Episode 161: Where is Empathy

In this podcast episode, Dr. Mark French discusses the intersection of human resources (HR) and safety, emphasizing the importance of creating a culture that values both. He shares his recent experience at a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conference, where he explored the relationship between safety and HR. Dr. French highlights the tragic story of a Wells Fargo employee who was found dead at their cubicle after four days, unnoticed by colleagues. This incident serves as a stark example of the failure in basic human dignity and organizational culture. Dr. French criticizes the lack of engagement and concern for employee well-being, questioning how such an environment could allow for such negligence. He argues that safety and HR should not be siloed departments but rather integrated efforts to ensure a healthy, supportive workplace culture. He stresses the need for empathy, open communication, and active leadership in fostering environments where employees are genuinely cared for and valued. The podcast underscores that safety is not merely a compliance issue but a fundamental aspect of human dignity and organizational integrity. Dr. French calls for a shift in perspective, urging organizations to prioritize both the physical and psychological safety of their employees, ensuring that such tragic incidents are prevented in the future.

Transcript

Mark French: 0:01

This week on the podcast, we're continuing a conversation about people in general and that cross between human resources and safety and how it all is one big culture that we have to cultivate the right way. This week on the podcast,

Unknown: 0:22

you welcome

Announcer: 0:36

to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr Mark French. Mark's passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing up 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. You

Mark French: 1:30

French, hello and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. I am your host, Dr Mark French, and I am so happy that again, you have joined me, that you are part of the podcast family. I'm always humbled and honored to hear that you've chosen to download this 20 minute piece of leadership, safety, engagement, all those things that come together. So this week I'm just coming off of a week of working for the first time ever, I was able to speak at a society of human resource management conference. It was the Kentucky version of Sherm, and I was able, for the first time ever, one to attend, which was phenomenal. And secondly, able to actually give a talk and the dynamics between safety and human resources, because I've been attending safety conferences for years and years and years, I've just recently really started integrating myself into HR, even though I've had some HR experience in the past, first time, I'm really integrating myself and accepting the fact that I may be crossing over, or bridging the gap, or however you want to call it, light side, dark side, you know, wherever I'm aligning myself now I'm becoming part of that and learning more about the concerns, The needs, the differences in the world of human resources, in the world of safety, even though one department of labor, two, it's about people. I'm continually convinced, though, that safety is the leading edge, that safety even though HR, you got to get people paid, you got to do those things beyond that, beyond the again and and here we go. This is Maslow's hierarchy. The first thing you think about when you think about human resources in a very basic term, again, I'm speaking generally very basic is, how do we hire and how do we pay people and make sure that we're doing the things we should do to keep people employed and not get in trouble. That is Maslow's very basic thing, food, water, shelter. How do we meet that basic physiological need the next one's safety, and once we establish that you're getting paid and you have a job, we can't just skip to the engagement part. We can't just skip to teamwork and reward and benefit, there has to be an essence of safety. And one of the items that I really encountered when meeting with human resources people and being there and seeing it and engaging is the office work of how much is the safety of the office and the psychological safety of an office, and I'm going to get to it soon, I promise. But the new story that grabbed my attention was one that got a lot of attention in the past week. It's unbelievable, but it shows here we are. I'm going to make the point of safety and HR merging. So Wells Fargo in Arizona, there was an employee dead at their cubicle for four days before the person was found. And there's a lot of excuses. Oh, they were on the third floor. Kind of corner cubicle out of the way, we just didn't find. Um, this is unbelievable, and I have so many questions of one, let's I'm going to have to make some assumptions, because I've done a lot of reading here, and I'm not finding a lot of what I'm looking for, but that's also a lot of personal stuff that I probably don't need to find online. So that's good. I wonder, though about the family, let's say I didn't come home from my office for a night, and my family didn't hear from me. They'd be pinging my phone, they'd be calling people, they'd be coming after me. They would be looking for me, they would be doing something it feels to me. And here's just my assumption of it is that, is it normal for someone working at this company, at this area, to have to work four straight days without communication to a family member or a friend. Is that typical that you would be at work or incommunicado for four whole days? Is that the work environment and what's interesting and sad at the same time is some of the news stories allude to that other people in the office were said they smelled to smell. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure they did, but passed it off as faulty plumbing. Now I may take this a little too far, and I don't mean to, but I'm going to say this the way that I'm feeling it. The difference between a bad sewer backup and a dead body. There's a difference in the smell, especially four days of just sitting, there's a difference. How bad is this work environment that we're smelling something terrible, consistently terrible in an office area, and we don't say a word about it, we don't complain about it, and we don't look around to try to find the source, what? What can not to even be able to check on your fellow employees. So here's where I'm really scratching my head. Is, is no one checking on each other? Is like, is it for like, Is this one of those offices truly that you walk in, you go to your cubicle, because we want you in the office for collaboration. And I'll use air quotes for that, because that's what we're trying to do to bring people back to the offices, is that it should be about collaboration. And you're putting them back in the office, you're sending them in a cubicle, and you're like, don't you leave. Don't you talk to people. Don't bother me. Don't Don't worry us. Don't bother management. Don't you do it. Do your job. Get it done. Work four days straight, if you need to, but you're going to get your work done. Is that what this is about I'm curious, and this is where I'm really stuck on it, and I'm kind of saddened. I'm also really angry about it. I've worked in a big office environment. I've been in offices. Did I walk around and check on people? Sure did I have occasionally people go, you know, we shouldn't be social. Social here. We should actually have to, like, you should stay in your cubicle and do work. I'm like, Yeah, okay, great. No, we're going to check on if there's a weird smell, and if, again, for it to be a dead body. This is a smell there. I can't describe it. Can't begin to tell you about it, but, but to believe that the faulty plumbing again, like they must have had a faulty plumbing problem that must have been absolutely terrible, that must hardly ever get fixed for them to keep going and go plumbing. Man, don't tell management. It's just the plumbing. They're not going to fix it. Don't tell anyone that we're living in this horrible smell, because it's just what it is. It's just what we have to deal with every single day here, and we better not talk to each other about the smell, because we'll be in trouble for that too. Someone dies at a cubicle sits for four days not found until there's basically a security check that finally, finally walked around and saw someone unresponsive at a desk and been four days. There's no doubt they knew that it wasn't just unresponsive, it was dead four days. Yeah, no doubt they they knew what they had walked in on. And it was probably scary. It was probably terrible. I feel sorry for that security people that had to do that, that had to find it. This is sad. This is the lack of human dignity that I can't believe still exists. And yet here we are, when some of us keep. Pushing and pushing for better and better. This is what we contend with. This is what we're this is what we're we're at sometimes. Let's come back and talk more about this people issue. It's not a safety it's not an HR, it's a people issue. Let's talk more about that on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast,

Stinger: 10:22

you are listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast with Dr Mark French,

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Mark French: 11:10

welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So this week, we're talking about the merger of people, the the HR, the safety. It doesn't matter. It's about people, and it's about caring about people in a real empathetic leadership role. The perfect example this past week was the Wells Fargo employee not found for four days after passing away at their desk. No one went to check on them, they smelled a smell. Thought it was faulty plumbing. Didn't evidently, check on anything or walk around or talk about it and let it ride. Unbelievable. It's basic human dignity. This is where it hurts those of us out there, trying to do the right thing in a leadership role, trying to build organizations that are better, trying to create good leadership, trying to create better cultures, trying to make a difference in people's lives where we can there's a lot of really good, talented professionals, and I have such a pleasure of every time I get to go to a conference of meeting so many of them and talking to them and hearing experiences and seeing it in action when they talk about what they're doing and their passion for what they do. And yet, here's the baseline, here's the bar that is being set for organizations. Well, you know, at least my workplace checked on me when I didn't leave on time, or at least tried to do something. That's where we're at is that, Hey, as long as you leave the dead body for three days and you're beating this organization, you could have someone die at their desk for three days and finally find them, and you're doing better at caring for your people than this organization did. That's startling. It's sad, and it's hard to even fathom that when we think about what we're trying to do in a progressive environment, when we're trying to really drive real improvement, real engagement, real meaningful conversations, and I believe they begin with safety, because this is a safety issue. Fundamentally, it's a safety issue of personal safety, of well being, of mental health. There is something here that has that component of safety. What if a fire alarm was pulled? Let's just go to emergency management. Would they be able to account for everyone? Would they have any clue if everyone exited that building and was safe if there was a fire and they had to evacuate, what kind of other protective measures? There's no progression. There's no dignity there. The the Maslow's hierarchy of needs is at the very bottom rung. We're not even trying to progress. And this is where I see that it doesn't take as much safety in an environment like this, but it takes some, and it begins with well being, health and wellness check just walking by and checking on people occasionally, seeing who's in their cubicle, seeing if they're there, seeing if they're doing okay. There's been times where I've been walking around different areas, different locations, and you'll see someone. Maybe they just need someone to talk to at that moment. And you can be that person. Maybe they really have a medical issue. You you happen to walk in at the right time and catch it, and. Do something about it. That's fundamental. And again, I keep using the word human dignity, but I'm not sure what other word would fit that, that we're watching out for each other in some form or fashion, and this is not blaming the coworkers. No, that is not what I'm trying to do. I though look at an organization, and I think about what created the status of an organization that let that has this happen, where? How far back does it go? What decisions were made, what culture was cultivated and created that led to an event like this being allowed to happen and not corrected. Now I've heard stories from other people, and it's usually stories of stories. And I was working for a company, and they were kind of well known to be a very brash company, like they were well known to get up in your face, yell at, tell you how things are, and that's how they made their name in the industry. And there was a story of one time of a corporate call that was going on with the general manager, and suddenly the general manager was unresponsive to the to the to the rear end shoeing he was receiving. And the guy hung up the phone and called someone else he knew in that office and said, Hey, so and so's not responding to me anymore, as I'm yelling at them for not doing a good enough job. Go check on them. And they found them dead at their desk, even in that environment, even though I think the boss really just wanted to continue the yelling, they at least had the trigger to go check on the person, and they found them within minutes and not even hours, but in this case, days, those that and not that. That was a great culture, that was a rough culture to be proud of. Hey, yeah, I chewed someone out so much they had a heart attack and died at their desk. And that was that was kind of like the the story. Now, again, it could have been embellished, because I'm hearing it down the line, like two or three levels, but it became like the legend of the organization at the time, sad, not safety conscious, from a standpoint of just caring about pushing people to that level, but at least there was something that happened because of it. And this is where, when I was at the HR conference, I really saw the importance of how it's a concerted effort of engagement, it's a concerted effort of listening, it's a concerted effort of feedback mechanisms of that two way honest and open communication, which in this case, we couldn't even openly and honestly talk about the smell, because we would just be told it was a sewage problem or a pipe problem, even though the smell is different, so odd, so strange, and such a terrible thing, but we every day that we think about what we're doing, and I think from this standpoint, I'm happy with what I've met, of people who are trying to push the limits of even what good means, rather than looking at something like this and going, Wow, let's hope this doesn't happen around us. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Wow. What a story this week. That just perfect culmination of things that I have been talking about, thinking about and involved in, I appreciate you taking that journey with Me, and until next time we chat, stay safe. You.

Announcer: 19:07

Music. Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online at www dot tsda 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 you. This has been the leading and learning through safety podcast. You.