Words that Don't Matter Don't Help

View my 10th Annual Appalachian Safety Summit presentation here:

I hear you out there, I’ve heard you and, especially your leadership, use big words (that don’t mean anything) to try to explain your workers behaviors: Why can workers get so?complacent? Why do workers not?buy-in?to our safety program? How do we get them to?care?

And ultimately: We should build a?safety?culture?where everyone looks out for each other! We should get our workers to take?ownership?over their safety! We should get workers?engaged!

I applaud your attempt to define what you want in your safety culture.?However, face it,?you don’t understand what any of this means. If you did, you would have done something about them.?When we construct our vision of safety culture based on words that don’t mean anything, we end up with a house of cards, ready to be knocked down by the next round of cost-cutting, leadership changes, production challenge or just the passing of time.?But when we get it right, our ‘construction’ is based on solid foundations, such as science, leading to?function?that we can build solid safety systems around.

Fear not!?We can define the words that don’t mean anything.?We can define them behaviorally to be ‘operational’ Let’s?operationally define?the behaviors that vex you (complacency) as well as the aspirational behaviors (engagement) to build into your safety culture. Then we can, well, operate on them, and build your safety culture… instead of just hope and wish that the big words that don’t mean anything have an impact.