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The Safety Checklist Lie · Speaking of Supply Chain

0:00
Speaker 1: Safety culture development is not a race. People are like,
0:03
Speaker 1: you know, our safety culture is really good, and I'm like, yeah,
0:05
Speaker 1: but it's never going to end. It's always going to
0:06
Speaker 1: be evolving. We're always going to have turnover. There's always
0:09
Speaker 1: things that we're going to have to revisit and make
0:11
Speaker 1: sure that they're fresh. And when you get to that
0:14
Speaker 1: point to where your employees see the actions that you're
0:17
Speaker 1: taking and they know that from CEO down from president, now,
0:20
Speaker 1: whatever your structure is, that safety is a value.
0:23
Speaker 2: Within your company, you're going to see.
0:25
Speaker 1: A lot of other business drivers become extremely healthy.
0:31
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to Speaking of Supply Chain, where we
0:34
Speaker 3: explore trends, current events, and innovations impacting the logistics and
0:37
Speaker 3: supply chain industries. I'm your host, Ellen Wood. In today's
0:41
Speaker 3: fast moving logistics environment, warehouse and production safety is under
0:45
Speaker 3: increasing strain, not just from higher volumes in seasonal spikes,
0:49
Speaker 3: but from shifting regulatory landscapes and internal pressures to maintain
0:54
Speaker 3: throughput at all costs. As federal oversight recedes in some areas,
0:58
Speaker 3: companies are left to uphold their own standards amid rising
1:01
Speaker 3: complexity and risk from duck congestion to safety culture breakdowns,
1:05
Speaker 3: the margin for error is shrinking. In this episode, I'm
1:08
Speaker 3: speaking with Justin Malone, director of Field Safety at MINOR,
1:12
Speaker 3: to explore how companies can reinforce safety from within through systems, culture,
1:17
Speaker 3: and proactive planning. We'll dig into what it takes to
1:20
Speaker 3: stay vigilant when regulations relax and volumes searge.
1:24
Speaker 2: Welcome Justin, Thanks for having me.
1:27
Speaker 3: A pleasure to have you on the show today. Well,
1:30
Speaker 3: I can't wait to get into our topic for today,
1:32
Speaker 3: but first let's get to know you a little bit better.
1:35
Speaker 3: Our icebreaker for today is what is your favorite part
1:37
Speaker 3: of working from home?
1:39
Speaker 1: That's a great question. So I came from a manufacturing environment.
1:44
Speaker 1: My previous employers, you know, I would have an hour commute,
1:48
Speaker 1: thirty minute commute, and now I'd made the transition to
1:51
Speaker 1: working remote.
1:52
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of perks.
1:54
Speaker 1: It was a you know, it was a bit of
1:56
Speaker 1: a shift for me just because I'm used to that
1:59
Speaker 1: show up at the plane at seven, leave at five
2:01
Speaker 1: thirty or six, and then the commute to and from
2:04
Speaker 1: was definitely challenged. But you know, honestly, working from home,
2:08
Speaker 1: probably the biggest perk is that I have a pantry
2:11
Speaker 1: that I do not have to go and pay for
2:12
Speaker 1: because I've already paid for it, and I can I
2:15
Speaker 1: can snack when I want to, and uh yeah, I
2:17
Speaker 1: will say that. You know, another thing my wife would
2:20
Speaker 1: probably call this a perk is if she has a
2:23
Speaker 1: little lundry then needs to get done. Well, guess what,
2:26
Speaker 1: Justin's at home all day so he can go and
2:28
Speaker 1: start the driver, start the laundry. So there's definitely a
2:31
Speaker 1: lot of you know, a lot of good and it's
2:34
Speaker 1: something that going back into a manufacturer environment would be
2:38
Speaker 1: a would be a change for me if I ever
2:40
Speaker 1: had to do that.
2:40
Speaker 2: But I'm I'm happy working from home now.
2:43
Speaker 3: You know, we only work from home a couple days
2:46
Speaker 3: a week, so obviously we have an office and we're
2:48
Speaker 3: in here, and I can relate to that commute, that
2:53
Speaker 3: forty five minute commute, because our office used to be
2:57
Speaker 3: further away from where I lived, and then we moved
3:00
Speaker 3: offices and now it's literally five minutes away from my house.
3:03
Speaker 3: Door to door. I can leave one door and be
3:06
Speaker 3: walking in the other within five minutes, And so working
3:10
Speaker 3: from home doesn't really have the same benefit for me
3:14
Speaker 3: because I'm so close to home anyway. But one thing
3:17
Speaker 3: I do enjoy. My husband works from home as well,
3:20
Speaker 3: and on the days that I do work from home,
3:22
Speaker 3: we get to sit and have lunch together. So, you know,
3:24
Speaker 3: when you've got kids and a family and two careers
3:27
Speaker 3: and all the things that go with all of those things,
3:29
Speaker 3: just being able to sit down and you know, make
3:32
Speaker 3: some time to reconnect with your your significant other is huge.
3:37
Speaker 3: And that's one of my favorite parks, is just getting
3:39
Speaker 3: to sit down and have lunch with my husband occasionally.
3:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely a better work life balance.
3:43
Speaker 1: And coming from the safety world, you know, when I
3:47
Speaker 1: worked at a plant, my family didn't really know what
3:50
Speaker 1: I did. They just they just knew that I kept
3:51
Speaker 1: people safe. So now they get kind of the inside
3:54
Speaker 1: scoop to say, okay, I understand what dad does.
3:56
Speaker 2: Now.
3:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, my five year old just thinks that my
3:59
Speaker 3: job is said emails, So he's not entirely wrong.
4:05
Speaker 2: That the brig part. I get it. So let's get.
4:09
Speaker 3: Into our conversation today, which is safety in an era
4:13
Speaker 3: where it's not necessarily mandated, where it's instead a value
4:19
Speaker 3: driver for the business. So we talked or I mentioned
4:24
Speaker 3: it in my in my intro. You know, when the
4:25
Speaker 3: guardrails come off, How are companies adjusting internally as external
4:31
Speaker 3: pressures and regulations start receding. Are there examples of organizations,
4:37
Speaker 3: you know, weakening their safety programs just because they don't
4:40
Speaker 3: have to anymore, or becoming more rigorous just to you know,
4:44
Speaker 3: have that competitive edge. What's going on?
4:48
Speaker 1: Sure, let's a I mean that's been a hot topic
4:52
Speaker 1: really of late. And there's only two points that I
4:54
Speaker 1: want to talk about here.
4:57
Speaker 2: With the uncertainty of.
5:00
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, manufacturing environments industry, you know, with tariffs
5:04
Speaker 1: and with interest rates and everything, that's that that we're
5:07
Speaker 1: all hearing. If if anyone tunes into the news, they
5:10
Speaker 1: you know, they they're here on a daily basis. That
5:13
Speaker 1: has led to a level of uncertainty with businesses. And
5:16
Speaker 1: what what that what that turns into is a business
5:21
Speaker 1: is is afraid to spend money.
5:22
Speaker 2: They're they're afraid to to make improvements.
5:27
Speaker 1: With you know, with with tear specifically, a lot of
5:30
Speaker 1: a lot of businesses and what we feel here at
5:32
Speaker 1: mind or a lot of businesses are cutting back a bit.
5:34
Speaker 2: They're starting to see, you.
5:37
Speaker 1: Know, we don't know what next month is gonna bring,
5:39
Speaker 1: We don't want don't know what six months is going
5:41
Speaker 1: to bring so we need to trim something and oftentimes
5:44
Speaker 1: and unfortunately what's trimmed or the things that that they
5:47
Speaker 1: don't see an immediate payback from. And we see it
5:50
Speaker 1: in the preventive maintenance part of the business. And I
5:55
Speaker 1: kind of relate it to kind of the COVID era,
5:58
Speaker 1: when people, you know, everything was down, people stop going
6:01
Speaker 1: to the dentists, they stop going to the doctor. They
6:03
Speaker 1: broke their routine of maybe every six months we have
6:06
Speaker 1: a cleaning, well, I can't go this month there, I
6:08
Speaker 1: can't go to my next appointment. And then once you
6:12
Speaker 1: break that routine, it's much harder to get back into it.
6:15
Speaker 1: And we've seen that people have fallen off on their
6:17
Speaker 1: preventative maintenance. They have you know, not not taken steps
6:22
Speaker 1: to take care of their equipment proactively, which leads to
6:26
Speaker 1: maybe two years down the road. You may not see
6:28
Speaker 1: it the first six months, but two three years down
6:30
Speaker 1: the road now that equipment's breaking down. Now you're seeing
6:33
Speaker 1: down time. You're seeing safety concerns or issues within the
6:37
Speaker 1: within these environments.
6:39
Speaker 2: And that's that's really uh.
6:40
Speaker 1: You know, something that that we try to pitch to employees,
6:44
Speaker 1: don't don't cut your proactive measures.
6:46
Speaker 2: Those those do.
6:47
Speaker 1: Pay you back in the long term. And all it
6:51
Speaker 1: takes is one you know, one shut down, one issue
6:53
Speaker 1: with a doctor, and some of these businesses are losing
6:56
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars a minute. So you know, all you
7:00
Speaker 1: have to be careful, You have to be very strategic.
7:02
Speaker 1: The other point that I that I want to talk
7:04
Speaker 1: about is is is around OSHA and and how you know,
7:08
Speaker 1: we've seen cuts with with with Ocean inspectors. We've seen
7:11
Speaker 1: kind of a pullback from having accountability for for a
7:16
Speaker 1: lot of industries from an OSHA standpoint and from the
7:19
Speaker 1: safety world. You know, if you if you really care
7:22
Speaker 1: about your culture, that shouldn't change a thing. Some industries though,
7:26
Speaker 1: they you know, they see, okay, this is we can
7:28
Speaker 1: breathe now, we can do things that we've wanted to
7:30
Speaker 1: do that you know now that the accountability measure is
7:33
Speaker 1: not as strong. But I want to warn that it's
7:37
Speaker 1: this is temporary and I guarantee.
7:39
Speaker 2: You OSHA OSHA will be back to where they were.
7:41
Speaker 1: So you can't you can't let your you can't take
7:44
Speaker 1: your foot off the gas when it comes to safety.
7:46
Speaker 1: And you know, I want to talk about a few
7:47
Speaker 1: things around culture and all that. But I'll I'll kind
7:51
Speaker 1: of wait for that, but safety will I mean, OSHA
7:54
Speaker 1: will be back. It's just something that we have to
7:57
Speaker 1: make sure it's ingrained in your business to where it's
7:59
Speaker 1: not something that and a lot of that. There's multiple
8:02
Speaker 1: factors with that, PMS being one, but there's other safety
8:05
Speaker 1: activities that you just can't let slip.
8:08
Speaker 3: Okay, So you mentioned loading docks specifically, Why are those
8:12
Speaker 3: still the most dangerous areas? I mean, it's it's just
8:15
Speaker 3: a door, But is it just the the activity that's
8:19
Speaker 3: taking place where it's it's just a highly volatile and
8:24
Speaker 3: dynamic environment. You know that that singular area has so
8:27
Speaker 3: much happening. Is that the reason for the safety concerns
8:33
Speaker 3: with with that specific area.
8:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, doc areas, warehouse areas where you have a lot
8:39
Speaker 1: of dock doors. Oftentimes you're gonna have a lot of
8:42
Speaker 1: a lot of powered industrial trucks, you're gonna have forklifts,
8:45
Speaker 1: you're gonna have material handling devices, and with.
8:50
Speaker 2: That you also have a lot of foot traffic. So
8:52
Speaker 2: there's a.
8:53
Speaker 1: Reason why OSHA keeps this on, you know, as a
8:56
Speaker 1: top top emphasis program. It's because those interactions really have
9:00
Speaker 1: to happen. But it's how you manage that pedestrian lift
9:03
Speaker 1: truck interaction that separates you from being a safe organization
9:08
Speaker 1: or an unsafe or lucky organization, because as people work
9:12
Speaker 1: in these environments, they really get desensitized to the risk
9:16
Speaker 1: of a forklift. You know, they're they've got their coworker
9:21
Speaker 1: on there. They know he's always here, she's always looking
9:23
Speaker 1: out for me. All it takes is one one little slip,
9:27
Speaker 1: one one sense of complacency, and it's they're just not forgiving.
9:32
Speaker 1: And when you when you don't have that clear separation
9:35
Speaker 1: or those walkways or present sensing devices, there's a number
9:39
Speaker 1: of things that you can implement.
9:41
Speaker 2: It's you know, it really.
9:42
Speaker 1: Is a risk that that you're just you're taking on
9:46
Speaker 1: a daily basis, and our employees get, like I said,
9:48
Speaker 1: desensitized to it.
9:50
Speaker 3: You know this, this reminds me of something very similar,
9:53
Speaker 3: and it is the backup camera and cars where you know,
9:57
Speaker 3: those of us who grew up learning how to drive
9:59
Speaker 3: the for this technology existed. You know, we've got the
10:04
Speaker 3: ingrained sense of no, you have to turn around, you
10:06
Speaker 3: have to check your blind spot, you have to check everywhere,
10:08
Speaker 3: you have to look. And now that we have these cameras,
10:11
Speaker 3: there's a sense of complacency, and so many more accidents
10:14
Speaker 3: are happening because you trust that the camera is telling
10:16
Speaker 3: you truth when in fact it even says, you know,
10:19
Speaker 3: objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. So
10:24
Speaker 3: and I mean even someone I know who works for
10:28
Speaker 3: the auto industry was saying, you know, he's never had
10:31
Speaker 3: more accidents since he started trusting that technology. So it
10:34
Speaker 3: sounds to me like part of this problem is that
10:37
Speaker 3: that sense of trust that we put in these automated
10:40
Speaker 3: you know, material handling in these vehicles, in this capability
10:44
Speaker 3: of doing this much work in this much space, and
10:48
Speaker 3: we're trusting this technology to do the work in a
10:51
Speaker 3: safe way without remembering that you know what, humans are
10:54
Speaker 3: the ones who mess up most of all, Like we
10:57
Speaker 3: are the problem.
10:59
Speaker 1: Right, you know what comes to mind, and if anyone
11:02
Speaker 1: in the safety world's gonna they've heard us a million
11:05
Speaker 1: times is trust but verify. I mean you can, you
11:08
Speaker 1: can use that as a tool, but the best tool
11:11
Speaker 1: that you have is are your eyes in your brain,
11:14
Speaker 1: and that's that's your human behaviors. But you have to
11:17
Speaker 1: you know, to your point, I learned by using mirrors too.
11:20
Speaker 1: We didn't have that cup cameras and now I'll check
11:23
Speaker 1: the backup camera, but my eye's default to okay, let
11:26
Speaker 1: me let me check my mirror because THO aren't going.
11:27
Speaker 2: To lie to me?
11:29
Speaker 3: True, Yeah, your eyes are not going to lie to
11:30
Speaker 3: you in the way that a camera could. So when
11:33
Speaker 3: we're when we're talking about some of these safety culture changes,
11:40
Speaker 3: what distinguishes a compliant operation from maybe a truly safety
11:45
Speaker 3: focused one. Is there a distinction that that's obvious when
11:49
Speaker 3: you walk into this facility.
11:52
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say obvious, but you spend a little bit
11:54
Speaker 1: of time, you can you can certainly tell the difference
11:56
Speaker 1: between a compliant.
11:58
Speaker 3: You see the see the signs.
12:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, between the compliant organization and a an organization that
12:05
Speaker 1: truly values safety culture. I'll use an example like it's
12:09
Speaker 1: safety checklist. A safety checklist is essentially the definition of compliance.
12:13
Speaker 1: We're going to check the boxes, We're going to do
12:15
Speaker 1: what we need to do because this is a metric
12:17
Speaker 1: that we track. That's that's that's good, that's that's critical,
12:22
Speaker 1: and in an organization, the compliance aspect, I'm not I'm
12:26
Speaker 1: not skimping out on it. I'm saying that it's just
12:28
Speaker 1: a piece of the puzzle. The rest of it you
12:30
Speaker 1: look at as a foundation of a house. Well, the
12:33
Speaker 1: compliance is the foundation, but look at the rest of
12:35
Speaker 1: the house. What else do we need to do? And
12:38
Speaker 1: when you get to be an emerging safety culture or
12:42
Speaker 1: even a you know, a stronger world class safety culture,
12:45
Speaker 1: things that you'll see are the employees understand why they're
12:50
Speaker 1: doing those inspections, understand why compliance is a is a
12:55
Speaker 1: is a tool that they have to use or that
12:57
Speaker 1: they that they can use because they see the value
13:00
Speaker 1: you in it. And when an employee sees the value
13:03
Speaker 1: in something and they hear it from their leadership that hey,
13:06
Speaker 1: this is important and this is why, then they understand
13:09
Speaker 1: that it's a critical piece of their job and that
13:11
Speaker 1: we're doing it because we care about their safety, we
13:13
Speaker 1: care about their well being. So that's your that's kind
13:16
Speaker 1: of your line in the sand. Are we checking boxes
13:18
Speaker 1: or do our employees truly understand why we are?
13:21
Speaker 2: You know, we're.
13:22
Speaker 1: Following through with all these these compliance activities or these
13:26
Speaker 1: what I like to call leading activities because they're proactive
13:29
Speaker 1: there it's it's not a reactionary checklist that that we're doing.
13:33
Speaker 1: But that's how you would see it if you could
13:35
Speaker 1: ask a couple a couple of employees in a in
13:38
Speaker 1: a manufacturer environment, Hey, let me see that checklist, why
13:41
Speaker 1: do you do this? And they they give you an
13:42
Speaker 1: answer that is that you get a feeling they truly
13:46
Speaker 1: understand this is important. That's how you see the difference.
13:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have they have a personal belief and a
13:52
Speaker 3: stake in making sure that the safety protocols are maintained
13:57
Speaker 3: and executed appropriately.
14:00
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
14:02
Speaker 3: I mean, that's an easy thing to talk about to say.
14:05
Speaker 3: You know, management just needs to have the right culture
14:08
Speaker 3: to drive this and make sure that they're you know,
14:11
Speaker 3: explaining this to their their teams. But what happens when
14:15
Speaker 3: that executive doesn't have the buy in? I mean that
14:18
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that the team can't care, but you know,
14:21
Speaker 3: how do you how do you get them to see
14:25
Speaker 3: safety as you know, a cost center rather than a
14:29
Speaker 3: value driver.
14:30
Speaker 1: Right, And that is a challenge that you know, an
14:33
Speaker 1: executive is looking at the looking at the bottom line.
14:36
Speaker 1: Their their goal is to make the make the business profitable.
14:40
Speaker 2: You know, impressed Jake or stare shareholders. Excuse me, but at.
14:46
Speaker 1: The end of the day, from a from a safety
14:49
Speaker 1: professional standpoint, there are ways of speaking their language. And
14:53
Speaker 1: I don't need that any disrespectful way. You just know
14:56
Speaker 1: what makes an executive tick. There's certainly ways of speaking
14:59
Speaker 1: their their language.
15:00
Speaker 2: And when you bring in.
15:03
Speaker 1: Safety factors and explain to them how, hey, this isn't
15:07
Speaker 1: something you're going to see a payback on, but this
15:09
Speaker 1: is you could and I'm going to get into that
15:12
Speaker 1: in just a second, but there's this is something that
15:14
Speaker 1: is going to prevent you from having to spend money.
15:16
Speaker 1: It's going to be attractive to customers, which can allow
15:18
Speaker 1: us to get more customers. And the I'm in the
15:22
Speaker 1: service industry, miners in the service industry, and before we
15:26
Speaker 1: can even quote a job or do anything with some
15:28
Speaker 1: of our bigger customers or really any customer, they're looking
15:32
Speaker 1: at our performance. They're looking at our safety performance. They
15:34
Speaker 1: want to know what our incident rate is, they want
15:37
Speaker 1: to know what our loss you know, our loss records
15:39
Speaker 1: look like. And when you can use that as a
15:41
Speaker 1: selling point to say, hey, you want to do business
15:44
Speaker 1: with us because we're a very safe company and we
15:46
Speaker 1: take that extremely serious. That that will speak to an executive.
15:50
Speaker 1: And when an executive understands it really is a driver
15:53
Speaker 1: of the business. Then their message becomes consistent with with
15:57
Speaker 1: the safety professionals message, which hopefully is consistent with your management.
16:02
Speaker 2: You're you know, all the.
16:03
Speaker 1: Way down to your your hourly employees. If everyone is
16:07
Speaker 1: speaking that same message, you've won. That's something that you
16:10
Speaker 1: can be proud of because it truly is ingrained in
16:14
Speaker 1: your business and it's not just prioritized day to day.
16:18
Speaker 3: Well, and you mentioned safety incident data, So what kind
16:21
Speaker 3: of data? How should companies gather and use that data,
16:26
Speaker 3: especially when we're talking about you know, seasonal peaks. We're
16:29
Speaker 3: in the midst of it right now. We've got some
16:31
Speaker 3: seasonal peaks. Are there red flags that typically get ignored
16:36
Speaker 3: before a major incident occurs or is it just diligence
16:41
Speaker 3: diligence diligence?
16:43
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and it's something that is I've been in the
16:47
Speaker 1: in the safety world for about fourteen years and this
16:50
Speaker 1: is probably one of the hardest hardest metrics to track
16:54
Speaker 1: because it's near miss reporting. Near miss reporting is so
16:58
Speaker 1: difficult because although something happened in the eyes of the
17:02
Speaker 1: employee in which it happened too, no one was hurt,
17:05
Speaker 1: nothing was damaged. So hey, we got off with you know,
17:08
Speaker 1: we got off with one here, so you know, I
17:10
Speaker 1: got lucky this time, and they move on with with.
17:13
Speaker 2: With their day to day.
17:14
Speaker 1: So unless the employees truly understand the importance of the
17:18
Speaker 1: near miss and how it's something that we can we
17:21
Speaker 1: can be proactive on in the company, that's you know,
17:25
Speaker 1: it is a miss really across all industry that we're
17:27
Speaker 1: not getting enough near miss reporting and more importantly, if
17:30
Speaker 1: they are reported, we have to make sure that we're.
17:32
Speaker 2: Taking action on them.
17:34
Speaker 1: There's in the in the safe world, there's a pyramid
17:37
Speaker 1: called the Hindrich pyramid, and people argue about the totals here,
17:41
Speaker 1: but the general concept of it makes a lot of sense.
17:45
Speaker 1: And that's you know, if it's three hundred thousand unsafe
17:48
Speaker 1: acts or unsafe behaviors or issues or opportunities on the floor,
17:52
Speaker 1: that means there's thirty thousand near misses that are tied
17:54
Speaker 1: to that, which means or first aids, which means there's
17:57
Speaker 1: three hundred serious OCERA recordables, which leads to a fatality.
18:02
Speaker 1: Kind Of what that means is if if we can
18:04
Speaker 1: eliminate these near misses, we can take proactive approaches before
18:09
Speaker 1: someone gets injured. That it's going to make us a
18:12
Speaker 1: lot more distant from that fatality. It's gonna it's it's
18:16
Speaker 1: going to kind of give us a lot of information
18:19
Speaker 1: that's going to prevent activities that lead to something very
18:22
Speaker 1: serious and near miss. Reporting, you know again is probably
18:26
Speaker 1: the best tool that we can use. But our employees
18:29
Speaker 1: have to understand why. There has to be recognition behind it.
18:33
Speaker 1: Warren Buffett said, show me your incentives and I'll show
18:36
Speaker 1: your results. It's easy to incentivize somebody on production. It's
18:39
Speaker 1: easy to incentivize even spontaneously on Hey, our our plant
18:44
Speaker 1: made it a year with no osher recordable. But that's
18:47
Speaker 1: all that's reactive. That's not something that we're we're not, uh,
18:52
Speaker 1: you know, taking that that time to say this is
18:54
Speaker 1: what we want you looking for, this is what's going
18:57
Speaker 1: to drive our safety.
18:59
Speaker 2: And a kudos goes a long ways.
19:01
Speaker 1: Just saying thank you, great job, you know, a shout
19:03
Speaker 1: out in front of the team, that's what really makes
19:07
Speaker 1: an employee change their mindset and allows your organization to
19:11
Speaker 1: get that golden information from the floor that managers just
19:16
Speaker 1: they can't they don't have the ability to be everywhere.
19:18
Speaker 2: All at once.
19:19
Speaker 1: But if you've got five hundred people in a manufacturing plant,
19:22
Speaker 1: that's five hundred sets of eyeballs that can see risks,
19:25
Speaker 1: get those risks brought to your attention, and then management
19:28
Speaker 1: supervisors take action on closure of those risks.
19:32
Speaker 3: Well it sounds simple, but we know that again, we're
19:38
Speaker 3: talking about people here, and people have different feelings and
19:42
Speaker 3: different experiences that make them often times hesitant to bring
19:48
Speaker 3: these things to management to say, oh, this almost happened,
19:53
Speaker 3: I almost got hurt because I you know, XYZ whatever
19:56
Speaker 3: the reason was. But there's a fear of retaliation. There's
20:00
Speaker 3: a fear of you know, not being looked upon favorably
20:04
Speaker 3: in your position because you screwed up at some point.
20:08
Speaker 3: And this is a screw up that we're trying to
20:10
Speaker 3: record and and capture data on. So how do you
20:13
Speaker 3: create a culture where the employees really feel safe and
20:17
Speaker 3: able to share that data and give those reports and
20:21
Speaker 3: report these things that are happening within the company that
20:24
Speaker 3: they're not going to get, you know, retaliated against or
20:28
Speaker 3: But yeah, how how do we do that? How do
20:31
Speaker 3: we change Yeah, how do we change that culture so
20:34
Speaker 3: they don't feel like they're tattling?
20:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's I mean, when when we first I'll
20:40
Speaker 1: say minor when we first started to really hone in
20:43
Speaker 1: on this that that was a major roadblock because people think, hey,
20:47
Speaker 1: my boss only wants to hear that the job's done
20:51
Speaker 1: and hey, we're good to go. He doesn't want to
20:53
Speaker 1: hear about this other stuff because it's it takes up
20:55
Speaker 1: his day on you know, on on issues that that
20:58
Speaker 1: I've identified.
20:59
Speaker 2: I don't want to be the whistleblower.
21:00
Speaker 3: Here, but exactly, and to your point, it doesn't look good.
21:03
Speaker 3: You know, now we have you know, we have an incident.
21:05
Speaker 3: We don't have you know, so many days without an incident.
21:08
Speaker 3: Now we have an incident. We're starting over. Like that's
21:10
Speaker 3: got to be demoralizing to these to these teams to
21:14
Speaker 3: think that, oh, I'm making it worse.
21:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
21:17
Speaker 1: So one thing that I've seen a lot of success
21:20
Speaker 1: in is, you know, I talked to a second ago
21:23
Speaker 1: about incentivizing, you know, having incentive programs and how it's
21:27
Speaker 1: easy to incentivize on things that drive the business from
21:30
Speaker 1: proctivity standpoint, it's a little bit more difficult to incentivize
21:35
Speaker 1: on these types of activities.
21:39
Speaker 2: We use.
21:40
Speaker 1: It's actually an OSHA terminology, it's stop work authority and
21:44
Speaker 1: Stop work authority is where an employee is on a
21:46
Speaker 1: job site doing a job, see something that's unsafe, and
21:50
Speaker 1: has the empowerment to say, hey, this is unsafe.
21:53
Speaker 2: We need to find a safe way to do it.
21:55
Speaker 2: That message has to.
21:56
Speaker 1: Come from leadership that that's what we want them doing.
21:59
Speaker 1: We have to instill empower them to say this is
22:04
Speaker 1: your right. You can you can say hey, because I
22:07
Speaker 1: care about myself, because I have a family, You've told
22:11
Speaker 1: me I.
22:11
Speaker 2: Can do this. Hey, this job is unsafe. But here's
22:14
Speaker 2: the piece.
22:14
Speaker 1: That's oftentimes missed and why stop work authority is something
22:18
Speaker 1: that you know may have a black eye at times.
22:21
Speaker 1: We don't want that to be a stop card just
22:24
Speaker 1: because someone doesn't want to do the job, So we
22:26
Speaker 1: make them a part of the solution. They stop the work,
22:29
Speaker 1: they're on the job site, they're seeing or they're at
22:31
Speaker 1: the piece of equipment, they're seeing what's going on. We say, okay,
22:35
Speaker 1: give us your solution. What do you think you can
22:37
Speaker 1: how do you think we can do it to where
22:40
Speaker 1: you can continue with your job safely. We see that
22:43
Speaker 1: a lot at minor between the use of a ladder
22:47
Speaker 1: and the use of a scissor lift. Of course, a
22:49
Speaker 1: scissor lift's more expensive, it takes time to get it there.
22:53
Speaker 1: A ladder's quick, pull it off the truck and go
22:55
Speaker 1: do the job. But at the end of the day,
22:57
Speaker 1: we want to be a ladder last company. And reason
23:00
Speaker 1: being is because, first off, you can do your job
23:03
Speaker 1: a lot easier.
23:04
Speaker 2: From a scissor lift. It's a lot more efficient.
23:07
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's a tool that gives you the
23:09
Speaker 1: ability to use both hands, whereas a ladder. Yeah it's quick, Yes,
23:13
Speaker 1: it's cheap, and we can get that job done quickly.
23:16
Speaker 1: It's it's it's not it's not the right tool for
23:18
Speaker 1: the job in a lot of cases, and we don't
23:20
Speaker 1: want a default to that. So we have a lot
23:22
Speaker 1: of stopwork authorities where employees say, hey, I'm up on
23:25
Speaker 1: this ladder, I'm twelve feet up and it just doesn't
23:27
Speaker 1: feel safe. Can we get a scissor lift? And management
23:30
Speaker 1: takes the steps. Yep, have one there. In forty five minutes,
23:32
Speaker 1: they'll call a rental company and then we can not
23:34
Speaker 1: only do that job more efficiently, but our employees are safe.
23:38
Speaker 1: They're safe, and they they see that we took action
23:41
Speaker 1: on their concern.
23:43
Speaker 3: So what role do you see of you know, we've
23:47
Speaker 3: got all this automation in place, and I would say,
23:51
Speaker 3: let's let's take out just you know, the automation like
23:55
Speaker 3: the scissor lift or a forklift like those are those
23:57
Speaker 3: are things we're all used to. That's that's standard press.
24:00
Speaker 3: Just now. When when I'm talking about automation, I'm thinking of,
24:03
Speaker 3: you know, the UH the new AI or or digital
24:07
Speaker 3: capabilities of monitoring systems in place and and different you know, protocol,
24:13
Speaker 3: different UH processes. So what are some of these technology
24:18
Speaker 3: things that are coming about that are going to be
24:21
Speaker 3: able to enhance this capability to you know, check these
24:26
Speaker 3: or or collect this this data on near misses or
24:30
Speaker 3: you know, sen something that is not to its peak safety,
24:35
Speaker 3: you know the latter or last, you know, Are there
24:38
Speaker 3: are there AI tools? Are there technologies that are coming
24:40
Speaker 3: into place that are able to support organizations with this
24:44
Speaker 3: task of maintaining safety in their in their facility?
24:48
Speaker 2: There absolutely are.
24:50
Speaker 1: And this is something that I kind of nerd out
24:52
Speaker 1: on it a bit because even though I'm not I'm
24:55
Speaker 1: not in the manufacturing environment anymore, it's still something that
24:59
Speaker 1: you know, we've we even we even look at some
25:00
Speaker 1: of these technologies and how in the service industry, how
25:03
Speaker 1: can we use them. What you'll see in a lot
25:06
Speaker 1: of you know, a lot of manufacturing environments or warehousing
25:09
Speaker 1: and environments are the use of we call them our gvs.
25:13
Speaker 1: There's a lot different terminologies robot robotic guidance vehicles, our
25:18
Speaker 1: gvs and other other devices like that. You know, there
25:22
Speaker 1: their brains, a computer that it's it's something that we
25:25
Speaker 1: we give it a mission. It can go do that
25:27
Speaker 1: mission perfectly, but we have to make sure that while
25:31
Speaker 1: it's performing its task that we have the protective measures
25:34
Speaker 1: in place to keep our people safe. Is it a
25:36
Speaker 1: safe option, one hundred percent, but we have to be
25:39
Speaker 1: careful that we're not scamping out on these protective measures.
25:44
Speaker 1: There's area scanners, there's there's things that present sensing devices
25:48
Speaker 1: that that are attached to these pieces of equipment as
25:52
Speaker 1: a safe measure to make sure that our that that
25:54
Speaker 1: they're not interacting in a negative way with our employees.
25:59
Speaker 1: One thing that that you know, I think a point
26:01
Speaker 1: that I would I hope everyone takes this into consideration
26:05
Speaker 1: when they're looking at present sensing devices for any type
26:08
Speaker 1: equipment is this is this is a device that really
26:12
Speaker 1: does take expert knowledge to set up it's something that
26:17
Speaker 1: can you hook one up in house. Yeah, sure you
26:19
Speaker 1: may have an electrician that that that's savvy, but bringing
26:22
Speaker 1: in an expert and not cutting that corner is is
26:26
Speaker 1: paramount to.
26:27
Speaker 2: It working the way that it should.
26:30
Speaker 1: And the last thing you want is that false sense
26:32
Speaker 1: of security that feel good. Hey, we've got present sensing
26:35
Speaker 1: devices on this, we shouldn't have any issues. But little
26:38
Speaker 1: do you know that present sensing device is not set
26:41
Speaker 1: up correctly and you have a blind spot. And in
26:45
Speaker 1: an industry there there are such things as perfect storms,
26:49
Speaker 1: and we don't want that perfect storm to you know,
26:52
Speaker 1: to lead to a catastrophic incident from a reporting standpoint,
26:56
Speaker 1: and just what information you can get from these devices
27:00
Speaker 1: is not just on our gvs, but they've got present
27:03
Speaker 1: sensing devices to where you can monitor foot traffic. You
27:06
Speaker 1: can monitor i'll call no go zones where people should
27:10
Speaker 1: not be and if if there's a sense, you know,
27:13
Speaker 1: if it picks up on someone.
27:14
Speaker 2: You're getting that data.
27:16
Speaker 1: You're getting those close calls where an employee came too
27:18
Speaker 1: close to a piece of equipment that they're not supposed
27:21
Speaker 1: to be that close to. And now that information is captured,
27:24
Speaker 1: we can see exactly where it was. We can see
27:27
Speaker 1: you know, the duration, and now you can react to
27:31
Speaker 1: that something that would have never been reported, probably because
27:34
Speaker 1: it was between one person and a machine. Now we're
27:38
Speaker 1: getting that information, we can take action on it.
27:40
Speaker 2: So AI is going so far.
27:44
Speaker 1: I'll even crossover just into like incident analysis, you know,
27:50
Speaker 1: from from where what used to take four to five
27:53
Speaker 1: hours to go through and break down incidents and see
27:56
Speaker 1: by location where your risks are, by planner, by the apartment.
28:00
Speaker 2: Now you can plug that into.
28:02
Speaker 1: A UNI kind of AI module and it's going to
28:04
Speaker 1: give you that detail in about fifteen seconds.
28:06
Speaker 2: So it's made things a lot more efficient.
28:08
Speaker 1: The information's right there at our fingertips, and the challenge
28:13
Speaker 1: now is to use that new information to put it
28:15
Speaker 1: into play and don't just hold on to it because
28:18
Speaker 1: it's gold.
28:19
Speaker 2: We you know, we have to take action on it.
28:21
Speaker 3: Well, and then I guess that that leads me to
28:24
Speaker 3: my last question is you know what examples have you
28:26
Speaker 3: seen of where a safety culture was improved and it
28:31
Speaker 3: led directly to improving some of their operational KPIs.
28:36
Speaker 2: This is a this is a good one.
28:39
Speaker 1: Well, I'll start by saying that safety just just having
28:43
Speaker 1: a safety a strong safety culture, it really does build
28:48
Speaker 1: all parts of the organization. And I'll dive into that
28:50
Speaker 1: little bit more.
28:51
Speaker 2: I mean, I have I have.
28:52
Speaker 1: A few regions that they are my clearly my safest regions.
28:56
Speaker 1: They're they're hitting on all score cards. You know, they're
28:59
Speaker 1: from a compliance standpoint, they're knocking it out of the water.
29:02
Speaker 1: You know, we see a lot of stopwork authorities where
29:04
Speaker 1: the supervisors are taking action and fixing it and lo
29:07
Speaker 1: and behold, there are most productive regions as well. So
29:12
Speaker 1: I think what really drives that is is the amount
29:16
Speaker 1: of focus that it takes to have a strong safety culture.
29:19
Speaker 1: And when you train someone to have that focus, to
29:23
Speaker 1: appreciate and to follow standard operating procedures, policies, whatever it
29:29
Speaker 1: may be. When when that's instilled in safety, it's going
29:32
Speaker 1: to trickle over to the quality of work. Hey, this
29:34
Speaker 1: is the way I've always done it. Well, we do
29:37
Speaker 1: have an sop. Let's see what it says straight from
29:39
Speaker 1: the manufacturer. Let's do it this way in boom. Now
29:41
Speaker 1: that that mindset, mindset has changed from that employee because
29:44
Speaker 1: he sees that, well, that worked too. So maybe I
29:46
Speaker 1: do need to read these things. Maybe I didn't need
29:48
Speaker 1: to follow these procedures, and it just you know it,
29:51
Speaker 1: it really is.
29:53
Speaker 2: If you have.
29:54
Speaker 1: Safety ingrained in your business and employees understand that you
29:58
Speaker 1: care about their safety and they have the empowerment to
30:02
Speaker 1: speak up, they're going to have higher morale. They're going
30:06
Speaker 1: to speak up on more issues than just safety issues,
30:10
Speaker 1: and ultimately you're going to create a very strong workforce
30:13
Speaker 1: that is hitting on all cylinders. You know, I've seen
30:18
Speaker 1: it across the board. But it's that challenge of making
30:21
Speaker 1: sure that our employees understand the why behind everything that
30:25
Speaker 1: we do. And if we're not explaining that why and
30:27
Speaker 1: we're just pushing things out on them, you're going to
30:29
Speaker 1: get negative connotation of the activities that you're trying to implement.
30:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like just utilizing the positive peer pressure
30:40
Speaker 3: of this type of focus is going to raise the
30:45
Speaker 3: enablement of the whole team and they're just going to
30:49
Speaker 3: be bought in to the business and you know what
30:52
Speaker 3: it is that they're trying to accomplish as a team
30:54
Speaker 3: together within that Organization's.
30:58
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. The whole boy in peace.
31:02
Speaker 1: When an organization understands that you care about them, not
31:05
Speaker 1: only just their livelihood. But safety they're gonna be bought in.
31:08
Speaker 1: They're gonna not They're not gonna lay in bed on
31:10
Speaker 1: Sunday night and say, man, I dread tomorrow.
31:12
Speaker 2: I got to go back to that place.
31:14
Speaker 1: They're gonna say, hey, I get to go work for
31:17
Speaker 1: I get to go work for me, or I get
31:18
Speaker 1: to go work for X y Z company tomorrow. Because
31:21
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, this is a company
31:23
Speaker 1: that truly cares about me and it's a pleasure to
31:25
Speaker 1: work for them. That's the ultimate goal and that's you know,
31:28
Speaker 1: will forever be chasing that safety is safety culture development
31:32
Speaker 1: is not a race. It's you know, I people are like,
31:36
Speaker 1: you know, our safety culture is really good, and I'm like, yeah,
31:39
Speaker 1: but it's it's never gonna end. It's always gonna be evolving.
31:42
Speaker 1: Where I was gonna have turnover, there's always things that
31:44
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to revisit and make sure that they're fresh.
31:48
Speaker 1: And when you get to that point to where your
31:50
Speaker 1: employees see the actions that you're taking and they know
31:53
Speaker 1: that from CEO down from president, now whatever your structure is,
31:58
Speaker 1: that safety is a value within your company, You're going
32:01
Speaker 1: to see a lot of healthy a lot of other
32:05
Speaker 1: business drivers become extremely healthy.
32:08
Speaker 3: All right, well, thank you justin so much for joining
32:10
Speaker 3: us today for this lovely discussion on safety culture. I
32:14
Speaker 3: have a feeling it's going to continue to be a
32:17
Speaker 3: large part of the conversation in twenty twenty six as
32:21
Speaker 3: we continue to face a lot of these regulatory let's
32:25
Speaker 3: just call them disturbances. We don't know what's happening. We
32:27
Speaker 3: don't know if it's staying or going, but it's it's
32:30
Speaker 3: constantly in flux. So the more that we can drive
32:33
Speaker 3: this culture for organizations, I think, the better we're going
32:36
Speaker 3: to be sure thing.
32:37
Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate you having me, you know, I love
32:39
Speaker 1: talking about safety and safety culture development.
32:41
Speaker 2: So hopefully listeners out there.
32:44
Speaker 1: You know, I give a you know, a little little
32:46
Speaker 1: golden nugget to somebody and they can try to implement that.
32:48
Speaker 1: Because there are no trade secrets in safety. We all
32:51
Speaker 1: want to make sure people are safe.
32:53
Speaker 2: I like that.
32:54
Speaker 3: So wherehouse safety isn't a checklist, it's a mindset, a culture,
32:58
Speaker 3: and a leadership priory. Already, your insights remind us that
33:02
Speaker 3: in times of regulatory uncertainty and operational stress, the companies
33:05
Speaker 3: that lead on safety won't just protect their people, they'll outperform.
33:10
Speaker 3: Thank you again for joining us as we explore what
33:12
Speaker 3: it takes to build resilient, responsible supply chains to our listeners.
33:16
Speaker 3: If you found today's episode valuable, be sure to hit
33:18
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33:21
Speaker 3: if you're interested in being a guest on our show,
33:23
Speaker 3: you can reach me at podcast at meboch dot com
33:25
Speaker 3: anytime