{"id":1594,"date":"2014-09-04T20:12:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T20:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/?p=1594"},"modified":"2014-09-04T21:09:45","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T21:09:45","slug":"advantage-safety-consultant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/safety-planning\/advantage-safety-consultant\/","title":{"rendered":"The Advantage of a Safety Consultant"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"benefit-safety-consultant\"<\/a>The Advantage of a Safety Consultant<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

As a safety consultant, I have the pleasure and privilege to look inside a company\u2019s culture to see what is \u201creally\u201d going on.\u00a0 Often times, management has a good idea of what is taking place in their company, however, they may not get the full picture from their people.\u00a0 There is no malice involved, simply the information needed to truly make cultural changes gets watered down, or dressed up enough to skew real picture.<\/p>\n

Benefits of a 3rd<\/sup> Party View on Safety\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A safety consultant can work on their own or be a great addition to your safety management team.\u00a0 A third party audit has no hidden agenda.\u00a0 The purpose is to determine if the company is doing what they say they are doing and accomplishing what they want to accomplish within their policies and procedures.\u00a0 Audits range from a few hours to several weeks.<\/p>\n

When it comes to safety management, asking open ended questions will take you on a journey through the culture of a company.\u00a0 For example, I conducted an audit of prestart safety meetings that were overseen by each shifts\u2019 front line supervisor. \u00a0I attended several of these meetings over several shifts and I found that the meetings seemed productive, informative and appeared to be meeting the objectives as set forth in the company\u2019s policies. \u00a0I could have stopped there, but I didn’t.<\/p>\n

After the meetings, I would talk with and ask questions of a few employees as to how they viewed the meetings.\u00a0 It was not uncommon to hear that the meetings were different when visitors or managers were in attendance.\u00a0 I was not surprised. \u00a0I am a former supervisor and I realized that employees can feel that prestart safety meetings are \u201cjust another task\u201d they need to complete.\u00a0\u00a0 If employees don\u2019t fully buy into the process, they are not going to be fully involved and supportive.<\/p>\n

I then talked with some of the supervisors about how they viewed their preparation and participation in these meetings.\u00a0 After some discussion, they would share that they don\u2019t always take the time to prepare for the meetings. \u00a0Some saw little value in the meetings. \u00a0Some said they had little to no resources to help make the meetings more productive.\u00a0 Supervisors have to juggle production, quality, safety and typically several other duties and tasks.\u00a0 Usually something has to give, and whatever task is not emphasized by motivation and accountability will suffer.\u00a0 EVERYTHING that EVERYONE can do to keep safe, should NEVER suffer.<\/p>\n

When reviewing the findings with management, there were several key items that were set forth to improve the quality and highlight the purpose of the prestart safety meetings.\u00a0\u00a0 The first was management buy in and presence.\u00a0 Prestart safety meetings are designed to allow employees time, energy and ideas to focus and perform their jobs safely.\u00a0 Management needed to set clear objectives and expectations as to what these meetings were designed to convey.\u00a0 We came up with a short agenda for the meetings in which we\u00a0provided safety topics that the supervisors could use to help with meeting preparation.\u00a0 These were safety related items with regards to company processes, safe working at home, and relevant news events. \u00a0This will help the supervisors manage the meetings and their time.\u00a0 Managers were encouraged to randomly attend the toolbox meetings.<\/p>\n

As an outside consultant, I am able to take a look at part or all of company’s system(s).\u00a0 I get to ask a lot of questions, since I am not familiar with their processes.\u00a0 In doing so, I am able to see\u00a0what could be improved or what’s missing. \u00a0In this example, while management was making a substantial time commitment to safety, it was not utilized as effectively as it could have and should have been.<\/p>\n

Whether you take the initiative in-house or utilize an outside safety consultant, make sure you have the right culture and attitude toward safety in your environment before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

As always, I welcome questions or comments below or email me directly greg@allrisktraining.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Advantage of a Safety Consultant As a safety consultant, I have the pleasure and privilege to look inside a company\u2019s culture to see what is \u201creally\u201d going on.\u00a0 Often times, management has a good idea of what is taking place in their company, however, they may not get the full picture from their people.\u00a0 There is no malice involved, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[99,101,100],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-safety-planning","tag-advantage-of-safety-consultant","tag-benefit-of-hiring-safety-consultant","tag-benefit-of-safety-consultant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1630,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions\/1630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}