Episode 150 - TN Safety Conf Recap

This episode of the "Leading and Learning Through Safety" podcast, hosted by Dr. Mark French, recaps the Tennessee Safety Conference in Nashville. Dr. French highlights the importance of both physical and psychological safety in the workplace, emphasizing that psychological safety is crucial for employees to feel comfortable reporting safety issues. He reflects on the conference's powerful session on state investigations of workplace fatalities, underscoring the heavy responsibility of safety professionals to prevent such tragedies.

Dr. French also discusses the importance of continuous learning and professional development for safety professionals, drawing parallels to other professions that require ongoing education. He describes some key trends and new technologies showcased at the conference, such as advanced fall protection standards, innovative cooling vests, and new styles of hardhats with various accessories.

The episode concludes with a reminder of the critical role of safety professionals in preventing workplace accidents and the need for organizational support to achieve safety goals. Dr. French expresses his gratitude for the learning experiences and interactions at the conference and looks forward to sharing more insights in future episodes.

Transcript

0:01

This week on the leading and learning through safety podcast, recapping the Tennessee safety conference and some ideas and thoughts that come about from our profession in leadership, more coming up on the podcast 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. Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. I am so glad you have joined me just came back from the Tennessee safety conference in Nashville. And from a state OSHA standpoint, so you can be federal OSHA or you can have a state plan, Tennessee has a state plan. One of the longer running, well done, really knowledgeable, one of my favorite, and I think one of the best state conferences and if you're anywhere near the Nashville area when it occurs, it's so worth that I had a great time, lots of people there and really thankful that I was able to be a part of it again, to those if maybe you met me there, I'm so happy to have met you. But I spoke about psychological and physical safety and how the safety professional the safety leader really is the the crossroads of those to the point of intersection, we have influence in an organization. In regards to physical safety, of course, what we don't always realize is that it also has to encompass a lot of psychological safety. What do I mean by that in a little preview, or kind of after the fact talk about what happened was, we explored the idea that there has to be psychological safety for us to learn about the limits of physical safety. What do I mean by that your team has to trust your team has to know that if they speak up about something not being right, and safety, which is what you have to have happened because I continued to hear about pay, I'm the first I'm the only I feel them had teams, but a lot of it was single people running a safety program, and sometimes for the first time, sometimes rebuilding it, sometimes trying to strengthen it. Where it came down once we started talking more and more about the fact that we can't see it all as a safety professional and we need people to trust us. We need that psychological safety in the organization that if they come to us that they know something will happen, that we know we can take action that we're vulnerable enough to talk about where we can improve. Without that we miss a lot. We miss a whole lot, unfortunately. And that is where we have to be a psychologically safe organization or human being or department for physical safety to really happen and we walk through that I really enjoyed it. I will be speaking again, the topic will be very similar at the Kentucky safety conference that's coming up in August. If you're going to be in, in or around the Kentucky area, interested in safety, another opportunity to hear the topic, very similar. I'll be kind of recapping that again, going through it, hopefully making some improvements based on some feedback from the Tennessee safety conference. Really excited again to share that information. It was such a great time. I had a wonderful, wonderful experience there and learn so much. And I want to go into one of the items that I think is more philosophical. We'll walk off with that There is one, one of the topics that Tennessee always covers, usually at the end of the day, and it's in the big ballroom area, because everybody wants to go to this one because it is so powerful. It is where the state recaps all of their investigations for the fatalities of the year before. What it interesting and powerful and sobering. And there's so many words that I can't even describe, because every one of those investigations was a person. Every one of those investigations was a family involved because or friends or other co workers. And some of them were horrible. And just you could hear the gas in the room and they would say what happened? And then the investigation usually went kind of where you would expect it and some of the organizations you had some some sympathy for of. And then some you were angry at how could they let that happen? Why would you let that happen to someone? Why wouldn't you have better protections? Why wouldn't you do more. And, and then as I was walking out of that room, and I was getting going back to my room for the night, I really started thinking about where I am and where we are, if you have anything to do with safety, if safety is your primary response, or even part of your responsibility. And I know, leadership should have an inherent piece of safety. But what I'm really talking about is safety professionals that we go out to get our improvement. If you have a certification, you have to get so many continuing education units. So you have you need conferences like this. Or if you're wanting to develop our Learn More great opportunities. And a lot of places require I mean, a lot of professions require continuing education. They require you to go out like if you're an engineer, you need to continually go out and learn the best practices of engineering. If you're a teacher, you need to learn new ways of engaging in teaching and newest technologies. If you're a salesperson, you go to sales meetings, or you go to trade shows, if you're in other departments, depending even what industry you're in, you'll go and look at the the newest and the best technologies of everything that's happening. And it hit me very strongly. And I don't think there's enough credit for the safety profession here. It's I don't know of many other like, generally speaking, of going to a Learning Conference, in a part of that. And one of the biggest pieces of that conference is to hear about the 45 people within a state that died, because they went to work that day. And that it's your primary responsibility to learn, and help prevent in some form or fashion to put some sort of thing in play, that you feel directly responsible to learn from those fatalities, and hope to prevent them in your own workplace. Because that's why you go to that is you want to hear about like, what happened, how did it go wrong? Do I have the same risk profile? Could it happen? Where I work? Could it happen to someone I know. And what do I do to prevent it and that's heavy. That's so heavy when you put it that way. And again, I don't. And so when we as safety professionals, stand in front of our supervision or our leadership, and we ask for things, and we need support, and we need accountability, and we need funding, and we need all the things that come with being a safety department. It's very sobering, that it's not about making the next sale. It's not about finding the best engineering piece that will improve productivity. It's not about learning about the greatest new technologies or the newest best practices. It's literally making sure that you're not one of those statistics that get listed at the next year's conference that say here's something we had to investigate because someone went to work today and didn't go back home. It hit me extremely hard. And I don't know maybe it's just maybe it's where I'm at. Maybe it's midlife. Just really You created that moment of passion for me. And it reminded me, it reminded me of the weight that we carry it not that we carry it, we should not carry it alone. First and foremost, you as a safety professional, as a leader of someone who cares about the safety world, and cares about other people, you don't carry that alone. It has to be an organizational team based effort. It takes everybody understanding the mission of what we're trying to accomplish. And it's, it was powerful to me very, very powerful. And I took that away with a newfound appreciation for kind of where I have to go next with what I have to do what I have to motivate. And actually I use some of the stuff I learned. Because I was one of the last presenters of the week, I got to set to a bunch of really awesome, I will talk about that next, some really awesome speakers and topics before I spoke, so I use some of that knowledge and asked me did you go to this one? And did you hear this being said, that's what we're doing together. So let's talk more about that. Coming up on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast, you are listening to the leading learning through safety podcast, with Dr. Mark French, D 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 TS da consulting.com. Welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So glad you're joining me just came off of the Tennessee safety conference, let's move on to something a little bit less heavy. Let's talk about some of the really cool advances that we're seeing. One of them that I went to was very technical, and it's about the new antsy standards that is coming out and has been published for Fall Protection upgrades to vault protection. I found it really interesting and a little bit concerning, because one he was walking through. And in the end, it was a little bit of a sales pitch. Of course, it was done by a manufacturer but he was very knowledgeable about fall protection and the standards. And they have their own in house testing lab and the testing regime that they go through to assure that the fall protection is holding up to what it should hold up to which is very important in the field. And it was interesting to go, Hey, he asked the question, can you just put any label you want on a piece of fall equipment or a piece of anything and just say oh yeah, here's a sticker, I put it on there? Is there anybody really policing it in a form or fashion? And come to find out? No. So you can easily get a piece of fall protection that's really not as strong as you think it is. But it's affordable, more affordable. But you have to do your due diligence in here, again, we usually rely on in the safety professional because we have to know so much. But the technical specs of fall protection, air monitoring, noise monitoring, in some of that is a very technical science, when you really get down to it. And so we usually trust that we can go somewhere, see a manufacturer of like, see the sticker, or see a certification listed on a webpage and say, Okay, that's gonna meet my needs to come to find out that you need to even go deeper than that just kinda worried me a little bit, because I'm like, Wow, another thing to think about that, why can we not just make it easier and just label it correctly, but I guess that wouldn't sell. And so I found that very interesting to do a little bit deeper dive to look for conformance standards to look for documentation on webpages even to find where they went through the proper testing procedures to validate that you have a good brand that's using it. I always enjoy going around and visiting the vendors to see what's new what's coming up because it really tells you like if if safety people and there's a market for these items, that means that if you can make money from it, it's probably important and people are wanting it and that's usually where the real innovation begins as like people want this so therefore we will create it we will market it and we will sell it. Some were cooling vest this year. A lot of old style cooling vests for hot weather their gear would require you it's like evaporative cooling, you would dip it in water, wring it out wear it and of course, you're getting little bit damp from using these. Some require ice packs you wear this vest you slot in those big heavy ice packs. Again, they melt. They're reusable but they melt and you get damp again from using them. There was a new technology, that chemical and a green chemical based USA made that actually re solidified itself in like normal ambient like air conditioner temperature. So if you put it in your car, if you have a truck and you're working out and you put it in your cooler in your truck and it would cool you put it on and as the material inside the little pockets melt super lightweight to it cools like you can feel the cooling effect from account like an ice pack. But not creating that moisture content that like a water based evaporative or ice pack. Cold vest would do so very interesting. noticed a lot of organizations are moving away from the standard hardhat didn't see as many like normal, your standard just normal hard hats moving to more of the climber. Style hats very sleek, they have the under strap under the chin. And what's really great about those my favorite, they seem they feel more lightweight to me than a standard hardhat. They have the under the chin strap and the strap that goes around the forehead and around the whole circle of the head to tighten down the chin strap which holds it in place. My biggest complaint with hardhats is when you're using them, they flop all over the place and can fall off, I unless you really crank it down. Maybe I just have a big head. I'm not gonna deny that either. But the fact that that you want to stay on but what's really cool about these is they have so many accessories, you can just clip onto them like snap on a flashlight, snap on a face shield, and it's completely carry the hardhat and you carry some little bit of gear, you have everything you need. earmuffs, flashlight, face shields, safety glasses, safety goggles, all kinds of really neat things that you can just snap onto him. A lot of and a lot of new styles, carbon fiber, colors, all of that coming out. And that was really, really neat to see that being shown. And it appears that maybe people are finally finding, getting in them on board with making sure that they're rigging correctly. I saw a lot of rigging consultants and rigging devices for cranes and rigging and those style of things. So I wonder if it makes me feel that maybe the construction industry and even general industry are catching on that that's huge liability. If you don't know about cranes and slinging and hoisting and all the connection parts, that you either need a competent person, like a consultant to come in and help you or you need to train your people. And you need to have the right devices for them so that they are able to do the right thing. So I always find that to be very interesting, because it gives me a hint of where is the market leading. And that's usually if there's a market. There's some reason behind that market. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. As always, I'm so glad you join me. If you were at the Tennessee safety conference, I was honored by your presence I learned so much from you and I thank you for that. If you were not there, that's okay too. I know not everybody can make it to Nashville but I appreciate you listening. And until next time that we chat, stay safe. 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 leading and learning through safety podcast