SafeStart Is A Culture Change Process, Focused On Employees, That Takes Companies To The Next Level In Safety And Overall Performance

Larry Wilson, CEO, SafeStart talks about his organization and its focus areas in the Safety training domain, the various OSH training programs offered and how they differ from competition, their efforts to enhance awareness around Safety in India and his views on the OSH India show and the work done by it in improving awareness around OSH in India.

Interviewed by Adeesh Sharma

1. Please tell us about SafeStart and its focus areas in the Safety training domain.

SafeStart is an advanced safety and performance awareness programme, successfully implemented in more than 3,000 companies, with more than 3.5 million people trained. It has helped thousands of companies in over 60 countries move beyond compliance and beyond the workplace to improve employee engagement, culture, family safety and business results.
SafeStart is applicable to everyone so there isn’t a specific industry, like petroleum or transportation that we focus on. However, industries with a more “permanent” workforce (vs. transient) is much more likely to get a return on the investment.  It is a culture change process, focused on the employees, that takes companies to the next level in safety and overall performance.

2. How do your training programs differ from others in the same space?

SafeStart is unique so there really aren’t any training programs in the same space. There are behaviour-based safety observation programs out on the market. So some people get confused. However, these programs, with the exception of SafeTrack, only focus on deliberate behaviour. They do not focus on the human factors that cause or contribute to critical errors. Which means that they are not teaching the four critical error reduction techniques or CERTs that are found in SafeStart. 

3. Apart from trainings, what else do you plan to bring to the table to enhance awareness around Safety in India?

In addition to training industrial workers, SafeStart also offers videos that these workers can take home to their families. SafeStart has also been taught in technical secondary schools, technical colleges, and the videos have been shown in hundreds and hundreds of primary schools around the world. It is my belief that SafeStart concepts and techniques should be available to all children, teenagers and youth, not just to those who are lucky enough to have a parent who works at a really good company that cares enough about safety to allocate resources to injury prevention in addition to those required to be compliant with the laws and standards. 

4. Your views on the OSH India show and the work done by it in improving awareness around OSH in India.

I’m looking forward to another OSH show. The last one Hyderabad was very good and the audience really seemed to like the concepts and techniques, as well as the show in Mumbai last year. The talk I’m doing this time is, in my opinion, it is even better because it includes the neuroscience behind the critical error reduction techniques. So I’m expecting this show in Mumbai to be even better.