October 31, 2024 • 14 mins
As a safety professional, I found myself standing at a crossroads, faced with two divergent paths: one leading towards genuine care for workers, and the other veering into the rigid territory of compliance and regulation. Our latest episode unpacks this contrast, inviting you to journey with us through my personal experiences at a pivotal training session. There, amidst a sea of compliance-driven peers, I uncovered the empowering essence of people-centered safety practices. Join us as we unravel how servant leadership and human-centered approaches can transform workplace culture, challenging the status quo of box-ticking and rule enforcement.
In high-risk environments, the difference between proactive safety advocates and those entrenched in compliance can be monumental. We explore how the rare 20% of people-focused professionals make a significant yet often uncelebrated impact on worker safety, while understanding the pressures that push many towards a compliance-centric mindset. This episode is a call to appreciate the unsung heroes of workplace safety, those who put people before paperwork. We gently remind listeners of the importance of empathy—for ourselves, for colleagues who might feel trapped in their roles, and for the workers who rely on these safety champions.
Download a PDF copy of Becoming the Promise You are Intended to Be
https://www.depthbuilder.com/books
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What is going on my people?
I think I'm about to rufflesome feathers because I want to
talk a little bit about safetyand, more specifically, I want
to talk about safetyprofessionals and Almost a very
clear distinction I've been ableto observe in terms of how they
operate, and it's two buckets.
(00:21):
One bucket is they come from aplace of service.
They come with the bestintentions of making things
better for the people that aredoing the work.
The other bucket is they are100, strictly solely concerned
with compliance, making sureboxes are checked, and really
don't have, or rather don'tdemonstrate, any interest at all
(00:45):
for the human beings thatthey're reportedly supporting
and keeping safe.
So this went back to just thatlittle blip on the screen of
time where I spent as a safetyprofessional.
So I had to take some trainingright, because I got this new
fancy position, had a lot ofresponsibility.
(01:06):
Here's a key point.
I was recruited for thatposition to help transform the
culture, and the person whorecruited me knew that I have an
immense focus on human beings.
And how do we make thingsbetter for the people that have
to deal with the stuff or thepeople that are doing the stuff?
And so his concept, or his idea.
(01:30):
His focus was perfectly alignedwith the way I prefer to
operate.
Now we both knew, because I'm awacko and I don't have, or
didn't at that time have, anyformal safety training.
Sure, I had my OSHA 30 andthose kinds of things, but, like
everybody has those right, Iwas granted national
responsibility.
(01:50):
So I obviously I needed someadditional training for that.
So I go to this training and Ican't remember it was three,
four, maybe five days worth oftraining and what stood out to
me.
This is the first time I sawthe difference and maybe one of
the largest contributors to theproblem.
The problem I'm talking aboutis the way some safety
(02:13):
professionals, eh&sprofessionals do their job, and
I just want to be ultra clear Ido not support it.
I believe 100% that people inthose positions are perfectly
staged like, put in an idealspot, to be an advocate for the
people doing the work and makeindeed make the work better for
(02:36):
the people doing it.
Anyhow, I'm in this class.
It's me, a friend of mine and Imade a connection there with
some other gentlemen.
There was about 20 of us inthere.
It was really interesting as wewere going through all the
material me, my buddy and and mynew buddy, the one I met there.
We were asking questions andpresenting ideas that made us
(02:58):
look like the odd ducks.
We were like everybody else inthe room was like what the hell
are y'all talking about?
Almost like would y'all shut upand let us get to the meat and
potatoes of the whole thing,except for the three of us.
We were like, yeah, yeah, likeI agree.
What do you think about this?
Have you tried this?
And now again, most of what thethree of us were talking about
(03:18):
maybe falls into the realm ofleadership, or even servant
leadership, and how do weapproach a situation that's not
clearly defined in a policy, andwe also maybe know that the
policy or the rules are notnecessarily applicable in the
particular situation.
And so we were having this typeof conversation of how do we
(03:39):
utilize the, we'll say, thestandards, the OSHA standards,
to better serve the people,which the instructor was
phenomenal because he could.
He helped us kind of navigatethrough that.
Of course, there was no directanswer, but he gave us a
framework to use in terms ofthinking of how to overcome that
thing.
(04:00):
Anyways, back to the rest of theteam.
So we didn't get invited to sitat the cool kids table right,
because we were the odd ducks,we were the weirdos.
And so I'm really observing,like why is there such a
distinct difference between thethree odd ducks, me being one of
them, and the rest of the crewthat was there?
And they were all fromdifferent companies from
(04:21):
different cities in that part ofthe country, and like they
weren't all from one company.
It's like, okay, so they're notall from the same employer, but
they share a lot of the samecharacteristics.
And so I decided to like talkto them and understand, like why
were they?
They were like the safetyperson for the construction
companies that they were workingfor, and I must've asked six or
(04:44):
seven of them like why theywere in the safety role.
Like was it something that theywent to university for?
Was it something that they werealways interested in?
And of the seven that I asked,all of them said that their boss
assigned them to the role, andI think that's a key thing.
They were assigned to the role.
I'm like, oh so it wasn'tsomething necessarily that you
(05:06):
were interested in.
No, they said that I was a goodcandidate for it and it was
kind of a.
I thought it was going to be areally great promotion.
So I took it.
One guy had had a significantincident on site and the the
idea, like it was a mutualagreement, in that the company
said, hey, like you have apretty interesting story and now
(05:28):
your attitude about safety hasdramatically changed, we would
like you to take this position.
He said yes, I want to, right,anyways.
But the rest were like no, theykind of made me do it.
They didn't say it that way,but it's kind of how I
interpreted it.
Now, the consistency I saw inthat group like the rest of the
people, not the odd ducks, theregular normies was they were
(05:50):
super, super compliant, focused.
They just wanted to know what'sthe rule, what's the
consequence?
Where do I find the answer?
What do I do to make sure?
Like to punish peopleappropriately and make sure
people comply?
They didn't use those words,but that was my interpretation
of like the gist of theirquestions.
They were just like black andwhite.
(06:12):
What is it?
Yes or no?
Go, go, do not go.
And then, of course, I keptthinking I'm like huh.
So these people are, these group, this group of people, awesome
people are hyper, hyper,compliant, focused.
Their only concern is to havethe ability to discern whether
(06:32):
somebody is doing it right orwrong and what to do when
they're not doing it right,which that's important.
Right, like that is a skill ormaybe a core element in managing
people.
But in terms of leading thesafety culture for an
organization, I don't think it'senough.
But that's not their fault,right, like that's their mindset
(06:55):
.
That's the way they think,that's the way they operate.
Not their fault, right, likethat's their mindset.
That's the way they think,that's the way they operate,
which to me was maybe a littledisappointing.
But shine the light on why wehave such a big divide between
the trade installers out thereand the safety or compliance
officers out there.
And it's through no faultnecessarily of the individuals.
(07:17):
It comes back to the leader ofthe organization that selected
the safety leader.
Like I, didn't do any study onthis, so I'd love to get your
thoughts in the comments orshoot me a DM or tell me I'm
full of it what I interpretedthat as is the leaders of those
organizations that selectedthose guys that were in that
class with me.
(07:38):
They did not see safety as acore element of their culture.
They did not appreciate safetyto be a core element of their
business or the success of theirbusiness.
They saw it more as a matter ofcompliance, more as a necessary
evil, like they had to do it sothey could comply with federal
(07:58):
guidelines, so that theywouldn't get in trouble.
And so if that's the value orthe level of appreciation they
have for safety or the potentialin a safety department or
safety program, of coursethey're going to find somebody
that is naturally compliant,that follows the rules, crosses
the T's and dots the I's, andthen that creates a lot of the
situation that a lot of us outthere have been dealing with,
(08:20):
where I know for a very longtime, like the safety person was
the least cool person on thejob site.
Right, they were the tattletale, they were the narc.
They would come and tell mewhat I was doing wrong but could
never help me figure out how todo it right.
They always came after the fact.
They were never involved on thefront end of things, and the
closest they got to beinginvolved in the front end was
(08:41):
giving me some damn checklist tofill out and a bunch of other
damn paperwork.
That didn't help me make thejob safer.
All it did was help them covertheir butt in case something
happened.
Going back to my boss, the onewho picked me in picked those
other two guys.
Their bosses picked them forparticular reasons.
I think that I know for surethe guy who picked me for the
(09:02):
role understood safety from adifferent perspective.
He saw that a good, soundsafety program that served their
people, produced businessresults and met the national or
federal requirements andinsurance liability issues and
(09:23):
all of that it wasn't.
It was a yes and situation interms of we want to provide a
different experience for ourpeople and for all the people
that come to our project.
By different we mean how doesthe program serve the human
beings?
What that was going to requireis some radical maybe yeah,
(09:45):
we'll say radical some radicalthinking in terms of doing it
differently.
And so maybe, on one hand, whatI'm saying is those
hyper-compliant, focused,dictator-type safety
professionals out there.
It's not entirely their faultthat they're that way, because
I've also been involved in someincident investigations which
(10:07):
are not fun, like they're.
Probably one of the worstexperiences I've had in my
career in construction is doingan incident investigation and
all the bureaucracy, all thetechnicalities, all the
liability stuff that you got toget into and check and make sure
that you're covered and you'renot saying the wrong thing and
people are okay.
And did somebody die?
(10:27):
Did somebody get hurt?
But I also have these corporatethings I need to do, like
there's a lot of conflictingthings that happen during an
incident investigation andsafety professionals.
They always get pulled intothose things and they're just
the worst, they're just bad.
There's no fun at all.
Maybe there's some learning,but it's very stressful, intense
(10:48):
learning, so that'll souranybody's mood.
Back to the point.
If you're in a situation on ajob side or with a company that
is hyper, hyper focused oncompliance and only compliance,
you're going to see thatfirsthand by the safety
professional that you're dealingwith.
You're going to see thatfirsthand by the safety
professional that you're dealingwith.
And maybe the challenge is thisto like keep an open mind,
(11:09):
because not all safetyprofessionals function that way
and that's usually a result oftheir leader and what their
leader values or understands agood safety program to be.
And that leader can go all theway to the CEO.
Right, in my little wishy-washyanalysis it was it all
absolutely went back to the CEO.
(11:30):
Ceo decided to put these peoplein these roles because the only
value they saw in it wascompliance.
And so when you have thosesafety professionals, those EH&S
pros, that do listen and do trylike, invest time and effort
into making the work better orunderstanding the situation and
(11:52):
help design this, mitigate allthe as much risk as possible and
design the safest ways toexecute the work, show them some
appreciation.
And I also have an ask I knowthis was a little convoluted but
I don't know if what I'm sayinglike it was just a little
sliver.
Of maybe 18 different people,three were the odd ducks, right,
they were real, people-focused,service-oriented.
(12:14):
How do we make this programserve our people and meet the
expectations or the federalrequirements?
And then the rest of them werevery compliant, compliant,
compliant.
Thou shall not, thou shall not.
So maybe you can help me, like,let me know how many of the
safety professionals that youhave worked with are people
focused, how many of them areproactive in terms of being
(12:36):
involved in evaluating the wayhigh risk work is going to be
executed and contributes tomaking it less risky, versus the
number of safety professionalsthat come and just tell you what
you're doing wrong and offer nosolutions or countermeasures to
(12:57):
approach that work differently.
I'm going to say we're stilllooking at a maybe 80-20, 80 on
the compliance, 20 on the peoplefocus.
But maybe you can help mefigure that out Again.
When you find one out therethat is people-centered and
takes action and steps to servethe people that are doing the
work, give them a fist bump,tell them thank you.
(13:19):
And when you come into the onesthat are ultra, ultra
compliance, fill out yourpaperwork, check the boxes, give
them some grace because they'renot doing it to be ugly.
There's the conditions that arein are just make setting them
up to really not have a lot offriends.
Be kind to yourself, be cooland we'll talk at you next time.
(13:41):
Peace.
What is going on my people?
I think I'm about to rufflesome feathers because I want to
talk a little bit about safetyand, more specifically, I want
to talk about safetyprofessionals and Almost a very
clear distinction I've been ableto observe in terms of how they
operate, and it's two buckets.
(00:21):
One bucket is they come from aplace of service.
They come with the bestintentions of making things
better for the people that aredoing the work.
The other bucket is they are100, strictly solely concerned
with compliance, making sureboxes are checked, and really
don't have, or rather don'tdemonstrate, any interest at all
(00:45):
for the human beings thatthey're reportedly supporting
and keeping safe.
So this went back to just thatlittle blip on the screen of
time where I spent as a safetyprofessional.
So I had to take some trainingright, because I got this new
fancy position, had a lot ofresponsibility.
(01:06):
Here's a key point.
I was recruited for thatposition to help transform the
culture, and the person whorecruited me knew that I have an
immense focus on human beings.
And how do we make thingsbetter for the people that have
to deal with the stuff or thepeople that are doing the stuff?
And so his concept, or his idea.
(01:30):
His focus was perfectly alignedwith the way I prefer to
operate.
Now we both knew, because I'm awacko and I don't have, or
didn't at that time have, anyformal safety training.
Sure, I had my OSHA 30 andthose kinds of things, but, like
everybody has those right, Iwas granted national
responsibility.
(01:50):
So I obviously I needed someadditional training for that.
So I go to this training and Ican't remember it was three,
four, maybe five days worth oftraining and what stood out to
me.
This is the first time I sawthe difference and maybe one of
the largest contributors to theproblem.
The problem I'm talking aboutis the way some safety
(02:13):
professionals, eh&sprofessionals do their job, and
I just want to be ultra clear Ido not support it.
I believe 100% that people inthose positions are perfectly
staged like, put in an idealspot, to be an advocate for the
people doing the work and makeindeed make the work better for
(02:36):
the people doing it.
Anyhow, I'm in this class.
It's me, a friend of mine and Imade a connection there with
some other gentlemen.
There was about 20 of us inthere.
It was really interesting as wewere going through all the
material me, my buddy and and mynew buddy, the one I met there.
We were asking questions andpresenting ideas that made us
(02:58):
look like the odd ducks.
We were like everybody else inthe room was like what the hell
are y'all talking about?
Almost like would y'all shut upand let us get to the meat and
potatoes of the whole thing,except for the three of us.
We were like, yeah, yeah, likeI agree.
What do you think about this?
Have you tried this?
And now again, most of what thethree of us were talking about
(03:18):
maybe falls into the realm ofleadership, or even servant
leadership, and how do weapproach a situation that's not
clearly defined in a policy, andwe also maybe know that the
policy or the rules are notnecessarily applicable in the
particular situation.
And so we were having this typeof conversation of how do we
(03:39):
utilize the, we'll say, thestandards, the OSHA standards,
to better serve the people,which the instructor was
phenomenal because he could.
He helped us kind of navigatethrough that.
Of course, there was no directanswer, but he gave us a
framework to use in terms ofthinking of how to overcome that
thing.
(04:00):
Anyways, back to the rest of theteam.
So we didn't get invited to sitat the cool kids table right,
because we were the odd ducks,we were the weirdos.
And so I'm really observing,like why is there such a
distinct difference between thethree odd ducks, me being one of
them, and the rest of the crewthat was there?
And they were all fromdifferent companies from
(04:21):
different cities in that part ofthe country, and like they
weren't all from one company.
It's like, okay, so they're notall from the same employer, but
they share a lot of the samecharacteristics.
And so I decided to like talkto them and understand, like why
were they?
They were like the safetyperson for the construction
companies that they were workingfor, and I must've asked six or
(04:44):
seven of them like why theywere in the safety role.
Like was it something that theywent to university for?
Was it something that they werealways interested in?
And of the seven that I asked,all of them said that their boss
assigned them to the role, andI think that's a key thing.
They were assigned to the role.
I'm like, oh so it wasn'tsomething necessarily that you
(05:06):
were interested in.
No, they said that I was a goodcandidate for it and it was
kind of a.
I thought it was going to be areally great promotion.
So I took it.
One guy had had a significantincident on site and the the
idea, like it was a mutualagreement, in that the company
said, hey, like you have apretty interesting story and now
(05:28):
your attitude about safety hasdramatically changed, we would
like you to take this position.
He said yes, I want to, right,anyways.
But the rest were like no, theykind of made me do it.
They didn't say it that way,but it's kind of how I
interpreted it.
Now, the consistency I saw inthat group like the rest of the
people, not the odd ducks, theregular normies was they were
(05:50):
super, super compliant, focused.
They just wanted to know what'sthe rule, what's the
consequence?
Where do I find the answer?
What do I do to make sure?
Like to punish peopleappropriately and make sure
people comply?
They didn't use those words,but that was my interpretation
of like the gist of theirquestions.
They were just like black andwhite.
(06:12):
What is it?
Yes or no?
Go, go, do not go.
And then, of course, I keptthinking I'm like huh.
So these people are, these group, this group of people, awesome
people are hyper, hyper,compliant, focused.
Their only concern is to havethe ability to discern whether
(06:32):
somebody is doing it right orwrong and what to do when
they're not doing it right,which that's important.
Right, like that is a skill ormaybe a core element in managing
people.
But in terms of leading thesafety culture for an
organization, I don't think it'senough.
But that's not their fault,right, like that's their mindset
(06:55):
.
That's the way they think,that's the way they operate.
Not their fault, right, likethat's their mindset.
That's the way they think,that's the way they operate,
which to me was maybe a littledisappointing.
But shine the light on why wehave such a big divide between
the trade installers out thereand the safety or compliance
officers out there.
And it's through no faultnecessarily of the individuals.
(07:17):
It comes back to the leader ofthe organization that selected
the safety leader.
Like I, didn't do any study onthis, so I'd love to get your
thoughts in the comments orshoot me a DM or tell me I'm
full of it what I interpretedthat as is the leaders of those
organizations that selectedthose guys that were in that
class with me.
(07:38):
They did not see safety as acore element of their culture.
They did not appreciate safetyto be a core element of their
business or the success of theirbusiness.
They saw it more as a matter ofcompliance, more as a necessary
evil, like they had to do it sothey could comply with federal
(07:58):
guidelines, so that theywouldn't get in trouble.
And so if that's the value orthe level of appreciation they
have for safety or the potentialin a safety department or
safety program, of coursethey're going to find somebody
that is naturally compliant,that follows the rules, crosses
the T's and dots the I's, andthen that creates a lot of the
situation that a lot of us outthere have been dealing with,
(08:20):
where I know for a very longtime, like the safety person was
the least cool person on thejob site.
Right, they were the tattletale, they were the narc.
They would come and tell mewhat I was doing wrong but could
never help me figure out how todo it right.
They always came after the fact.
They were never involved on thefront end of things, and the
closest they got to beinginvolved in the front end was
(08:41):
giving me some damn checklist tofill out and a bunch of other
damn paperwork.
That didn't help me make thejob safer.
All it did was help them covertheir butt in case something
happened.
Going back to my boss, the onewho picked me in picked those
other two guys.
Their bosses picked them forparticular reasons.
I think that I know for surethe guy who picked me for the
(09:02):
role understood safety from adifferent perspective.
He saw that a good, soundsafety program that served their
people, produced businessresults and met the national or
federal requirements andinsurance liability issues and
(09:23):
all of that it wasn't.
It was a yes and situation interms of we want to provide a
different experience for ourpeople and for all the people
that come to our project.
By different we mean how doesthe program serve the human
beings?
What that was going to requireis some radical maybe yeah,
(09:45):
we'll say radical some radicalthinking in terms of doing it
differently.
And so maybe, on one hand, whatI'm saying is those
hyper-compliant, focused,dictator-type safety
professionals out there.
It's not entirely their faultthat they're that way, because
I've also been involved in someincident investigations which
(10:07):
are not fun, like they're.
Probably one of the worstexperiences I've had in my
career in construction is doingan incident investigation and
all the bureaucracy, all thetechnicalities, all the
liability stuff that you got toget into and check and make sure
that you're covered and you'renot saying the wrong thing and
people are okay.
And did somebody die?
(10:27):
Did somebody get hurt?
But I also have these corporatethings I need to do, like
there's a lot of conflictingthings that happen during an
incident investigation andsafety professionals.
They always get pulled intothose things and they're just
the worst, they're just bad.
There's no fun at all.
Maybe there's some learning,but it's very stressful, intense
(10:48):
learning, so that'll souranybody's mood.
Back to the point.
If you're in a situation on ajob side or with a company that
is hyper, hyper focused oncompliance and only compliance,
you're going to see thatfirsthand by the safety
professional that you're dealingwith.
You're going to see thatfirsthand by the safety
professional that you're dealingwith.
And maybe the challenge is thisto like keep an open mind,
(11:09):
because not all safetyprofessionals function that way
and that's usually a result oftheir leader and what their
leader values or understands agood safety program to be.
And that leader can go all theway to the CEO.
Right, in my little wishy-washyanalysis it was it all
absolutely went back to the CEO.
(11:30):
Ceo decided to put these peoplein these roles because the only
value they saw in it wascompliance.
And so when you have thosesafety professionals, those EH&S
pros, that do listen and do trylike, invest time and effort
into making the work better orunderstanding the situation and
(11:52):
help design this, mitigate allthe as much risk as possible and
design the safest ways toexecute the work, show them some
appreciation.
And I also have an ask I knowthis was a little convoluted but
I don't know if what I'm sayinglike it was just a little
sliver.
Of maybe 18 different people,three were the odd ducks, right,
they were real, people-focused,service-oriented.
(12:14):
How do we make this programserve our people and meet the
expectations or the federalrequirements?
And then the rest of them werevery compliant, compliant,
compliant.
Thou shall not, thou shall not.
So maybe you can help me, like,let me know how many of the
safety professionals that youhave worked with are people
focused, how many of them areproactive in terms of being
(12:36):
involved in evaluating the wayhigh risk work is going to be
executed and contributes tomaking it less risky, versus the
number of safety professionalsthat come and just tell you what
you're doing wrong and offer nosolutions or countermeasures to
(12:57):
approach that work differently.
I'm going to say we're stilllooking at a maybe 80-20, 80 on
the compliance, 20 on the peoplefocus.
But maybe you can help mefigure that out Again.
When you find one out therethat is people-centered and
takes action and steps to servethe people that are doing the
work, give them a fist bump,tell them thank you.
(13:19):
And when you come into the onesthat are ultra, ultra
compliance, fill out yourpaperwork, check the boxes, give
them some grace because they'renot doing it to be ugly.
There's the conditions that arein are just make setting them
up to really not have a lot offriends.
Be kind to yourself, be cooland we'll talk at you next time.
(13:41):
Peace.
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