Steven Thrasher on Leadership Presence and the TIME Framework
Home Blog Steven Thrasher on Leadership Presence and the TIME Framework By Nishant Facebook LinkedIn Safety programs rarely fail because people do not “care.” They fail because the system does not match reality. Field work is dynamic. Conditions change. Crews rotate. Subcontractors come and go. Priorities compete. Pressure builds as schedules tighten; weather shifts, access changes, and a project’s moving parts stack up. In that environment, safety cannot survive as a document. It has to survive as a habit. At Plan Group, the goal is not to create the most impressive manual. The goal is to build a safety culture that holds up under real conditions, when the day gets messy, and decisions must be made quickly. That philosophy shapes the way Plan Group approaches leadership, planning, mental well-being, and the systems that support workers before something goes wrong. A big part of that work is led by Steven Thrasher, the Director of Safety and Environment for Canada. Over nearly two decades at Plan Group, Steven has helped shape an approach that treats safety as operational discipline, not a compliance layer. The result is a program designed for the realities of field execution: practical, consistent, and rooted in trust. Safety That Sticks: Leadership Is the System Every organization says safety is important. The difference is whether leadership behaves like it is. Steven’s view is direct. Safety does not scale through posters, slogans, or policy updates. It scales through consistent leadership actions that set the standard on a job site. Supervisors decide what gets enforced, what gets ignored, and what gets modeled. Project leaders decide whether planning gets protected or rushed. Senior leaders decide whether safety is a “priority” that disappears during conflict, or a standard that holds even when it costs time. Steven focuses on presence. When leadership is visible in the field, conversations change. When leadership is distant, safety becomes performative. People learn what will be rewarded and what will be punished. If safety gets praised publicly but penalized privately through schedule pressure or frustration when someone stops work, workers notice immediately. “Being approachable and present allows employees to feel heard, supported, and motivated to contribute their best,” Steven explains. That may sound simple, but it is structurally powerful. Approachable leadership increases reporting. It increases feedback. It increases early warnings. And early warnings are the most valuable currency in a safety program, because they let you fix weak signals before they become strong consequences. Steven also stresses that presence is not about policing. Safety leaders who show up as enforcers train people to hide problems. Safety leaders who show up as partners train people to surface problems. One creates compliance theater. The other creates operational learning. This distinction influences how Plan Group’s safety team is received on site. “I take pride in the fact that when we show up on site, people are happy to see us,” Steven says. “We’re there to help, not to judge or police. That approach changes the dynamic entirely.” When those dynamics change, safety stops being something done to people and starts being something built with people. A Safety Culture Where People Can Speak Up Without Fear Steven’s leadership approach consistently returns to one idea: psychological safety supports physical safety. Field teams notice hazards and weak points long before an incident occurs. The question is whether they feel safe enough to say something early. If speaking up leads to irritation, blame, embarrassment, or a reputation for “slowing things down,” people will stay quiet. When people stay quiet, risk accumulates quietly too. Steven encourages an environment where raising concerns is treated as competence, not inconvenience. That requires intentional behavior from leaders at every level: how they respond to bad news, how they speak to people who raise issues, and whether they show curiosity or defensiveness when challenged. Psychological safety is often discussed in corporate settings as a culture concept. In Steven’s view, it is much more than that. It is field control. It reduces the latency between “someone notices something” and “the organization acts on it.” That reduction is where prevention actually lives. If your safety program depends on perfect execution and silence, it will break. If your safety program depends on honest communication, it becomes resilient. The TIME Framework: A Pre-Task Discipline That Changes How Crews Think One of the most practical elements of Plan Group’s approach is the TIME framework, an acronym Steven and his team use to reinforce pre-task thinking and decision quality. TIME stands for: Tools: ensuring teams have the right equipment and it is safe, functional, and appropriate for the job Information: ensuring workers understand the hazards, procedures, and expectations, and have what they need to perform the task correctly Materials: ensuring materials are planned, staged, and handled in a way that reduces strain, unnecessary movement, and improvisation Environment: ensuring the workspace and conditions are assessed for factors that can change risk or performance What makes TIME effective is not that it is new or complex. It is that it is usable. It prompts a short pause that can prevent predictable failures. It helps teams catch common gaps before the job begins, when the cost of fixing those gaps is low. Steven is clear that TIME is not meant to become another “tick-the-box” moment. It is meant to create a mindset: plan, anticipate, and confirm before execution. That is why TIME is reinforced through training, checklists, and follow-ups. The repetition builds the habit. “It’s not just about doing things safely,” Steven notes. “It’s about planning, awareness, and ensuring that every task is executed efficiently and effectively.” That sentence is more important than it looks. It links safety to efficiency without turning safety into a productivity slogan. The connection is real: better planning reduces injuries, but it also reduces rework, delays, and frustration. Crews do not have to improvise as often. Work runs smoother. Mistakes decline. The job gets done with fewer surprises. TIME is also designed to tackle specific pain points common in field environments. One recurring example is material handling, a frequent source of strain-related injuries. These injuries often arise not from dramatic hazards, but from repeated small decisions: where material is staged, how often it is moved, whether mechanical assistance is used, and whether the sequence of work was planned with movement in mind. By focusing on materials as its own element, TIME forces teams
Building Safety People Choose: Jared Memory on Buy-In, Energy, and Radical Care
Home Blog Building a Safety Culture People Choose to Be Part Of: Jared Memory on Buy-In, Energy, and Radical Care By Nishant Facebook LinkedIn Some safety programs look solid on paper, then fall apart in the field. Not because the rules are missing, but because the everyday attention and participation needed to make them real are inconsistent. That’s the space Jared Memory works in. A construction safety professional who started in the trades, Jared has built his approach around a simple, difficult goal: making safety something people choose, not something they endure. In a conversation alongside Samuel Michon-Bonneau (corporate communications at Englobe, who supports the health and safety program), Jared shared how experience, attitude, and trust-building can turn safety from compliance into culture. A Construction Foundation Built on Mega-Project Standards Jared’s safety career began in 2011, but his credibility started long before that. He spent roughly a decade in the building trades as a carpenter before moving into safety. That mix matters, because it shaped the way he designs safety solutions: practical first, always grounded in how work actually gets done. Early in his safety career, Jared spent five formative years on major Western Canadian projects, including: A major potash mine construction project in Saskatchewan A hydroelectric dam project in northern British Columbia Those sites weren’t just big; they were structured. Jared describes them as best-in-class environments where safety expectations were driven hard by the client and supported by partners across the project. He credits those years as a “boot camp” that rapidly elevated his skills and built the construction-safety mindset he now applies in his work at Englobe. The Real Job Is Winning Buy-In Jared doesn’t romanticize safety work. He’s blunt about the hardest part: engagement and buy-in. You can build programs. You can deliver training. You can write procedures. But if you cannot reach people in a way that matters to them personally, “all the safety nerdery in the world is not going to stick,” as he put it. His approach to buy-in is built on a few consistent principles: Bring visible energy and passion to daily interactions Keep conversations positive, even when the situation is serious Make safety personal by connecting it to livelihoods and life outside work Build relationships before asking for behavioral change That last point is deceptively powerful. Jared shared a tactical habit that many safety leaders skip because they feel rushed to make changes before building care and rapport with the people they are meant to protect. Ask about the person. Their job. Their world. Their family. Then talk about safety. It signals care, and care creates openness. Openness creates honesty. Honesty is where hazards surface. Why “Positive” Does Not Mean “Soft” Jared’s positivity isn’t motivational-poster optimism. It’s a method for correcting risk without turning the worker into a problem. He gave a common scenario: you see someone missing PPE or standing too close to an excavator. The unsafe act must be addressed, but the approach determines whether the person learns or resists. His pattern is consistent: Connect first Highlight what’s going well Address the specific risk and what needs to change Offer support and confirm understanding Close with encouragement and availability This aligns with a basic behavioral insight: people are more likely to adopt safer behavior when they feel respected and capable, not embarrassed or attacked. A harsh correction might win the moment, but it often loses the long game. Jared’s goal is that the worker walks away feeling empowered, not “disciplined.” The “Superpower” That Makes Safety Work When asked what he does best, Jared leaned humble. That’s where Samuel Michon-Bonneau added an external observation. “Jared has a very kind, strong heart and you feel the warmth in every interaction. Don’t get emotional, but you feel the warmth. We talked about the transactional aspect of every interaction within a business setting. People who are able to transcend that naturally is a rare talent, and especially in health and safety because outcomes are real. They are very real. Not diminishing other business outcomes, but we’re really on the human level here. And that integrity and that honesty and that authenticity when it transpires effortlessly, by itself… that’s a rare gift.” Samuel described Jared’s standout strength as warmth. Not surface friendliness, but genuine, steady care that makes interactions feel human rather than transactional. In safety, that matters because outcomes are real. People either tell you what’s really happening, or they don’t. They either report hazards, or they stay quiet. They either admit uncertainty, or they pretend to be confident. Warmth builds trust, and trust creates the conditions where the truth comes out. The Field-Experience Gap, and the Fix that Always Works Jared also addressed a tough but common industry reality: safety professionals who begin without trade experience often face a credibility barrier. He does not frame that as a permanent disadvantage, but he is clear about the solution: Spend time at work. Job sites. Tools. Processes. Equipment. People. Ask questions. Watch how the work is actually done. Learn what workers do when the plan doesn’t match reality. This is the core idea behind “work as imagined vs. work as done.” Safety programs are often written for the imagined version. Incidents happen in the done version. Jared’s message is practical: if you want practical safety, you need real exposure to real work. Raising the Standard Across Construction When asked what he wishes was more widely adopted in the construction industry, Jared didn’t point to a single checklist. He pointed to a broader issue: uneven safety expectations across sectors. Some high-risk industries and major projects push hard for safety excellence; others don’t, even when physical risks are similar. He also flagged a structural challenge that affects national companies: provincial differences in regulations can create complexity without reducing hazard. Working at height is working at height. Yet the rules can vary in the details depending on where you are. Jared noted early conversations around harmonizing safety standards across provinces and argued that consistency would make safety simpler to understand and apply. And when safety is simpler, people follow it more reliably. Measuring Participation Before Incidents Happen Jared also shared one of the most concrete parts of Englobe’s safety approach: measuring proactive engagement through leading indicators. In 2025, Englobe established company-wide safety goals to increase participation in proactive safety activities such as: Reporting hazards (field, lab, or office) Observations and safety conversations Supervisor-led safety meetings Other proactive activities that strengthen habits To track progress, the company uses a metric Jared described as Safety Activity Frequency, designed to reflect how often employees are completing proactive safety actions relative to work hours. The point is simple: more proactive activity means
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