Managing Safety Performance News

Execution

Effect – And Cause

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul digs into some of those recent events to see what we can use back on the job to make sure everyone goes home alive and well at the end of each and every day.

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Hazard/Risk

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Behind every safety rule stands a reason. And that reason almost always has something to do with someone getting hurt, making “every safety rule written in blood.”

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Execution

Word Games

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News I sent Paul to an ancient place and he came back with some very interesting and useful insights that he shares in this month’s News. I was rewarded and I suspect you will be too.

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Hazard/Risk

Got Machines?

Machinery is everywhere: all that production equipment; maintenance equipment like mills lathes, welders; equipment moving equipment…

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Leadership

Your Safety Culture

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul examines safety culture: What it is, why it matters, why it can be a problem, and what you need to know to change it. If you’re like me, you’ll get a lot of value out of what he has to say. You may even get a new appreciation of the paper that lines your hallways.

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Hazard/Risk

Recognizing What Can Hurt Us

You’re driving a truck. On a narrow, one-way street, eastbound on a beautiful late summer morning. Your route calls for you to make a right turn…

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Hazard/Risk

Stopping The Job

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul examines making stop work decisions at work and the critical importance of that decision. Oh, yes, the client stopped the work and canceled the class in Houston. Our teacher did go to Salt Lake City so the client, in a Harvey-free area did not need to stop the work. Our teacher on the river stopped the work and headed to Fort Worth. Paul will give you some suggestions about making your stop work decisions.

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Hazard/Risk

Safe to Go?

When a traffic light turns green, how many people actually take the time think about the choices?

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Execution

Forward!

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul shares his thoughts on making real change occur. Sure, from time to time change has a lot of different names, but change by another name is still change. Humor aside, making change in the direction of sending people home alive and well at the end of every day is pretty darn important and Paul has some darn good advice on making that happen.

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Hazard/Risk

Fatigue

Fatigue is one of the many tough safety challenges every leader faces. Part of the problem is that the sources – or root causes – of fatigue don’t just come from one place.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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