Mar 29, 2021 12:55:52 PM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, Road Safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure, networking
We’ve all done it. Sneaked a peek at an incoming text while driving. Punched in a quick reply with one hand on the wheel—our eyes dancing from screen to road as we hurry our message along as quickly as we hurry home. It’s no big deal, right? Just one text?
Mar 29, 2021 12:41:30 PM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure, process safety, networking
This workplace safety article was co-written by Ryan Roark director of operations, AkzoNobel Surface Chemistry, and was previously published in the July 2014 issue of Safety+Health magazine.
In a perfect world, safety would be easy. Leaders would look at safety incident reporting and identify and remove the exposures and hazards that cause them. They would improve behavioral reliability and safety by making sure everyone followed the rules. But real life is not so simple. The live workplace is always changing—making it critical that employees be able to detect and respond to real-time changes in risk.
Mar 18, 2021 11:18:29 AM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure, process safety, networking
Network! Network! Network! We're encouraged to network with others in safety whether it's over social media or at safety conferences. But what if networking isn’t really your thing. Maybe you don't where to begin or you're an introvert and uncomfortable with approaching strangers. What if you're the opposite and are extremely curious, friendly, outspoken, but find yourself not finding a lot of value out of the conversations you have with others? Often people need help navigating their interactions to have richer, valuable conversations.
Mar 18, 2021 11:00:52 AM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure, process safety
This workplace safety article was originally published in BST’s The Manager’s Guide to Workplace Safety (2012: Safety in Action Press).
Managers and supervisors play a critical role in culture change. They are the ones who communicate organizational priorities and values and who build relationships with individual team members. Managers and supervisors act as messengers between employees and the organization at large, and their actions signal what is accepted and rewarded. To many employees, managers and supervisors are the organization.
Mar 9, 2021 1:02:47 PM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure, process safety
A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I went out for lunch with friends. When we drove up to the restaurant, we noticed our friends had just arrived and were getting out of the car. This also meant they could see me struggling to wiggle my car into one of the tiny parking places. When we got out, I was expecting some comments on my parking skills, but the first thing one of my friends said was: "Filip, the engine of your car does not sound right. That is a sign something's wrong. You have to take it to the garage."
Mar 9, 2021 12:19:22 PM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure
When done right, safety can transform company culture and produce dramatic results in employee engagement, production, and other corporate goals. Organizations better at safety tend to perform better in other business areas and produce bottom line results everyone can get behind. The benefits safety offers the enterprise, however, are often overlooked in boardrooms where the company’s most important decisions are made. Corporate leaders often fail to recognize the advantages that can be gained by including safety in strategic planning or the ways business functioning can be improved with a comprehensive safety approach. In other words, at the highest levels of planning, safety falls into strategy’s blind spot.
Mar 3, 2021 8:29:03 AM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure
For organizations operating in high-risk conditions, staying safe presents its own set of unique hurdles. What can leaders do to ensure they are fully supporting the technical and operational aspects of effective process safety? What are the key areas of focus, and what characteristics need to be strengthened to protect the enterprise and prevent minor incidents from becoming catastrophic events?
Mar 3, 2021 8:20:14 AM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure
Feedback is one of the pillars of performance management. Leaders adept at feedback are better able to influence behavior, redirect performance, build understanding of organizational objectives, and demonstrate leadership.
Feb 23, 2021 9:22:54 AM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure
This article was first published in the February 2017 issue of Safety+Health magazine.
Sometimes a single decision can make the difference between going home safe and not. We’re good at identifying a single poor decision (for example, failure to alert the next shift of an offline pump or missing a specific step in a complicated procedure), but few understand what it takes to make a safe decision. Advances in human factors, technology and neuroscience are changing that. The challenge is understanding what safe decision making looks like and how to develop and deploy it systematically.
Feb 23, 2021 9:08:24 AM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure
In most organizations, managers have few opportunities to think about the underlying principles of safety, let alone know how to apply solutions for reducing injury exposures in the workplace.
At DEKRA Organizational Safety & Reliability, we are scientists, technologists and advisors—experts in both the cultural dynamics of large organizations and the physical challenges of an industrial work environment. With solutions spanning behavior and leadership, reliability and testing, and data analytics, we offer a uniquely robust approach to safety. Our specialty is helping clients evolve both their organizational culture and their operational environment, empowering them to reduce injuries, save lives, protect assets—and in the process, achieve higher performance.
