The Safe Acts Audit…A Key to Safety in Businesses

October 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

In many of my safety blogs, I have emphasized the importance of conversations so we can all learn and grow together.

The conversations brought us all together and helped us to achieve excellent business and safety results. As we became increasingly successful in our work, we introduced a new safety audit we called The Safe Acts Audit. It is very useful and powerful; we used it extensively.

the safe acts audit - leading indicator of the safety climate

Each week, the safety team of 2-3 people would walk out into the plant among the people, looking at how they were working. We wanted to observe people doing things right.

The auditors would just walk among the people and watch. They did not stop to talk; they just cruised around the plant at random times for about an hour, 2-3 times each week. They would observe 40-60 people each time, and if (by chance) they saw anyone working unsafely,* they would deduct a point or two from the beginning Safe Acts Index number of 100%.

(*Certainly, if the observed behavior of working unsafely was blatant, the person’s supervisor was immediately notified to prevent a potential injury; however, the intent of the audit was purely to observe and record what was being done correctly. It’s a whole different type of audit when you’re looking for the good things, not the negative.)

Most of the time the Index would indicate that 95-98% of the observations were of people working safely. It gave us a very easy way to sense what was happening. We also found that it was an excellent leading indicator. The Safe Acts Audit is not to be confused with a Gemba Walk. Remember, this Safe Acts Audit was simply to observe people, and to record the number of observations of people working safely – that’s the bottom line.

After a year or so, most of us did Safe Acts Audits every time we went into the plant. These were mostly impromptu, and the official Index number was the one generated by the safety people. There is some subjectivity in doing this audit so we thought that the official number should be generated by the same people to reduce the variability of the Index.

Using the Safe Acts Index

Over time, we realized that the Safe Acts Index was a sensitive, leading indicator of the safety climate.

If the Index fell in any audit by 5-10%, there would likely be a recordable injury within the next 3 days. We had to immediately raise everyone’s awareness of the potential, and the need to work more carefully. We did this in several ways.

One way was to put a traffic stop light at the pedestrian gates; a green light indicated that we were doing okay; a yellow light indicated a drop in the Safe Acts Index; and a red light meant we had had a recordable injury somewhere on the plant. With the yellow light all of us would talk more about the safety and hold better toolbox meetings each day, simply to raise awareness.

Another way to raise awareness was to have all eight of us on the leadership team greet everyone coming into work on each shift for a day, reminding them of the need to be more aware, sharing that our Safe Act Audit numbers were indicating we need to all increase our awareness of doing our jobs safely, and that we do not want to see anyone be injured.

Another way was to publish a safety caution in the emails and newsletters we used. We also put cautions onto the login screens of their computers.

safety audit significance

Conclusion

All this communication effort was done with respect and caring. We wanted people to know that we cared and that we all had to work together so we could all go home safely to our families.

Doing the Safe Acts Audit was easy and a highly effective part of our total safety effort, contributing to helping us reduce our injury rate by about 97% in four years. It was a positive audit – seeking to raise people’s awareness to do our work safely and to watch out for each other.

There were 1,100 people working at the plant, so using our safety index as a way to look at our performance was reliable. By working together to improve our total performance, including safety, we did not suffer the problem of under reporting, but we kept a keen eye on that potential, so it did not develop.

If you’d like to know about how important this Safe Acts Audit process is or how you could adopt it for your organization, please give me a call at 716-622-6467.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Respect, Trust, Partnering and Safety…Excellence Emerges…and it Matters!

October 10, 2022 By Leave a Comment

Safety and Environmental Performance

When I was the Plant Manager of the DuPont Belle, West Virginia chemical plant, I developed a practice of walking around the Plant 4-5 hours a day, every day for almost 8 years, for the safety of the employees. The plant was a mile long and a third of a mile wide, with about 1,300 people working there.

I needed to engage with everyone to get to know them, their work, and to see what I could do to help them. I did not make decisions as I walked around, since that would weaken the line supervision. I would talk about our mission of being the best we could be with our responsibilities for safety, the environment, the people, the quality of our products and work, our customers, our customer service, our costs, and our community. I would share the news of the day, talking openly about things I knew about the plant, our businesses, and the community.

I would also ask if they had any news to share. I would ask for help in how I could improve my own job. There was a lot of give and take; some days were great and some were very hard. My mantra was, “I don’t have a right to make my living at a place where it was okay for you to get hurt. We also need to make a living so let’s figure this out together.”

we can make a difference for workplace safety by working together

In our conversations, we talked a lot about occupational safety and occupational health. Many good ideas emerged. I would encourage the people to follow-up on their good ideas and support them. We would also talk about process safety management and the importance of keeping the chemicals in the pipes, improving yields, and reducing waste.

I encouraged them to go after leaks and to talk with the engineers about how they could run the processes better. I encouraged the engineers to teach the supervisors and operators about the theory and processes they were running. I encouraged them to learn as much as they could. I would ask about the safety and environmental maintenance work orders and if they were being taken care of promptly. When people asked me questions I couldn’t answer, I told them I did not know the answer, and promised to get back to them with the answer, which I always did.

We had a Central Safety Committee of about 50 people, which met monthly. People from across the organization participated and led the various committees. We integrated all our discussions, so everyone was thinking about their roles in improving occupational safety, health, and process safety. The 4-person safety group, operators, mechanics, supervisors, and engineers were all involved.

While each of the three parts of safety have their own technology, they all overlap in the people doing the work. We saw all aspects of safety and environmental performance as an integrated whole where everyone could make contributions. As the safety and environmental improvements built, this way of working, sharing information, building respect and trust, and helping people to see the importance of their contributions and to find meaning, spread all across the plant.

Treating the People with Respect and Building Trust

In addition to improving our safety and business performance, we emphasized the importance of treating people with respect and telling the truth. I modeled this as I walked around and visited with the people. I apologized for the mistakes I made. I encouraged them to talk together this way as well. I also worked hard to eliminate any bullying or harassment behavior because it is bad for the people and blocks the open flow of information, greatly hindering any improvement efforts. As it became safer for people to speak up and share their ideas and thinking, our total performance significantly improved. Everything happened through the people giving their energy, creativity, and resourcefulness.

The Integrated Whole

Everyone does some of each of these three phases of safety in their jobs. While each of these has different technologies and requirements, they are all in play all the time. For example, an operator moving a container of chemicals needs to be wearing the correct PPE, lifting correctly and being sure that nothing gets spilled. Or a clerical person needs to be seated properly to take care of their back, handling office equipment like scissors carefully, and putting their trash into the proper containers. Or a truck driver needs to use three-point contact when entering and exiting his truck to prevent a fall, have proper cushioning in the truck to support their back and adhere to speeds that are appropriate for the highway conditions.

All dimensions of safety are taking place all the time, as each person does their work. Each person needs to integrate these as appropriate for their particular assignments and tasks. When these are an integrated whole, their jobs are much easier as they think about them together.

Having them as an integrated whole also goes a long way to preventing disasters like the Deep-Water Horizon where the people on the drilling platform received a safety prize for great occupational safety, and then the platform blew up a day or so later because the process safety was falling apart.

The work of the Belle Plant people clearly shows that if we approach safety as an integrated whole, the total performance of the people improves.

approach safety as an integrated whole, the total performance of the people improves

Summary

Trust was built, people opened up, shared their ideas, learned, made decisions about improving their work, and brought occupational safety, health, and process safety management together into an integrate whole. The mood of the entire organization became very positive as things came together. In just four years the people had cut our injury rate by 97% to a Total Recordable Injury Rate of 0.3, reduced our emissions to the air, water, and land by 95%, improved productivity by 45% and increased earnings 300%.

This integrated way of working can happen for your business too. Give me a call at 716-622-6467 for more details. Let’s get started! Please check out our website: Safety Excellence for Business.

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Leaders: You Must Understand This in the Workplace!

September 12, 2022 By Leave a Comment

I’m presenting at the New York State SHRM Conference in Verona, New York, this coming weekend.

That is the state-wide gathering of Human Resource Managers – it is good to be able to return to this big conference (post covid). I’ve also spoken in the near past at Safety Professional gatherings around the fact that it matters what Leaders do or don’t do!

it matters what leaders do or don't do

Whether we are HR Managers, Safety Leaders, CEO’s, Supervisors or Managers – the same message applies.

Notes:

  1. I am amazed by how few Safety Leaders understand that the Cultural side of Workplace Violence (which can negatively manifest into bullying, harassment, incivilities, and dysfunction) is part of Safety – having a workplace free of intimidation and abuse is how we eliminate psychological and emotional injuries and incidents.
  2. I am concerned how many Human Resource managers (many of them siloed into various positions, like “I only deal with Benefits; or I only deal with Talent Recruitment; or I only deal with onboarding”), have shunned their responsibility for behavioral dysfunctions within the larger organization. Yet, they do consider themselves Leaders.

Consider this: A Supervisor/Leader walks by an obvious Safety hazard/condition in the workplace, that if not corrected, will likely lead to a physical injury to someone. When that Leader walks by, ignoring it, he/she is telegraphing to the organization what their standard is – it doesn’t matter enough to him/her to take action – it’s okay if someone gets physically hurt.

Similarly, when a supervisor or leader observes or overhears harassment or bullying or disrespectful things being said, or gestures being made, and does nothing to stop it – he or she, again, conveys to the organization that it doesn’t matter – in other words, it is okay if someone is being hurt emotionally / psychologically – in effect, the Supervisor by not stepping up, allows the disrespectful dysfunctional behaviors – and because they go unchecked, these behaviors continue.

the culture of the organization is shaped by leadership

This begs the question: Why are Leaders timid? Afraid to step in? Lack the managerial courage? Is it lack of skill? Lack of will? Fearful of how they may be seen? Afraid of not being liked? Afraid of not being supported? There is always something underneath that every leader needs to understand about their own Leadership. How about YOU?

At Nagele and Knowles, we teach Leaders HOW TO LEAD. It is about stepping up, stepping in, and staying in the heat. The heat is hottest in the nosecone of the rocket. Do you need to learn more about handling conflict, engaging, and being better at confrontation skills?

Call us at 716-622-6467. We teach Leaders how to Lead effectively.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Working Together Makes All the Difference

November 10, 2021 By Leave a Comment

When we are asked to come into an organization to help them improve their safety performance, we do not work on safety in the traditional sense.

We work with them to identify an important, complex problem they want to solve. It needs to be a problem that everyone thinks they know about and wants to solve. While the stated problem is something like, “How do we improve our total safety performance?,” their problems are usually much deeper than this surface level. We help the people to find the deeper problem that is driving a lot of their poor safety performance.

working safely together requires teamwork

We then gather a group of people together from across the organization, from the top management to people on the floor, and have a focused conversation about their problems. Our workshops usually last 1-2 days, depending on the size of the organization. As the people open up, a lot of important information emerges. Their answers are arranged around a circle (circles indicate wholeness), and they discover who and what they are as a group and how to work together in resolving this concern for the long-term.

This figure illustrates the process:

collaboration model shows who and what we are together

As they look at their question from these nine perspectives, the collective intelligence of the whole group rises. People often tell us that they did not know that they knew so much.

As they talk together, they discover that their main problem is in how they chose to work together which they describe when they talk about their Principles and Standards. Initially, a lot of dysfunctional behavior surfaces. They see that stuff like bullying, harassment, and lying are really causing their poor performance across the organization. It’s not just in poor safety performance. These poor behaviors contaminate all their work.

Paul Glover of the Forbes Coaches Council reported recently in LinkedIn that 48% of American workers are looking for other work because of dysfunctional behaviors like these, 70% see no reason to speak up about problems because they fear their bosses and co-workers, and only 33% are working at optimal levels. There is little psychological safety for raising and resolving problems together. Many organizations are in denial about problems like these. These dysfunctional behaviors adversely impact all aspects of the organization’s performance, and lots of people want to get out of there. Leadership, unfortunately, is in denial – often because egos are involved, or they don’t know how to turn things around. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way!

Note: This model works, when you decide it is time to make that big difference for your organization, to be intentional about the safety of your people! This model becomes your extraordinary leadership magnet for improved safety performance – because it contains all the critical elements – and because it is collaborative, alignment and effectiveness comes quickly.

Most people want to work in organizations where everyone is working together for the good of the whole. Leaders are seeking better ways for embracing safety. People want to be proud of their place of work and feel good about it. So, in our workshops we help the people to tap into this way of working and everything gets better, quickly. For example, we have seen the safety performance change for the better the very next day. When people decide that they want to change, they do it.

Call me at 716-622-6467 soon and share with me the safety concerns that are happening in your organization. It’s a free consultation. Leaders are looking for answers…I’ll demonstrate for you how quickly your safety issues can be rectified, and your people can be more engaged in the betterment, as well.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,