Change, Growth, and Continuous Safety Improvement Are All Connected

Sandra McWha has worked with Husqvarna Motorcycles in Nashville, Arkansas for 32 years! 

I delight in talking with safety professionals with decades of experience. So, in a recent episode of our Sospes podcast, I asked Sandra, who is an EHS manager, what she thinks is the biggest takeaway about safety. 

Brilliantly, she said, “It’s ever-changing. It never stops. So, never stop growing [as a safety professional]. If you don’t keep improving, you’ll get stagnant. And when you get stagnant, something [bad] is going to happen.”

She’s right. 

What Sandra said made me think of the general concept of continuous improvement, which exists in pretty much every industry you can think of. So, I researched continuous improvement, and I wrote the following, which relates to continuous safety improvement.

What are the Four Key Phases of Continuous Safety Improvement? 

1. Plan. 

This phase includes assessing your organization’s current safety culture and procedures. Is it strong or weak? What’s working or not working? Next, come up with a safety improvement strategy. This should include all the actions that are aimed at improving safety.

2. Do: 

In this phase, create a safety pilot program that owns and addresses the problems and solutions identified in the previous phase. 

3. Evaluate.

In this phase, assess whether your safety improvement measures are effective. (If they’re not, you might have to return to Phase 1!) 

4. Implement.

After you’ve analyzed all of the ins and outs of your safety improvements, roll them out to the rest of your company.

Related to the topic of continuous safety improvement, my guest said: “If you don’t change, you don’t grow.” Again, Sandra is totally right! 

Be sure to check out my full episode with Sandra McWha, and her colleague, Kristy Ravarra. 

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsmgZdEPCxY here>>

Subscribe to the podcast: 

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

* Google Podcasts 

Connect with Stacey Godbold on LinkedIn 

This episode was produced by Story On Media & Marketing: https://www.successwithstories.com.