Cultural & Organizational Safety Assessments

Improvement efforts are consistently more successful if they begin from a known starting point. The purpose of an assessment is to determine that starting point, while exploring feasibility, identifying barriers, and determining optional paths forward.

ProAct Safety® has performed over 1,000 site assessments and has helped many organizations to develop customized perception surveys, interview strategies, and methods to analyze safety data to ground the perception findings. Measuring perceptions alone is an inadequate way to understand a culture.

Let ProAct Safety perform a consultant-led assessment or help your organization to develop your own customized method for assessing your site or organizational safety culture.

Safety Culture Perception Tool

ProAct Safety has a perception survey for safety culture which can be purchased along with its own tabulation and analytical instructions. ProAct Safety can also tabulate and write an analysis of your surveys if you choose to contract with us.

Our perception survey can be used as-is, but we recommend that our survey be used as a template to create a customized survey for your organization. This customization can be accomplished in a one-day meeting between your key personnel and a ProAct Safety consultant. All aspects of the customization including terminology, language translations, and modifications to the analytical tools can be accomplished through ProAct Safety.

Onsite Assessments

A culture is made up of common practices, attitudes, and perceptions of risks that influence behavioral choices at work and away from work. Culture is also influenced by management leadership, supervision, workplace conditions and logistics. Measuring a culture involves a complex metric of perceptions, workplace realities, past accident history, and inter-connectivity of the people.

The assessment process included the following:

  • Site tour to determine behavioral and environmental issues
  • Review of safety documentation including accident investigation and other reports to determine existing behavioral risk trends, as well as documentation of the traditional safety process evaluated from a high level traditional safety gap analysis approach
  • Administering, scoring and interpreting of a customized safety perception survey
  • Individual interviews with key site managers
  • Group interviews with supervisors, workers and elected union members
  • Site preliminary briefing with leadership
  • Detailed internally-actionable report

Safety Communication Analysis

Many organizations have never analyzed their safety communication, evaluated its effectiveness, or explored opportunities to improve it. ProAct Safety can help you with all three steps and leave you with an increased awareness and a plan for improvement. Much of this work can be done over phone and internet with a minimum amount of onsite consultant time. Approaches and costs vary significantly with organizational size and logistical issues.

Testimonials...

"On behalf of GATX Corporation, I would like to thank you and your colleagues for your efforts to support the safety program at our Hearne, TX railcar maintenance facility over the past 18 months. ProAct's Site Strategy and Cultural Safety Assessment and subsequent Leadership Workshop have had a significant impact on the effectiveness of the Hearne management team in managing safety risk. Additionally, your coaching relationship with our Plant Manager has also had a noticeable impact on his development as a leader at the facility. Your approach and efforts have surely contributed to the ∽ 50% year-over-year reduction in recordable incident rate at the facility.

Thanks again and we will certainly let you know if any additional opportunities to help any of our facilities or facility leadership teams in the future."

Jeff Nee, VP, Operations, Hearne, TX, GATX Corporation

"In 2014, FMC Technologies, Inc., Western Region Subsea Business Unit (BU) sought the external assistance of ProAct Safety to provide an outside perspective on our safety excellence strategy and the current safety culture within the WR Subsea. We saw ProAct Safety as a team of highly experienced consultants that have worked with other companies in a variety of industries to achieve impressive results… and our experience with them this year has proven this out!

ProAct Safety's goal was to provide our BU with profound insight into what was motivating our safety performance and culture and what was necessary to further our injury-prevention efforts and enhance the existing safety culture. Through their proven methodology of assessing a business' safety culture, they were able to identify the beliefs most important to advancing our current safety culture and determine precisely what experiences were influencing beliefs to sustain or improve them. They have identified a strategic framework with prioritized objectives and initiatives that will align expectations to advance both injury-prevention and cultural enhancement efforts.

ProAct Safety's Terry Mathis and Shawn Galloway ensured the project was based on the needs of FMC Technologies rather than the expertise of the consultant. Their approach was collaborative, proactive, results-orientated, fit-for-purpose and strategic (yet practical in nature). Their experience, knowledge, dedication, passion and customer focus was continually demonstrated and visible throughout the project.

I highly recommend ProAct Safety for any organization seeking external support in improving their safety culture. ProAct has proven to be a valuable partnership in our journey to achieve and sustain safety excellence."

Larry Barnett, Western Region Subsea HSE Manager, FMC Technologies Inc.

"Shawn has excellent people skills and his in-depth knowledge of Safety and Leadership is unsurpassed. He is truly a pleasure to work. He has an endless amount of knowledge and ideas to help our company reach our goals and expectations of achieving Excellence in Safety."

Emily Wilkins, Safety Representative, Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative, Inc.

"ProAct Safety assisted an organization within the National Institutes of Health with a cultural safety assessment. Shawn was professional and provided a comprehensive report that analyzed the organization's behaviors and attitudes towards the existing safety program. His findings and recommendations have provided a foundation for further growth and improvement. We look forward to future projects with ProAct Safety."

Derek Newcomer, Chief, National Institutes of Health

"Shawn has an excellent ability to help an organization size up its current safety culture and to identify prioritized steps forward."

Greg William, Director - Safety, Health and Environment, MeadWestVaco

"Shawn has provided us with excellent support and guidance in further developing our safety program and addressing the "human element" side of the equation. Shawn was able to come in and provide honest evaluations and enabled us to identify areas that would give us the most opportunity for success. He and his company have made a significant difference for us."

Bob Tucci, Director - Safety Application and Compliance, GenOn Energy

"We hired Shawn to help us "get over the hump" on our safety performance. His expertise and training has helped us turn around our safety culture. He is one of the true leaders in the profession and provides excellent advice in addressing safety challenges... be they large or small. We would not have achieved the results we did without his assistance."

Kelvin Roth, Director - Corporate EHS Group, Amcol International

"Shawn and his company have been extremely helpful in the development of the Rexam safety process. As an internal consultant for Rexam, trained by ProAct, I have frequently sought help from Shawn in dealing with a variety of issues. His breadth of knowledge and experience has provided me with creative solutions to my problems."

Randy Klug, Director of Health & Safety, Rexam Beverage Can

"Shawn is great to work with. You will really appreciate his desire and ability to understand your safety culture prior to offering opportunities for safety improvement. Shawn provides so much support beyond the service agreement and hands over the entire tool box for you to pick and choose the appropriate tools, allowing site to site flexibility as we strive for continuous improvement in safety. ProAct Safety truly thrives on your success. Every part of their process will be customized to your site and will become your process. This is employee operated and managed with very little oversight. Each site had a different implementation strategy, site specific checklist (based on the history of that facility), and the freedom to choose its own pace. Training internal consultants from across the company to manage the process has been extremely cost effective, yet efficient thanks to the constant support from ProAct Safety (by way of telephone, site visits, podcasts, as well as a network of companies that are willing to share successes and opportunities from their experiences). ProAct Safety's approach is perfect for the lean environment of today."

Max Reichen, Safety Director, Hollingsworth & Vose

"ProAct Safety provided our site with a unique BBS experience by first seeking to understand our existing safety culture and union/management relationship, and then helping us to customize and successfully implement a BBS program. They continue to provide support to our site and will remain a valuable resource on our path to safety culture excellence."

Janet Friday, Director, Cherokee Pharmaceuticals

"ProAct Safety implemented an "observation based" safety program at Impress North America. Shawn was an integral part of the assessment process, which included customized recommendations for each of our high-speed manufacturing facilities. Our Safety & Health Manager found Shawn's advice during the sometimes controversial implementations to be sound and creative. The Pro-Act process is simple and effective, resulting in measurable improvements in both accidents and safety culture at Impress North America, with good buy-in from both union and non-union employees."

Carolyn McKinney, Vice President, Human Resources, Impress North America

"Working with Shawn and ProAct has been a great move for our organization. The professional expertise and personal care provided was exceptional and our safety culture has made dramatic improvements since implementing the strategies shared."

Brian Ingles, Employee Development, Roquette America Inc.

"My Plant was selected to be the pilot for implementation of Behavioral Based Safety in Europe. During the study, Shawn and his company had visited our Plant several times. Their ultimate knowledge on safety, including classical safety, was way impressive. Also, their approach to employees who are from a different culture had made our kick-off very successful and valuable. Despite the language barriers of the local employees, they were able to reach and understand the employees and make them believe the importance of the program. ProAct's behavioral based safety program, I believe, one of the most successful programs in its area. Program makes employees able to create their own program. Employees create and own the program from the beginning. Nothing is based on templates and pre-defined formats. Every items used during the implementation are created by the employees. I believe this is very important for a program which should be used by employees most of the time. Lean BBS could easily be applied to almost every sector and plant versus other BBS programs. This is also another good thing about the program."

Tayfun Akusta, Environmental, Health and Safety Site Leader-Turkey, Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies

"I have had the pleasure of working with Shawn on two plant-level safety transformations. In both cases, Shawn drove lasting and sustained safety improvement by elevating the skills and capabilities of the management team and, at the same time, transforming the attitudes of production employees. Both assignments were extremely challenging - older facilities with established cultures and ways of working. Success in such environments truly demonstrates the efficacy and utility of Shawn's approach and abilities. I would recommend him and his firm without hesitation to anyone that is serious about transforming their safety culture."

Yurij Wowczuk, General Manager, Illinois Tool Works

"Shawn represents one of the top companies in delivering cost-effective comprehensive behavioral-based business processes. A clear out of the box thinker that can offer pragmatic solutions...that can adapt to the culture of any company. I have been associated with ProAct for the past 13 years and will continue to capitalize on the continuous improvement opportunities that ProAct has distinguished itself in a very competitive marketplace. If you are looking for a business partner that has the business acumen and adaptive stance to deliver performance excellence...it would be a solid business decision to consider ProAct as a strategic partner. The performance outcomes will exceed expectation and leverage a safety culture of sustainable performance improvement."

Lloyd Hansen, Director Safety & Health, Martin Marietta Materials