
Safe Spaces
When you’re sitting in the office or break room, It’s easy to have the sense that you’re safe. The hazards you need to be on the lookout for are found “out on the jobsite” not “back in the office.”…

When you’re sitting in the office or break room, It’s easy to have the sense that you’re safe. The hazards you need to be on the lookout for are found “out on the jobsite” not “back in the office.”…

Getting behind the wheel of a vehicle and drive to work. In a typical year in the US, ten times as many of us suffer fatal injuries out on the streets and highways than we do on the job. Most of us spend more time working than we do driving, and face a lot more hazards on the job…

Complacency is a state of mind characterized by an absence of fear. If there really were nothing to fear, there’s nothing to hurt you. When there is something that can hurt you and you’re not fearful, beware…

In this edition of the NewsFlash Paul asks a simple question about a preventable tragedy.

Sometimes workplace accidents happen in public places. Case in point: a fall that claimed the lives of two men working on the overhead power lines at a street intersection. The effect on the public…

The Injury Triangle© is such a simple model of what it takes to get hurt. Here’s a case when person and the object are stunningly obvious. As to where the energy came from….

When the time comes to look for the hazards that can hurt you, where do you look? Without giving that question a lot of thought, you might answer…

Does your operation have life critical safety rules? Many do, for things like suspended loads, elevated work and entering confined spaces. When you don’t follow the rules for hazards like those…

It’s now been more than 90 days since the world around us was transformed by a hazard so small as to be invisible to the human eye. The next time you fill out a…

People are worried about a serious hazard they can’t see. They’re being forced to change the way they do their jobs, some in very significant ways. They’re worried about their….
In this month’s Flash we look at static hazard recognition. Knowing and understanding where stored energy exists, which might not always be obvious, helps us ensure everyone goes home alive and well.
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, guest contributor and Balmert Consulting senior teacher Van Long reflects on a simple but powerful idea: the most effective safety leadership begins with self-reflection.
In this month’s Flash we look at the difference between an expectation and an assumption. That distinction might seem subtle at first glance, however the difference found in the definitions proves a very critical point for anyone who leads and manages safety.
In this issue of Managing Safety Performance News, Paul looks at why separating “environment” from “safety” misses the point. Using real work examples—from hauling tools over a snowbank to executive debates about compliance—he makes the case that many hazards don’t come from the job itself, but from the conditions in which the work is done. By stripping injuries down to simple “headlines” and sorting them by the source of the hazard, patterns start to emerge that are easy to miss in root cause analysis reports. The takeaway is straightforward: environment and safety are inseparable, and leaders who want better safety performance need to see the work—and its hazards—clearly, from the moment it begins.
In this month’s Flash, we explore where hazards come from—and why that matters. Understanding their sources is a critical step in identifying what could cause harm.
This month Paul examines how leaders often misuse the phrase “it’s just common sense”—either to dismiss learning or to assume shared understanding without definition. He argues that many leadership statements presented as fact are really opinions, and that poor communication stems from assuming others interpret words, experience, and expectations the same way.
In this months Flash we are re-visiting the fundamental concept of getting folks to follow all of the rules, all of the time. As to how you might move the needle a great place to start is with PPE.
This month Paul shares that for twenty-five years, our work has been grounded in disciplined observation, analysis, and testing. That process has shaped how we identify the leadership practices that most directly influence safety performance—the same ideas we teach.
This month, we are pleased to feature an article by Newton Scavone, one of our most experienced members of the Balmert teaching team, based in São Paulo. Newton started as a client learning and using the MSP tools, then became one of the leaders developed to teach the course inside his company. For the last six years, many of you have known him as a Balmert Consulting teacher. He brings deep operational credibility and a clear understanding of what it takes to make these tools work in the real world.
In this month’s Flash, we take a look at a very important first step to ensure conversations go as well as they ought to when expectations around safety haven’t been met.