In this podcast, we chat about workplace violence and the environment around workers.
In this podcast, we chat about workplace violence and the environment around workers.
This week on the leading and learning through safety podcast, we're talking about workplace violence. It may not just be People to People violence, it may be other violent acts that happen around the workplace, what we can do, what we're seeing and how to overcome it.
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 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:Hello, and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Hi, I am Dr. Mark French. And I am so happy that you joined me for this episode. Always happy to have you joining me as we have these little chats about safety, environmental, but most importantly, empathy and leadership. Without the first to have empathy and leadership, we don't really end up with anything else, we can't progress to that next level of safety. And that's what I created this podcast for, for that opportunity for us to talk about that in a real way. And hopefully of creating some change out there. So that we all have a safer place to live and work. So again, so happy that you've joined me. Welcome to the podcast. This week, I found a really a story that caught my attention for you know, I don't know why it really hit home so hard, but it did. And I want to talk about it is I think it's a really interesting study in what we do with safety people, what we do as leaders and what we do as community members. This one was out of Georgia, and it was a postal worker. So the postal worker was found in a garage with two dogs standing over her body. Bloody and motionless. A 36 year old Postal Service carrier was delivering mail to a home it was a package, dropped it off, and two dogs began to attack her they were dogs that were from the owner. How did it was reported because of her friend she was on the phone with a friend or with someone that she knew was on the phone and suddenly heard commotion because that's kind of common to keep yourself aware. I see people with their headphones and like one headphone in usually like listening to something or talking to someone as they're delivering things. Or listening to the radio. So in this case, they were on the phone with a friend. The friend heard her a loud commotion her friend didn't answer. And so they had to go and help. They went to the location that they thought the person was and saw the two dogs over their body began honking the horn trying to get the dogs to move the dogs wouldn't leave them alone kept kind of pseudo attacking jumping in there. And then finally called nine one wants and all this is happening. The it says that the the police or the sheriff's office actually had to use rubber bullets to get the dogs away long enough for them to have the EMTs come in, grab the woman out and then airlift her to a hospital. According to the homeowner, her dogs had never bitten, says his dogs have never bitten anyone before. Animal Control left the dogs in the care of the owner. Of course the United Postal Service is unhappy about this. This is common. And there are some statistics and this is again, where I love good journalism and I appreciate good journalism. They actually put some stats in there and it says more than 5300 United States Postal Service employees were attacked by dogs while doing deliveries in 2022. The agency said wow, that's a lot of dog attacks. And it's not surprising. I mean there's a A lot of people say it's not the dog as the person agree, they train the dogs to be aggressive toward anyone who is coming at them or coming around them or trying to get into the home. And they don't recognize a postal service person for anyone else, and the postal service person has a duty to deliver. That's what they do. This is a this is all too common in environmental hazards, that you may have a same routine, you may go to the same locations, you may have to go different locations. I know in my case, in being a very rural area, we generally have the same postal person that's delivering the mail, we have a few substitutes that we see pretty regularly, we know them all so but there's even times where we'll get a new face, a new postal worker will be making those deliveries and it may not know our home from anyone else. And I'll tell a quick story about that. That made me think about just kind of the dog issue, and even how sensitive I am to it. Not that this makes me a great person. It just I'm aware, as someone who was exceptionally scared of dogs growing up, I understand the fear. I had a mortal fear of dogs probably until I was in third or fourth grade. And what changed it was we found a tiny little puppy on the side of somebody had dumped a puppy on the side of the road and a very rainy day. And I was like leave it don't touch it. Don't get it. Dad Don't pick that thing up. It's dangerous. It's a dog. Those are evil. Don't do that. We brought it home. And we were going to take it to the shelter after the weekend was over. Because this was like a Saturday morning. If I remember, I don't even know if that's true. But I think it was we brought it home. And we start caring like in it turned out to be like I decided I wanted to at least like see this puppy before we took it to the shelter and I fell in love with it. And that became my very first dog's name rainy, because we found her on a rainy day. And very creative child I was and my first dog so I understand that fear of like this canine even no matter what size coming at you in not knowing, even just unsure of what's happening. And I now we have a little dog. He's a rescue dog. His name is rocket, he doesn't take off as fast as he used to. He's a little chunky fella now. And he's a Barker. And not that we appreciate that. But that's his vocal. That's what he's when he's excited when he's happy when he wants something. He barks. So when the postal carrier comes, and he's at home and awake, and the weather's nice, he will go outside and bark. Because he's like, Hey, I'm a chunky boy, give me head rubs the Postal Service to UPS workers, anybody who's delivering things to my house? Unless you know, and I have told you that yeah, he just wants a pat on the head. He just loves people. And he thinks you're awesome. He's not gonna He's never bitten anyone. And we have trained him to be very passive and to be very loving. Unless you know that you would think he's an aggressive dog. And you would not want to come in. So I understand where that there's that, that part of having to have your duty, but also having to overcome like, what is the situation happening to me right now. This is unfortunate. This is terrible. That a postal worker goes into work, trying to do their job trying to do the right thing in brutally attacked. This was when I read I didn't I spared a lot of the details that were in the story because it's very telling how bad this was how badly this person was attacked. And this is when I started the podcast. So we're going to talk about workplace violence. This is a violent thing. There is no OSHA standard currently for violent it's cited under general duty, which is that you have the right to you have to have provide a safe working environment for your people. And that's what they cited under because well, you didn't provide it because someone evidently was hurt extremely bad. So there's no workplace violence or item that's covered directly, specifically under the OSHA regulations. They are trying to change that there is some work in progress, extremely slow work, of course, that's it's hard to get new legislation through OSHA. There's even some other things happening within the government that may look to slow the rulemaking where rulemaking would have to actually go through a legal process rather than just being enacted through the exceptionally slow process that it is. And with that, we have to think about how do we create the safer environment. I want to expand on that just a little bit more. When we come back for the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast,
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Mark French:And welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. I am so happy you're joining me glad that you are part of the podcast and welcome. So we're talking about workplace violence. And how how difficult this is one, OSHA is understaffed to OSHA covers it as part of workplace safety standards. And three, we don't have real regulation or guidance. Other than some, we have some very proven industry standards. And I want to say that we're completely blind like, oh, my gosh, what do we do about this problem? There's been a lot of studies on what we do about this problem. And how do we overcome it in what in what it comes down to? Is more investment in our people, more investment in the security of our people and having the right staffing to protect them, and making sure that we invest in significant amount of training and tracking? And, again, it comes down to how much are you willing to invest? And with all things OSHA What is it being compared to as legislation is prepared as how much is it going to cost a business to implement it? And is the burden worth it? That always blows my mind, the more that I and when I first entered safety, that idea made sense. Like you don't want to put so much regulatory burden on a company that it can't sustain itself. As I've done this, more and more, my opinion has changed a little bit too. Why would you have a business if you're not willing to protect the people who work there? Isn't that like a fundamental right of being human, that you could come to a job and it leads to have the employer have some due diligence in place to make sure that you go home okay, that you don't go home hurt. And there's still a balance there like you can overregulated I mean, I think of other government agencies that are overregulate so many things, that we could have a political discussion about that all day long, and I don't need that. Don't need that in my life. So let's continue to talk about how we protect our people. In this case, I will say that if you are a friend, or a family member of someone who delivers things, and you're regularly on the phone with them, occasionally check in where they're at, hey, where are you at right now? Every so often just to have an idea of where they're at. And if you hear something go wrong, don't chase after him. Call 911 Say my I was on the phone with my friend, my family member. And I lost them at this point. They said they were in this area delivering things. I sounded bad, I think something's happened, can you check on him? Because like, in this case, there was a delay of care, because the person went to the place first, and then call 911, then they still had to remove the dogs from the area and try to then get the personnel. It delayed a lot of care there. The best thing we can do is we think someone's in trouble. It's okay. make that call. Get them the help they need. And I want to expand just a little bit we're is workplace violence. The the recent regulations are where they're trying to create rulemaking. It's actually in the health care system and the social services system. Because there it is a very, it can be a very controlled environment, and the violence against social workers that go into the homes, nurses that go into homes and even hospital staff inside like an emergency room or inside a hospital. There's surprisingly a lot of injuries. And when you really begin to think about and why is that it makes sense. You have people Will who were hurt may not know what they're doing have other types of illnesses that may result in them being violent or conditions that create them to be confused and maybe violent. And not, sometimes intentionally. It's just where they're at in that medical condition. And then there are those who wish to do harm, that maybe they didn't finish what they thought they needed to start the first place and try to complete it at the hospital. So there's a lot of opportunity in the same thing with like the dog, this dog bite, I'll take a step back here and say, social workers, those that go into the home for nursing care or skilled services, have the same concern about dogs and animals that the post workers have, that any delivery person would have in those cases. And so that was a rulemaking that is very taking its time getting around. And because there's so much commentary, and so much debate on what to do, and how to handle it, is around those ideas of how do we better protect our first look at the medical community because they are so varied and diverse and everywhere. And then we can expand that we can use those best practices elsewhere, because it helps protect them going into the home, it may protect those that are going around the home, or going around other environments. And so he had the opportunity to learn from that. And that's usually where it begins, is you rule make for one specific industry, and then you're able to use when you show that it works, you're able to then spread it around confined spaces is a great example moving from general industry to construction that came along later on after it was like, Hey, we have a great standard, let's just use it elsewhere. And the rulemaking process began. That is where we need to start to help prevent these things from happening. And if you're a homeowner with animals, it's it's good to know your animals is good to let to be friendly towards your delivery people so that your animals see that they're not a danger and that they get used to you interacting in a positive way with people who come around your location. As we're wrapping up this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast, I want to say 2024 is shaping up to be a very exciting year for me. Coming up next week, even I will be at the alert media safety conference, the employee safety conference in Austin, Texas. I will be there talking about how to handle duty of care with a small staff. How do we run lean and how do we still accomplish our goals and not to say that's the way we always should do it. But there are things we can leverage to make it easier, maybe during a transition phase, maybe during a time where you're just a little bit light on staffing and you need to figure out how to make it work and make that sprint talking about how to run it lean but also accomplish your goals long term to keep going. Also, I am super excited also to announce that I've already been selected to be part of the Tennessee safety conference coming up in June in Nashville spoke there last year spoken there a number of years love that is a fit. If you're around Nashville, Tennessee at all it is worth coming to that safety conference is not just for Tennessee, it's it's for anyone interested in in safety. It's a well established, well run. Really great conference. I always enjoy being there. Meeting the people they're being part of just everything that goes on. There's so many I'm honored because there's so many good speakers there. You will definitely find something to learn something that will interest you. That's coming up in June of course Nashville. Wow. Fun times there. Thanks for joining me on this episode. And until next time we chat. Stay safe.
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