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. Selling is about influencing employees behaviors and executive leader’s decisions. It can be a tough sell. Even the word “safety” can have negative connotations, in particular when we connect it 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 Patrick Karol’s work history as an hourly employee, a supervisor and a safety professional, this session provides an understanding of three key components for selling safety: vision, knowledge and heart.