Tim Page-Bottorff

Soft skills are the personal attributes (people skills) that enable safety professionals to effectively interact with others. Traditional safety training focuses on teaching workers how to follow compliance rules but when you don't relate to workers on a human level, there’s bound to be a disconnect. This session will explain how soft skills can help safety professionals win the hearts and minds of workers and dramatically boost compliance rates as a result. Participants will workshop on what has worked for them and what hasn’t and gain an understanding of best practices in the industry. Participants will also come away with the skills and knowledge to add a hefty dose of engagement to their next training sessions, improving both the quality and consistency of safety outcomes.

Even if your safety management program has robust technical systems and rigorous training, numerous incidents may occur if you fail to properly manage human factors. Participants will be part of a demonstration and see how human factors are the most challenging obstacle to maintaining your safety management systems. They will also review a real-world case study of how one company was able to integrate elements of human factors management into their SMS and participants see first-hand how to use a flexible framework as well as guiding principles from the new ANSI/ASSP Z16.1-2022 standard to show how to achieve a balanced approach to managing complex safety systems.