This week, we chat about how self governance can help prevent laws that may not follow common sense.
This week, we chat about how self governance can help prevent laws that may not follow common sense.
Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French marks passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now, here is Dr. Mark French.
Mark French:And welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Hey, I am your host, Dr. Mark French. And it's good to be back with you this week. After a couple of weeks of missing the podcast I am back and behind the mic and ready to go. Again, just bad scheduling on my part. Anyway, good to be back. Thank you for being a part of this podcast. I can't thank you enough for that. And let's just jump on in. I'm actually going to tell the story here. And I will bring it back around. But I'm going to tell the story that just recently happened to me. And I want to use that to kind of show where we get ourselves as an as, I think as organizations, as larger groups when things happen. So I'm I did some flying this week had to go up to a city and back home, flew up no trouble. On the way home, I get my bag gets chosen by TSA to be searched a little further because something is in there. Turns out it's my razor. And I you know, I don't argue that's one thing I have learned. It doesn't get you anywhere. It's not going to work. They're just doing their job. And they didn't make the law. They didn't make the process. They didn't have to evaluate. They're just doing what they've been told to do and taught to do. And they're following their training and they're doing their work did it was I upset and happy that one of my items got taken away from me. Absolutely not. That stinks. I hate that. I don't think it's common sense. I think there was no common sense approach to what happened. But it happened. And that's not a que from my standpoint. But from the fact that he had to do what he had to do the the TSA officer did his job as he was supposed to do it. Now the inconsistency of how can you fly out with a fly back? And I've got lots of questions about things like that. And I think that's a lot of the argument is there's a lot of personal judgment that has to go into it. But that personal judgment comes from the training they receive it comes from the organization, it comes from the culture of that local jurisdiction, and I lost that item. And then once I sat down and started thinking about my item that I no longer had, as I sit there and thought about like what led to this other than me not being more prepared. I mean, usually, I'm better prepared to know what is and is not, I probably still wouldn't argue because it wouldn't get me anywhere. But I began to think about, by me making the choice to fly, I give up certain rights. I go here to whatever I've been subjected to because they have the right to make those discretionary decisions. I remember years ago, reading an article and I cannot even remember like the the whole reason behind it. But there was some pressure from outside entities to for the government to get involved in something and I cannot remember exactly what it was. But the organizations came together whomever this group of people that would be affected by the law and said if we don't self govern in a very positive way, if we don't figure out a way to create a consensus standard that we will all agree to as this type of work. And we do it independently the government is going to get involved and when the government gets involved, common sense goes out the window. I paraphrase but that's what it was it was these organizations recognize that within their, their work group would and I think it was actually a fire arms thing where they were looking at, I forgot exactly even what it wasn't maybe even like an alcohol thing. I think it was ATF thing. And this has been years ago, but they decided on a consensus standard to that they would enact within themselves, publicize it, put it out there, so that the government wouldn't get involved in lawmaking for that issue. And they would just, they would govern it with a common sense approach that they felt was appropriate and safe. Before the government could get involved in rulemaking. I think of that now is OSHA in a lot of ways, because organizations couldn't stop hurting people, maiming people killing people, that they thought it was okay, which still blows my mind that you can think that doing some of those things were okay. Even to this day, still think it's okay, and let it happen. And then we end up with laws. I've had so many discussions with people about OSHA record ability, or confined spaces, or lockout tagout. And they say, Well, that doesn't make common sense. That just doesn't make sense. And I'm like it. It is not supposed to. It's a law, it was written to be a law, a piece of paper that can be debated, that can be a spirit or the intent. It was written to be a legal thing, not to be a common sense approach and a practical, user friendly approach. It was written to be a law, we have to follow the law, as it says, not with our intent, not with our interpretation, but with the laws interpretation that has happened, and I think there's a lot of safety people have had to have those discussions that, yeah, it may not seem like that's a common sense approach to hazard prevention. But because of the lack of self regulation, the lack of reduction, or the lack of not actually hurting or killing people, the government got involved in made a law. And here is this law, and we will have to follow it as it states, not as we feel like it should be. Because years ago, people couldn't control themselves. We are we are that product of what just happened. And we see it even today, like there are laws being governed, and OSHA has proposed laws coming potentially coming into effect. Because we weren't able to self govern before we and I say we, it's not the probably the we listening to this podcast, let's be honest. It's the others out there. But if we can have an influence as those who are understanding and be less accepting of how others can do things and get away with it. Hopefully, it it prevents lawmaking that is unnecessary or too broadly accepted. That's where I think about the TIA, not that we could control a lot of that. But the law was written, it was enacted. It was given its piece, and part of it says there is discretion that can be made their discretion was made. And so we are a product of that. When it comes to safety, when I look at the safety programs, I look now at some of the disturbing, like funding issues that are being discussed in Washington right now, of reducing funding for OSHA. That bothers me a lot. Because I know that is needed. Because we weren't able to self we still as let's say companies as employers of the entire United States, there's way too many fatalities. We know that there's way too many people that get hurt, we are proving that we can't self govern even with laws in place. Therefore, we need more people looking out and going out there and looking does it need to be better focused? Does it need to have a better? Yes, there's always an opportunity for improvement for more fairness for a lot of different things. I think there's a lot of ways it can be improved. Absolutely. But where we are right now is because we were unable to figure it out internally and fix it. We treated people as a disposable resource. And it can't be done that way. It absolutely should not cannot. That's why we do what we do as safety people is we want to go beyond the law. We know the laws, the base, the very first rung of protection for people and we want to take it further. We want to go above we want to look for ways that we're preventing in helping our team. So in some ways we do look toward like the consensus standards VPP ISO, things like that, that help us show Oh, that we are willing and able to go above and beyond. Let's come back after a short break and we will talk more on the leading and learning through safety podcast, you
Stinger:are listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast with Dr. Mark French,
Commercial:D is D consulting, learn you lead others,
Mark French:the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. The problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr. Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more. Individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at t is da consulting.com. And welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So the first half of the podcast I kind of went off on a tangent there just thinking out loud, in a way, a little stream of consciousness about how we have these laws that are in effect. And I kind of want to transition to my next kind of larger topic that really struck me because of a news story. And because of some work that I've been doing with my will call it my day job work as a as a safety HR professional for an organization. That it struck me as very interesting. And something that I talk about very frequently as, as a company that our we serve as other organizations. So we would come to a site and we do work, we do energy conservation work for companies. So you call us we come into an audit evaluation, we do a construction project or upgrade project that would ultimately save energy, greener world. But we are a subcontractor or a contractor on the side of a usually a much larger organization. And one of the things I've always tried to express, even when I was hiring in or being part of that evaluation, and I've talked about this a little bit before being when you're hiring in that subcontractor, when you bring someone in to your company, to do work, you need to make sure you're not just going for the lowest bid, you're looking for the best value in the work, but you're also looking for someone who is going to uphold your name. Because when the things go wrong, if the things go wrong, it's not the usually the contractors name in the newspaper, or at least if it is it's buried in like paragraph seven. It's the name of the company that hired them. That's in the headlines, like injury it whatever plays fatality here in the story that I came across from a few weeks ago, was the Brown Forman distillery, unfortunately, had a contractor doing some brick work that fell and still under investigation and resulted in a fatality. And that's again, their stuff. I never liked to hear about a fatality. And what I really want to dig into that I see that well, it was a contractor. But what was interesting in the account, looking at this point of it, it didn't say the name of the contractor that didn't label that business name until well down into it, or the name of the individual till well down into it. The headline was fatality and Brown Forman in US looked at the look at the internet. And I was looking at that to see if there was more information. And that's what almost every headline read. And so as a contractor, as someone who comes to sides, I want to make sure that companies understand that we know that, that I know that as a safety professional that if you go with the lowest bid, if you look for the cheapest contractor and you don't look at their safety programs, and you don't even ask if they have a safety program. That's the risk you take for your brand. Because that is what's going to be in the news the next day, when there was a I've seen it a few times where different larger companies when a confined space issue happens and there's injuries or a release. It's usually a subcontractor that was doing the work but as the name of the company that's in the headlines. And if you're part of a company as a safety professional that is hiring in these contractors, safety has to be a part of it. And I have had a lot of interesting discussions with purchasing departments, large capital departments, some are really good. They want to evaluate safety they they would have the safety managers signature on it or a safety vice president or someone signature that reviewed that company to say that they are safe 50 acceptable or environmentally acceptable to be a contractor, there's even companies out there that do that certification now and you get your grade and you look at it online, you submit your paperwork as a contractor, and then the client can decide based on that, that grade, whether or not you can come to work for them. So there's a lot of solutions out there, the solution that's unacceptable is not to ask to simply look at the cost that's on a piece of paper and say, well, they're the cheapest, let's bring him in, let's get it done. That is a recipe for disaster, because if they're the absolute cheapest by a lot, they're shortcutting. Something, whether it be the pay of their people, the benefits of their people, the safety of their people. In roofing companies not calling that out specifically, it's just the one that came to mind immediately, is looking at the roofers that have a fall protection system. And the one that don't, I know which one was the cheapest bid, I know which one's gonna give you the highest quality too. Because they care, they've invested. They're doing their due diligence. They're doing what's right for their team, and for other people. That's what's important. And as clients, and I've had those, again, I'll go back to my first point there of the discussion with purchasing to make sure that we're protecting our brand. By doing that evaluation, if we didn't do it before. And there's, I've worked for smaller companies that needed to make sure we evaluated that I've worked for bigger companies that had a nice system in place. And now that I'm on the other side, kind of for the first time, I see the importance, I see the marketability. And I'm proud that we use that as an opportunity to tell people that you're getting a quality service, you're not just getting the cheapest service, you're getting a service that cares and understands it as a partner. And not always see that as an opportunity to be a partner with whatever subcontractor, whatever contract or whatever vendor. There's a partnership there that we have to each work together to protect our brand, protect our people protect the things that are most important to our company. And you see that. So there's the key we protect what is most important to our company? Is it people? Is it a brand? Is it money? You see those things very quickly, you make those decisions. You may say one thing, but here's where you see the truth of it is how we act and react and how what we evaluate and where we put that effort. So it's something really that I think about frequently is where did the effort go? Did we make that effort to assure that we were doing the right things, that we're doing the correct things that we're trying our best? Is there a such thing as perfect? No,
Commercial:Am
Mark French:I perfect? laughable, not even close. Not even close. But I'm looking every day for a way to be better. That's important. That's the piece of it that makes the difference is are you looking to be better? Are you always thinking about where we make those improvements where we drive those improvements? Well, I appreciate you. Here we are at the end, the music is telling me I've only got a little bit of time left. Thank you for joining me, I really appreciate your time. It's good to be back behind the microphone. I'm excited as we enter the holiday period and as we march toward the end of 2023 of what we're going to be able to accomplish in the world of safety and leadership and this podcast hopefully will be a part of it. So until next time we chat please stay safe.
Announcer:Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online at www dot T S D A consulting.com. All the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice. This has been the leading and learning through safety podcast