Larry Wilson

Larry Wilson, SafeStart, CEO, author, manager, workplace safety training, universal safety skills, profile picture, portrait, black and white, SafeStart, SafeStart International, safety habits, workplace safety, occupational safety, improve safety culture, boost safety awareness, reduce human failure, reduce injuries, injury reduction, reduce accident rates, improve company figures, prevent critical errors, implement a positive culture change at your company, promote employee engagement, boost employee commitment, 24/7 safety, safety round the clock, being safe 24/7, safe behavioural patterns, learn safe behaviour, acquire universal safety skills, safety skill for families, safety skills for children, safety skills for everyone, safety training for employees, safety for the whole company, safety training for kids, improve operational efficiency, improve quality, safety-related habits, safety-related behaviour, risk patterns, ensure high performance, critical states, critical decisions, critical errors, how injuries occur, how to prevent injuries, how to prevent accidents
Position at SafeStartCEO
Location / CountryWhistler / Canada

Safety is personal.

 

The Author with a Vision

Larry Wilson is the CEO and author of SafeStart. His unique safety concept has spread to more than 60 countries all over the world; and it not only applies to a safe working culture but also to any area of life, whether professional or private.

Where SafeStart comes from – and why

Initially Larry worked as a behaviour-based safety (BBS) consultant. Realising that the BBS approach is narrowly limited and does not consider the crucial details, he wrote his own safety programme that pays special attention to the human factor. The result is SafeStart, a unique safety concept which he developed and officially launched in 1998.

However, the whole idea originated in the mid-1980s: that was when Larry, at a fairly young age, was entrusted with the implementation assistance for BBS programmes his company distributed for all their customers in Canada. During this job, he soon found drawbacks that traditional observation and feedback processes would not cover – because they were focusing on what people were doing deliberately or intentionally. These approaches did not really get at human error. Digging deeper, he not only managed to identify the mechanisms that cause injuries in the workplace, he designed a whole new safety concept which enables each employee at any company to significantly improve safety, performance and personal safety, which leads in turn to a significantly improved safety culture.

Taking Safety to the next level

Ever since launching SafeStart, Larry Wilson has set the example of what SafeStart is now all about: teaching universal safety skills to employees of all levels. As a result, client companies have been boosted in their challenge to reduce injury figures as well as raise employee engagement. One decisive factor for its success is a matter close to Larry’s heart: everyone who has taken the course also gains access to SafeStart materials specially geared for sharing with their family members. Creating and teaching SafeStart, Larry has succeeded in combining all crucial aspects by making safety a personal matter.

How to Sustainably Change Safety Culture

Working for a company that distributed safety programmes for behaviour-based safety at an early age, he was assigned to look after implementation for customers all over Canada. Talking to people in companies concerned with their workplace safety, he started asking questions – the right ones, as it turned out.

One of those questions was: “What’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done?”

Which was quickly followed up by, “And now, what’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?”

Combining the insights of BBS and the responses he got, Larry was able to pinpoint the four states and the four critical errors which are involved in over 95 percent of all accidental injuries; and he has his solution ready. With the goal to make the world a safer place, he has authored an extensive range of learning materials that help clients internalise both SafeStart and SafeTrack. On top of that he has written over 35 published articles and co-authored the book Inside Out: Rethinking Traditional Safety Management Paradigms.

Larry Wilson: A Masterfully Skilled and Influential Speaker

Everyone who has heard him present knows that Larry excels at speaking in front of an audience – from knowledge as well as by skill. He has more than 25 years of speaking experience in the fields of health and safety and frequently taken the stage at international conferences in North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and the Middle East as well as delivering keynote sessions at the NSC (National Safety Council), ASSP (American Society of Safety Professionals) and VPPPA (Voluntary Protection Program Participants’ Association) conferences in North America.

Moulding Safety by Means of Hands-on Experience

Larry has combined insights from his own training with those gleaned from conversations with thousands of people in professional safety as well as workshops he has given. With his background knowledge, he primarily represents SafeStart as:

  • Author; and
  • Manager.