E52: 6 Continents, 40 Years & a Wake-Up Call: Roger Bresden on Safety Leadership That Actually Saves Lives

About this episode

Roger Bresden discusses his extensive experience in safety leadership and the challenges faced in reducing injury rates in dangerous industries.

What does it take to reduce injury rates by 75% across 80,000 people in one of the world's most dangerous industries and what happens when the system still fails and people die? Roger Bresden has been there. The CEO of BBI International joins Tanya and Richard with 40 years of hard-won experience spanning six continents, a decade at Saudi Aramco, 21 power plants across North America, and three companies he built from the ground up including what might be the world's first handheld safety auditing tool, built on a Palm Pilot and sold to Goldman Sachs. At one point in this conversation, Roger reveals something that stops you cold: most new leaders step into their roles with only 12 to 18 percent of the competencies they actually need and almost no one is talking about the other 88%. From blaming cultures to blame-free investigation processes, from the psychology of safety across wildly different global cultures to a custom Belgian guitar with alligator-skin detail, Roger Brezden is exactly the kind of safety geek Safety Debris was made for.

People in this episode

Hosts: Tanya Steele, Richard Dulong

Guest: Roger Bresden

Topics covered

• safety leadership
• injury reduction
• global safety culture
• competency in leadership
• safety auditing tools

Keywords

• safety leadership
• injury rates
• global cultures
• safety auditing
• leadership competencies

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: BBI International, Saudi Aramco, Goldman Sachs

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