Have you ever given thought to how powerful the written word is? Safety speakers and safety professionals are primarily communicators. Understanding the tools we use to communicate is critical to our success. In our field, you often hear phrases such as, “walking your talk,” “being a safety example” and the ever popular, “actions speak louder than words.” I would suggest words are, in fact, actions. 

Employees naturally want to feel “psychologically safe” when they express emotions, air complaints, or make suggestions. You know your workplace is psychologically safe when employees take interpersonal risks when communicating with team members and up the chain of command.

 Learning to focus the mind can be a powerful antidote to the stresses and strains of our on-the-go lives, according to a Harvard Medical School special report. It also can tremendously benefit overall safety alertness on the job. 

More than 24 years ago when I began speaking to audiences about safety, this was the title of my presentation. I was reminded of it when I was being interviewed by Dave Johnson with ISHN www.ishn.com.

Europe continues to lead the U.S. in a sharp and continuing focus on workplace stress – excluding NIOSH’s research. OSHA is silent on the subject of work-related stress. Cultural differences are at play here: stress is infrequently publicly discussed in corporate corridors in the U.S., where a combination of potential disability claims and the go-it-alone John Wayne tend to silence talk about job stress. 

The IRSST just published a “Guide to an integrated practices program for supporting a return to work and promoting job retention - Facilitating an employee’s return to work following an absence for a mental health problem.”

Art Linkletter, the entertainer, said, “If you change your attitude you will change your life.” Wouldn’t it be nice if we always got our way with things? If things were as they SHOULD be? Unfortunately, the world usually doesn’t meet our expectations and we are left disappointed that people and things are not what they SHOULD be.

I was blown away by a report in this morning at one of the client sites I visited. It's amazing how we all keep learning, keep getting more personally safe and together set records of no one being injured. The site I was at just passed the first time in its history with six months no incidents.

ISHN conducted an exclusive interview with John Drebinger of John Drebinger Presentations, who presented a talk at ASSE Safety 2014 on “The ‘How To’ of Watching Out for the Safety of Others.”