In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Rob Fisher, a globally recognized expert in operational excellence and process safety improvement. A sought-after executive mentor, speaker, and trainer, Rob is also a best-selling author and podcast host who shares his expertise with organizations around the world.

Why does safety management often end up in a silo separated from mainstream business operations?

Rob explains why building safety into work in conjunction with other functions will improve operational efficiency, reduce injuries, and strengthen organizational resilience. He explores safety’s relationship with operational excellence, and actually argues for less specific focus on making workplaces safer. 

As well as reframing safety in general, Rob shares his ideas for improving safety measurement, before highlighting the common challenges that desiloing can create.

A key theme of this practical conversation is the need for better tools, and Rob introduces the Essential Leadership Cycle as a core framework and describes the 3 phases of deployment.

This strategic conversation gives EHS professionals a more integrated and sustainable approach to keeping workers safe while enhancing organizational excellence.

Find out more about Rob’s work: Fisher Improvement Technologies | Improve with FIT

Fisher Improvement Technologies - YouTube 

FIT Online 

*If you join Fit Online and you find a paid course that would benefit you or one of your colleagues, send an email, and Rob will gift it to you!

Contact emails: [email protected] or [email protected]

Rob’s book: Understanding Mental Models: Practically Applying Performance Modes, Systems 1&2, and GEMS: Fisher, Rob

Rob’s podcast: Podcasts | Fisher Improvement Technologies

Rob also recommends:
The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error': Dekker, Sidney

Pre-Accident Investigations: Conklin, Todd

Rob Fisher on LinkedIn: Rob Fisher | LinkedIn 

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Philip Franco, a safety manager at Amazon who transitioned into EHS following a successful career in sales. He applies the principles of influence and persuasion to safety leadership and has consolidated his ideas in a forthcoming book.

Philip explains why safety professionals and salespeople have more in common than you might expect. Both roles rely on building rapport, understanding needs, creating stories, finding solutions, and handling objections. Instead of helping people’s mindset change from prospective to buyer, you help workers change from unsafe to safe behavior.

A key focus for Philip is showing EHS professionals how these shared skills will gain commitment to safer practices without relying on traditional fear- or blame-based approaches.

Recognising that ‘closing’ is one of the hardest parts of safety management, Philip shares lots of practical tools to influence attitudes to safety - at all organizational levels - in the workplace and create lasting behavioral change.

This enlightening conversation gives safety professionals a clear understanding of the value of influencing skills and will make workplace safety a much easier sell.

Philip’s book: Selling Safety: The Safety Leader's Handbook eBook : Franco, Philip A

Philip also recommends:

• Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
• Frank Luntz’s Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear

Philip Franco on LinkedIn: Philip F. | LinkedIn 

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Dave Whitefield, a safety and risk culture specialist and consultant with over 30 years of experience across a wide range of roles and industries.

Is our current framing of safety holding the profession back?

Dave Whitefield invites us to rethink safety - moving beyond the focus on preventing harm and fixing issues. Instead he advocates putting people at the center and helping them make better risk decisions more often.

After exploring the importance of building safety and risk culture maturity, Dave examines the psychological, ethical, cultural and linguistic forces that shape organizations' approaches to safety. He shares some great practical guidance, including how shifting language from safety to risk can transform safety cultures.

This thought-provoking conversation gives EHS professionals an alternative perspective to help them increase effectiveness without doing more safety.

Find out more about Dave’s work: People and Risk- Culture Risk Leadership

Dave recommends Ben Hutchinson’s website and podcast:

SafetyInsights.org – Home of safety & risk research summaries

Safe As: A thrifty analysis of safety, AI and risk - YouTube 

Resources from Dr. Robert Long:
Robert Long Archives - SafetyRisk.net 

And the following books:
Navigating Safety: Necessary Compromises and Trade-Offs - Theory and Practice: Amalberti, René

Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity: Weick, Karl E., Sutcliffe, Kathleen M

Dave Whitefield on LinkedIn: Dave Whitefield | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Simon Whiteley, a system safety engineering and accident analysis specialist who helps organizations uncover critical safety issues.

Traditional safety approaches often focus on events and failures, but Simon explains how system safety engineering takes a different approach. It changes the emphasis to look at how systems are controlled to identify a wider range of potential weaknesses, including more subtle factors that get overlooked.

He reveals that you can actually have ‘dangerous successes’ - where systems work exactly as planned, but a specific situation or context could lead to an unintended outcome.

A key part of system safety engineering is the advanced analysis tools used by practitioners, and Simon expertly guides listeners through STAMP-based safety assessment approaches, CAST accident analysis, and STPA hazard analysis.

This insightful conversation gives EHS professionals a new perspective on managing controls, assessing risk and preventing future safety incidents.

Learn more about Simon’s work: Whiteley Aerospace Safety Engineering & Management

Simon’s YouTube channel: Whiteley-Safety

STAMP/STPA/CAST Case Study Workshop: Workshop Waitlist

Simon Whiteley on LinkedIn: Simon P P Whiteley | LinkedIn 

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Adam Johns, a risk consultant with Marsh (the global insurance broker), who brings extensive experience from aviation and rail, where he strengthened systems and cultures in safety-critical environments.

Are safety practitioners learning enough from other industries, or are they generally operating within their own sector’s traditional boundaries?

Adam explores how the profession could improve by looking beyond their own industries, including using the underutilized lever of insurance.

He shares many practical approaches to enhancing workplace safety, including: prioritizing the safety of work over safety work, creating just cultures, using language that encourages curiosity rather than judgement, and rethinking the measurement of safety.

This generous and valuable conversation even finishes with Adam sharing an underutilized gift EHS professionals could potentially access to significantly increase their ability to keep workers safe.

Online resources recommended by Adam:

Safety and Risk Management | Energy Institute

Aviation Safety Experts - Flight Safety Foundation 

RSSB

Books that Adam recommends:

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World: Amazon.com: McChrystal, General Stanley, Silverman, David, Collins, Tantum, Fussell, Chris

Friendly Fire – The Accidental Shootdown of U.S. Black Hawks over Northern Iraq: Amazon.com: Snook, Scott A.

Adam Johns on LinkedIn: Adam Johns | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Steve Simpson, an international workplace culture consultant, speaker and author, who has been helping organizations understand and transform their cultures for over three decades.

Why does the profession have so much difficulty measuring and understanding safety culture? Are safety practitioners missing something??

Steve introduces his concept of Unwritten Ground Rules (UGRs), the things nobody talks about that actually constitute the real culture of a workplace.

He explains how they shape “the way things are done” in organizations and why these hidden beliefs and expectations can have a powerful impact on behaviors, decisions and attitudes to risk.

EHS professionals will learn how to uncover these powerful UGRs by using a simple technique that will also identify the key contributing attributes impacting safety culture.

This practical conversation gives listeners a new perspective on cultural learning and change that will help organizations close the gap between stated safety values and actual workplace practices.

Learn more about Steve’s work: Steve Simpson – Workplace Culture & UGRs®

Steve’s books:
Cracking the Corporate Culture Code
A Culture Turned

And Steve also recommends:
Corporate Cultures: The Rites And Rituals Of Corporate Life : Deal, Terrence E, Kennedy, Allan A

Steve Simpson on LinkedIn: Steve Simpson | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Gretchen Haskins, an internationally recognized human factors expert and safety leader with extensive experience improving performance in aviation and other safety-critical industries.

Is the profession spending too much time looking backwards, managing safety reactively, and overly focusing on compliance, incidents, and corrective actions?

Gretchen wants safety professionals to shape strategy rather than fix issues. Drawing on her background in human factors, she explores how understanding the critical everyday tasks undertaken by workers will help identify opportunities to design the risk out of safety systems.

Creating a powerful context, finding a common safety purpose and building action plans are just some of the initiatives that Gretchen has used to enhance safety in her successful career.

This uplifting conversation gives EHS professionals practical guidance to expand their outlook, knowledge, collaboration, and influence to proactively make their organizations safer.

Learn more about Gretchen and her organisation’s work: HeliOffshore 

Resources Gretchen recommends:

Being Human in Safety-Critical Organisations eBook : Gregory, Dik, Shanahan, Paul

Learning from normal work | IOGP Publications library 

SKYbrary Aviation Safety

Gretchen Haskins on LinkedIn: Gretchen Haskins | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

In this episode, Mary Conquest talks with Corrie Pitzer, a consultant who specializes in safety transformation in high-risk organizations and is regarded as a leading expert on culture, risk management, and leadership.

Corrie addresses the profession's dependence on traditional safety metrics like injury rates, arguing they provide ‘dirty information’ - an inappropriate and inaccurate proxy for the safety of a workplace. 

He explores the critical internal conflict within safety between old and new approaches, and explains why this duality is having such a profound effect on the industry. Better tools, techniques and deeper understanding of psychometry and psychology are offered as practical solutions to this impasse.

Corrie argues that our definition of safety is the key contextual issue at the root cause of safety management’s lack of progress. He redefines what safe looks like and believes this new perspective will help EHS professionals rethink how they measure, manage, and enhance safety in today’s complex workplaces.

Find out more about Corrie’s work: safemap.com

The safety conference that Corrie founded: safetyontheedge.com

Corrie Pitzer on LinkedIn: Corrie Pitzer | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Anna Keen, a consultant who began her career recruiting safety professionals and now focuses on developing their non-technical skills so they can become even more effective at making workplaces safer.

Anna’s had a front-row seat to safety’s recent evolution, so is perfectly placed to analyze the EHS professionals’ changing personality type, role, and skill set over the last two decades.

The profession has (mostly) moved on from the safety cop mentality based on rule enforcement, blame and fixing, as organizations seek deeper learning, greater collaboration and more proactivity to ensure workers go home safely.

But how do safety managers, who have previously focused on technical skills, develop the capabilities to support this transition?

In this forward-thinking conversation, Anna shares practical insights on how EHS professionals can develop the human attributes - including emotional intelligence, curiosity, self-awareness and influence - to support modern safety leadership.

Find out more about Anna’s work: Anna Keen Consulting Ltd

Resources recommended by Anna: The Learning List

Anna’s podcast: Aunty Treacle that crowdsources support to help you get unstuck.

Anna Keem on LinkedIn: Anna Keen | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Dr. Anne Lyren, the Chief Medical and Strategy Officer for the Children's Hospitals Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS Network) - a pediatric healthcare safety collective of over 150 hospitals across North America.

Anne discusses the challenges of improving worker safety alongside patient care, sharing her organization’s inspiring evolution from safety standardization to systemic learning.

She explains why employee safety was harder to improve than patient safety in this complex workplace environment with many competing priorities, and reveals how they were eventually able to make meaningful progress.

Understanding worker adaptation and addressing workplace culture were both key changes of approach, and Anne shares many more practical strategies and tactics to help EHS professionals improve workplace safety at their organizations.

Find out more about Anne’s work: Solutions For Patient Safety | Children's Hospitals Working Together to Eliminate Harm 

Anne recommends exploring the work of:
Amy Edmondson | LinkedIn
Bob Edwards | LinkedIn 

Todd Conklin | LinkedIn 

Dr. Anne Lyren on LinkedIn: Anne Lyren, MD, MSc | LinkedIn

Safety Labs is created by Safety Products Global, the world's leading manufacturer of safety knives. Through our trusted brands, Klever, Slice and PHC, we empower companies to prevent injuries by providing safer cutting tools for every material and application. Find us at www.safetyproducts.global

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]