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Operationalizing the Characteristics of High-Reliability Organizations

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

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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?

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The Power of Feedback – When and How to Get It Right

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

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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.

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Safety Leadership: Decision-Making and Safer Outcomes

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

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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.

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Motivating Managers to Lead Safety

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

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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.

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How Generation Gaps Can Impact Your Safety Experience at Work

Feb 13, 2021 1:57:46 PM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure, analytics

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I was there with a 50-something year old supervisor and an 18-year-old front line worker.” That’s how DEKRA Consultant Erika Gwilt begins her story demonstrating the difference between the generations in safety. “And we were talking about how things have changed and the supervisor said, "Well, you know back when I started out with the railroad, they taught us how to get on and off moving equipment. That was something we got trained to do. Today there's a rule against getting on and off moving equipment. You're not allowed to do it. And my knees are the reason why! My knees are pretty much wrecked and part of that is jumping off stuff. That's why the rule has changed the way it has.”

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The 4 Measurable Safety Disciplines of High-Reliability Organizations

Feb 13, 2021 1:50:00 PM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure, analytics

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Since the 1980s, academics have worked to define the practices and methodologies of high-reliability organizations (HROs). These are enterprises that execute consistent and sustainable operations by creating a culture that anticipates and minimizes variation and implements high-quality decision making and controls.

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DEKRA's Employee-Led Safety System Transforms Performance

Feb 5, 2021 1:23:03 PM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure, analytics

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Keeping workers safe is an organizational priority, and one of the most effective ways to protect frontline employees is behavior-based safety (BBS). While some so-called BBS processes masquerade as true employee-driven safety systems, they are in fact little more than behavioral checklists that fail to integrate organizational elements essential to sustained success.

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Short-Term Project Safety and Reliability on Time and on Budget

Feb 5, 2021 1:13:05 PM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure

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Traditional safety programs are designed for the long haul. They build safety into the organizational culture in layers over time. But for short-term projects like turnarounds, shutdowns, and on construction sites, the traditional approach isn’t fast enough. In the time it takes traditional programs to make gains in the culture and reorient the organization around exposure control and safe work practices, the short-term project has typically run its course. Moreover, because of their harried pace, high-risk jobs, and disparate groups of contractors, short-term projects can face more exposures than steady-state operations do in years.

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Want Better Workplace Safety? Control Exposure

Jan 28, 2021 9:37:24 AM / by DEKRA posted in Serious Injury and Fatality, safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Crisis, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, exposure

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In our experience, most companies define safety as "going home the same you came to work." While healthy and unharmed is certainly the state we want each of our employees to be in when they leave work, this definition fails to account for the organization's responsibility for ensuring that result comes to fruition. It also puts the safety focus on outcomes (e.g., whether someone was injured or not) rather than on controlling the environment that puts people at risk for harm.

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High-Reliability Performance is Within Your Grasp

Jan 28, 2021 9:15:04 AM / by DEKRA posted in safety, organizational safety, DEKRA, workplace injuries, Crisis, Workplace safety, safety leadership, culture, neuroscience

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Have you ever wondered how you as a leader or how your organizational systems are contributing to human error? Have you ever wondered why one of your best employees makes a serious mistake?

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