By Dean B. Wisecarver
We published an article here in RE-marks back in January announcing that we were sending invitations out to General Managers to attend our safety management seminar for executives, to be held May 8-10 at Jekyll Island, Georgia. That seminar is history now, so I thought I’d write a brief article reviewing it.
Hurtado & Associates, the organization that administers the national property/casualty insurance program in which your company participates, sponsored the seminar and Synebar Solutions, the loss control partner in the national program, conducted it.
The goal of the seminar is to bring executives together in a small group (16 or less) from a variety of states to openly discuss some important management topics, topics you might not get many opportunities to discuss anywhere else - Shaping Workplace Attitudes, Post Incident Review Procedure, Behavior-based Interviewing, and Developing Effective Safety Committees. The executives that participated this past May came from cooperatives in Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, and Colorado.
“The topics discussed allowed for a great deal of discussion
from the group, which is very good.”
We had an outstanding group and I believe we succeeded in attaining our goal. Certainly, we had plenty of discussion and sharing, and that always seems to result in the best learning for all of us. The feedback we received seems to confirm that.
“All four topics of discussion were very relevant to issues at my company. There were some real life experiences that were shared, and I think all four were very well presented.”
“The topics discussed allowed for a great deal of discussion from the group, which is very good.”
“It was fun as well as educational.”
Our seminars are very management-oriented, not technical. I don’t think I heard the term “OSHA” or anything like that even once over the 2½ days. And, even though your insurance program sponsors the seminar, discussions about “insurance” matters were pretty much just incidental. We stuck to management and management decision-making issues that impact safety performance. I believe that pleasantly surprised a few of our participants, too.
One of the things we asked each participant to tell as candidly as possible was if he/she would attend another seminar if we had one or if they would recommend this seminar to others. The responses were very positive:
“Yes! When will the next one be? Please be sure to invite me.”
“I would recommend this seminar to other General Managers! I know they spend lots of time attending meetings, but this seminar is well worth their time.”
“I would highly recommend this session to other co-op executives, both for the content and the format.”
During private discussions with various participants over lunches, dinner, break times, and our social moments, I heard very reinforcing comments about how well prepared we were, how much we seemed to understand their business and challenges, and how willing we were to let the participants speak the minds and express their own ideas and opinions. I believe many were surprised at how the seminar was conducted, and were genuinely delighted not to be in just another “meeting.”
To those who attended we say, “Thanks for being such a marvelous group to work with.” To those yet to attend we say, “Come join us at the next seminar. We think you will be pleasantly surprised by how much useful information you take home with you.”