Pete Batrowny

A positive organizational culture and a positive safety climate are very closely linked. Both are essential to improve productivity, quality, retention, employee engagement, morale—and reduce injuries. This session will define key leadership skills that can improve your workplace safety climate. Participants will be part of the discussion with two key people from SafeStart about specific ways individual leaders can influence safety and engagement, and how your organization can support the vital actions for safety climate enterprise-wide to improve safety and culture. Pandora and Pete will share examples that will help participants see how leadership skills influence safety climate. Discover how to distinguish climate from culture and why it matters, and take part in activities that demonstrate how building leadership skills can have positive effects in the workplace. By the end of the session, participants will become the safety climate and culture catalysts, knowing how to drive positive change, improving the workplace safety climate and fostering a stronger safety culture.

Nearly every workplace faces challenges in understanding and transforming culture. An organization’s culture forms over a long period, it is deeply ingrained in an organization’s DNA, and it can be hard to change. In contrast to culture, safety climate is defined as employees’ perceptions of safety in their daily work environment. Simply put, safety climate is what is happening right now. The culture is shaped by how the company's processes and systems interact with each other and respond to internal and external changes, while safety climate is more about the current feelings and atmosphere of the workplace. Leaders can have a significant impact on the safety climate.

This interactive workshop will distinguish climate from culture and participants will learn how their safety climate can be influenced. We will use the SafeStart Human Factors Framework as a lens to help us see the connection between individual worker safety and organizational systems. The framework will also be used to identify examples of the human factors that contribute to safety and performance challenges within your workplace.

Organizations looking to influence their safety climate must operate as a learning organization. The quality and quantity of learning opportunities are crucial for creating a learning organization. During the workshop, we will introduce a structured process to learn from hazards and risks and practice the process in groups.

What we say and, more importantly, what we do, effectively convey and reinforce organizational values and a positive safety climate. An introspection exercise will be conducted to help the participants determine what they value personally and how they project those values in the real world. Case studies explaining how verbal and non-verbal cues project values to others will be reviewed. We will work together to develop a prioritized action plan for influencing a positive climate.

This half-day workshop engages participants with role-playing, a risk assessment hazard hunt, a communication exercise and a task of self-reflection. Participants will leave the workshop with a personal development plan and a commitment to use communication skills more deliberately. Developing and sharing personal development plans is the capstone of the workshop.