Many unhealthy behaviors that require change (smoking, alcohol, addiction) often contribute to negative health outcomes and common diseases. The Behavioral Change Transtheoretical Model has been used for years to assist individuals in recognizing a behavior and then taking action to change it.  

Critics argue diversity, equity and inclusion and associated values and programs are simply superficial, trendy attempts to look good. Nothing more than social issues greenwashing. But the more I researched into diversity in the business world, the more I realized there’s nothing trendy or new about it.

The best safety cultures come when everyone involved takes ownership and is empowered to develop, communicate and use the safest work practices. The proverbial “winning hearts and minds” is a concept that is supposed to make team members want to be safe. But, how does someone win hearts and minds?

The last two years have demonstrated the importance of prioritizing overall health and well-being — and how everyone’s personal and work life affect each other. With safety being the number one priority in construction, leaders in the industry should take the lessons learned to implement a holistic approach to safety, addressing both physical and psychological health.

Expenses are an unavoidable reality and the cost of doing business. The trick is to pick the right things to spend money on, to maximize revenue and minimize cost. In the post-COVID era absenteeism has skyrocketed in many industries, becoming a key focus for executives who want to bring down costs. 

Behavioral safety has had a significant impact on making the American workplace safer in recent years. Observing behaviors can help to identify unsafe acts and conditions and provide a tool to help correct both. 

To improve their safety, outcomes some organizations advocate "everyone is responsible for safety." The thinking behind this is that it will create a universal mindset in their workforce to actively engage everyone. The fundamental problem with this thinking is that it is not practical to hold a group accountable for individual behavior. 

Preventable injuries culminate from a series of sequential events, as represented by five dominos. The first represents the task or situation, followed by some faulty worker decision, resulting in the unsafe action, which leads to an accident and the inevitable injury. By tipping the first domino all tend to fall, and by removing some of the intervening domino the accident can be eliminated. Hence the belief that workers decisions or actions are the primary cause of accidents.

We are often asked about what advice we would have for other women in manufacturing. At first, it was a difficult question for us to answer because we did not particularly focus on being women – we just were people working hard at doing the jobs we were engaged in.