In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Steve Simpson, an international workplace culture consultant, speaker and author, who has been helping organizations understand and transform their cultures for over three decades.

Why does the profession have so much difficulty measuring and understanding safety culture? Are safety practitioners missing something??

Steve introduces his concept of Unwritten Ground Rules (UGRs), the things nobody talks about that actually constitute the real culture of a workplace.

He explains how they shape “the way things are done” in organizations and why these hidden beliefs and expectations can have a powerful impact on behaviors, decisions and attitudes to risk.

EHS professionals will learn how to uncover these powerful UGRs by using a simple technique that will also identify the key contributing attributes impacting safety culture.

This practical conversation gives listeners a new perspective on cultural learning and change that will help organizations close the gap between stated safety values and actual workplace practices.

Learn more about Steve’s work: Steve Simpson – Workplace Culture & UGRs®

Steve’s books:
Cracking the Corporate Culture Code
A Culture Turned

And Steve also recommends:
Corporate Cultures: The Rites And Rituals Of Corporate Life : Deal, Terrence E, Kennedy, Allan A

Steve Simpson on LinkedIn: Steve Simpson | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at safetylabs@safetyproducts.global

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Gretchen Haskins, an internationally recognized human factors expert and safety leader with extensive experience improving performance in aviation and other safety-critical industries.

Is the profession spending too much time looking backwards, managing safety reactively, and overly focusing on compliance, incidents, and corrective actions?

Gretchen wants safety professionals to shape strategy rather than fix issues. Drawing on her background in human factors, she explores how understanding the critical everyday tasks undertaken by workers will help identify opportunities to design the risk out of safety systems.

Creating a powerful context, finding a common safety purpose and building action plans are just some of the initiatives that Gretchen has used to enhance safety in her successful career.

This uplifting conversation gives EHS professionals practical guidance to expand their outlook, knowledge, collaboration, and influence to proactively make their organizations safer.

Learn more about Gretchen and her organisation’s work: HeliOffshore

Resources Gretchen recommends:

Being Human in Safety-Critical Organisations eBook : Gregory, Dik, Shanahan, Paul

Learning from normal work | IOGP Publications library

SKYbrary Aviation Safety

Gretchen Haskins on LinkedIn: Gretchen Haskins | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at safetylabs@safetyproducts.global

In this episode, Mary Conquest talks with Corrie Pitzer, a consultant who specializes in safety transformation in high-risk organizations and is regarded as a leading expert on culture, risk management, and leadership.

Corrie addresses the profession's dependence on traditional safety metrics like injury rates, arguing they provide ‘dirty information’ - an inappropriate and inaccurate proxy for the safety of a workplace.

He explores the critical internal conflict within safety between old and new approaches, and explains why this duality is having such a profound effect on the industry. Better tools, techniques and deeper understanding of psychometry and psychology are offered as practical solutions to this impasse.

Corrie argues that our definition of safety is the key contextual issue at the root cause of safety management’s lack of progress. He redefines what safe looks like and believes this new perspective will help EHS professionals rethink how they measure, manage, and enhance safety in today’s complex workplaces.

Find out more about Corrie’s work: safemap.com

The safety conference that Corrie founded: safetyontheedge.com

Corrie Pitzer on LinkedIn: Corrie Pitzer | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at safetylabs@safetyproducts.global

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Anna Keen, a consultant who began her career recruiting safety professionals and now focuses on developing their non-technical skills so they can become even more effective at making workplaces safer.

Anna’s had a front-row seat to safety’s recent evolution, so is perfectly placed to analyze the EHS professionals’ changing personality type, role, and skill set over the last two decades.

The profession has (mostly) moved on from the safety cop mentality based on rule enforcement, blame and fixing, as organizations seek deeper learning, greater collaboration and more proactivity to ensure workers go home safely.

But how do safety managers, who have previously focused on technical skills, develop the capabilities to support this transition?

In this forward-thinking conversation, Anna shares practical insights on how EHS professionals can develop the human attributes - including emotional intelligence, curiosity, self-awareness and influence - to support modern safety leadership.

Find out more about Anna’s work: Anna Keen Consulting Ltd

Resources recommended by Anna: The Learning List

Anna’s podcast: Aunty Treacle that crowdsources support to help you get unstuck.

Anna Keem on LinkedIn: Anna Keen | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at safetylabs@safetyproducts.global

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Dr. Anne Lyren, the Chief Medical and Strategy Officer for the Children's Hospitals Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS Network) - a pediatric healthcare safety collective of over 150 hospitals across North America.

Anne discusses the challenges of improving worker safety alongside patient care, sharing her organization’s inspiring evolution from safety standardization to systemic learning.

She explains why employee safety was harder to improve than patient safety in this complex workplace environment with many competing priorities, and reveals how they were eventually able to make meaningful progress.

Understanding worker adaptation and addressing workplace culture were both key changes of approach, and Anne shares many more practical strategies and tactics to help EHS professionals improve workplace safety at their organizations.

Find out more about Anne’s work: Solutions For Patient Safety | Children's Hospitals Working Together to Eliminate Harm

Anne recommends exploring the work of:
Amy Edmondson | LinkedIn
Bob Edwards | LinkedIn

Todd Conklin | LinkedIn

Dr. Anne Lyren on LinkedIn: Anne Lyren, MD, MSc | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at safetylabs@safetyproducts.global

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Clive Lloyd, a renowned psychologist specializing in safety leadership and culture development, best-selling author, and founder of GYST Consulting.

Clive returns to Safety Labs with even more evidence that trust is the fundamental driver of safety management success. Where there are low levels of trust, there will be high levels of fear. Workers won’t report issues, so there will be no learning and no progress - as safety managers can’t fix a secret.

To solve this underlying issue, he introduces the 3 Cs model of trust - care, character, and competence - as foundations of authentic leadership and just cultures.

There is a rallying call for organizations to reassess their context, including policies, procedures, systems, and governance, rather than trying to fix workers.

This conversation gives EHS professionals compelling and game-changing guidance on building psychological and psychosocial safety, while creating caring - and safer - workplaces.

Find out more about Clive’s work: Leadership, Psychological Safety & Culture Programs | GYST

Clive’s best-selling book:
Next Generation Safety Leadership: From Compliance to Care

Other resources Clive recommends for safety professionals: Book List | GYST Leadership & Culture Insights

He also encourages you to explore the work of Ben Hutchinson: SafetyInsights.org – Home of safety & risk research summaries

Clive Lloyd on LinkedIn: Clive Lloyd | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at safetylabs@safetyproducts.global

In this episode, Mary Conquest talks with François Barton, CEO of the Business Leaders Health and Safety Forum in New Zealand - someone who knows exactly how to speak ‘executive’ and how leaders view workplace safety.

Effective safety management is very challenging when it simply doesn’t have the budget required to implement meaningful change.

François thinks that HSE managers can build stronger executive support by aligning safety initiatives with the bigger business picture. He encourages you to get familiar with organizational complexity and direction of travel and focus communication on context rather than content.

Sound judgment is preferable to a ‘passion for safety’ as François shares examples of how linking safety to the organization's objectives secured executive buy-in and created significant improvements.

This uplifting interview gives EHS professionals practical strategies to influence decision-makers and secure much-needed support for effective safety management.

Learn more about François’ work: Business Leaders Health & Safety Forum

Recommended reading: Health and Safety Governance: A Good Practice Guide

François Barton on LinkedIn: Francois Barton | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at safetylabs@safetyproducts.global

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Dave Rebbitt, one of Canada's most respected EHS professionals, who is also a safety consultant and best-selling author.

Workplace harassment, bullying, violence, and toxic environments are now finally getting the attention they deserve. But are organizations managing harassment investigations effectively? And how can safety managers enhance this process??

Dave decided to specialize in this area after recent legislation changes and discovering there was minimal practical guidance available to the safety profession.

Drawing from his extensive research resulting in his book, Harassment and Workplace Violence Investigations, Dave explores the unique and complex challenges, the different types of complaints, best practices for interviewing, and methods to assess credibility.

Throughout this thoughtful discussion, he highlights the importance of balance, curiosity, fairness and emotional intelligence to give EHS professionals practical strategies to conduct effective investigations and foster safer, more respectful workplaces.

Dave’s best-selling book: Harassment and Workplace Violence Investigations: A Practical Guide

Learn more about Dave’s work: Rarebit Consulting - Safety Expert, Harassment

Dave Rebbitt on LinkedIn: Dave Rebbitt, MBA, CRSP, C. Tech, CD | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at safetylabs@safetyproducts.global