The power of Coaching

Often in organisations safety is perceived to be owned by the Safety or Compliance department who then enforce compliance to safety rules. Typically, this creates a ‘have to’ safety culture that often fails to ensure commitment from both line managers and the workforce. A ‘have to’ safety culture needs continual enforcement from the safety department, which creates a spiral of decreasing personal responsibility for safety. Our safety coaches are not enforcers or auditors, they create interaction by posing open questions and enable delegates to think for themselves and take ownership of improving safety performance. Ethos safety coaches have a fundamental belief that involvement leads to commitment, so our safety coaches involve personnel at every opportunity through open discussions.

What makes us different?

By creating participation, we develop ownership. Our safety coaches harness that ownership to agree on specific actions that can be implemented – moving from theoretical solutions to practical application at the worksite. Ethos safety coaches create a ‘want to’ safety culture, where people throughout the organisation have a personal responsibility for safety. Ethos safety coaches move safety culture from dependency to interdependency:

Using both head (rational thought) and heart (the emotions) our safety coaches motivate delegates and improve their skills and knowledge to enable them to manage individual and corporate risk. Ethos has always worked to engage people on an emotional level, and provide the hard facts to back up any assertions we make. This fundamental principle and the way in which it is applied sets us apart.

We believe a full-time safety coach is only a temporary position, once the team is independent and can support each other, the team members will provide the coaching. When the team has shifted from ‘have to’ to ‘want to’ mentality, the work of the full-time safety coaches is accomplished, and monitoring tools are implemented.