Great Safety Speakers Are Aware of Manager’s Viewpoint and Needs
Great Safety Speakers Are Aware of Manager’s Viewpoint and Needs
As a safety speaker or safety professional most of our interactions in the field of safety are about persuasion. We need to persuade employees to embrace the latest techniques and equipment and policies, which will help them stay safe. We must persuade managers from the first level all the way to the CEO to understand their important role in supporting and maintaining a safe workplace. The list could go on and on. Another way of thinking of what we do is to think of it as selling or marketing. Selling is the interaction between you and an individual or group that causes them to “buy” what you are selling. Consider reading articles on the internet which teach sales techniques. I encourage safety speakers to be experts in persuasion, motivation, sales and marketing.
Have You Ever Thought of Yourself as a Salesperson or Marketer?
Marketing is about keeping your brand or product in front of the people in the marketplace. Keeping safety, personal protective equipment, safe driving, safety on the job, and safety off the job are things you want people to be constantly aware of.
More and more corporate and organizational leaders are committed to keeping the workplace safe. One of their challenges is they don’t always know what you need to improve safety performance; more equipment, more training, more safety team members, or bringing in a great safety speaker like John Drebinger 🙂 From your perspective, these are investments in better safety performance; to your management, they are costs or expenses. Many corporate leaders divide what their company spends into two categories, expenses and profit generators. When they spend money on the sales and marketing department they expect a certain return on the dollar. They see those expenditures as revenue-generating or profit. Everything else from the maintenance of your physical plant to the support staff are expenses. For most managers, safety is seen as an expense.
We need to think like a manager and see that safety is a profit-generating venture in addition to being the right way to care about employees and their families.
Do You Save Your Company Money or Do You Make Money?
As a safety speaker, I hear over and over again from safety people they “saved the company money last year.” While this may be true, there is a more appropriate way to state the facts. Remember, communication must be designed with the listener or the audience in mind. When you are talking to the corporate leadership about safety performance, remember what is important to them. Corporate leaders are responsible to produce profits. They manage production and sales in order to maximize the profits their owners or shareholders realize.
Solutions For Your Safety Challenges
When you need solutions for your safety challenges give Diane Weiss a call at 209-745-9419 and bring John to your site to discover injury preventing solutions. You can email her at diane@drebinger.com
Until next week,
I’ll be, “Watching Out For Everyone’s Safety™”
John
© 2017 John Drebinger Presentations
Permission to use granted when credited and contact information included. www.drebinger.com +1 209.745.9419
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