Safety extends past the eight-hour workday and into the homes of every single worker.
Creating a safe workplace goes above and beyond a company's doors, said Terry Gray during his keynote address at VPPPA's Safety+ Symposium.
The pipefitter and motivational speaker developed the Safety Man Movement as a way to demonstrate the importance of maintaining a safe, engaged workplace as well as exemplifying the core values of safety in everyday situations.
"If you don't get involved, then your work will deteriorate," he told the audience. "If you expect more others, you need to expect more from yourself. Don't tell someone to do something and then not do it yourself. The heart of engagement is execution."
The four "E" attributes of his philosophy comprise of empathizing for people; empowering employees to do the things they need to do to maintain a safe workplace; engaging workers in positive ways; and enlarging or spreading the knowledge and challenging everyone to think the same way.
"I know each and ever person in this room has something you care about that moves your heart, that makes you get up and do what you do," he said.
Embracing these concepts will lead an organization to reach to the next level of safety excellence. Gray broke this down into the M.O.V.E. acronym:
- MOTIVATE your members or lose momentum;
- OBLITERATE obstacles or lose optimism;
- VALIDATE safety values or lose vision; and
- ELEVATE engagement or lose everything.
Watch Gray explain the Safety Man Movement in a song he performed at the conference.