The Safety Guru

October is Distracted Driving Awareness Month. What better introduction to an excellent conversation with Emmy Award-winning journalist and author of The Long Blink, Brian Kuebler, who exposes the staggering cost of the American trucking industry’s rising crash rate through the intimate struggle of Ed Slattery, who is left to piece his family back together after a trucker fell asleep at the wheel and killed his wife and maimed his ...

Behavior Based Safety has brought incredible successes to many organizations but often performance pushes to new heights and plateaus. In a lively conversation with Dr. Josh Williams, we explore strategies to push past the plateau. From re-energizing Behavior Based Safety programs to integrating ideas from Cognitive Psychology and Human Performance tools to bring a holistic approach to safety improvement. This is a must listen to e...

Digging into the latest research in sleep with Rebecca Brossoit M.S. to understand the impact on safety. Exploring strategies to improve sleep and drive the right outcomes for workplaces. Rebecca Brossoit earned her M.S. in Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychology from Colorado State University (CSU) in 2017 and she is currently in the final stages of her PhD in I/O Psychology at CSU. Her research interests include em...

It’s been over 10 years since Brad Gardner lost his right arm in a workplace accident—an accident that didn’t have to happen. Brad and his wife, Dolores, have dedicated their lives to making workplaces safer in order to prevent tragedies like their own from happening to others. Listen to a truly inspirational story on the importance of safety leadership and ownership from Brad. Brad and his wife, Dolores, are world-renowned safety ...

Hot off the press! Dr. Stephanie Andel shares some recent research on safety for healthcare workers in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Some concerning insights that aren’t getting the needed attention. This timely episode provides some actionable insights to protect the wellbeing of our front line workers that are keeping all of us safe. Stephanie Andel (sandel@iu.edu) is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Indi...

An excellent interview with Dr. Archana Tedone exploring the latest insights in Safety Communications to help organizations improve a critical dimension to improve outcomes. In addition to sharing ideas around how leaders can improve their safety communications, she shares some evidence-based ideas around upward and lateral safety communications – how workers share ideas and how they collaborate with each other. Archana Tedone, Ph....

An excellent interview with Dr. Chuck Pettinger exploring what Big Data can teach us about safety and preventing the next potential injury. Exploring what information and insights are available now and predictions about the future of safety in the digital space. Chuck has over 30 years of experience designing, implementing and evaluating culture step-change initiatives. His major interests include developing large-scale corporate b...

Dr. Madison Hanscom shares some alarming recent research on Mental Health in the Workplace through the current COVID-19 context. She touches on the impacts on Worker Safety and provides some tangible strategies that organizations can implement to support in difficult and challenging times. This is such a critical topic that is too often missing from the Safety and Executive dialogue. This episode of the Safety Guru also touches on ...

Brian Humphreys shares the story of the Flin Flon, Manitoba smelter explosion at Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting in his book No Smoke Without Fire; A Recipe for Disaster. He was the safety supervisor on the night of the fatal smelter explosion and details the tragedy and shares perspectives on what can be done to prevent potentially fatal workplace incidents. He touches on the importance of front-line supervision and the importanc...

Safety Communications with Dr. Josh Williams  Effective communication is the cornerstone of a healthy safe production culture. This is particularly important with one-on-one conversations with employees. Employees who feel listened to and appreciated are more likely to go beyond the call of duty for safety and other organizational efforts. Effective communicators demonstrate genuine caring, promote psychological safety, actively li...

Close Call Reporting with Dr Josh Williams Does your organization reinforce a culture of reporting or is there some fear (or hassle) associated with close call events? The answer to that question is a great litmus test for your overall safe production culture. The purpose of reporting close calls (and minor injuries) is to promote a learning culture and avoid serious injuries in the future. Close call reporting, when done correctly...

Safety Incentives with Dr Josh Williams. For years, organizational leaders have used incentives to try and motivate safety. The rationale is that providing financial rewards for not getting hurt will motivate employees to “try harder” for safety.  In reality, this often encourages non-reporting which is why OSHA now discourages outcome-based incentives. Plus, people are already motivated to avoid injury.  Effective incentives, if u...