A management system has a place within how we can operate to eliminate variation from the processes that impact the operations of a business. Many commonly known management systems are implemented by EHS and risk management professionals.

One sweeping glance across the Seattle skyline is enough to see that something is happening in the area. If a region’s tower crane count is any indication of economic growth, then companies should pay attention to the Pacific Northwest.

Google “safety culture” and you get about 1,600,000,000 results in 0.95 seconds. Safety and health managers have long known the importance of culture – the organization’s values, beliefs and leadership - on safety, morale, productivity, engagement, presenteeism and absenteeism. Culture has been at the top of safety and health issues for the past ten years at least.

Our company has been roofing/remodeling injury-free since inception in 2004. The behavior of people is the predominant cause of accidents and the variable that is most easily changed. Although this article is based on our roofing experiences, the principles are easily applied to any industry, especially those that involve hard labor, high turnover, or dangerous conditions.

Most readers are familiar with the common phrase, “The errors of our ways.“ So why am I talking about the intention of our ways -- not errors – in this article?

You can’t deny the critical role of human dynamics when analyzing contributing factors to a workplace injury, or when developing interventions to prevent injuries and improve occupational safety and health.

Training companies include cloud-based training, eLearning, streaming video, classroom lectures, blended learning, behavioral observation training, coaching, comprehensive training processes for teams and workforce materials.

Not many people walk around throughout their day with a risk assessment in hand. We should, however, always have an informal risk assessment tool in our mind that allows us to perform at least a cursory assessment until we can dig deeper or in a more formal way.

It wasn’t until recently that we started understanding that people with different personalities tend to naturally pay more attention to safety attributes like work environment, people, equipment, processes, etc. based on their personality tendencies.