Safety: Nuts 'N Bolts Strategies For

7
Safety
Nuts ’n Bolts Strategies For
Communication
By: Kevin Burns

Safety Speaker/Consultant
1
Never Stop Broadcasting
The secret to communication in safety is something
I learned back in 1974. My father, along with two
partners, opened a radio station in a small town. Small
budgets, small audience, small advertising revenue.
We had to make what we thought were smart decisions

like broadcasting only from 6am to midnight. So we shut
down for six hours every night. But our listeners didn’t
stop listening. There were shift workers, taxi drivers,
restaurant and bar staff still working. But when we
went off the air, they went to our competitors’ stations.
We actively forced our listeners to go somewhere else

to get their information, entertainment and, worst of all,
we gave our competitors our audience - with nothing in
return. It was then that we learned that the secret to
communication is to never go off the air.
The moment you go silent on safety, your “listeners”

(staff) will go somewhere else for information - any
information. And in the absence of real information,
gossip and rumors start.
7 Nuts ‘n Bolts Strategies For Safety Communication | © 2013 Kevin Burns Corporation
What do you do when the TV channel you were
watching goes off the air? How about the radio station
you were tuned into? What about when you get to your
bus stop and the newspaper you usually read is sold out
and its competitor is the only paper available? For radio
or TV, you change the station and for newspaper, you
buy the other guy’s message.
Workplace safety communication works the same way.

If a manager stops broadcasting (communicating) to
his/her listeners (employees), they end up tuning in
other stations (messages) who could potentially instruct
them to do something different than your message.
Just because a radio station goes off the air doesn’t mean
that listeners stop listening. In fact, when managers stop
broadcasting, they send their listeners to a competing
message. Sometimes that message undermines you, the
manager, and your safety program. Never go off the air.
Communication is all there is. Keep your people in-
formed and tuned in.
Keep communicating with your people. Keep them in

the loop. Never be so arrogant as to assume that they
don’t need to know something or that by telling them
once, they will get it. If you want them to trust you, you
have to trust them... especially with real information.
Keep the lines of communication open and never go

off the air in safety. Never.
2
Just Because They’re Dressed Safely
Doesn’t Mean They Believe In Safety
On a cold, snowy November morning in Regina,
Saskatchewan, I waited for the light to turn green.
I had, the previous day, given two safety keynote
presentations: the first to the Saskatchewan Heavy
Construction Association in the morning and the
Regina Construction Association in the afternoon.
Two days before, it had poured freezing rain onto

the streets of Regina. After two hours of freezing rain,
the snow fell hard - before road crews could deal with
the ice on the roads. Now there was six inches of snow
covering a very slick layer of ice.
As I waited for the light to change, a car flew through

the intersection. The car was covered in snow: rear
window, side windows, side mirrors and tail lights
all obscured by snow. From behind, you couldn’t see
the driver and he couldn’t see anyone else. But as he
flew through the intersection we were afforded a brief
glimpse of the driver in that one or two seconds. My
wife exclaimed, “I think he was wearing a hard hat.”
We turned the corner and followed him into a shopping
center parking lot where the former Walmart location
was now under construction being re-purposed for another
tenant. Construction materials and equipment were strewn
about the parking lot with a full complement of workers
rebuilding the former department store. Everywhere
you looked, there were safety signs, hazard warnings,
barricades for safe areas and fencing to protect the
hazardous areas.
After following the driver of the snow-covered car

into the parking lot, we waited and watched as the
driver emerged from his vehicle wearing a hard hat
and steel-toed boots, coveralls and safety glasses.
He carried a cup of coffee in each hand from the

nearby Tim Horton’s Coffee shop. He glanced over
in our direction as we took his photo. It was the proof-
positive of what I had been preaching for years in my
speaking presentations: that just because you make sure
your workers dress safely doesn’t mean they believe in
safety nor are they more likely to act safely if they feel
no one is watching.
How many times have you seen companies who claim

to have successful Safety Programs but still employ
people who:
• drive to work on bald tires or with broken
headlights/tail lights/signal lights
• talk on a cell or text while driving
• stand on chairs to reach for things in the kitchen
• mow the lawn in sandals and without hearing
or eye protection
• ignore PPE protection when doing home renovations
• skip walk-arounds before backing out of driveways
• don’t signal their intentions in parking lots
• cut across three lanes of traffic to turn a corner
• exceed the speed limit
• wrestle with multiple grocery bags while fumbling
with keys at the door
• don’t wear life jackets in boats
• don’t wear sunscreen in the backyard
• leave garden hoses/extension cords running
across the grass
• operate propane/gas barbecue grills with
faulty controls
• overload home electrical outlets.
(Sigh) and you can add to this list on your own…

you see this stuff everyday.
Are the Safety Programs really successful or is

it just the illusion of success because no one has
a Lost Time Incident “on the job?”
If you are going to call your Safety Program successful,
you have to take into account the shift in employee
attitudes about their home safety. If you don’t take
into account how your people conduct themselves
OFF the job, then you have the illusion of a successful
Compliance Program – not a successful Safety Program.
As a safety manager, you can’t afford to think that
because your people wear PPE and follow the rules
and procedures, that they believe in safety.
Your rules don’t automatically become their values.
3
Look for the Signs of Safety Risk
I delivered several speaking presentations on “Safety
Attitude” to several groups of natural gas installers.
Although the numbers of safety incidents as it pertains
to working with natural gas were within an “acceptable”
range (if it’s more than zero is it really acceptable?), the
numbers of incidents while driving were up – numbers
that the management team wanted brought back down.
Several of the workers in attendance were awarded

with five, ten, fifteen, twenty and twenty-five year safe
driving awards. But not all of the workers received
awards. So it begged the question: what separates
a safe driver from a careless driver?
A person who is careless with other things in his or

her life will be careless behind the wheel. Careless is
careless. You won’t find a person who is careful and
meticulous with his or her own personal possessions
and be careless behind the wheel of a company vehicle.
Carelessness is a personality trait. Safety is an attitude.
Carelessness transcends all things in your life – includ-
ing driving. If you’re careless and regularly lose your
safety equipment, you will be careless behind the wheel.
If you’re careless in ensuring that the quality of your
work is your best effort always, you’ll be careless behind
the wheel. If you’re careless about where you leave your
car keys, you’ll be just as careless behind the wheel.
Watch how people treat a rental car and you’ll see

similarities in how they drive a company vehicle.
When you see a vehicle that is filled with fast-food
bags, needs a wash (for a long time) or has several
dings or fender crunches, you’ll see that same person
being careless while driving the company vehicle.
There’s a sense of ownership and pride that comes with

achieving something. When you are personally invested
and earn your new car instead of just having it handed
to you, you treat that new possession with a little more
respect. If you won’t secure your own personal belong-
ings, your own vehicle or your quality of work, you
won’t really care about how you drive. It’s simple really.
How you do one thing is how you do everything.
How you do one thing is how you do everything!

You are a creature of habit. You make the same kinds of
decisions each day, like the same kinds of clothes, prefer
one type of music over another and you have favourite
flavors. You lean one way politically, favor certain car
brands over others, have a favourite restaurant and
probably buy your gas from the same gas stations.
You make your decisions based on your values.
Your values don’t change from one day to the next.
So if you’re a manager, if you’re in Human Resources or
if you’re a safety supervisor, why aren’t you exploiting
this knowledge?
For a person who displays unsafe behaviors off the

job (speeding, drinking and driving, recreational drugs,
skiing in high-risk avalanche areas, etc), that person is
likely to not have a deep-rooted safety attitude on the
job. If they don’t believe in personal safety off the job,
will they believe in personal safety on the job? That
knowledge could be a potential life-saver in your
organization.
If you want to find evidence of employee values when

it comes to safety, walk through the employee’s parking
lot making note of the vehicles with cracked/broken
windshields, balding tires, worn wiper blades, broken
lights, etc. Then match the owners of offending vehicles
with past workplace safety incidents. You should see a
pattern start to emerge. How you do one thing is how
you do everything.
10
So here’s one way to weed out the safety risks before
you hire them: at the end of the interview, walk each
candidate to their car and observe. Wait until they drive
away watching for use of mirrors, seat belts and state of
the vehicle. If there is no car (they may have taken the
bus), ask why. You may discover something that wasn’t
part of the interview but speaks to the character of the
candidate - both good and bad.
Fully-engaged workers amount to less than 30% of the

workforce. That means that over 70% of selecting, inter-
viewing, hiring and managing is not weeding out these
disengaged, risky-behaviour people. So get aggressive
and do something different. Do whatever is necessary
to rid your workplace of safety risks.
Combine hiring with Training Camps whenever

possible. Have each of your high-consideration
job-candidates shadow your best people - the ones
with the best safety attitudes and performance and
who would represent your organization best.
After a day or two, you would be in a very strong

position to determine who would best serve and bring
strength, stability and safety to your workplace. You can
weed out the ones who LOOK good and really find the
gems who ARE good.
11
Stop thinking that interviews will suffice. Basing your
hiring on people who can answer inane HR questions
like, “tell me about a time you were forced to speak
up and how that made you feel” is insulting to the
candidate and embarrassing to your organization.
If you want to find the really good, solid and safe

employees, then stop using the same interview tech-
niques as every other mediocre organization struggling
to reach Zero. Be bold. Be different to get different.
The problem is that current Occupational Health and

Safety programs don’t address Safety Attitude. OH&S
programs really only address rules and procedures and
adherence to those same rules and procedures. OH&S
does not address the underlying attitudes that determine
how the rules come about. A really successful Safety
program must include the elements of not just personal
safety, but also the attitudes around personal security
and even money.
If you won’t look out for your own personal safety

and security, how in the world are you able to look
for others? How you do one thing is how you do
everything. Someone who is a menace to himself
on the job is sure as hell going to be a menace to
everyone he works with.
12
4
Just Because It’s the Law
Doesn’t Mean Compliance
Police set up Check-Stops regularly and nab drunk
drivers. They sit at the side of the road and nab speeders
every day. Even the numbers of tickets being issued for
distracted driving (using handheld phone, texting, etc.)
are on the rise. Your people know the dangers of engag-
ing in these activities from a safety perspective let alone
the legal perspective and the heavy hit to their wallets.
Yet people in your organization are still doing this stuff
today – maybe even right now as you’re reading this.
If you are going to call your Safety Program successful,

you have to take into account the shift in employee
attitudes about their off-the-job safety compliance.
If you don’t take into account how your people conduct
themselves OFF the job, then you have the illusion of
a successful Compliance Program – not a successful
Safety Program.
Zero incidents in the workplace is ultimately the goal

of every safety strategy – but it is a goal often missed.
If Zero is achieved, it is not held into perpetuity. And
there is a simple reason why it is elusive: because safety
compliance is not linear and certainly not logical.
13
Most Workplace Safety programs are based on the
premise that if you develop a set of rules, procedures
and policies, and police your people into complying
with the rules, that you will have no workplace
incidents. In other words, line them up, make them
do the same things, train them the same, blanket-policy
everything and take away the ability to choose,
you should have a safe workplace.
But it doesn’t work. Traffic laws, speed limits, distracted

driving legislations are still being offended.
Processes might be uniform, people are not. People

get bored when their freedom of choice is taken away.
People mentally check-out when independence is
impugned. People are illogical because each thinks
a little differently. Trying to get everyone focused
on-task at every waking moment is like herding cats.
Thoughts are not linear. They are random.
Building a Culture of Safety for the future, because

employee attention span is shrinking daily, will have
to appeal to more than just uniform policy and complete
compliance. People are going to be distracted. When
they are distracted they are not focused on the task at
hand – an opportunity for incident.
14
The Safety Manager of the future is going to need
to be part psychologist. As the 9-second-attention-span
new-worker numbers begin to dominate the workplace,
organizations will need to address each individual’s
underlying attitudes toward personal safety to achieve
positive OH&S results.
Expecting to achieve zero without addressing the

underlying attitudes is like painting a car and hoping
the new paint will stop the engine from burning oil.
15
5
Overcoming The Biggest Obstacle
To Improving Safety
Engagement! It’s the biggest problem in the workplace
today. The surveys tell us that 71% of employees are
NOT fully engaged. 71%! And don’t kid yourself, it’s
not just Gen Y that’s disengaged. Gen Y only account
for 15% of the workforce. Even if all 15% of Gen Y were
disengaged, you’d still have to explain the other 56%
to make it add up to 71. Stop kidding yourself. The
problem is not just young workers.
If the workplace assembly line slowed down by 71%,

you’d call in the consultants, the engineers. You’d be
screaming four-letter words at the manufacturer of
your malfunctioning piece of equipment. But you
wouldn’t just lay down and take it.
So you’d think that a 71% level of disengagement,

a serious drop in focused-attention productivity,
would be cause for grave concern for companies.
After all, lost productivity creates a huge financial
mess forcing companies to continue to pay more
and get less. You’d think that there’d be a hue-and-cry
from Corporate North America. At the very least, there’d
be summits and meetings to address solutions intended
to curb this very real problem that is plaguing our
workplaces and costing us money.
But there isn’t.
16
It’s apparently still not painful enough. If it were painful
enough, companies would be doing something about it.
But they’re not. They’re simply reading the occasional
blog post about it from a few people who care enough
to write about it in the hopes that people would have
the little light bulb come on and get how serious this
problem is.
But they’re still not getting it and here’s why: because

it an “employee” engagement problem (terribly named
as though it’s all the employees’ fault). And it’s because
you, as a safety manager, think that “employee” engage-
ment is not your department.
Companies are sending employees to team-building

workshops and time-management courses hoping that
the engagement problem will get fixed. They’re even
sending their managers to Leadership courses hoping
that will fix it. And yet, the numbers of the disengaged
keep on rising.
And here’s why the numbers keep rising: because

taking a course in one specific area only is like painting
a car and hoping the new paint will stop the engine from
burning oil. The problem isn’t in how the car looks.
The problem is how the engine runs. And the engine
apparently needs an overhaul.
17
Engagement involves more than just time management,
or leadership or team-building. Lack of engagement is
a problem in every corner of every organization. Here
are just some of the areas where work needs to be done:
• Annual Performance Review - You’re still doing
annual performance reviews with a workforce that
is used to and requires daily feedback. The reason
people seem addicted to Facebook is because on
Facebook, someone is engaging them there several
times per day. Use the Facebook model as a model
of how often to give feedback. People check-in daily
because they’re looking for feedback daily. Remember
that idea when it comes to safety.
• Resumes and Interviews - You’re still hiring by
looking at a resume instead of getting to know the
person holding the resume. You don’t know and
can’t know anything about a person after only a
one-hour interview - even three one-hour interviews.
You get to know people when you work with them
and build relationships with them over time.
Consider short-term projects to identify how well
they work in safety instead of relying on interviews.
• Surveys - You’re using anonymous surveys to give
the illusion that you’re actually listening to your
employees but they think you’re just giving lip
service to their concerns. Really, how hard would it
be to simply ask them to solve the problems they’re
supposedly creating? I know that I get at least a
dozen survey requests every month. So do most
people. Surveys are not special anymore. Yours is
just another boring survey with different questions.
Besides, most employees think the findings aren’t
likely to be addressed anyway so what’s the point?
But ask them in a meeting to offer feedback and
you get an earful of ideas.
18
• Empowering Employees - You’re still forcing employ-
ees to ask if it’s OK to do the right thing instead of
empowering and trusting them to do the right thing.
Explain to me why the “right thing” only resides in a
manager’s office. Don’t make your people ask if they
can do the right thing for each other. Trust that they
WANT to do the right thing - especially if it gets
them home safely.
• Safety/Security - You’re still asking employees to

be loyal to the company with no assurance from
you will be loyal to them if something drastic were
to occur. You ask for certainty from employees but
don’t mitigate their underlying uncertainty. Safety
and security isn’t just physical. It’s mental as well.
Address security (financial and personal) issues
and you will engage better. Remove doubt.
You can’t continue to hire, manage and communicate

like you did twenty or thirty years ago. That was a
different time doing different things in a different way
with different technology and a different workforce with
different values. What used to work obviously doesn’t
work anymore. The evidence is in the engagement rates
- only 29% are engaged in their work.
While engagement levels continue to plummet, safety

incident numbers are beginning to rise. Safety managers,
engagement just became your department!
19
Get under the hood of your workplace. Figure out
why the engagement rates are dropping in your work-
place. Engage your people in conversation and finding
solutions and I will guarantee that they will engage in
helping build a better, safer workplace.
No department or person should be sacred, untouchable

or off-limits in any organization. Everything and every-
one should be under the microscope.
20
6
Become An Effective Manager
When someone posts a video on YouTube, do you
ever ask if they graduated from Film School before you
view it? When you read a Blog post that resonates with
you, do you ask whether the author has a degree from
Journalism school? When you hear of or read a practical
piece of business advice, do you question whether the
source of the good advice is an MBA? You don’t…
unless you have one of these degrees yourself – only
then does it become important – but by ego more than
substance.
You see, if you expect your staff, your employees and

your co-workers to respect you because you have a title,
then you are an out-of-touch manager. The new genera-
tion doesn’t follow a title; they follow someone who has
something of substance to offer.
Professionally produced YouTube videos rarely get

near the same number of views as a lone-figure video,
shot in a basement with poor audio. The professionally
produced video is going for the “look” while the lone
guy in his basement is going for the “feel.” Your people
want to “feel” what they do and you’ve got to find a
way to deliver that. And if as a manager, you want to
engage your people in safety, remember that fact.
21
Attempting to keep down a good idea from a Gen Y
because they “don’t have enough experience” just
insults an entire generation and they will quickly be
searching for other work. When you disengage any
worker from their work, you put them at risk of harm.
A good song is a good song, regardless of whether it’s
Top 40, country or folk music. In the workplace, a good
idea is a good idea, regardless of how long the employee
with the idea has worked there. Let’s not get caught up
in tenure and seniority and pompous arrogance to the
point where it affects Safety Culture.
The more often you engage your people in conversation,

the less you require employee performance reviews as
a whole. If a manager is engaging his/her people daily,
there is no need for a formal review quarterly or
annually.
Many employees view the annual review as a legal

requirement for the organization to defend itself should
need be. That stresses the employee. Too many man-
agers are lazy in speaking regularly with their employ-
ees and they depend on a few sheets of paper once per
year to be the one time that there is any meaningful
dialogue between manager and employee.
22
An employee’s performance review is more indicative
a manager’s effectiveness at communication and coach-
ing. The only upside to formal reviews is that it forces
“absent” managers to communicate with their people –
which, on the downside, can create animosity based
on a poor review because of poor management.
Employees will engage only as well as managers

engage the employee. If the manager is engaged
with the employee, performance can be guided daily
so that any need for a formal review becomes obsolete.
A manager should have a conversation with his/her
individual team members daily, no excuses, to hand
out an “atta-boy,” something to work on, keeping
safety top-of-mind or just even having a heart-to-heart –
but something that touches the real person inside.
But the most crucial part of a performance review,

if you’re going to do them, should be the employee’s
review of their immediate supervisor. This is far more
important than the review of the employee. The em-
ployee is only ever going to perform as well as his/her
manager. That’s a given. Rarely do you find the manager
who encourages the employee to perform beyond the
manager’s ability to coach. So the most important
document becomes the review of the manager by
the employee and NOT the other way around.
23
It would stand to reason, purely by the numbers, that
the department with the highest staff turnover, highest
incident rates and lowest performing employees would
have the worst manager running it.
Employees are only ever going to perform as well as

their managers allow. Poor employee reviews all coming
from one department are more indicative of the manager
than the employees. And it is for this reason that em-
ployee reviews should be scrapped. Instead, focus on
communicating directly with your people every single
day. Get to know them personally. Know when they are
being distracted (divorce, sick family, cancer, etc) by
outside events and move them to light duties until
their ordeal has been handled.
Move your people out of harm’s way. Keep them safe.

Be an effective manager. The best managers are the
ones who encourage high-performance and equip
their people with the tools to do it for themselves.
That doesn’t happen in a formal environment annually.
That happens by engaging every single day.
24
7
Replace Compliance
With Collaboration
Managers are encouraging the relentless pursuit of
mediocrity through repetition, routine and regurgitation
that disengages people to treat the work as just a job.
Managers who are too focused on following the rules
and not enough on encouraging new ideas for new times
serving new customers with new products are making
it impossible to become organizations of greatness by
forcing workers to stick to routines instead of rewarding
innovation.
Everything about your business has changed except

how you let your people do the work. Innovation is
what engages people. Innovation is what gets people
excited about coming to work. New things get people to
re-focus. People love new challenges and new products.
Why would you think they wouldn’t enjoy a new way of
finding solutions to age-old, boring traditions that take
too long to accomplish and are, well, they’re boring?
Tradition, however, encourages boredom. Repetition

encourages boredom. Boredom encourages disengage-
ment. Disengagement encourages incident. Stop focus-
ing on doing things the way you’ve always done it. Your
new Gen Y hires don’t have those same traditions and
they don’t understand why you’re still doing safety the
old way. Managers who can’t relate to their staff also
make it hard for them to feel excited about the work.
25
It’s impossible to remain engaged when the work isn’t
rewarding and when the supervisor under-appreciates
employees, who treats them like a number, who plays
favorites and who has little or no compassion or soft-
skills as a decent human being. Can you honestly say
that each and every manager in your group could
muster up the courage to have a heart-to-heart with
an employee about a sick child at home or to be truly
thankful and grateful for the work of their employees?
Do your managers, in addition to being taught how to
manage, have the ability to communicate feelings
or just to bark orders?
You may have been able to get away with that when
you had a full complement of Baby Boomers working
for you but the numbers are turning. Soon, Gen Y’s will
outnumber Boomers in the workplace.
If you want your employees to engage in safety, you

had better engage your managers. If you’ve got high
turnover numbers and high incident numbers in one
or two departments, it’s because of your managers.
Stop buying the department manager’s excuses and
remove them. Your managers are costing your company
good people and a lot of money.
26
7 Nuts 'n Bolts Strategies For Safety Communication | © 2013 Kevin Burns Corporation
Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting different results.” If you
keep doing what you’ve always done you’re going to
keep getting what you always got. Regardless of
whether safety numbers have flatlined or are on the rise,
something needs to change. The numbers are not head-
ing in the right direction. That means, what you are
doing has been useful in getting you to where you are,
but it might be time to upgrade to a new vehicle —
something that can get you to where you need to go.
Maybe it’s time you asked your young workers to come

up with solutions to stem the rising numbers in their
own age category. After all, presupposing that old safety
managers can develop strategies that will resonate with
younger workers sounds like a recipe for disaster.
You can’t develop full buy-in by thrusting rules and
regulations upon your people. Making them feel as
though you know what’s best for them better than they
do creates push-back. Blind compliance fails over time.
Expecting people to blindly follow because of someone’s

says-so doesn’t make sense any more – especially as the
workplace changes its age. Generation Y doesn’t sub-
scribe to a “because that’s the rule” philosophy. They
want to know why. They don’t have the same propensity
for blindly following as those who make the rules so if
you want to get your organization to Zero, you had
better start including them in the discussions. They have
ideas. They have suggestions. Employees will embrace
anything that they themselves had a hand in creating.
27
Without appealing to the hearts and minds of your
workers, you create an us-versus-them adversarial
relationship that too, will fail over time. Sure there’s
a need to have minimums (for those that would try
to do less) but the focus shouldn’t be on achieving
minimums. You should be shooting for something
far beyond minimums. Minimums are for the lazy.
Safety needs a face-lift. Top-down may have worked

for a while but it’s time for a grassroots-up strategy.
It’s time to begin to think more collaboratively — to get
everyone involved — not just a select few who have
managed to achieve some sort of certification. Safety
is not a club — it’s an attitude.
If you seriously want to achieve Zero, you had better be

prepared to give up your titles and your organizational
hierarchy. There is no place for any of it in safety. Safety
is something that should transcend position, power and
place and consider all of your employees as equals.
That’s the only way it works in the future. You can’t
legislate conformity – which means compliance is on
its last legs.
Collaboration is the next wave of safety.
28
Kevin
Burns
Kevin Burns doesn't see safety as everyone else does.
Kevin Burns sees safety as something people must be
convinced to buy for themselves – not forced to have it
shoved down their throats through compliance. Force
people to do anything and they resist. Let them choose
for themselves, and they will own it for life.
Kevin Burns works with middle-managers, front-line

supervisors and the people they manage offering work-
place safety engagement strategies and communication
strategies to overcome safety performance challenges.
Kevin is opinionated, blunt, direct, funny, thought-

provoking, incredibly well-researched and usually…
right! And that makes for a very entertaining and
eye-opening safety meeting.
Face it, there are things that you really want to say to
your people on their performance in safety... but can't.
Kevin can.
29
Kevin Burns can break down seemingly complex
workplace safety and engagement issues into simple
language and simple concepts that anyone, regardless
of their background, can understand. Seasoned safety
veteran or first-day greenhand, Kevin Burns' message
appeals to every person in your organization.
Kevin Burns, has worked in management, consulting

and corporate safety for almost 30 years. He uses stories
and humor to get inside people's heads and inspires
them to want to choose safety for themselves. He is
an instigator of change and safety betterment.
If you're serious about making an impact with

your workplace safety meeting/event and in getting
you organization on the fast-track to Zero, then hire
Kevin Burns.
Hire Kevin Burns for your safety meeting.

1-877-287-6711
www.kevburns.com
30
Box 719, 105-150 Crowfoot CR NW
Calgary, AB, Canada T3G 3T2
Toll-Free 1-877-BURNS-11
Local 403-770-2928

Safety: Nuts 'N Bolts Strategies For

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Safety: Nuts 'N Bolts Strategies For

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7

By: Kevin Burns

We had to make what we thought were smart decisions

We actively forced our listeners to go somewhere else

The moment you go silent on safety, your “listeners”

Workplace safety communication works the same way.

Keep communicating with your people. Keep them in

Keep the lines of communication open and never go

Two days before, it had poured freezing rain onto

As I waited for the light to change, a car flew through

After following the driver of the snow-covered car

He carried a cup of coffee in each hand from the

How many times have you seen companies who claim

(Sigh) and you can add to this list on your own…

Are the Safety Programs really successful or is

Your rules don’t automatically become their values.

Several of the workers in attendance were awarded

A person who is careless with other things in his or

Watch how people treat a rental car and you’ll see

There’s a sense of ownership and pride that comes with

How you do one thing is how you do everything!

For a person who displays unsafe behaviors off the

If you want to find evidence of employee values when

Fully-engaged workers amount to less than 30% of the

Combine hiring with Training Camps whenever

After a day or two, you would be in a very strong

If you want to find the really good, solid and safe

The problem is that current Occupational Health and

If you won’t look out for your own personal safety

If you are going to call your Safety Program successful,

Zero incidents in the workplace is ultimately the goal

But it doesn’t work. Traffic laws, speed limits, distracted

Processes might be uniform, people are not. People

Thoughts are not linear. They are random.

Building a Culture of Safety for the future, because

Expecting to achieve zero without addressing the

If the workplace assembly line slowed down by 71%,

So you’d think that a 71% level of disengagement,

But there isn’t.

But they’re still not getting it and here’s why: because

Companies are sending employees to team-building

And here’s why the numbers keep rising: because

• Safety/Security - You’re still asking employees to

You can’t continue to hire, manage and communicate

While engagement levels continue to plummet, safety

No department or person should be sacred, untouchable

You see, if you expect your staff, your employees and

Professionally produced YouTube videos rarely get

The more often you engage your people in conversation,

Many employees view the annual review as a legal

Employees will engage only as well as managers

But the most crucial part of a performance review,

Employees are only ever going to perform as well as

Move your people out of harm’s way. Keep them safe.

Everything about your business has changed except

Tradition, however, encourages boredom. Repetition

If you want your employees to engage in safety, you

Maybe it’s time you asked your young workers to come

Expecting people to blindly follow because of someone’s

Safety needs a face-lift. Top-down may have worked

If you seriously want to achieve Zero, you had better be

Collaboration is the next wave of safety.

Kevin Burns works with middle-managers, front-line