welfare. When you are able look out for your family, then you are able to look out for your coworkers as well.

But if you won’t look out for your own personal safety and security, how in the world are you able to look for others? How you do one thing is how you do everything. Someone who is a menace to himself on the job is sure as hell going to be a menace to everyone he works with.

Face it, if you’ve got a good money plan in place and your family is well looked after should something tragic happen to you, you have security. Security, for most families, comes from doing the right things with your money.

The challenge for most people though, is that they don’t realize that they’re acting unsafely because they’re not on the job at the time. On payday, plunking a quarter of your paycheck down on the casino card-table or the VLT is not a Safety Attitude. Going to the bar to get liquored-up so that you can feel lousy and not be 100% the next morning is not a Safety Attitude. Driving home with a couple of beers under your belt is not a Safety Attitude. Getting a windfall of money and spending it all foolishly (boats, skidoos, etc) when you could invest it and set yourself up for life is not a Safety Attitude.

SAFETY ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Being foolish with your money shows you don’t care about your long-term security or long-term safety. If you’re willing to take chances with your money, you’ll do the same thing on the job. You may adhere to safety regulations on the job but you really don’t much care for those rules. You simply tolerate them. Anyone who allows him or herself to be foolish with money, show up to work with a hangover, frequently misplace their requisite safety gear or even drive around without a seat belt on are the kinds of people who don’t care about their own personal safety and security. If they don’t care about their own safety and security, what makes you think that they’ll be looking out for the rest of their fellow crew members on the job? Get real.

If you want to increase safety in your workplace then increase security out of the workplace. Help people with their money and increase the security of their loved ones. Give people a reason to be careful and they will. Make them blindly adhere to a bunch of safety regulations and, well, you take your own chances on the success of that program.

How To Not Do Safety - Safety Attitude - Test #04

Safety Attitude? Huh?

OK, so I'm planning on doing a little restoration work on my own car this weekend but I will guarantee that this is NOT how I will work under it. It seems like this guy perhaps played a few too many football games in High School without a helmet.

Enjoy your weekend. Think Safety Attitude!

Which Is Safer – Home Or Work?

There’s a different sound in the neighbourhood these days: it’s getting close to summer so the kids who were probably looking for something to do inside during the winter months have now headed outside. The sounds of playing outside are ramping up.

As I watched the neighbourhood kids this past weekend, I noticed that many parents send their kids out with bike helmets, elbow and knee pads for the skateboards and sunscreen for the hot days that were upon us this past weekend. As I opened the newspaper, I read an article that reads that more children are being injured by falling TVs and furniture than ever before. In fact, the number of incidents of kids being injured by falling furniture has increased 41 percent over the past eighteen years.

From the Journal of Clinical Pediatrics, researchers identified that 264,200 injuries – about 21 cases for every 100,000 children – are caused by furniture and TVs falling on them. More than 24 percent of the children injured had inadvertently pulled furniture onto themselves and another 11 percent were found to be climbing on furniture when the incidents occurred. Remember, this is only from the actual numbers of cases reported. Kids who may have hurt themselves but not badly enough to require medical attention are likely not included in this report. But here’s the big number, over half of the tip-overs were from televisions falling on the kids. In every single instance, large pieces of furniture and appliances were not anchored to the wall.

You send your kids outside to play with all of the requisite safety gear yet fail to protect them in their own homes. So what’s the problem? The problem is that you don’t want to “appear” as a bad parent so anything that happens in plain view of other parents; you make sure the kids have the appearance that you are looking after their safety. That’s simply a safety-tolerance attitude: if your neighbours can see our kids, then you’re probably making sure you have the appearance of safety. You don’t want to look like bad parents by letting your kids go into the street without helmets and elbow pads. But it turns out, that the kids are actually safer outside the house than inside.

It may be OK for kids to climb trees but not OK for them to climb bookshelves. Just because it’s not OK, doesn’t mean they don’t do it.

SAFETY ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Safety Attitude means thinking about safety whether the neighbours are watching or not. If you go to work and adhere to the safety procedures, think for just a second about whether your kids would be safer at your place of work or in your own home. You see, someone has already set the rules for safety at work. Technically speaking, it would be safer for the kids, in many instances, to play in the workplace than it would be for them at home.

If you’ve got one of those big-screen TVs, anchor it. Anchor bookshelves, cabinets and anything else that might tip over when you can’t possibly be watching the kids’ every move. So go home and get a screwdriver, anchor straps or L-brackets and anchor your big stuff so the kids don’t hurt themselves. You’re a parent – a leader in your children’s’ lives – set the example for leadership and keep your kids out of the hospital. Show them that you have a Safety Attitude. It’s a small thing like this that will equip your kids when they themselves get ready to enter the workforce.

Kevin's New "Safety Attitude" Web Site

It's done. My new web site specifically for Safety professionals http://www.safety.kevburns.com

When it comes time for your next safety meeting, make sure that at least part of that meeting is set aside to specifically address Safety Attitude!

What is Safety Attitude? It's how your people think of safety. Is safety something they simply tolerate while on the job or do they actively practice it at home as much as they do at work. A Safety Attitude goes beyond the time clock. A Safety Attitude has no start and end time. A Safety Attitude is a state of mind - not a tolerance for the rules while on shift.

The truth is Safety Attitude, both on and off the job, brings your workers' safety focus to the forefront. It's the attitude of your people, when they drive in traffic, when they cut their lawns, when they operate power equipment at home, when they come to work alert (not hungover or full of cold meds) that can seriously cut the number of incidents on the job. It's Safety Attitude that keeps your people looking out for each other on the job and helps them to realize that "Zero" can be achieved but everyone on the job site needs to buy in. The Safety program may fall under the control of the Safety Supervisor, but carrying out safety on the job is everyone's responsibility.

Safety Attitude is perspective. Change the perspective and you change the results. Once you change someone's perspective, once you change how they see things. Once you change how they respond to hazards, you change results.

There are companies around the world who are achieving Zero on the job. Would you be willing to take the time to find out their secrets? I'll save you the trouble. Companies hit Zero when they don't allow excuses, reasons or justifiers to stand in their way. That's simply "Safety Attitude" in play.

None of it is measurable or tangible. But you won't find a single successful organization without it.

Now, you have two choices: address Safety Attitude at your next safety meeting - or - change the safety culture by continually addressing Safety Attitude as the primary component of a safety culture that works. Either way, we're here to help you get it done.

How Not To Do Safety - Test #01

Some incredibly hilarious (if not near tragic) photos have made their way to my email recently. I will be sharing them with you over the next little while. The saying is true: "A picture is worth a thousand words" or at the very least, a dozen safety infractions.

I invite you to offer up your observations as to which safety infractions you can identify. Simply add your comments by clicking "comments" below.

Test #01 - drywalling in a commercial building.

Feel free to forward this post to others by clicking the white envelope (email post) and get them involved in having a little fun with safety.

New Alberta Safety Reg's

New safety announcements were made today for workplaces in Alberta. If you haven't heard, here is where you can find more information from the 2009 OHS Code and a bulletin that compares the 2006 and 2009 editions of the Code. They can be found online at: http://employment.alberta.ca/whs-ohs

Employers have three months to phase in the changes - that's 90 days and counting.

In a nutshell, here's what it says:

The Alberta Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Code has been updated to keep workplace health and safety rules current and relevant. Alberta employers have until July 1 to comply with the updates.

The Occupational Health and Safety Council recommended changes to the code after extensive public consultation.

Updates to the OHS Code include the following:

• new requirements for lift calculations, tag lines and personnel baskets;
• health care requirements specific to patient/client/resident handling;
• new requirements for medical sharps;
• new concept of a ‘restricted’ space with less stringent requirements than a ‘confined’ space;
• requirements applicable to respiratory protection against airborne biohazardous material;
• mobile equipment requirements specifically for concrete pump trucks;
• new, specific safety factors for rigging components;
• occupational exposure limits revised for nearly 150 chemical substances; and
• updates to better reflect current mining practices.

As Larry The Cable Guy says, "Git 'er done."