Hazard/Risk
Inspect Equipment Before Use
There’s always a reason for every safety rule, and it’s not the least bit difficult to figure out what the reason is for that piece of advice.
February 18, 2019
No Comments
Execution
What’s Your Plan?
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul dives into planning for the New Year. Specifically, planning to send everyone home alive and well at the end of each and every shift. January is the time we seem to be most focused on planning and Paul’s got a few words of good advice.
January 24, 2019
No Comments
Hazard/Risk
A Simple Task
If there is one good thing to be said about the hazards all of us are regularly exposed to as we make a living, it is this: people are hard targets to hit. It takes a lot for the stars to align…
January 17, 2019
No Comments
Leadership
Not On My Shift!
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul looks back to the lessons learned on his last trip of the year that included developing a new teacher for Balmert Consulting in Germany. But that is not the story, not this month.
This month Paul finds safety leadership in the most unusual place and follows the thread back fifty years to his first boss and the plant manager.
December 13, 2018
No Comments
Hazard/Risk
No Laughing Matter!
Safety is serious business, but that hasn’t stopped some from poking fun at the way those of us who work for a living get hurt. Before he became famous as a Cajun chef….
December 7, 2018
No Comments
Uncategorized
Information, Please!
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul describes role-modeling a successful technique used by Malcom Forbes. In our circles, we have a familiar name for the practice. You can read about it in his book, Alive And Well, or you can come to one of our open enrollment sessions and learn it first hand from Paul, who certainly practices what he preaches.
This month Paul also discusses some basic principles to measure safety performance. They can be found in more detail in the chapter, Measuring Safety Performance. It’s the longest chapter in his book.
November 27, 2018
No Comments
Hazard/Risk
Ranking Hazards
If you’re someone who works with your hands, on the list of hazards you face doing your job, how high would you rank Power Tools? …….
November 15, 2018
No Comments
Hazard/Risk
Failure To Learn?
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul examines the problem of failing to learn and there is a lesson we should not fail to learn. He focuses on the real problem of the perception of risk, aka, probability.
October 31, 2018
No Comments
Hazard/Risk
Assumptions
We make assumptions all the time. When it comes to safety, we routinely rely on those assumptions to keep ourselves safe. In the vast majority of cases, no harm comes from doing that.
October 15, 2018
No Comments
Compliance
Clickit – Or What?
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul shares the experience of 1 of the 7.7 billion. A person who had an impact on 139 fellow passengers during one of Paul’s recent trips. It got Paul thinking. I asked Paul if he was sure about running a “go” story and he said, “This story is one filled with things to be observed and learned. All you have to do is to look and pay attention.” Turns out Paul’s message is not really about “the go”, but critical lessons about compliance for sending people home alive and well at the end of the day and it does not require air freshener.
September 30, 2018
No Comments
Popular Topics
Popular Articles
Your Safety Meetings
In this month’s Flash, we’re giving your safety meetings a checkup. Instead of another idea for what to talk about, we’re taking a closer look at how your meetings are going—and what makes a good safety meeting good.
Reliability and Safety
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Newton draws on four decades in pulp and paper manufacturing to explore the relationship between reliability and safety. When equipment fails, production falls behind, and the pressure for results builds, does improving reliability necessarily improve safety?
Real-Time Decisions
In this month’s Flash, we explore real-time decision making, what to do when urgency and pressure push us toward making faster decisions, and how to recognize when it’s time to slow the process down to make a better decision.
Running Red Lights
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul takes running a red light and turns it into a much larger lesson about safety, leadership, human behavior, and execution. He starts with a company vehicle that ran a red light near his house and connects that incident to the tragic runway collision at LaGuardia, where technology, procedures, radio communication, and red runway entrance lights were all in place. The system had controls, but the outcome still depended on execution at the point of contact.
Appreciating Feedback
In this month’s Flash what might get in the way of intervention, why feedback matters, and how a simple “thank you” can encourage the conversations that help prevent injuries.
Coaching Leaders
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Gary Rivenes explores what effective coaching looks like when safety leadership moves from the classroom to the field. Gary writes from experience: before joining Balmert Consulting, he spent more than thirty years in mining leadership roles, from supervising a seventy-person crew to serving as Chief Operating Officer. In those roles, coaching leaders was not a theory or a program. It was part of getting the work done safely and sending people home alive and well at the end of the day.
All “Those” Rules…
In this month’s Flash we discuss “dumb rules”, and re-visit an easy way to put on great Tool Box Safety Meetings. Unfortunately those sorts of rules are often unwanted and seen as unnecessary, here’s one idea to help you reduce the chance a new one might be needed in the first place.
A Case Study
This month Paul explains that investigation reports are valuable leadership tools not simply because they identify technical causes, but because they reveal how familiar execution challenges—such as limited training, inexperience, weak supervision coverage, fatigue, time pressure, and inconsistent use of PPE—combine to produce serious outcomes. The primary purpose of an investigation is to help ensure an event does not happen again, but equally important is the Performance Visibility investigations provide: a clearer understanding of what is actually happening where work is being performed.
Situational Awareness
In this month’s Flash we look at static hazard recognition. Knowing and understanding where stored energy exists, which might not always be obvious, helps us ensure everyone goes home alive and well.
Looking In The Mirror
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, guest contributor and Balmert Consulting senior teacher Van Long reflects on a simple but powerful idea: the most effective safety leadership begins with self-reflection.