September 3, 2024 • 20 mins
Episode 291: In this episode, we dive into the concept of "Safety in Action" with Matt Mohler, the EHS Manager at Delta Systems in Streetsboro, OH. Matt shares his extensive experience as a safety manager and the journey of fostering a proactive safety culture in the workplace.
Matt discusses the importance of engaging employees, making safety a visible priority, and ensuring everyone understands their role in maintaining a safe environment. He emphasizes the significance of transparency, regular training, and promoting safety practices that extend beyond the workplace.
Tune in to learn practical strategies for improving safety culture, from effective communication and personal engagement to the implementation of comprehensive safety programs. Discover how a commitment to safety can positively impact both employees' work and personal lives.
Join us for an insightful conversation on building a safety culture that not only meets compliance standards but also prioritizes the well-being of every worker.
For more information about the PCSC, visit their website at: https://portagecountysafetycouncil.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You know, if you think to yourself, do we have a safety culture? The answer is yes.
And the question is, are you proud of it? If you have people at work going,
man, this place is so unsafe and there's dirt everywhere, we don't really have
any, well, then you've got a poor safety culture.
And then if you have a place where everybody looks out for everybody and things
are, you know, nobody's perfect, mishaps are going to happen,
but you work to try to prevent those and have long gaps in between,
(00:24):
then you'll start seeing that good safety culture. And then eventually it'll grow.
Success breeds success. And that's true even in safety.
And as you know, like I said, when we started with, hey, we're focusing on what
do we have to do to ensure that we're compliant.
And now we're ensuring we're compliant and we're thinking about the total worker,
making sure that they can take stuff home to keep them safe at home.
That's all part of that. And it's all part of safety and action.
(00:47):
If you truly have actions in safety, your culture should naturally grow.
Welcome to the Portage County Safety Council podcast. We hope you enjoy today's safety talk.
Welcome everyone to the Portage County Safety Council podcast.
(01:10):
I'm excited today as we continue working on our series from our panel interview
at our live Portage County Safety Council meeting. And joining me today is one
of those panelists, Matt Moeller from Delta Systems. Matt, welcome to the podcast channel.
Hi, Nick. How are you today? Doing well. How are you? Good.
So before we jump right into your topic of safety in action,
(01:32):
let our listeners know a little bit about you. What's your background?
How long have you been doing safety? And what's really that driver for you?
Why did you get into safety?
I've officially been, I guess, a safety manager leader for about 25 years or
more. I've kind of always been involved in safety from my time in the service
and volunteered to become a first aid and CPR instructor.
(01:54):
And I think being that I was in the construction phase in the military and then
got into the maintenance and facility construction and general industry after
I got out, you see a lot of bad things happen.
And you try to, at least I guess I had a passion to want to help people avoid
those and be able to react if there was an accident to help them.
(02:15):
And I think that's why a lot of us as safety professionals do that and,
you know, really developing those safe work practices because we've seen bad things happen.
I know that's part of the reason I got into this, seeing injuries and seeing
things happen to my family themselves.
And so that is a passionate driver. And I can tell you, you know,
in Portage County area, there's a lot of times that we do talk about Matt and his safety programs.
(02:36):
He's got really good stuff going on at his organization there.
And that's why we invited you to be on the podcast and to be on this panel interview
because you're making good things happen there. at your company.
So safety in action, what is that about? Kind of give me a high level overview
of your vision of what safety in action is.
Safety in action is, if you say it in reverse, it's the action that a company
(02:58):
is taking towards safety.
It's making sure that the employees, the workforce, visitors,
when you have them, can see that there is a active safety environment,
that safety is paramount in the thought processes of the workforce and all around the shop.
So So it's beyond the guarding.
It's beyond the lines on the floor.
(03:19):
They can see postings. They can see the proper PPEs are in place.
They can see people that are taking that time to ensure that they're following
the procedures that we've identified to keep the employees free from harm.
So on the shop floor, what's been the feedback to this? Is they see more people involved in that?
Is it positive feedback from staff? Has it kind of changed their viewpoint of
(03:42):
safety and health as they see more people involved in this process?
I would tell you it's one of those sneaky things that kind of happens.
And it's one of those ones where when you first get started on it,
you're the safety cop, right?
And everybody sees you and like, oh, here comes Matt and put your safety glasses
on and make sure you have whatever.
And then eventually it starts going to the point where they just naturally do
(04:03):
it and then they'll start kind of policing each other. And then hopefully you
get to that point where, you know, it's they just know that,
hey, this is the way we have to do it. This is how we do things here safety wise.
And and that's that's the nice part of it when you get to that point and see
that it's just kind of an automatic. It's just naturally occurring.
It's just naturally part of the culture.
(04:25):
So safety in your company, is it solely your responsibility or is safety everyone's responsibility?
Well, safety should always be everyone's responsibility. And,
you know, we always try to share.
I mean, I'll tell people I do my best to bring you the safety information you
need to keep you free from harm.
But ultimately, safety is everybody's personal responsibility.
(04:47):
And, you know, whether you're at work at Delta or you're out and about in your
daily lives, you have to make some conscious decisions for yourself to say,
I'm not so sure about that.
Do your own little hazard assessment, judge the risk, and then make decisions
on, you know, if you're going to continue to do that.
Everybody has a responsibility, but on the same token, we have that responsibility
(05:08):
to educate people so they know that there's a safety standard for it.
You know, one of the problems I see sometimes in companies trying to get safety
happening and safety in action taking place in a company is getting leadership to commit the time.
You know, they say, well, I can't pull people off the production floor or it
takes too long to do an annual training.
And you and I were talking before this about how you broke that down time wise.
(05:32):
You know, how did you get management to buy into?
I need everybody's attention for so much time every month.
You know, when you're talking business, they all like to talk numbers.
So I think if you can run the numbers back at them and say, I'm asking for 30
minutes a month on average.
And I have a couple of trainings that have to go 45 just because of the content.
But typically, it's 30 minutes a month. So that's six hours a year.
(05:54):
If you're a 24-hour shop, you think 2,080 hours a year for one shift.
So about 6,100 hours a year.
I'm asking for six of those hours, about 1%. So if you can commit me 1%,
I can try to work on a safety program that we can be proud of.
And they bought it. So either I'm a good salesman or it made sense. I'm not sure.
(06:17):
I mean, it makes sense. You know, I've always said, I've always talked about
the fact that we need to push safety and talk about injury rates and effects
to the workers' comp premiums. But breaking it down to simpler terms like this,
I just need 1% of their time every year.
I think that's a pretty digestible thing for, as we like to call them,
the bean counters out there, right? They can digest that a little bit easier.
(06:38):
So as you do the safety action, people see it happening. They see the trainings.
They start to get involved in that.
What does that look like for your company with training?
Are you just kind of doing toolbox talks?
What's the nature of that training? Is it focused just on the workplace or is
it focused outside of the work too?
So, I mean, to start, and this is what I shared with you before,
(06:59):
in 2009 when I assumed the responsibilities for safety, a bulk of it was ensuring
that we were meeting the OSHA standards.
We were getting that check the box, make sure our lockout tag has come,
our emergency response, all
those programs were in place and we were training everybody to do that.
And you can't forget about those. You still need to have your trainings,
(07:19):
your refreshers and whatnot.
But as you move on, you're going to start broadening that to where at the beginning,
it was focused on make the workplace safe and make sure employees are safe while
they're at the workplace.
And I really had a focus for no harm.
After that safety in action, and you're doing your safety trainings,
we do job safety analysis, we do area audits, all those kind of things where
(07:42):
we're constantly looking and checking.
We were very involved. We just
had a great safe and sound week that just happened a couple of weeks ago.
Those are the kind of things employees get to see that. And I think it helps them get that buy-in.
And at some point, I think you just Just wear people down like,
okay, I get it. You care about safety.
But it really helps everybody get to see it.
And, you know, when we're talking about the safety in action part of it,
(08:05):
not only the promotion of, hey, this is what we're doing. We post our minutes from our meetings.
We post the actions from our JSAs after we do that with pictures and make it
easier for people to follow.
But while our safety team is out there, we have safety team shirts to make it
easier for people to focus on, hey, what's the safety team doing now?
And you know it sometimes it gets
(08:27):
someone else to say hey how can i get involved which is wonderful other
times you have people saying no i think it's great but i'm not
it's not my game i don't want to get involved you know some people just you
know the more the people that watch what happens and do what happens you hit
on an important point there you talked about your jsa's and how you do those
and then you come up with action plans and follow up with the changes you made
(08:47):
and i think that's one of the things that companies sometimes struggle with
is that they They have good GSAs.
They have a good process, but they're not very transparent about it.
And I'm a firm believer in what gets measured gets done.
And then if you're sharing those results, it ensures it gets done because everybody's
looking for those results.
Well, I agree. I would tell you my previous supervisor prior to,
(09:09):
like I said, I assumed the responsibility in 2009 and within the first year.
He said he loved how transparent I was with the minutes and the follow-up action plans from the JSAs.
He made the comment that previous safety was like a secret society.
There was no schedule events. There were no agendas for the meeting.
They would just randomly show up one day and be like, hey, we're having a safety meeting.
(09:29):
But no one else had a clue of what was going on, and they never knew what they talked about.
And I think that's a mistake. I want guests to come to the safety meeting.
I want it to be regularly scheduled so people know when it is.
And if they want to come to it, great.
You have a safety suggestion? Bring it to us. We'll talk about it.
You want that open atmosphere of it's not a secret society.
Everybody has good safety thoughts and ideas. And the people that are working
(09:52):
at the work cell every day, day in and day out, see things much more readily than we do.
And when we're in there doing the JSAs, as long as it's not unsafe to distract
the people running equipment, we try to talk to them and engage them.
Hey, we're doing a safety audit. it? What do you see? What kind of thing? What have you had?
And some of that goes into asking them about ergonomics and the posture.
(10:13):
And, you know, we do a lot of small parts here, as you know.
So a lot of times I'll ask people, hey, by doing this action,
how do your hands feel at the end of the shift?
Really try to engage the person there and talk to them because,
again, it's not always that OSHA standard that is very obvious.
It's the other parts of safety of the whole person and the health effects that
(10:34):
we may not have a standard that points it out to us.
But, you know, we need to also consider with that ultimate goal of no harm.
Well, you know, it's total worker safety. And the way that we treat our employees
at work, the way that we set things up ergonomically, the work,
the tasks that we put them through affect their lives outside of work, too.
(10:55):
And I think you start to get more buy-in to the safety and health programs when
people People see how these changes make their total life better both at work
and outside of work because they're not leaving with their hands cramped up,
their back hurting where they can just go home and sit on the couch.
They can't enjoy life outside of work.
Absolutely. When we started, the training was solely focused primarily on the
(11:16):
workplace and ensuring that we were compliant.
We've gotten to the point now where obviously we're still working to be compliant,
but we've expanded that training. So what can people take with them outside of the workplace?
You know, whether it be vehicle safety, home safety. You know,
I've had trainings where I've said, share this with your other family members
that work somewhere else. Just don't assume that they're getting the same information.
(11:37):
And it's that what that that you can apply in every aspect of your life and
really focusing more recently on the health. You know, we all talk about we're
EHS professionals, but sometimes we forget about the health aspect, that big H in the middle.
And we got to do things for mental health and their physical health and well-being.
And, you know, we talked, now we're to the point where we even talk about healthy
(11:59):
choices in the vending machines and stuff like that.
That all ties together for that, like you kind of said, the total worker health.
And that's all part of safety in action and promoting it, making sure people
understand that, But yes, we're consciously thinking about free from harm.
You know, I tell people, I'm trying to prevent you from getting so much of a splinter.
(12:20):
So if we can focus on not having splinters and obviously not forget about the
high hazards and we're doing everything we're supposed to do and have done to
prevent that, then everybody should go home as good or better than what they came in.
You know, if we really build safety and make it an action, you know,
we want them consciously thinking about it, but eventually we get them to the
level that it's subconscious.
So even when they're at home and they go to get that miter saw out to do some
(12:44):
work around the house, they're putting on the safety glasses,
they're putting the hearing plugs in, they might not have ever done,
but it's because of the work that we do here in the workplace that has molded
that and just made that a subconscious decision that they make every day.
Absolutely. Yeah, we share that a lot, especially like with the hearing conservation.
We share with them about ear pods and earbuds.
And it's nice to have that music, but be cautious about how loud it is and the
(13:08):
hygiene part of the ear and cleaning the earbud and making sure you don't get
infections and stuff like that.
That's where we, you know, it's beyond the workplace. But those are some of
the things that we've gotten to at this point.
We're expanding it beyond our walls of the workplace. We talked also about culture in the company.
And, you know, a lot of times we ask people, what's your culture like?
(13:29):
And we always just we're aiming for that good safety culture.
But as you kind of alluded to earlier, that culture exists no matter what is.
But the question is, are you proud of the culture that you have in your workplace?
Place. Yes, absolutely. I say that all the time.
If you think to yourself, do we have a safety culture? The answer is yes.
And the question is, are you proud of it? If you have people that work on,
man, this place is so unsafe and there's dirt everywhere, we don't really have
(13:53):
any... Well, then you've got a poor safety culture.
And then if you have a place where everybody looks out for everybody and things
are... Nobody's perfect.
Mishaps are going to happen. But you work to to try to prevent those and have
long gaps in between, then you'll start seeing that good safety culture.
And then eventually it'll grow. Success breeds success. And that's true even in safety.
(14:15):
And as you know, like I said, when we started with, hey, we're focusing on what
do we have to do to ensure that we're compliant?
And now we're ensuring we're compliant and we're thinking about the total worker,
making sure that they can take stuff home to keep them safe at home.
That's all part of that. And it's all part of safety in action.
And safety in action, if you truly have actions in safety, your culture should naturally grow.
(14:38):
And you'll be more proud of it. As we kind of wrap up here, you know,
getting the safety compliance, the OSHA compliance, we all know what that is.
There's tons of information out there on that. But it's going to that next level.
So if you had an EH&S professional sitting there with you today and they were
saying, hey, you know, we've met OSHA minimum compliance.
What's the next level to get there? What are the next steps that I take?
(15:00):
What are the three calls to action that you would really tell them to do?
These are the next three steps that you need to do to make this successful in
your company. Number one would be do what you can to continue to engage each
individual worker that's out there.
Talk to them, get their feedback, look for their suggestions,
and then building off of that action of this is how we do it and we don't sacrifice
(15:22):
from that. And, you know, unfortunately, sometimes, oh, this will only take a minute.
Well, bad things happen in much less than a minute. And so we don't ever make that risk.
We don't. And sometimes that takes a discipline. Sometimes you have to stop
and go, yeah, the right thing to do is to get down off of this lift and go back
and get whatever I properly need, whether it be fall protection or bigger ladder
(15:43):
or whatever, and not just say, oh, I'm almost done.
Right. So always doing the right thing and then making sure that you're in good
engagement with those people.
And then the other side of that is that promotion part
of it that making it obvious making it viewable making
sure people can see that it's not just a tagline
that you actually believe in and you know if i might i'll share a story way
(16:06):
back when i was first out of the service and i was in charge of a plant in charge
of the safety and whatnot and i had this one young guy that always put his safety
glasses up on his forehead and i'd walk back and he was using impact guns and
separating things that were right at head level,
the potential was potentially severe. It could have been really bad.
(16:28):
So I'd always go to him and I'd say, Ryan, they're not meant to protect your
forehead. Put them over your eyes.
And every couple days I always had to remind him when we had done write-ups.
Part of me was thinking, I really hate the fire of this guy because he's not
wearing his safety glasses properly. He's a really good worker.
And one day, it had been a long day, I was tired, I was there late,
(16:48):
and I was leaving, and I saw he had them on his forehead again,
and I was like, you know what, I'm just going home, I'm tired of talking to him.
And before I could get to the back door, I went, I couldn't live with myself
if tonight was the night that something bad happened, and he lost his sight.
So I walked back over to him, and as soon as I was walking towards him,
he looked, he knew, he put him right down, and I said, Ryan,
(17:10):
I couldn't live with myself if you wouldn't be able to see You're a little girl
again, and I need you to always wear them safety glasses. And I just turned around and walked away.
A couple days later, he said, the fact that you knew or remembered that I had
a little girl and that your whole focus was making sure I could see her made a difference.
Now, I'm not going to, you know, roses and sunshine here.
I can't say that he never, ever did it again, but I can say that he at least
(17:33):
admitted to me that it made a difference.
And, you know, hopefully it carried with him. I didn't get to see him too much
longer after that. he went on to another job anyhow.
But hopefully that one situation, that might've been the one time that it finally
clicked with him and hopefully he took it with him and he still has his sight today, I hope.
And making safety personal is so important.
(17:55):
And I say this often in my presentations and when I talk with customers,
I can usually judge your safety culture pretty quickly or what it's going to
be like within the first 30 seconds on the floor.
It's the safety professionals like you that know the employees.
They're not just a number, you're actually out there understanding them.
As we walk through, you're asking about Johnny's football game.
You're asking about Jane's cheerleading competition, right? You know them and
(18:17):
you're making it personal.
Those are the programs that are successful because it's about the human element,
not just checking those organizational boxes.
I'm a sucker for the adages and the sayings, but I also believe in safety,
that line that, you know, employees don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
I think is part of it. As a safety professional, they got to know that you care
(18:37):
more about them and less about being, you know, checking the box and making
sure that you're not going to get cited.
People want to know that you care that I'm not going to get hurt.
And that's, I think, where the no harm comes in.
And the way you can ensure that is being on the floor and seeing people.
And don't be, you don't have to be hard about it. You can walk up to them very
politely and say, hey, I noticed you don't have your safety glasses on.
(19:00):
And, you know, if you have have somebody that's stubborn and you need to do
some paperwork, well, then so be it, right?
But it doesn't have to be a battle. It can just be a, like I said,
hey, I want to make sure you can go home and play that video game, see your kids,
whatever the case, whatever your enjoyment is, whether it be safety glasses
or gloves or footwear or whatever the PPE is that you would need or the engineering
(19:22):
control as far as that goes.
Yeah, no, that's perfect. We got to make it personable and we got to make it,
you know, something that they recognize in the workplace. place.
Well, Matt, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.
Thank you for all the work that you're doing here in Portage County.
And thank you for being a part of this panel interview for us this month for
our safety council meetings.
I think this information is so important. It's planting some really good seeds
(19:44):
because you are really honestly one of those members that we have that's a wealth of knowledge.
I always direct people over your way if you've got some questions too.
So thank you again for being part of this and to our listeners out there until next time, be safe.
Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
For more episodes, Check us out on your favorite podcast app,
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(20:08):
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becoming an active member of the Portage County Safety Council,
please visit our website at www.portagecountysafetycouncil.com.
You know, if you think to yourself, do we have a safety culture? The answer is yes.
And the question is, are you proud of it? If you have people at work going,
man, this place is so unsafe and there's dirt everywhere, we don't really have
any, well, then you've got a poor safety culture.
And then if you have a place where everybody looks out for everybody and things
are, you know, nobody's perfect, mishaps are going to happen,
but you work to try to prevent those and have long gaps in between,
(00:24):
then you'll start seeing that good safety culture. And then eventually it'll grow.
Success breeds success. And that's true even in safety.
And as you know, like I said, when we started with, hey, we're focusing on what
do we have to do to ensure that we're compliant.
And now we're ensuring we're compliant and we're thinking about the total worker,
making sure that they can take stuff home to keep them safe at home.
That's all part of that. And it's all part of safety and action.
(00:47):
If you truly have actions in safety, your culture should naturally grow.
Welcome to the Portage County Safety Council podcast. We hope you enjoy today's safety talk.
Welcome everyone to the Portage County Safety Council podcast.
(01:10):
I'm excited today as we continue working on our series from our panel interview
at our live Portage County Safety Council meeting. And joining me today is one
of those panelists, Matt Moeller from Delta Systems. Matt, welcome to the podcast channel.
Hi, Nick. How are you today? Doing well. How are you? Good.
So before we jump right into your topic of safety in action,
(01:32):
let our listeners know a little bit about you. What's your background?
How long have you been doing safety? And what's really that driver for you?
Why did you get into safety?
I've officially been, I guess, a safety manager leader for about 25 years or
more. I've kind of always been involved in safety from my time in the service
and volunteered to become a first aid and CPR instructor.
(01:54):
And I think being that I was in the construction phase in the military and then
got into the maintenance and facility construction and general industry after
I got out, you see a lot of bad things happen.
And you try to, at least I guess I had a passion to want to help people avoid
those and be able to react if there was an accident to help them.
(02:15):
And I think that's why a lot of us as safety professionals do that and,
you know, really developing those safe work practices because we've seen bad things happen.
I know that's part of the reason I got into this, seeing injuries and seeing
things happen to my family themselves.
And so that is a passionate driver. And I can tell you, you know,
in Portage County area, there's a lot of times that we do talk about Matt and his safety programs.
(02:36):
He's got really good stuff going on at his organization there.
And that's why we invited you to be on the podcast and to be on this panel interview
because you're making good things happen there. at your company.
So safety in action, what is that about? Kind of give me a high level overview
of your vision of what safety in action is.
Safety in action is, if you say it in reverse, it's the action that a company
(02:58):
is taking towards safety.
It's making sure that the employees, the workforce, visitors,
when you have them, can see that there is a active safety environment,
that safety is paramount in the thought processes of the workforce and all around the shop.
So So it's beyond the guarding.
It's beyond the lines on the floor.
(03:19):
They can see postings. They can see the proper PPEs are in place.
They can see people that are taking that time to ensure that they're following
the procedures that we've identified to keep the employees free from harm.
So on the shop floor, what's been the feedback to this? Is they see more people involved in that?
Is it positive feedback from staff? Has it kind of changed their viewpoint of
(03:42):
safety and health as they see more people involved in this process?
I would tell you it's one of those sneaky things that kind of happens.
And it's one of those ones where when you first get started on it,
you're the safety cop, right?
And everybody sees you and like, oh, here comes Matt and put your safety glasses
on and make sure you have whatever.
And then eventually it starts going to the point where they just naturally do
(04:03):
it and then they'll start kind of policing each other. And then hopefully you
get to that point where, you know, it's they just know that,
hey, this is the way we have to do it. This is how we do things here safety wise.
And and that's that's the nice part of it when you get to that point and see
that it's just kind of an automatic. It's just naturally occurring.
It's just naturally part of the culture.
(04:25):
So safety in your company, is it solely your responsibility or is safety everyone's responsibility?
Well, safety should always be everyone's responsibility. And,
you know, we always try to share.
I mean, I'll tell people I do my best to bring you the safety information you
need to keep you free from harm.
But ultimately, safety is everybody's personal responsibility.
(04:47):
And, you know, whether you're at work at Delta or you're out and about in your
daily lives, you have to make some conscious decisions for yourself to say,
I'm not so sure about that.
Do your own little hazard assessment, judge the risk, and then make decisions
on, you know, if you're going to continue to do that.
Everybody has a responsibility, but on the same token, we have that responsibility
(05:08):
to educate people so they know that there's a safety standard for it.
You know, one of the problems I see sometimes in companies trying to get safety
happening and safety in action taking place in a company is getting leadership to commit the time.
You know, they say, well, I can't pull people off the production floor or it
takes too long to do an annual training.
And you and I were talking before this about how you broke that down time wise.
(05:32):
You know, how did you get management to buy into?
I need everybody's attention for so much time every month.
You know, when you're talking business, they all like to talk numbers.
So I think if you can run the numbers back at them and say, I'm asking for 30
minutes a month on average.
And I have a couple of trainings that have to go 45 just because of the content.
But typically, it's 30 minutes a month. So that's six hours a year.
(05:54):
If you're a 24-hour shop, you think 2,080 hours a year for one shift.
So about 6,100 hours a year.
I'm asking for six of those hours, about 1%. So if you can commit me 1%,
I can try to work on a safety program that we can be proud of.
And they bought it. So either I'm a good salesman or it made sense. I'm not sure.
(06:17):
I mean, it makes sense. You know, I've always said, I've always talked about
the fact that we need to push safety and talk about injury rates and effects
to the workers' comp premiums. But breaking it down to simpler terms like this,
I just need 1% of their time every year.
I think that's a pretty digestible thing for, as we like to call them,
the bean counters out there, right? They can digest that a little bit easier.
(06:38):
So as you do the safety action, people see it happening. They see the trainings.
They start to get involved in that.
What does that look like for your company with training?
Are you just kind of doing toolbox talks?
What's the nature of that training? Is it focused just on the workplace or is
it focused outside of the work too?
So, I mean, to start, and this is what I shared with you before,
(06:59):
in 2009 when I assumed the responsibilities for safety, a bulk of it was ensuring
that we were meeting the OSHA standards.
We were getting that check the box, make sure our lockout tag has come,
our emergency response, all
those programs were in place and we were training everybody to do that.
And you can't forget about those. You still need to have your trainings,
(07:19):
your refreshers and whatnot.
But as you move on, you're going to start broadening that to where at the beginning,
it was focused on make the workplace safe and make sure employees are safe while
they're at the workplace.
And I really had a focus for no harm.
After that safety in action, and you're doing your safety trainings,
we do job safety analysis, we do area audits, all those kind of things where
(07:42):
we're constantly looking and checking.
We were very involved. We just
had a great safe and sound week that just happened a couple of weeks ago.
Those are the kind of things employees get to see that. And I think it helps them get that buy-in.
And at some point, I think you just Just wear people down like,
okay, I get it. You care about safety.
But it really helps everybody get to see it.
And, you know, when we're talking about the safety in action part of it,
(08:05):
not only the promotion of, hey, this is what we're doing. We post our minutes from our meetings.
We post the actions from our JSAs after we do that with pictures and make it
easier for people to follow.
But while our safety team is out there, we have safety team shirts to make it
easier for people to focus on, hey, what's the safety team doing now?
And you know it sometimes it gets
(08:27):
someone else to say hey how can i get involved which is wonderful other
times you have people saying no i think it's great but i'm not
it's not my game i don't want to get involved you know some people just you
know the more the people that watch what happens and do what happens you hit
on an important point there you talked about your jsa's and how you do those
and then you come up with action plans and follow up with the changes you made
(08:47):
and i think that's one of the things that companies sometimes struggle with
is that they They have good GSAs.
They have a good process, but they're not very transparent about it.
And I'm a firm believer in what gets measured gets done.
And then if you're sharing those results, it ensures it gets done because everybody's
looking for those results.
Well, I agree. I would tell you my previous supervisor prior to,
(09:09):
like I said, I assumed the responsibility in 2009 and within the first year.
He said he loved how transparent I was with the minutes and the follow-up action plans from the JSAs.
He made the comment that previous safety was like a secret society.
There was no schedule events. There were no agendas for the meeting.
They would just randomly show up one day and be like, hey, we're having a safety meeting.
(09:29):
But no one else had a clue of what was going on, and they never knew what they talked about.
And I think that's a mistake. I want guests to come to the safety meeting.
I want it to be regularly scheduled so people know when it is.
And if they want to come to it, great.
You have a safety suggestion? Bring it to us. We'll talk about it.
You want that open atmosphere of it's not a secret society.
Everybody has good safety thoughts and ideas. And the people that are working
(09:52):
at the work cell every day, day in and day out, see things much more readily than we do.
And when we're in there doing the JSAs, as long as it's not unsafe to distract
the people running equipment, we try to talk to them and engage them.
Hey, we're doing a safety audit. it? What do you see? What kind of thing? What have you had?
And some of that goes into asking them about ergonomics and the posture.
(10:13):
And, you know, we do a lot of small parts here, as you know.
So a lot of times I'll ask people, hey, by doing this action,
how do your hands feel at the end of the shift?
Really try to engage the person there and talk to them because,
again, it's not always that OSHA standard that is very obvious.
It's the other parts of safety of the whole person and the health effects that
(10:34):
we may not have a standard that points it out to us.
But, you know, we need to also consider with that ultimate goal of no harm.
Well, you know, it's total worker safety. And the way that we treat our employees
at work, the way that we set things up ergonomically, the work,
the tasks that we put them through affect their lives outside of work, too.
(10:55):
And I think you start to get more buy-in to the safety and health programs when
people People see how these changes make their total life better both at work
and outside of work because they're not leaving with their hands cramped up,
their back hurting where they can just go home and sit on the couch.
They can't enjoy life outside of work.
Absolutely. When we started, the training was solely focused primarily on the
(11:16):
workplace and ensuring that we were compliant.
We've gotten to the point now where obviously we're still working to be compliant,
but we've expanded that training. So what can people take with them outside of the workplace?
You know, whether it be vehicle safety, home safety. You know,
I've had trainings where I've said, share this with your other family members
that work somewhere else. Just don't assume that they're getting the same information.
(11:37):
And it's that what that that you can apply in every aspect of your life and
really focusing more recently on the health. You know, we all talk about we're
EHS professionals, but sometimes we forget about the health aspect, that big H in the middle.
And we got to do things for mental health and their physical health and well-being.
And, you know, we talked, now we're to the point where we even talk about healthy
(11:59):
choices in the vending machines and stuff like that.
That all ties together for that, like you kind of said, the total worker health.
And that's all part of safety in action and promoting it, making sure people
understand that, But yes, we're consciously thinking about free from harm.
You know, I tell people, I'm trying to prevent you from getting so much of a splinter.
(12:20):
So if we can focus on not having splinters and obviously not forget about the
high hazards and we're doing everything we're supposed to do and have done to
prevent that, then everybody should go home as good or better than what they came in.
You know, if we really build safety and make it an action, you know,
we want them consciously thinking about it, but eventually we get them to the
level that it's subconscious.
So even when they're at home and they go to get that miter saw out to do some
(12:44):
work around the house, they're putting on the safety glasses,
they're putting the hearing plugs in, they might not have ever done,
but it's because of the work that we do here in the workplace that has molded
that and just made that a subconscious decision that they make every day.
Absolutely. Yeah, we share that a lot, especially like with the hearing conservation.
We share with them about ear pods and earbuds.
And it's nice to have that music, but be cautious about how loud it is and the
(13:08):
hygiene part of the ear and cleaning the earbud and making sure you don't get
infections and stuff like that.
That's where we, you know, it's beyond the workplace. But those are some of
the things that we've gotten to at this point.
We're expanding it beyond our walls of the workplace. We talked also about culture in the company.
And, you know, a lot of times we ask people, what's your culture like?
(13:29):
And we always just we're aiming for that good safety culture.
But as you kind of alluded to earlier, that culture exists no matter what is.
But the question is, are you proud of the culture that you have in your workplace?
Place. Yes, absolutely. I say that all the time.
If you think to yourself, do we have a safety culture? The answer is yes.
And the question is, are you proud of it? If you have people that work on,
man, this place is so unsafe and there's dirt everywhere, we don't really have
(13:53):
any... Well, then you've got a poor safety culture.
And then if you have a place where everybody looks out for everybody and things
are... Nobody's perfect.
Mishaps are going to happen. But you work to to try to prevent those and have
long gaps in between, then you'll start seeing that good safety culture.
And then eventually it'll grow. Success breeds success. And that's true even in safety.
(14:15):
And as you know, like I said, when we started with, hey, we're focusing on what
do we have to do to ensure that we're compliant?
And now we're ensuring we're compliant and we're thinking about the total worker,
making sure that they can take stuff home to keep them safe at home.
That's all part of that. And it's all part of safety in action.
And safety in action, if you truly have actions in safety, your culture should naturally grow.
(14:38):
And you'll be more proud of it. As we kind of wrap up here, you know,
getting the safety compliance, the OSHA compliance, we all know what that is.
There's tons of information out there on that. But it's going to that next level.
So if you had an EH&S professional sitting there with you today and they were
saying, hey, you know, we've met OSHA minimum compliance.
What's the next level to get there? What are the next steps that I take?
(15:00):
What are the three calls to action that you would really tell them to do?
These are the next three steps that you need to do to make this successful in
your company. Number one would be do what you can to continue to engage each
individual worker that's out there.
Talk to them, get their feedback, look for their suggestions,
and then building off of that action of this is how we do it and we don't sacrifice
(15:22):
from that. And, you know, unfortunately, sometimes, oh, this will only take a minute.
Well, bad things happen in much less than a minute. And so we don't ever make that risk.
We don't. And sometimes that takes a discipline. Sometimes you have to stop
and go, yeah, the right thing to do is to get down off of this lift and go back
and get whatever I properly need, whether it be fall protection or bigger ladder
(15:43):
or whatever, and not just say, oh, I'm almost done.
Right. So always doing the right thing and then making sure that you're in good
engagement with those people.
And then the other side of that is that promotion part
of it that making it obvious making it viewable making
sure people can see that it's not just a tagline
that you actually believe in and you know if i might i'll share a story way
(16:06):
back when i was first out of the service and i was in charge of a plant in charge
of the safety and whatnot and i had this one young guy that always put his safety
glasses up on his forehead and i'd walk back and he was using impact guns and
separating things that were right at head level,
the potential was potentially severe. It could have been really bad.
(16:28):
So I'd always go to him and I'd say, Ryan, they're not meant to protect your
forehead. Put them over your eyes.
And every couple days I always had to remind him when we had done write-ups.
Part of me was thinking, I really hate the fire of this guy because he's not
wearing his safety glasses properly. He's a really good worker.
And one day, it had been a long day, I was tired, I was there late,
(16:48):
and I was leaving, and I saw he had them on his forehead again,
and I was like, you know what, I'm just going home, I'm tired of talking to him.
And before I could get to the back door, I went, I couldn't live with myself
if tonight was the night that something bad happened, and he lost his sight.
So I walked back over to him, and as soon as I was walking towards him,
he looked, he knew, he put him right down, and I said, Ryan,
(17:10):
I couldn't live with myself if you wouldn't be able to see You're a little girl
again, and I need you to always wear them safety glasses. And I just turned around and walked away.
A couple days later, he said, the fact that you knew or remembered that I had
a little girl and that your whole focus was making sure I could see her made a difference.
Now, I'm not going to, you know, roses and sunshine here.
I can't say that he never, ever did it again, but I can say that he at least
(17:33):
admitted to me that it made a difference.
And, you know, hopefully it carried with him. I didn't get to see him too much
longer after that. he went on to another job anyhow.
But hopefully that one situation, that might've been the one time that it finally
clicked with him and hopefully he took it with him and he still has his sight today, I hope.
And making safety personal is so important.
(17:55):
And I say this often in my presentations and when I talk with customers,
I can usually judge your safety culture pretty quickly or what it's going to
be like within the first 30 seconds on the floor.
It's the safety professionals like you that know the employees.
They're not just a number, you're actually out there understanding them.
As we walk through, you're asking about Johnny's football game.
You're asking about Jane's cheerleading competition, right? You know them and
(18:17):
you're making it personal.
Those are the programs that are successful because it's about the human element,
not just checking those organizational boxes.
I'm a sucker for the adages and the sayings, but I also believe in safety,
that line that, you know, employees don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
I think is part of it. As a safety professional, they got to know that you care
(18:37):
more about them and less about being, you know, checking the box and making
sure that you're not going to get cited.
People want to know that you care that I'm not going to get hurt.
And that's, I think, where the no harm comes in.
And the way you can ensure that is being on the floor and seeing people.
And don't be, you don't have to be hard about it. You can walk up to them very
politely and say, hey, I noticed you don't have your safety glasses on.
(19:00):
And, you know, if you have have somebody that's stubborn and you need to do
some paperwork, well, then so be it, right?
But it doesn't have to be a battle. It can just be a, like I said,
hey, I want to make sure you can go home and play that video game, see your kids,
whatever the case, whatever your enjoyment is, whether it be safety glasses
or gloves or footwear or whatever the PPE is that you would need or the engineering
(19:22):
control as far as that goes.
Yeah, no, that's perfect. We got to make it personable and we got to make it,
you know, something that they recognize in the workplace. place.
Well, Matt, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.
Thank you for all the work that you're doing here in Portage County.
And thank you for being a part of this panel interview for us this month for
our safety council meetings.
I think this information is so important. It's planting some really good seeds
(19:44):
because you are really honestly one of those members that we have that's a wealth of knowledge.
I always direct people over your way if you've got some questions too.
So thank you again for being part of this and to our listeners out there until next time, be safe.
Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
For more episodes, Check us out on your favorite podcast app,
Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and more.
(20:08):
To get new episodes sent directly to your phone or smart device, be sure to subscribe.
To learn more about how your company can earn an Ohio BWC Premium rebate by
becoming an active member of the Portage County Safety Council,
please visit our website at www.portagecountysafetycouncil.com.
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