This week, we review the previous year and talk about accelerating leadership and safety for 2024.
This week, we review the previous year and talk about accelerating leadership and safety for 2024.
Welcome to the first podcast of the year. This week. We're talking about some of the OSHA work earlier in the year, what we can expect coming forward, and a lot more about how we can prevent human suffering through our work is safety people.
Announcer: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 69. 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.
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Mark French:to the first podcast of 2024. So happy you've joined me for the leading and learning through safety podcast. Welcome to the new year. Hopefully as we get started, we'll have some new fun things happening this year. As we get the podcast going again, happy you've joined me happy that you're streaming downloading wherever you may be listening to the podcast. Thank you for that. So let's jump right on in I have a lot of really interesting information that kind of kicked off the entire early part of this year of things that are happening around OSHA things that are happening around a lot of just things that that we need to be looking for as leaders in safety professionals to be watching for. And I think the first one that came across was actually a YouTube video of a news story. And it was about a family that wanted answers about a shipyard workers fatality. In this is an example of where I'm really happy with the journalism usually I'm very skeptical journalists. I did some of that work early in my career. I loved it. I loved news and radio and those things. And so here I am doing a podcast, of course, I enjoyed that. And I felt it was like something that I had to have high ethics, I had to ask the right questions, I had to do the right things, almost went completely into that at one point. To know, got lucky and where I am now and do a little bit of everything's I enjoy. In this case, and I if you're following me on Facebook or LinkedIn, that link will be in the podcast comments. Take a look at it. It's a really interesting piece of journalism, very short news story. But a family had questions about the death of a family member. And it's a very compelling story. It's not very long. And they have questions that aren't getting answered. And of course, OSHA can't release too much information till they do their full investigation. They felt that the injuries that lead to the fatality of their family member was really not in alignment with what was told and they went to the local news agency and they actually assigned a reporter to start asking questions and finding out that there were people that wanted to talk off the record there were people that once they realized it might be on the record changed their story. A lot of stories have been changing and what happened was they claimed that he fell off of a ladder but he had massive injuries broken ribs head trauma I mean it was for a fall off a ladder it seemed excessive but that's what they reported and that's what they're telling everyone is what happened but then they're they're off the record comments are saying now some stuff fell like a crane drop some items or something else happened. That was huge trauma, big deal. That being covered up by the company, potentially, again, nothing proven nothing out there. But the questions are being asked, the attention is getting that's where it begins. Is the attention has to be there. Their questions have to be asked. So many times we say it's a tragic accident or something just happens and that's where they leave it and that's been my one of my greatest complaints about news reporting with occupational fatalities until we start treating them that they're not just routine or just a freak accidente in reporting it that way and putting it out to the public that oh, these things just happen to people. So don't be excited and don't be angry and, and don't get anything to be asking questions about it, it's going to remain that way. It's not going to get attention. It's not going to be focused on it's not going to be the outrage that needs to be there to really drive policy and changes won't be there. Because if we treat it as just another quick blurb in the news, in this case, here in this new story here, they're taking it further. The family is talking on camera, the investigator is asking questions and saying, Hey, I'm not getting answers, but I'm inconsistent things and things are happening in this news as well. I really, really do encourage you to watch that video that I'll post in my links. I think it's absolutely fantastic. And then as I switch over to another one that again, the link will be in the thing in my comments, is a manufacturer was hit for a quarter million dollars in fines right at the end of the year. 32. serious violations in a lot of was in regards to working in walking surfaces, blocked exit routes, improper installation of walking surfaces, guard rails that were loose, electrical equipment not touched, and it was a huge volume. So it wasn't like they had one major safety issue that led to a huge fine. It was a bunch it was all these things. Its sheer volume. It was interim one of the quotes in the news story, and I'll read this and OSHA inspection finds this volume of safety and health violations across several work areas indicates a failed safety and health program. Yes, it does. But you know what it shows more of it shows a complete failure of leadership. If leaders, if one leader took a walk across some of these platforms and shook a guardrail and felt like they could fall off of it, do you think it would still be there? Probably not. Our leaders have to interact, they have to be out there. And as a leader, if you're not doing the gamba that go to the place of the work and see it experience and be there. You can't really feel it, you can't really see it, and you can't put yourself into it. This is apathy. This is Go do your work, make money for the organization. And that's it. There's no other piece that feels like is there that is engaging, carrying all of that wrapped up into a piece of leadership. And yeah, I feel like I'm kind of starting the year off a little bit like, oh, my gosh, look at where we got to go. But I think this gives us the like a bow and arrow, this is pulling the string tight. We're getting ready to see how we can get better, can we get better? How do we improve it? How do we push further? How do we push more? How do we make things better, through good leadership? The other story, and I hear I'm on my third story already, that according to some reports, 2022 they're seeing significant increase in fatalities. Now, that's data from a number of places. So this one actually comes from a contractor management system that kind of does validation work? They're finding the Yep, they are on an increase. We saw that also, with some OSHA data that as we exited 2022 into 2023. And there's some predictors there that 2023 wasn't much better. But they were saying that the top three causes for these fatalities were contact with objects where equipment, slips, trips, and falls. And overexertion oil and gas sector recorded the highest fatality rates. And they continue through the they see that injuries are on the rise in these contract and management systems that are looking at this and grading contractors are seeing the shift that we are seeing more injuries. Now what's interesting about contractor injury rates, is sometimes we have to think about where are they working? That's one of the ideas that i i toy with in my current world is I don't control the environment anymore. As a contractor, you go to the environment and you have to find your controls within the environment you're given. And you have a choice binary in the beginning of work, don't work but that's money, no money in some ways. And then how do you train the team to see it To overcome it and move past it. And we'll talk a little bit more about that. When we come back for the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast.
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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 SDA consulting.com. Welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast, number one for 2024 first episode, excited that you're with me excited to be doing this. Let's continue the discussion from the first half, where we're talking about that contractor management, grading services that are showing increases in injury rates and fatalities, through 2022. Maybe some predictive metrics say they continue into 2023. What's interesting to me about contractor data is that these contractors are usually at a site, they're coming on to someone else's premise to do work, they can bring in their own tools, they bring in their own items to do the work. But they are doing the work in this environment that they don't control. So when, for instance, I'll go back to when I was in manufacturing, when I was doing safety for manufacturing, everything within the walls was within my control. So I could control the environment and say we need to fix this, we should work on this, we should let's put some cones out not let people go here until we do something here. I could control it. And I can even control it for contractors that came on I wanted to provide in this is good leadership that you treat your contractors like you treat your team you watch out for them, you take care of them, you make sure they're coming into an environment that is at least safe, that you're you're bringing them into something that you're proud to show them of what you're doing as an organization. In this case, they're coming into an area they're getting hurt or killed somewhere else. It's not their four walls, it's not their containment, it's not their environment. And I see that that a lot of there's this old saying that I laugh at every time I hear it is that when safety is a factor you call a contractor because you know the environment is unsafe. And let's let someone else take the risk and hope it goes okay. That's not the way it should be. You call a contractor to find expertise that you may not want to develop or have the ability to develop inside your own organization. So maybe you don't have certain electricians over a certain voltage and you need to call them in for the bigger work because they have the skills and expertise. You need a crane operator because you're doing a crane thing and you bring in someone that has skills and expertise. You look for a contractor that brings that knowledge to you on a temporary basis. That's what a good contractor should be and provide to you. For those organizations, though, that see it the opposite way of let's bring them in and let them do the work that we feel is unsafe. We create that opportunity for if a contractor company doesn't have a really, really strong safety system, it creates a significant risk. Because it is you have to give a very high level of empowerment, education, and the ability to stop work, the empowerment to make that phone call to stop the work to ask the questions. Regardless of the situation, your team has to feel very empowered. Am I great at that? No. I have a lot of opportunity to develop that further. And I don't think you ever stop really having to strive towards that is people have to travel and go to other locations and go to environments that may be varied may be different and have different levels and consistency of safety programs and leadership programs and security programs and pick everything that could affect you when you're in those areas. There's risk and it's up to the team member to be aware enough to look at something and say A safe or unsafe binary. If unsafe, Can I correct in my scope of work yes or no, another binary choice. And it's like a flowchart. And it has to be, they have to feel that they can make those decisions, they have to be educated enough to know those what those decision matrix are. Sometimes that's a handheld audit that we do, maybe it's even before we go into a location, we evaluate them for safety, even if the sales position to look at the area and go, Whoa, this doesn't look so good, we may not even want to be here because it doesn't look so good. Or maybe they look at it a while, their safety is going to be phenomenal, we need to be ready, we need to bring the best of the best, we need to not only be compliant, we need to be beyond compliant. And we need to be above and beyond and really show how safe we can be. It goes both ways. And I have seen that both ways. And I love it, when I come into an organization that has that high safety leadership in a very great climate of proactive safety, because we can really shine them, we can really show the value of hiring a high quality, safety oriented high leadership, high people driven organization. So I always like to focus on the positive, because what's showing here, unfortunately, is the situation is not getting better, it's getting worse for some reason. There's somewhere if we were to keep asking the wise and digging deeper and looking more, that something is happening there between that contractor and client relationship, that shift of control to uncontrolled environment, the evaluation of safe to unsafe and trained to untrained somewhere in there is a multi faceted, there's going to be it's not going to be the silver bullet approach. Something is happening overall, with many factors that are adding up together the Swiss cheese model of safety, they're coming together, and it is showing that the risk is becoming more and more. And the severity of that risk is getting worse. Over time. We can correct that. It can be fixed, it can change, it can get better. And it's leadership, it fundamentally begins with investment of leadership of saying not anymore. It's not worth it. We don't want that. And within when you look at the business, environment, inflation up spending down capital resources, not as available in a lot of areas of the organizations that are out there right now. It's tough to maintain that high standard of saying we still won't sacrifice people and safety. Because there's market conditions and economic conditions that are not where we want them to be right now. I really appreciate you joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast kicking off the year looking at where are we? Where have we ended? Where have we stopped? Now the exciting part happens? Where do we go? How do we take our leadership? How do we take our safety? How do we take our people management processes and accelerate them, improve them? Drive them, hey, we're in this together. We're all learning at the same time. I'd love to hear your advice. Connect with me on social media, talk more about how we can do this together, how we as leaders, safety, HR, all of that coming together. How are we going to make this year safer than last year. Thanks for joining me, and until next time we chat. Stay safe.
Announcer:Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online@www.ts da 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 lead Again learning through safety podcast