In this episode, we talk about the control of hazardous energy.
In this episode, we talk about the control of hazardous energy.
This week on the leading and learning through safety podcast, we're talking about the control of hazardous energy. How does that affect us and what news stories is it brought us this week 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. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. I am so happy you've joined me, I am always excited to know that you have chosen to listen and download my podcast. Welcome. So happy you're here this week. Interestingly, and I think this happens a lot with a lot of items that are out there is that you see a trend, you see news stories that seem to trend around one central idea. In this week. In particular, as I was going through the news, I was reading through what was happening in the world of safety. It's the control of hazardous energy, or known out there, the world is lockout tagout, that we turn it off, we control it in some form. So we can't turn on then we do our work. Two news stories in particular really caught my attention because it reinforces some of the themes that I see. And a lot of it is that we never even get to the first point of just turning it off of just making sure that something is turned off. Before that before we jump in and start playing with it. Or before that we start doing something that may cause it to have an issue. And so in this case, I want to look at a couple of news stories that just really, I guess bothered me more than anything, and how that they were reported how everything happened around them. So let's just jump on. And the first one here is out of Georgia. And I'm gonna read the entire thing here that was listed. Because I was shocked by it. This was a few days ago this happened. And it basically says a man died after entering an industrial conveyor wood chipper. According to authorities, the person died at the scene of the lumber mill and Georgia. According to the sheriff's office, he was an employee at the company. No other details were available. In the news, even like when you watch the story, it actually says we'll give you more as we learn. Right now it seems like that the way it looks, a man just got into a wood chipper that was running an industrial wood chipper we're not talking about like the ones that you get your brush up. This is a logging facility, a lumber facility. This is not your ordinary wood chipper This is not something you just go into this is not something that shouldn't be running my guests and here's where I'm going to have to use my I'm gonna have to use just experience to guide me through what it appears happens because we don't have the information which is bothers me so much. Because there's so much we could learn and I know we avoid a lot of the time a cup Well, let's say almost all the time. A company when something like this happens, their lawyers shut down all communication you learn nothing until well after the event where they have scrubbed everything it's ready for public viewing. And even then you may not see the whole story that's life because they don't want to admit in the theme of recent years and for a while now has been don't admit blame No matter what, never admit that you may have done something wrong or even contributed to something wrong, because it will absolutely be held against you. That's scary, especially in the world of safety. When I think about and when we think about how do we share, if there was something here that happened, I would want to learn from it, I would want to understand it. And I'd want to learn from it and build from it. Unfortunately, there's people out there that want to do things that aren't so good about that they want to find blame and find there is a lot of there's issues here. But I'm going to use, what I expect happened is that this person has to unjam that equipment as it does have a tendency to jam, because it is a big piece of equipment to do it a lot of work, and it's chopping things up, it gets gummed up, it gets stuck, do you see this a lot. In these types of Mills, it's a common occurrence. Usually there's a process for turning it off, locking it out and jamming it. There's also in a lot of situations the unofficial way, that you're able to clear it without having to turn it off. And it's usually pretty dangerous, but they've gotten away with it for so long. And they've taught it to so many people that a choice was made to do something that shouldn't have been done. And more than likely, and I'm not gonna say more or less, I'm gonna say in my theory is that someone condoned that that it had been done so many times, no one had ever stopped it, they applauded probably even the gains and how quickly they were able to get the equipment back up and running. It's amazing how many times efficiency, overcome safety. I saw this at an industrial facility that had very strong metrics to a delivery metric. And they would rate it every so often, they would rewrite all the people on how fast they were doing their productivity work. And so what would happen was to make sure that you didn't miss the mark and got in trouble. Because you didn't get rewarded for doing well, you got punished for not doing well. And you didn't really know the pace you were on unless you were keeping it in your head. And so you would you would try to work at a pretty decent pace to make the number. And what would happen would be you would take shortcuts or you would find shortcuts to make the number so that you made your productivity so you didn't get in trouble. And I even saw that a few times where supervisor would come over flip the laptop open and go up, you've been below you do that so many more times will write you up. Then they go to the next person go oh, look, you were above thanks for doing that keep up the good work. And it was it was basically there was no carrot there was only stick motivation involved. But then people would make those shortcuts as part of their work. No one would ever verify during these processes that standard work was occurring, there was a standard process to follow that included safety things. No one ever verified that they were doing that if the people who were exceeding were doing the safety stuff, they were just happy to see that the number was good, the productivity was high. And so people would take the shortcuts, and then they would go forward. And then their metrics would be so good that the company would change the benchmark and go, Well, everybody's doing so high, let's move it up. Because we're already meeting it, we're already exceeding it, things are good. Let's just keep it going. So they raise the rates and more people will take more shortcuts. And eventually it got to the point where there were no more shortcuts to take it. So you get hurt, and you got hurt quicker. You got hurt more severely. And this particular industry has been this company in particular has been called out for being five times more injurious than competitors have its own style and its own type of work. And the complaint has been from those those rates and the fact that you don't verify the standard. You just accept the numbers as the data they aren't sure you've run a good T tester that it correlates the Yeah, this is fair, this is equitable. But here, you see where it gets rewarded to exceed the expectations without the verification that we're doing it the right way, without the verification that we're following the process not only for a quality standpoint, but the most important. Are we doing it for our safety? Are we teaching our team that it's okay to take the shortcut as long as you don't actually get hurt. But then when you get hurt, there's a whole different thing that happens. But in this case, it was a life that was lost and this is that's gruesome, terrible. Not something I would ever just It's not from a human aspect when you read that story to hear what it is, and you hear kind of how blase The story is about it. Ah, it's frustrating and it's something I get frustrated about. There was no follow up. There was no Hey, what's going on? It was just this person is now dead. It was probably an industrial accident. And there's probably a culture there. That would tell us even more, more Podcast coming up in just a moment. humanizing the workplace it is the leading and learning through safety podcast, is da consulting, learn you lead others, 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 psda consoling.com. And welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So the next part of the very similar theme, and this one goes to a different aspect of what I really think about a lot from being in different positions and being in different places. Again, I'm going to read this one, pretty much as is because I think it's important to what I'm the point I'm going to make here in a few minutes. This was at a Raleigh, North Carolina. Here's the news story. A man died after being electrocuted at a Coca Cola factory according to the Clayton Police Department, Clayton police reported that at 11:17am on February 8, an employee found a dead body and the Coca Cola distribution center on Shotwell road and Clayton so notice they have said the name Coca Cola twice already first two sentences. The person who called police found the corpse and a fire suppression rise room at the rear of the warehouse. Investors vaguely believe it was a person who was removing a heater fan from a wall inside of the room when he was electrocuted. The person worked for Schultz management company which conducts property maintenance at the facility. The Clayton police in North Carolina Department of Labor will investigate the case further. Again, an electrocution doesn't happen unless there's power coming. I know that sounds so basic when I say it. But I see this I see a lot of electricians who accept that risk they get in the routine, they get into working and they forget to pull up their meter and just verify you verify your meter works on something you know is live, then you verify that that item that you're working on is dead, and then you verify that your your item is your device is working again through something that is live. That's a lot of work to test your device. But it's so I'm scared of electricity. Let me be open and honest that electricity is one of those invisible things that scare the daylights out of me because I can't see it. I don't know it. I have been minorly shocked years and years ago when I was doing some Christmas lights and more of the bulb was broken. And I touched it. And I hated it. And I thought this is crazy. I don't ever want to do this. Again, I don't want to touch anything electrical, ever again in my life that I have to work on. Because that was horrible. And those who work on it have such a great skill and such a great understanding of the way that it's working. And I cannot give enough respect to electricians for that work when they do it. Well. In this case, the person probably knew and forgot their meter didn't have it didn't think about it assumed that it was off. And so many times you find that wiring has changed and a lot of older buildings or even newer buildings they come in and if you don't pay enough for the right electrician, and you don't pay for what you're getting, you're gonna get something that may not do what you think is going to do. It may be wired in a completely different thing. I've heard stories of people wiring in lights in it shuts down part of a whole facility because it should never been wired that way. But it triggered it was connected to a breaker and a junction that controlled way too much and never done it. I even had a nightmare with my own home. We were doing. I was fixing up my office. And I was adding some electrical and it was supposed to be part of the lead because I'm a heavy power user. No surprise. I use a lot of power. I need a lot of stuff plugged in. So I was going to dedicate two or three more rakers just to my office come to find out that's not what happened when he got wired, the electrician, I actually had to fire an electrician and hire another one. Because it was so bad because at one point, I could kick my wall, like where my outlet was, I could kick it, it would turn the lights on and off in the ceiling. Unbelievable. Any random story about hire, you pay for what you get, I knew that and this person came recommended, they weren't cheap, either. They were certified. And anyway, long story short, that doesn't really matter for this. You get with that. So in this case, who knows, it may, maybe he was still alive. And I hope to goodness that somebody wouldn't just work on it live. Maybe they test maybe they didn't test it, maybe they made an assumption, there's a lot here that can go wrong. But what's interesting, and what I pointed out in the beginning, and here it comes again to like, if you hire contractors, for your workplace, if you're in charge of safety for your site, and for your company, it's your brand that goes up on the front page, every time they come to work. And that's why I'm amazed at how many companies will choose the cheapest contractor when they do the bidding. And they do these, they even do like reverse auctions to see who will bid the cheapest to do the work without even looking at safety sometimes, which is unbelievable, because you at least need a standard set. For the safety aspect. It's not going to be that contractors name in the news, it's going to be buried down to the very bottom, when something goes wrong. It's your brand at stake for who is coming in your facility. It I know is so easy. And I had been there to think that you know, let's just hire a contractor because I didn't want to deal with a headache. That's going to happen with this work. But then I tried to I had to learn later on that you want to hire the right contractor and a good contractor and a dedicated to their people and safety contractor. If they're treating their people well, and they're dedicating their time and effort into training for safety. That's important. That's where it matters. I still remember it one of the big sites I was at that every week or every month depending on who it was. I met with a safety rep of the contractors to talk to them one on one about what we could do together to make sure that everyone was safe because it one is people and no human beings should suffer because they've come to work. Number one, number one, number two, it's still your name out there, it's still your responsibility, you are going to be called out for it. So you might as well do it right. And make sure and verify what oh, there's so much here this disturbing, like how long was this person hurt before someone found them? Who was checking in and the poor person who found them? That's horrible. That's not the way you want to do things. So in this, what we're really talking about here is doing it right. Investing the time investing the effort, investing what's most important, and that safety, and your people. Thanks so much for joining me. So happy that you joined for the chat of this leading you to learning through safety podcast already. The year is really starting to get going in June will be the Tennessee safety conference. I will be there I hope to have a really great talk. It's, I hope it's good. I'm gonna give it my best, but it's gonna be about how physical and psychological safety come together to create that cultural experience. Fear are going to be around Nashville and June already an opportunity to get there. And until next time we chat stay safe Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online at www dot t s 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 leading analyst burning through safety podcast