35: Selling Safety in Your Organization

It’s a common complaint from safety professionals and supervisors: “I can't get employees to follow safety procedures.” We often fail to recognize the two sides to safety: technical skills and soft skills. Selling is one of those critical soft skills. It’s about influencing employees’ behaviors and executive leader’s decisions. But safety can be a tough sell. Even the word “safety” has negative connotations, particularly when we connect safety to terms like “investigation,” “audit” and “disciplinary action.” Yet, safety professionals, supervisors and operations managers must be able to sell safety throughout the organization. Using stories from the presenter’s work history as an hourly employee, supervisor and safety professional, this session will provide you with an understanding of three key components for selling: vision, knowledge and heart.