The Making Safe Decisions® Solution

The Last Line of Defense for Human Performance Reliability

Culture, leadership, systems, and processes play a significant role in whether exposure is controlled in the workplace. Yet, even when all four are strong and supportive, we are susceptible to mistakes because we are human. And because of the way our brains are designed, we are vulnerable to error.
In recognizing this discrepancy, safety leaders are forced to ask themselves:
  • Are we doing enough to identify exposure?
  • Are we doing the work accurately?
  • How can we ensure that we are making the right decisions?
The Making Safe Decisions® solution helps safety leaders understand how the brain plays an important role in helping workers recognize exposure that can lead to injuries or fatalities and gives them the tools and techniques for overcoming brain-oriented vulnerabilities. Leaders can learn how the brain can help or hinder worker actions and learn what they can do to optimize real-time, high-performance reliability to avoid unplanned events.

Who Is It For?

The Making Safe Decisions solution is designed for:
  • Senior leadership in organizations that are determined to learn why good employees occasionally make incorrect decisions.
  • Safety leaders and employees at all levels seeking to understand the role of the brain and what can be done in real time to avoid unplanned events.

Why is it important?

Recent neuroscience research indicates that many of the causes of errors are a result of how the brain is designed to operate.

In many cases, these characteristics, which we call Brain-Centered Hazards™, help our brains work efficiently. But, in some cases, these can increase our exposure to injury and error.
We all can visualize physical hazards, such as ice on a sidewalk, an unguarded rotating shaft, a speeding driver, or the movement of a heavy load with workers nearby. It is more difficult to visualize the hazards housed in our brains.
If left unattended, Brain-Centered Hazards can lead to catastrophic events.

How Does It Work?

Successful implementation of the Making Safe Decisions solution entails five critical steps:
1. Planning the Implementation — Evaluating the exposure profile of the organization, understanding the safety activities performed by leaders and workers, and planning the key steps and milestones of the implementation.
2. Managing/Supporting the Implementation — Planning, communicating, and removing obstacles to ensure a successful implementation.
3. Building Capability — Centers on four half-day sessions for front-line workers, designed to cover the five modules that are essential to every human action whether working alone or with others: seeing, thinking, doing, moving, and teaming.
4. Tracking Progress — Change in several leading measures results from effective implementation, leadership support, and sustainability actions.
5. Sustaining Success — Putting in place a comprehensive and consistent set of sustainment activities.