Leading and Learning Through Safety

🎙️ Podcast Summary: Tennessee Safety Conference Recap & Lessons in Leadership

In this episode, Dr. Mark French reflects on his experience at the Tennessee Safety Conference, highlighting both inspiring takeaways and sobering moments. A major segment featured Tennessee OSHA’s annual fatality recap, a powerful session showcasing real-world tragedies to underline the importance of prevention, risk management, and leadership accoun...

A podcast discussion led by Dr. Mark French about new safety legislation moving through the Kentucky House. The conversation centers on two key legislative changes:

1. State Plan Reversal: Kentucky’s OSHA program is under threat of being restricted to only enforcing standards that are as effective as federal standards, with no ability to exceed them. This change would strip the state’s power to address its unique workplace risks ef...

The podcast episode from "Leading and Learning Through Safety" hosted by Dr. Mark French focuses on the significance of ethics and values in safety leadership. Dr. French discusses how companies often face a disconnect between stated values and actual practices, leading to cognitive dissonance and weakened organizational culture. He emphasizes that true values must be lived and reinforced through actions, not just written...

The podcast episode discusses the relationship between ethical decision-making and workplace safety. Hosted by Dr. Mark French, the episode explores how distance from the work environment affects ethical judgment in safety-related decisions.

Dr. French references an article from the Journal of Applied Psychology (February 2025) titled Out of Sight, Out of Mind: How High-Level Controls Can Decrease the Ethical Framing of Risk-Mitigat...

In this episode of Leading and Learning Through Safety, Dr. Mark French explores mental health as a workplace issue, sparked by a Professional Safety Journal article on mental health and suicide in construction. He emphasizes that while work doesn’t necessarily cause mental health struggles, it can be a significant stressor, with leadership, culture, and supervision playing key roles in employee well-being.

A major insight is that d...

The podcast episode discusses a legislative proposal to abolish OSHA, introduced by an Arizona Congressman who argues that workplace safety should be managed by states and private employers rather than the federal government. However, similar efforts in the past have failed, and the speaker believes this attempt is unlikely to gain traction. OSHA plays a crucial role in setting, educating on, and enforcing safety laws, though compl...

This episode focuses on managing organizational change, particularly in the context of safety. Key points include:

1. Nature of Change: Change is inevitable and often disruptive. Effective leadership is crucial in managing, implementing, and measuring change.
2. Safety as a Moral Imperative: Safety-related changes should be the easiest to implement, as they address a universal priority—protecting human life. Organizations must clearly ...

This week's podcast focuses on workplace safety, particularly on whether all accidents and injuries are preventable. Key points include:

1. Safety Philosophy:
   • Initially, Dr. French believed all injuries could be prevented, especially in controlled environments like factories. However, his view has evolved to recognize that while striving for zero injuries is noble, some risks, particularly in public and uncontrolled environ...

The episode discusses anticipated trends in 2025 across leadership, HR, safety, and psychology. Key points include:

1. Shift in Hiring Practices: A move from valuing degrees to prioritizing skills, with organizations increasingly using AI to screen candidates. While this improves efficiency, concerns are raised about the loss of human judgment in hiring decisions.
2. Skill Development: The importance of evolving skills in the workplace...

OSHA’s Top 10 Cited Violations for 2024:

• Frequent safety issues such as fall protection, hazard communication, ladders, respiratory protection, lockout/tagout, powered industrial trucks, scaffolding, PPE, and machine guarding.
• The importance of addressing these life-critical hazards to prevent injuries and fatalities.

Leadership and Safety:

• Emphasis on the role of safety as a cornerstone of effective leadership.
• Connecting ...

The podcast episode focuses on a catastrophic explosion at a food additive manufacturing site in Louisville, Kentucky. The explosion was attributed to the failure of a ventilation system on a cooker, leading to overheating, overpressurization, and a subsequent explosion. The event caused significant community damage, including shattered windows and structural harm, injured 10-12 people, and claimed two lives. Notably, one victim wa...

The podcast emphasizes the importance of safety leadership in fostering a work culture that prioritizes employee well-being and risk management. Dr. Mark French, the host, shares personal experiences to illustrate the moral imperative behind safety initiatives, stressing that safety programs should not merely focus on compliance but aim to prevent catastrophic incidents. He highlights the need for strong leadership commitment to pr...

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, ens...

The podcast episode from "Leading and Learning Through Safety," hosted by Dr. Mark French, focuses on the topic of confined spaces and their safety implications, particularly in industrial settings like factories with trash compactors. Dr. French explains the importance of recognizing and properly managing confined spaces, which are areas large enough for workers to enter but with limited means of entry or exit and not de...

In this episode of the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast, Dr. Mark French reflects on the nature of risk perception, safety, and willpower in both personal and professional settings. He recounts a personal incident where he injured himself with a chainsaw while cleaning his yard, emphasizing how easy it is to misjudge or downgrade risks during seemingly routine tasks. Despite his safety expertise, a lapse in focus and pre...

Dr. Mark French discusses a personal injury incident as a way to illustrate how even experienced safety professionals can momentarily lose focus and get hurt. French describes how, during yard work, he accidentally burned and cut his leg with a chainsaw after finishing his task and thinking the danger was over. He reflects on the psychological factors that led to his lapse in judgment, such as fatigue and the desire to finish the j...

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 ...

In this episode of the "Leading and Learning Through Safety" podcast, Dr. Mark French reflects on his experience at the Kentucky Safety Conference, focusing on the critical intersection of physical and psychological safety in the workplace. He highlights the importance of safety professionals not only in ensuring a physically safe environment but also in fostering psychological safety, where team members feel secure enoug...

The podcast episode discusses a tragic incident at a Kansas municipal airport where a 16-year-old worker was electrocuted while using a boom lift near high-voltage power lines. A 24-year-old worker also sustained severe burns in the incident. The host, Dr. Mark French, emphasizes the critical role of leadership and safety protocols in preventing such tragedies. He questions the decisions that led to the young workers being pla...