Episode 165: Safety is People First

In the podcast, Dr. Mark French discusses the importance of leadership in creating a strong safety culture within organizations. He emphasizes the need for leaders to prioritize the well-being of their teams, using the management of heat stress as a central example. Dr. French recounts his experience observing a team in Texas, where extreme heat required close attention to safety protocols. The team worked together effectively, ensuring hydration breaks and taking care of one another, which underscored a critical point: safety must be ingrained in daily operations.

Dr. French highlights the significance of making safety processes automatic, so that employees can easily make safe decisions. He explains that leaders must go beyond suggesting safety measures, actively ensuring their teams are protected. This extends to supervisors personally checking on workers, making sure they have access to water and encouraging breaks when needed. This hands-on leadership builds trust and fosters a culture of care.

Moreover, Dr. French reflects on his company's achievement of being named one of Newsweek's Top Most Loved Workplaces for 2024. He attributes this recognition to the organization's deep commitment to safety, which serves as the foundation for broader cultural and leadership success. By placing safety at the forefront, companies can empower their people, driving engagement and overall workplace satisfaction.

In conclusion, the podcast underscores the role of safety in creating thriving, empowered teams and how leadership is key in embedding safety into the workplace culture.

Transcript

Mark French: 0:01

This week on the leading and learning through safety podcast. We're talking about safety attitude, and we're going to begin by talking about heat stress and how it's more about managing people than it is managing the environment. Let's talk about that this week on the podcast.

Announcer: 0:36

Welcome 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 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: 1:30

hello and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Hi. I am your host. Dr Mark French, and I am so happy that you have chosen to spend the next 20 minutes talking about leadership, talking about safety, talking about people the most important thing, the most complex thing that we have in our work environment is our team and our people. The most precious, the part of it that makes it worth what we do every day as leaders is seeing our people excel, seeing our people grow. And this week, I had a really good experience overall, and I want to share just a few things about that experience, about what I saw, about what went just the things that came to mind as I was there, and I hinted that it was going to be about around heat stress, that's where it began for me to see clarity on where we begin to talk about our people. And so this week, I was in Texas, and there's kind of two temperatures there that appears for me when I was there, there was hot and there was hotter. So you had your choice, which, which, which temperature Do you want today? Do you want to be hot or you want to be really hot? And I was out in the field, and they actually went out in the afternoon, not because of heat stress, but that's just the way it worked. And I don't want to put any pretenses out here of patting myself on the back for any of this, because Sure, I'm a leader with the organization. I hopefully hit Set some tone for culture. I set some tone for how we do things. But what I saw was some genuine teamwork and some genuine people management and leadership, and it wasn't directive, it was natural, and it was part of the function of watching them work. So the work was going on outdoors. There wasn't a lot of shade, and it was definitely hot toward the end of the afternoon, when I was out doing the work, and what I really wanted to see was the hazards that were present and how the team were working together, how they were interacting, how they were talking. And so first thing I ask is, do you have a cooler out here that you're filling up with ice and water before you come out every day? And there was two trucks there doing the work. The team was out doing their work, and they said, Absolutely, and they showed me where their coolers were at, and they were full of water and ice. Now the ice wasn't as much ice anymore, because it had been a few hours, but it was still cool, and it was still in the cooler. And what was even more interesting was the supervisor that had been in the office and decided to come with me, to take me on this tour, to show me where the teams were, was already inspecting them, and I didn't even realize that he was going around and checking and encouraging the team, like, if you need more eyes, to give more eyes. If you need more water, you get more water you fill up what you have to do to make sure you're prepared for the work you're doing, and if you need to stop, you stop. That was powerful to see that detail of just checking on the team of it wasn't related to did you get that work? Done on time. One of the critical items that was checked was, did you have your water? Was, did it look like you were using some of it, and was it still cold? Did you still have ice on it where you could take a break get what you needed? And that was one of his inspection points. And that's not something that I was teaching or doing. He did it on his own. Impressive. I really appreciated seeing just the aspect of caring and checking on it in a physical way that makes a difference. Now let's take it a step further that the not only at the so they finished up what they were doing, the task that was at hand, and we're beginning to discuss the next phase of the work that needed to happen during that time, the field supervisor, or kind of the field crew lead that was leading the group of a few team members, goes over, gets in the cooler, grabs out like a whole armful of bottles and just forces them into the hands of his team. It wasn't like, Hey, do you want a water? It's like, here's you're gonna take it. And while we're sitting here discussing what we're gonna do next, you're gonna drink on you're gonna sip on it and drink it. It forced them to stop and do something for safety. It forced them to hydrate. It forced them to rest a little bit more. And it was impressive to see that, that there wasn't the option of like, Hey, everybody, go get a water, or that where you say, hey, go get it. And that I learned that's a really cool thing that I saw, that I most of them like, hey, go grab a water. I'm that kind of a leader. He took it to that next level. And I was really impressed, honestly. And I keep saying that over and over again, but when you think about the difference between asking someone to go do something for their safety, like, hey, why don't you go take a break, and then physically going, Nope, you're done. You're gonna take this water, I'm gonna put it in your hand, and you're gonna stand here in the shade while we're talking about the next phase of our job. We're not going to be it was interesting. We turned it into it was. It was productive, talking about the planning out that next phase of what they needed to do, how they were going to do it, and at the same time, taking a break in the shade, sipping on some water, making sure they were taken care of because it was hot. There was even, for me, it was it was hot. And generally, I'm acclimated to pretty warm weather in when I think about my own leadership style and how I have managed in the past of just people and situations and periods of time. Did I give it the option to go do something for safety, or did I force the item to happen for safety? I'm not on the winning side of that. And I've told the story before of a manufacturing site where the supervisor would walk around and just kind of grab people off the the line or out of the work stream, and go, Hey, go grab some water real quick. I'm going to fill in for you. And he would just make rounds doing that during the day. Really impressive. Did he say, Hey, if you need to step off the line and get some water, do it anytime you want to. That was there. But even more powerful was the act of tapping someone on the shoulder and going, Hey, take five go in the break room, grab some water for a minute. I'm gonna stand here and do this for you. That way, when you come back, you're not behind, and you come back, and after you take a moment, are we suggesting safety? Are we doing it and that's not regulated, that those because, of course, we don't have a heat stress standard. We may, there's some states that have it. We may have a federal standard, either way, that act of making sure they understand the importance of that work with safety, that work, that leadership aspect of you were going to do the safe thing. And I wrote down from another discussion while I was traveling and observing and learning, oh, I and I write this down so many I can, honestly, I can probably find multiple times where I've written this down and still struggle, still struggle with the statement of, how do we make it so simple that the safe thing automatically happens every time. That's where it's really at. How do we make it so that the safe choice, the Safe Action, is so easy, so automatic, that it just happens that's so hard to do, and that's kind of my the thing. I want to strive for. The opportunity that I'm working toward is, how do we do that? How do I in putting the water right in their hand and saying, Hey, while we're talking, you go ahead and drink that, and we'll all sit here and and talk about what we're doing and and hydrate. How do we make it that easy, that it's automatic. It's a pretty interesting thought. Let's continue with that on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast,

Stinger: 10:32

humanizing the workplace. It is the leading and learning through safety podcast,

Commercial: 10:39

dsda Consulting. Learn you lead others. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. 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 tsda consulting.com

Mark French: 11:18

Welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast this week, talking about generalized caring, just the people management of what we do as safety leaders, as leaders who understand that safety is such a powerful piece of how we lead people, and using the example of heat stress and how to mitigate heat stress is an opportunity to talk about what really comes down to a very lean concept of, how do you simplify your processes so much so? Or how do you build in the stop gaps or the Poke yokes for safety, that it's automatic, that safety is so built in that it can't be ignored, it can't be bypassed. And sometimes it's administrative, and that's where the leadership part really begins to take form, because it begins with that administrative piece of I'm gonna walk up and physically say, I'm taking you from this position. You go take a break for five extra minutes. I'm gonna do your job so you don't have to worry about it. Then you come back. I'm gonna put the water bottle in your hand, not let you say no or say I'm good for now, put it in your hand as we're discussing the next thing we're going to do, and so it becomes an automatic break that you're talking you're drinking, you're taking that rest watershed. The things we see on that post are of rest, water and shade. We're doing it automatically, because it's just part of the workflow that we naturally do, and that comes from a strong piece of leadership. Of you read books like leaders eat last you read books that Good to Great. How do they become that way? It's through empowering our people. And people cannot be empowered if they are scared of getting hurt, or if they feel the company does not care about their well being, or if the company has not mitigated the safety things that are happening every day, we cannot expect our team to grow into empowerment. They're not going to be able to do it because the fundamental need, the fundamental process that they have and want, is just not there. I am going to take a moment now, and I may do a little bit of selfless, selfless self promotion. I am just shamefully going to do it, and it's really, not really me. I just happen to be a piece of the puzzle, but I'm very excited about what is going on in my work world right now. Newsweek just published their top most loved workplaces of 2024 and I am honored to say that the company that I represent for HR and some pieces of safety was made the top 200 and that's just an amazing, amazing item. How do you become a most loved workplace? And here's where I want to take some piece of it and go. Here's the proof that when I say and you've read books, and we see it. And I say this all the time, you show me good safety. I will show you good leadership. You show me good leadership, or tell me there's good leadership. I would expect to see really good safety. I always begin at that spot first. We have to make it safe. Five. And I mean first, physically. I mean second, psychologically, they work together, hand in hand. They have to, because if you trust me psychologically, we will fix the physical. If we fix this physical, it becomes the intuition of psychological. It becomes more natural that way, begin with that focus on safety. Here's the proof. You don't become a most loved workplace by not caring about people's safety. I don't see how that could even happen without it. Could we not care a whole lot about quality, or could we have average quality and be most loved, sure, can we be good at what we do, for a lot of other things, and be a most loved place to work? Absolutely. Could we be average safety, or even, like slightly above average safety, and be most loved? That was that we could be loved. I'm not sure would be most loved. It began with a place of safety, and I've seen it and the example. That's why I gave the example in the first half, because that's indicative of the people that I work around, that I'm honored to know, I am honored to work around. And I I just thought I needed to say these things on my podcast, I feel like it's a necessary thing that we talk about, because I say it and I research it, and I give presentations on the idea that safety can absolutely revolutionize your engagement, that safety can revolutionize your leadership. Safety can revolutionize your entry point to reaching out to your people as a collective with a shared goal, shared ethics, shared passion. And the proof is there now the award is there. There's proof that when an organization focuses on those things as a beginning point, as is the seed that you the root that will bind that tree of engagement and caring when it's safety oriented first, and not to say you can just stop there. It's a beginning. It's a vital piece of it. It is it has to be healthy. It has to be functional. It has to be growing and getting better and better. But it's the starting point to everything else that branches off of that tree that you would call culture. And when you do it and you focus on safety, there are so many things that come out of it, that work so well. And I'm honored to be able to say that we can show it the that it's right there, and it can be something that accelerates your people into understanding what it takes to be a culture and an organization that's growing and thriving. It takes that kind of work, and it begins first with an orientation towards safety. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety. I am so happy that you joined me now. One thank you for bearing with me is I got a little passionate and shared a little bit about some of the really cool achievements that are going on. I'm super excited to be part of it, if you couldn't tell already, but I see the results out there of the work that has been done, and it's not mine, it's all the great people that I work around, that I'm thankful for every single day. I hope you also take that, run with it. Do something with it. Help encourage your team with it. Until next time we chat, stay safe. You.

Announcer: 19:13

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.