This week on Safety Labs by Safety Products Global: Philip Franco. Philip believes that changing behavior is the real job of safety leadership - and leans heavily on his previous occupation as a salesperson to achieve lasting commitment to safer workplaces. He highlights the major commonalities between sales and safety and shares many practical influencing techniques that EHS professionals can use to help workers move from unsafe to safe behaviors.
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.
