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Welcome to Balmert Consulting

We look at things a little differently!™

Practice Overview

Our consulting practice can be summed up in one word: Execution.

Execution simply means “faithfully carrying out the plan.” When it comes to getting results, our careers as managers at some of the biggest names in the industrial world convinced us that execution is the difference that makes the difference.

Sure, policies and procedures pay an important role. So do programs. But they’re just print – until they are converted into action. In the world of operations, line management determines how well that conversion takes place. When it comes to execution, no level of supervision plays a more critical role than that of the front line supervisor.

Whether we’re teaching or consulting, we take a practical, common sense view of problems and solutions.  Our training courses – from the Managing Safety Performance suite to professional development courses, like Influencing Skills – teach what to do and how to do it. Our approach to teaching is based on the Socratic Method, the oldest teaching technique on the planet, but still the best. Our consulting work is built on the Law of the Critical Few: find the real problem and come up with simple and effective solutions. That’s where the critical time and resources of management can be best employed.

We believe that’s what sets us apart from the rest of the consulting world. And why our work has helped make a real difference in the performance of our clients.

MANAGING SAFETY PERFORMANCE

Senior management just about every operation demand top-notch safety performance. But, for line supervisors and managers, producing successful results takes more than just a safety manual and an occasional speech at a safety meeting; they need practical safety leadership tools and techniques that can make a difference.

That's why, in the last eleven years, more than 40,000 front line supervisors and managers have attended Managing Safety Performance: Tools for Supervisors and Managers™. By putting the practical leadership tools taught in this course into play back on the job, the results have been dramatic.

Who Should Attend

Any supervisor or manager with line responsibility in an organization where are at risk of getting hurt. Also for any individual preparing for supervisory responsibilities.

Purpose of the Workshop

The purpose of the Managing Safety Performance™ workshop is to develop managers and supervisors to make a sustainable improvement in the execution of safety. The workshop teaches practical skills and techniques supervisors can use to create the level of safety performance management expects.

Learning Objectives

At the completion of the Managing Safety Performance™ program, participants will be able to:

  • Define the reasons why safety is a vital concern for supervisors, the people doing the work, and top management
  • Communicate the case for working safely to those who report to the supervisor
  • Identify the critical elements essential for outstanding safety performance under the control and influence of a supervisor
  • Recognize and reinforce safe work behaviors
  • Identify and resolve unsafe work behaviors and conditions
  • Implement new safety policies
  • Lead effective safety meetings
  • Utilize measurement systems and metrics to evaluate safety performance
  • Conduct an effective incident investigation

Immediate action following this course reinforces the learning process. Each participant will leave with a personalized action plan to address a pressing safety issue. The action plan is designed to incorporate the organization's safety goals and objectives.

The Program

Managing Safety Performance™ is an intensive two-day workshop. Classroom lectures, individual and group exercises, and case studies are used to bring real world safety management problems into the classroom. The course is taught by an instructional staff of senior line managers, each with more than thirty years of experience in operations and safety management.

Upcoming Workshops

Managing Safety Performance:
Skills for Supervisors & Managers™

2013

March 4th & 5th - Houston
May 13th & 14th - Houston
July 15th & 16th - Houston

September 16th & 17th - Houston
December 2nd & 3rd - Houston

 

(Click here to find out how you can attend as our guest)

More Info

Health, Safety & Environment Assessments

Our consulting practice focuses on improving execution in the manufacturing and industrial services sector. A key step in the performance management and improvement process is conducting an HSE Assessment - determining the current state and identify opportunities and provide specific recommendations for improvement of Health, Safety and Environmental processes and execution - represents. Our definition of an HSE Assessment is “an evaluation against mandatory government requirements and recognized industry best practices.” In the typical HSE assessment we do for our clients, the evaluation cover matters such as management leadership, employee participation, incident reporting and investigation, management and staff organization for the required Health, Safety and Environmental work Our team of consultants brings a world of knowledge and practical experience to the task of understanding the way things really are, and what it will take to achieve the HSE goals that have been set for the operation. Our assessments are helping clients around the globe achieve the level of health, safety and environmental performance they have set for themselves.

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© 2000 - 2013 Balmert Consulting

updated January 31, 2013

Managing Safety
Performance News™

The leading source of Darn Good Ideas™

January 2013

THIS MONTH

Confessions of an average student.

I remember many years ago driving up John Glenn Boulevard in New Concord Ohio for freshman orientation at Muskingum College. I thought going to college was the answer to my quest to find better teachers who would excite me and teach me all sorts of interesting, even useful things. I knew I would be a better student for it.

Economics, Psychology, World Civilization, Computer Science, Art, French: all exciting stuff. By the first days of Spring, after hours and hours of mind-numbing monotone lectures and mimeographed notes read to the class by the professors, I was slipping out the back window whenever the professor turned his back. Thank goodness there were no PowerPoints back then; I'd have died of PowerPoint Poisoning!

With guidance from my parents and others, I decided not to return. Although Dad insisted that while I figured out what I wanted to be that I take a few classes at the local college. That's where I met him. The Chairman of the Civil Engineering, Math and Physics departments: Mario Marcopoli from Turkey. I think in a past life he was a general, or at least he believed he was. He was as tough as the country he grew up in, and he taught most of the engineering, math and physics classes. There was no avoiding him if you wanted to be an engineer. To the sixty of us assembled he bellowed, "In my classes you will work hard. I will constantly challenge you and your thinking. Only three of you will graduate, but those who do will know something and know it well!"

He was right. Only three of us graduated and we three did know our stuff. He wasn't easy, but I did graduate second in my class and I can't remember missing a single class. Before I finished my senior year I put my new skills and tools to work designing houses and chemical plants. To this day, with a small refresher, I believe I could pass the engineering portions of the PE exam.

What was the difference that made the difference?

In this month's Managing Safety Performance News™ Paul begins the first of several newsletters that will examine what makes great teachers, like Mario Marcopoli, great. I'm walking proof that great teaching matters.

~ V. Scott Pignolet

TEACHER, TEACHER

by Paul Balmert
Principal, Balmert Consulting

"Training is probably the least effective management tool in industry and business."

~William McGehee and Paul Thayer

A few weeks ago, I listened to a presentation on a proposal for an Environmental, Health and Safety management system. As a management consultant with a great deal of interest in the application of management processes to things safety, that topic is guaranteed to get me to sit up and pay attention.  It was only a matter of time before another subject that I’ve become fond of came up in the course of the presentation.

You know, training.

It’s not really possible to have an intelligent discussion about a management system and leave out the important matter of its execution.  Knowledge is critical to execution: you can’t expect people to follow a management system if they don’t understand how it’s supposed to work - and how they’re supposed to do their work under that system.

Sure enough: “A management system must ensure that employees, supervisors, and managers have the knowledge and skills needed to perform their roles properly. There also needs to be periodic checks to show that the training they receive is effective.”

Who could argue with that?

In order for the organization to follow a system, accomplish its goals, and be truly safe, there are important things employees, supervisors and executives need to not just know, but to understand. As far as checking goes, suppose there were periodic checks to see how well the training being delivered measured up: how many organizations do you know of that would pass that audit with flying colors?

Not many. That’s a problem.

EXCUTING TRAINING

Writing the rules that lay out the management system is easy. A paper and pencil will do the trick. Turning that paper into practice is what really matters. That’s execution, and execution is bound to require training.

We do a lot of our training in our safety meetings. How well do you think that works?”

In my classes, I get that question a lot. You probably do training that way a lot. On this subject, your opinion counts more than mine. They’re your people, it’s your time, it’s your stuff, and it’s your meetings. Honestly, I doubt someone would be asking me that question if they didn’t already know the answer. But if you wanted to know, you could always stand in the back of the room and watch what’s going on. The answer would be obvious.

Suppose you did. What are the odds you’d find students not paying the least bit of attention to what’s being taught, while some teacher drones on? Reminds you of tenth grade, first period, economics class: “Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?”

If your goal is simply to check the box “trained” I suppose this approach works as well as any. It might even pass an audit, as long as the auditors stick to measuring warm bodies in seats. On the other hand, if you think that understanding important things that bear on safety

matters more than some high school math class,  that approach isn’t doing anyone any good. Them - or you.

But you know that.

CHANGING THE STATUS QUO

If the subject matters, why keep training that way? Because we’ve always done it that way? Because we can’t think of a better way?

Let’s start with simple proposition: your people are not adverse to learning new things. If you’re tempted to snicker at that, show up at a new hire orientation class. On day one, brand new people are always eager to learn.

 Given that the content is important – it is - isn’t it time to start working on delivery? In a dozen years of teaching, I’ve learned that delivery counts more than anything else. In the scope of delivery is the physical setting for the training, the means of delivery of the training, and everything the person running the class is doing while standing in front... (Continues)

 

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