Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#23: Jay Allen from SafetyFM
86 Plays6 years ago
Jill James, our series host, talks with Jay Allen from SafetyFM. They cover topics including his broadcasting background, trying to settle on a major, and Jay explains how a vehicle fatality gave him a push to get into safety.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by Vivid Learning Systems and the Health and Safety Institute, episode number 23. My name is Jill James, Vivid's Chief Safety Officer, and today I'm joined by Jay Allen, who is a safety professional and the creator of Safety FM. Welcome to the show, Jay.
00:00:30
Speaker
So Jay, this is kind of a first for you. Usually you are the one interviewing guests for Safety FM, but we're turning the tables today. Are you ready? No, I think I'm not as ready as I can be. It's definitely a different approach, but we'll see how this goes.
00:00:44
Speaker
Oh, well, I'm so happy to have you here. And I know it's we've sort of been doing a little bit of arm twisting to get Jay on the other side of the other side of the microphone.
Jay Allen's Entry into Safety
00:00:54
Speaker
So Jay, you are a safety professional. And you have never told me your story in the times that we've spoken. And so I am very interested for you to share your story, not only for my curiosity, but for our guests as well. How did you get into safety?
00:01:11
Speaker
and where did it all start? Because I'm guessing it's a winding path like everybody else. Well being on the Accidental Safety Pro, it happened by accident as you can assume. It was pretty interesting because I was actually an operations person for a long period of time for a transportation company. And we actually outsourced to, we'll say independent contractors.
00:01:33
Speaker
And we had an issue out in the Seattle market with one of our independent contractors who was involved inside of a vehicle accident. As this vehicle accident had occurred, we ended up injuring somebody in another vehicle that led to a fatality. And that right there, that occurrence, when that happened,
00:01:51
Speaker
I started looking at, well, maybe the whole revenue side is not as important as people getting home safely. And that really what started my career path and really looking at safety. At the time, I didn't realize that that was really what I was focusing on. I was just more like, oh, we need to get people home. But I wasn't looking at it as safety only. I was looking at let's do a combination of both, but really started leaning heavily towards safety, but didn't realize it until probably about a couple of years later down the road.
Career Transition and Incidents
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And so talk about that operations job that you had. How did you, how did you get into operations and how long were you in that before this event happened that sort of changed your trajectory? Well, the funny part was I was actually involved with a pretty large electronic company and I won't say them by name, but they sometimes wear blue and yellow. I'm just saying. Um, but
00:02:42
Speaker
I had actually worked for them and they start to outsource a lot of the stuff that they were doing internally so what I did was there was a company that came about and said would you be interested in handling some of our operations and I had already been with this blue and yellow company for roughly about almost six years and I decided to go ahead and go to this other company doing the transportation side.
00:03:03
Speaker
And I was there and I was based out of Miami, Florida Which is the funny part, but my region covered from Miami, Florida to Tennessee Portland, Oregon and what I'm Seattle, Washington Which I still don't understand how that's a territory, but that's how they that's how they work. Oh my gosh That's how they worked it out. So I did a lot of traveling at the time also and so as I'm doing the traveling
00:03:24
Speaker
I was probably about a year into working for that organization when this event occurred. I was up to actually assist at a location that was supposed to be covering somebody's vacation for about four days. And this four day trip ended up becoming a 19 day trip because of everything that was involved and everything that had occurred.
00:03:43
Speaker
And it was a catastrophe in regards of, of course, anytime that you're gonna have any kind of involvement where somebody's dead, you know, it's crucial and it changes the organization. And the way that we looked at it, because we were number one, a third party vendor, then number two, our logo or the logo for the company that we're representing was all over the news and we had shut down the 405.
00:04:04
Speaker
so it became very interesting in regards of now we have all this media attention and it's bad attention let's just be realistic and it's like what parts could we do to correct it and keep in mind that when you're dealing from a third-party vendor standpoint they don't look at the third-party vendor
00:04:20
Speaker
they're looking at a person who has the logo on the side of the vehicle. So that was a portion of what did we do wrong and what can we do to correct our processes to make sure that we're doing things correctly, that we don't have a similar issue going forward. Now keep in mind, errors are going to occur, but how can we avoid these catastrophic failures? Yeah. And you were looking at it from a couple of different angles. It sounds like, I mean, not only the negative brand recognition,
00:04:48
Speaker
but really hitting you in the heart of someone had a loss of life here. Right, and the interesting part was I went out to the scene of the incident and why I'm standing there at the scene, and at this point I don't understand anything about accident investigations or anything along those lines. So I'm standing there just as a person to try to provide information to the cops and to the medical people that are there, and as we're going through the discussions, the person's parents showed up.
00:05:17
Speaker
And as I'm standing there, the parent turns around and says, my kid's girlfriend is pregnant and she's eight months along the road. And I'm not trying to go dark here, but this just kind of added a whole other level into the whole thing. And as I sat there, I was like, we're definitely doing this wrong. What can we do to correct these matters going forward? Yeah, and how was your driver? Did the driver survive?
00:05:43
Speaker
Well, the interesting portion about it is dealing with independent contractors. If you're not vetting the whole process correctly, you can run into some problems. And the way that the home delivery business works is you normally have a, what we call quote unquote, a driver and then an assistant that's inside of the vehicle with them.
00:06:00
Speaker
Well, on this particular day, no one caught it and it wasn't a driver and assistant. It was two assistants that were in there, but one decided to drive. And so he was not quote unquote, a qualified driver. So that's opened a whole other can.
00:06:14
Speaker
Right, right. A lot of layers here. Oh, yes. Yeah, a lot of layers. Yeah, the story that you're telling sounds familiar to an experience that I had in a previous job as well where a driver was involved in an accident on a roadway, same sort of situation. And I ended up helping the driver who was involved in the accident
00:06:40
Speaker
And PTSD from what had happened as a result for him personally as the driver so a different angle In it, you know in addition to what you're talking about So I was asking about the driver and what happened so interesting there so Jay
00:06:57
Speaker
I know. Where do you go from there?
Shift to Safety Integration
00:07:01
Speaker
There's so many elements when it comes to safety. People often ask, what does a safety professional do in a day? Well, we just ticked off a whole bunch on a list of all the different pieces, parts, and fingers that impact day-to-day safety things.
00:07:20
Speaker
and you're an operations person at the time, not even a safety person. So what happened next? You're standing there, you're with that family, you're hearing all of these stories, and you're like, hey, I'm the operations guy, I'm not the safety guy. Yeah, what took off?
00:07:36
Speaker
Well, that's the interesting part, because keep in mind that we're still interacting as a third-party vendor, so we have to contact our primary customer to let them know what's going on. Or we have to turn around and say, this just occurred. I'm sure if you turn on the news, everybody and their brother knows at this particular moment what's going on. And then I'm reporting back to my company of, this is what's going on. We need some kind of insurance representative and investigator where we can have our side of what exactly occurred.
00:08:03
Speaker
And it becomes more and more interesting, and I've thought about this years and years later about, when you look at the whole scenario, do you look at it as, was the, what we'll call the assistant in the wrong for trying to get the work accomplished? Or was he in the right for doing everything possible to get the work accomplished? So it's one of those weird catches on how you have to look at it, and it's all about perspective.
00:08:28
Speaker
yeah absolutely absolutely it is so what happened next for your career well the interesting part is that i'm still involved with operations but i really start looking at operations as a whole i'm still interested but safety is really kind of laying heavy on my heart
00:08:44
Speaker
And I start really getting engaged with another organization that was similar to this blue and yellow one. They were mostly red and no longer in business. But I started interacting with them, but they let me do some safety things that I wanted to do inside of their transportation side of the company.
00:09:01
Speaker
So I started laying those out. And as I was able to lay those out, I kind of saw where things started to change in regards of we're safety minded, but still have operations. So as I drove that forward, we were able to incorporate things, but then of course the bad thing occurs. The market does a shift and goes, we don't like this company that wears red, that looks so much like this blue and yellow company. So they ended up folding. So they ended up folding. So what I ended up doing is I started doing my own consulting company.
00:09:31
Speaker
And I started interacting with companies that do transportation using this scenario of what occurred with one of my previous employers and then trying to go, if we have these issues, how can we correct them? And it had become something very interesting as I went down the path because companies were open to ideas, but not so open when it came to some third party vendors.
00:09:56
Speaker
Sometimes they wanted somebody who had name recognition at that particular portion. I'm relatively young. Let's see. I want to say at the, I'm probably 28 29. So I'm a little kid to how they're viewing it. And I'm going into these very large, large established organizations and they're looking at me going, how is this kid going to know better than I do?
00:10:17
Speaker
Right. So it was interesting trying to get that information out. So I really started tying into, I'll say quote unquote, established people within the industry that would allow me to learn their methodology in regards of how they were actually bringing forward the information on when they were discussing with people from the line level. And we didn't get a lot of C-level people, but we got a lot of directors and regional people at the time.
00:10:42
Speaker
Sure. And so you were essentially being an entrepreneur, but trying to teach yourself at the same time by working through these established organizations.
Broadcasting and Communication Skills
00:10:52
Speaker
Right. And when you have somebody who's established and will use some of the big name, let's say electronic companies that also sell other things that used to be very popular at the mall that are still around, but kind of struggling.
00:11:06
Speaker
They don't really want to hear that or at the time they didn't want to hear the the younger person's perspective because they didn't have as much Influence or knowledge from there from the way that they brought it forward, right? So what did you do to build your your street cred at that time as a young person? I mean, how how did you how did you find a win for yourself? Well, the fun part was that I I found this gentleman that was a older gentleman That was kind of in the twilight of his career and he had a lot of connections with people inside of that industry of transportation
00:11:36
Speaker
And he let me really kind of sit at his footstep in regards of really being able to learn and understand some of the concepts of the business. And I'm talking more along the operation side and how these items could be tied in. Not so, we won't say quote unquote so much from safety, but it was more along the lines of how can it be a financial benefit to an organization for them to go ahead and say, okay, this might make sense because in the backend you could save us X.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah. And you were, you were leaning into your operations discipline then and being able to like, how can I apply this? Right. And what I understood at the time is I had a degree in broadcasting, which has nothing to do with transportation and definitely had nothing to do with the retail market. But I knew that I could package things at the time from an audio content that I could understand that when I'm standing in front of someone where I could actually change their mind.
00:12:28
Speaker
I normally refer to it at the time as theater of the mind in regard to how you're actually drawing the story. It's just kind of this thing about like the old days of radio, the golden age of radio. You didn't really have a TV show. You sat around your radio and you were listening to a story. And if you could develop that story as you were telling it to people, they were very interested in what you had to say.
00:12:49
Speaker
So you were able to leverage your broadcasting background to do that story, but except it was in front of a live studio audience every time, right? Right. The first few times of actually doing something in front of people, when you're used to sitting behind a microphone where you don't get to interact, let's say, quote unquote, with people in person, it becomes very intriguing on how that works because you see the reaction on the face and how are they going to absorb the information and are you going down the right path when they make the face?
00:13:18
Speaker
So it was interesting at first, I kind of chuckled, but looking back at it now and I'm like, I should have taken more public speaking classes at the time, but that was back then. It's a totally different experience when you can see and feel the energy of your audience. Absolutely. And you have to adapt and change your thinking.
00:13:38
Speaker
So let's back up because our audience has just heard you say you have a broadcasting degree and anyone who's listening to your voice right now who's been thinking, man, that guy has a voice for radio. Aha. Well, what I normally tell people is I have a face for radio. I don't have a voice for radio. I have a face for radio. So that's how that works. Now, the funny part was I tell a lot of people I have the voice that sounds like this because my parents spent a lot of money to get me to have my voice developed in this particular pattern.
00:14:06
Speaker
No way. Okay, let's stop there. How do parents develop their child's voice? I want to hear this story. Well, they sent me to college and they let me change major five times without trying to kill me. So this is for sure how this voice ended up turning this way.
00:14:21
Speaker
That's awesome. And so you went to college, you got a broadcasting degree and then you ended up in operations. How did that happen? Well, that's the fun part because at the time I was doing my degree to get my broadcasting degree.
00:14:37
Speaker
But I was going through school, but I was making enough money in the private sector where it didn't make sense to me just to go into broadcasting full time. So I did it from a part time aspect and people would make me job offers. But I was like, at the time I was so young, I was more hung up on the money than what I was for the experience, not thinking, hey, the experience is what's going to guide me down the path. So I kept on returning. I kept on turning down positions and I would just go,
00:15:00
Speaker
Okay, I've been working here as I was going through college, so I'll just stay doing the same thing, not realizing that I was not advancing the career that my parents helped pay for and what I wanted to do in the long run. That's pretty cool.
00:15:15
Speaker
But, you know, it sounds very inventive, Jay, in how you pulled this career together, which I'm guessing is still an evolution to this day, you know, creating theater of the mind and winding safety into it. That's fantastic.
00:15:32
Speaker
So what happened, what happened next? Because I'm guessing, you know, you said you, you continued, you found this mentor, you were working still with electronics industry, but you know, that's kind of waning as well industry wise. So what, where did your path lead next? Well, I'm still continuing down the path of doing transportation. The mentor has really has started to decide to pull back a little bit. He's getting to,
00:15:58
Speaker
He's getting a little bit older and he doesn't want to do so many things where we're sharing information. He's more of, I want to be able to establish my company so far and well that I'm able to sell it, which I totally understand. He doesn't mentor me as much going forward, but he did it for a year, so I can't say anything bad. It was a great experience the whole time.
00:16:19
Speaker
So I decide to go, I decide to say, hmm, maybe the consulting thing's not for me. And I decide to go directly back in to the aspect of just doing operations. So I go to another transportation company and I'm just doing operations from the standpoint of
00:16:34
Speaker
Let's establish ground level stuff. I'm going into this organization and I'm opening brand new locations where they're dropping me inside of these towns. I have, depending on where I was at, six to 12 weeks to have absolutely nothing. I start off with nothing. So I have to find a warehouse, find the independent contractors and establish the place. And we have a deadline of X.
00:16:56
Speaker
So it was a fun job. Yeah, sounds exhilarating. Yeah. My wife really loved that I was gone 90% of the time. It was one of those things that I was like, either I'm going to be married to the road or I'm going to be by myself, one or the other, because I didn't think she was going to stick around with how much time I was actually traveling.
00:17:12
Speaker
Now the interesting part was I started to notice more and more that it was very difficult to get independent contractors to understand. Some of the, we'll say at the time I didn't know the word, but we'll say safety culture on how it should tie in because I'm an independent contractor and nothing wrong about independent contractors, but they treat theirself as their own business because they're their own separate entity.
00:17:33
Speaker
So it's kind of hard to establish of, Hey, the company that I'm representing, meaning me, Jay Allen does this, this, and this, and this is what we're going to hold you to because you're totally separate entity. So it becomes very difficult to say, well, this is the minimum guidelines, but you're an independent contractor and you're not an employee. So it's that very fine line of employee, employer.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yes, so you had to become masterful at explaining that employer-employee relationship piece and the multi-employer worksite policy that OSHA likes to talk about often because it's a thing.
Safety Culture Challenges
00:18:11
Speaker
I mean, it's a thing and people sort of, like you said, like this, I don't work for that company, so I kind of get to do it in my own way and that's not the case.
00:18:20
Speaker
Well, and that's the fun part because how can you turn around and tell somebody, okay, you need to be here by this time. You need to go do this kind of work. You need to wear this kind of uniform. Oh, by the way, you're not an employee. You're an independent contractor. Oh, and we're going to hold you accountable for these kinds of guidelines. It becomes such a weird spot to be in. But as I did that, I learned so much about the different industries.
00:18:41
Speaker
And then I really started noticing on what I'll call the psychology of safety, where it became very interesting when you were interacting with people on, you could have the conversation of what do you do when you see a speed limit sign and they'll be like, well, I go maybe five miles above the speed limit or 10 miles above the speed limit. And you turn around and go, what happens if you see a police officer around that sign? Well, I'll slow down. And so I started to look at it and I go, well, people want rules.
00:19:08
Speaker
but they want rules that are enforced or enforceable, at least at the time that's what I thought, and my mind has really changed since then. But I looked at it in regards of, so the behavior's going to drive the way that people do things. And I say, this is what I wanna do. I wanna get more information about safety, but I don't wanna be a safety engineer. And I turn around and I go, let's go ahead and go back to school, and I'm gonna go ahead and go get my doctorate in psychology.
00:19:37
Speaker
And now the school, both of my parents were in the Marines, which is kind of funny and I still chuckle about that years later. And it was a great thing, but they were done with my college adventures. They were pretty much told me that I was on my own going forward.
00:19:52
Speaker
Now, the interesting part was that the university that I went to had an option of you getting a psychology degree. You get a master's or you get a doctorate, but you didn't have to get both, which I was like, this is weird. And normally it's not the pattern, but I'm just going to go straight for the doctorate. Why not? And use that instead. Now, not realizing at the time the amount of work that you're going to have to put into it, which was always the fun part.
00:20:13
Speaker
but the amount of research that went into it. And I didn't look at it that from the master standpoint, that if you had the masters that, you know, people looked at you and said, okay, you're a practitioner and you understand academics. And when you start getting into the doctorate level, it's more along the lines of you're an academic and you probably don't understand practical as much as somebody who with their masters. And I always go, isn't that funny? I essentially paid all kinds of money to become quote unquote a scientist.
00:20:46
Speaker
I've got to talk about the fact that you had on your show Safety FM, Dr. Todd Luchein, who PhD as well, and he loves to talk about research, and so the two of you together must have really geeked out on that episode. Todd's a dear friend of mine in safety, but this is sounding familiar to me.
00:21:10
Speaker
I have to tell you, yes, it was a great episode. The funny part was, at the time, I wasn't doing what we'll say, quote unquote, the lifestyle, where right now, if you come on to Safety FM, we'll record the moment, we'll record it for the podcast piece, but we're airing it live on the internet stream. So at the time that he came on, we weren't doing that yet. So we spent a good 30 minutes before the interview.
00:21:31
Speaker
Speaking about very interesting stuff But I never told him that I was recording and I felt that it would be wrong on my behalf if I turned around and said okay Well, I recorded that but I'm gonna go ahead and air it but we didn't know that at the time so But it was a very interesting conversation if I ever released the director's cut on some of the podcasts that I've done in the past It might be an interesting conversation for song but we probably would probably still have to edit out some of the companies for sure and
00:21:57
Speaker
I bet he would love to have that. What makes both of you unique in that regard with your PhDs in different disciplines, of course, is that you both have these practical, like you're talking about, these practical pieces of your background to be able to apply to this really academic
00:22:15
Speaker
Education that you that you ended up, you know, taking your career to the next step, you know, so you have your whole background in operations and Todd, Dr. Todd has his in various other arenas as well. And I think that makes for a really wicked combination wicked meaning in a really good and effective manner. So,
00:22:34
Speaker
What did you do with that degree? Well, that's been the fun part. So I decided that operations I still like, but I'm not in love with.
Transforming Safety Culture
00:22:44
Speaker
And I really started to focus on interacting with organizations that were safety minded, but not safety focused. Does that make sense?
00:22:55
Speaker
Explain the difference. So what I mean is that they understand safety, but they're not solely focused on safety alone. And this is going to sound terrible. So what I would do is I would go into these organizations and do research. I know it's terrible. But I'm able to do research because I know they understand the concept of safety.
00:23:15
Speaker
But then it was, how do I change the mentality and the culture inside of there on them focusing on being safety focused? And that it was always an interesting concept because on most job interviews, at least at that time, I wouldn't tell people that I had a PhD or that I was even going for it. And the reason behind it is I thought that it would throw people off. And now that I was trying to be deceiving, it was just, I didn't want to become that scientist or safety nerd guy.
00:23:41
Speaker
So as I did that, it was interesting just to see the different aspects on what companies and organizations do. And this one I will try not to mention colors, letters, or anything to that extent, because I think it would be wrong on my part to do that. Can't wait to hear what you learned. But it was interesting on when you take a look at what the field people are doing and the way that they do the work compared to what somebody behind a desk tells them to do,
00:24:10
Speaker
It becomes something entirely different. So they use the concept or a lot of people say the concept work imagined opposed to the work that's actually performed. And the work imagines is great because somebody sitting inside inside of an office behind a desk saying this is how we should do it. But the work being performed is entirely different out there in the field. And as I looked at it, it was.
00:24:32
Speaker
that conversation you had with the field people where they turn around and they tell you, this is how we're supposed to train you, but this is how we actually do it. And it was entirely different. And I was like, how do we change that mentality from a C level to understand what we're teaching people is not what's being done in the field. And that's where a lot of the excitement occurred inside of part of the organization.
00:24:57
Speaker
Right. And you know, and I guess I found that neither one is necessarily right nor wrong and can and both can learn from one another. Absolutely. However, I have to lean toward the way that it's being performed. If you adapt the safety to the way people are doing things, you can have a greater success. Is that what your is that what your research found? Right.
00:25:20
Speaker
And that's exactly it. Now, I'll tell you, I was in love with behavior-based safety and there's nothing wrong with behavior-based safety. It's something where if you need a starting point, that's a great starting point. But the more I looked into it, the more I felt that it was, you have a better worker, you'll have a safer environment. And I thought that it was conceptually wrong, but that was from my perspective. And I know people have different points of views and they're perfectly fine.
00:25:44
Speaker
I am just telling you what I'll say, my belief in safety. So I just want to make sure that that's clear because everybody's going to look at it differently. But as I looked more and more into the way that it worked, I didn't think that 329 in one was accurate. I can tell you that when I didn't have common sense, I would be on my phone behind the wheel and go, okay, boom, this makes sense. And I've done this over 300 times and I haven't had any kind of issues or major incidents.
00:26:13
Speaker
And I kept on looking at those numbers and said, this doesn't seem correct. But then I found what they call human and organizational performance. And this is a different style of safety. And this human and organizational performance. And this is something that the Department of Energy created after Three Mile Island occurred.
Human and Organizational Performance
00:26:33
Speaker
So that's where it gets even more interesting. And the main concepts here talk mostly about error is normal.
00:26:41
Speaker
The lane fixes nothing. Your system will drive the behavior of the organization. Learning is vital and how your people inside of the organization respond matters. And I was like, if you take those five simple concepts,
00:26:58
Speaker
And it's a philosophy because it's definitely you're not building a program around it. It's a philosophy. And if you can do the shift inside of an organization on looking at those five concepts, you might have a better safety system than what most people do that already have something else. Now, keep in mind that if you are running a behavior based safety system, you have a sunk cost.
00:27:19
Speaker
And this is an enhancement, too. I don't ever look at it or go into an organization to go get rid of behavior based safety. This makes no sense. No, you have a sunk cost. I got you to that point. Now let's just expand on it. And I think that's what a lot of the research that I did or white papers, as I told them, tell people, help me out with in regards of learning that as I was inside of the organizations.
00:27:39
Speaker
Right. It really seems the five concept really seems like a kind of like a roadmap on like a way to like every time you have an initiative, an idea, a process, whatever it is, like how do we apply this? Am I getting that correctly? Yes. That's the funny part that you say that because high performance computing, this is what they use also for programming. They look at how this is going to be normal and that there's going to be a problem.
00:28:09
Speaker
So that's the fun part is that we try to build out these systems that they're error free and we're driving to zero and hey, that's a good they're they're great catchphrases and but I think they're not real. They're not real. No, if you have a zero issues for over a year, I think somebody didn't report something. I think that somebody didn't report a near miss something along those lines. But if you build it into the whole concept of
00:28:33
Speaker
error is normal and we're going to have a failure, but can we build safeguards in place where the error can occur and our system still works? I think you have a different concept as an organization. And the error isn't catastrophic. Absolutely. It's the capacity of being able to accept that the error is going to occur. So if you have an, if you have an incident that occurs, but it falls into that safeguard section, that was a planned event and it went exactly how, how it should. And that's a great thing.
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah. So how did you get to implement these five concepts? Well, that's the fun part because when you sit there and you start having conversations with people that have put all this money into behavior based safety, it's really driving it from the perspective, depending on the organization on how can you tie it into process improvement? Because those five concepts are not safety alone.
00:29:24
Speaker
Absolutely. I'm just thinking of all the different ways we could do this, whether it's just the culture of a company, including processes and lots of them. At the time, I could speak lingo that the operations people cared about, so I tied it in from that side.
00:29:43
Speaker
And that made it a lot easier to go, well, if it's working here, how can it not work there? And then really taking the concept of having the people that are out in the field that are doing the work. And I'm not saying that everything they do is perfect, but they have a good understanding on what's being done and let them teach us as an organization on what we can do better.
00:30:03
Speaker
And how you actually respond to that is going to change the trajectory of your company But you have to have leaders that are open-minded enough to understand and accept the concept understanding that you have an accident and you can't run out there and be like Everybody needs to be retrained because this occurred and we're having a training tonight at five o'clock in the afternoon And we're gonna say it louder to make sure that everybody understands it because it's not gonna change anything
00:30:30
Speaker
Isn't that so true? Did you find some leaders who were evolved enough to take this on? Conceptually, there was a lot of people that said, great idea, let's move forward. But then when the error occurred, that's when the conversation would change.
00:30:49
Speaker
And I'm not saying that you can restrict a leader, but it's doing that shift of, can we bring you back and get you back into that mental model of what we're trying to portray. Right. And rewiring their brain from their instinctual, this is how you react. You know, we're, you know, this is how we've always reacted to an event, a tragedy, whatever it is.
00:31:11
Speaker
So if we change the way that we look at safety, opposed to it just being, safety is the absence of accidents. And this is a definition that I stole from Dr. Todd Conklin. And we take a look at it and go, safety is not the absence of accidents, but safety is the presence of defenses.
00:31:29
Speaker
I think that is a true definition of safety. A concept that he talks about a lot is this. The car industry, especially if you look at Volvo in particular, they have made the determination that they are aware that people are going to get into car accidents. So they make their vehicles with the understanding that you are going to be involved in a car accident at one point or another. But they make their vehicles where they say they're fatality proof. And if you do research on Volvo, they haven't had a car accident where someone's died in it over the last three years.
00:31:59
Speaker
Whoa. Fantastic. Now we all want to buy a Volvo. I know. I tell my wife all the time, you need to get a Volvo. That's where we need to go. I'm looking at making a car purchase in the next year, so maybe thank you for that anecdote. And this was not a sponsorship by Volvo. But I do have an affiliate link on my website. No, I'm kidding.
00:32:23
Speaker
Excellent. So do you have a successful story to share on a leader who bought into this? Well, the thing is that the leaders have noticed, you know, I want to tell you
00:32:36
Speaker
the name of the company just for you to understand, but I can't, that's the problem. But this organization is very, very, very well known, and oh, I can't even tell you the industry, because you'll figure it out so well, just so quick. But they took the concepts and took them back into the organization, and I'm going to tell you, it's not going to change anything overnight. So I just want to be as realistic as possible, because it's not a magic bullet, it's not going to change anything. But they took the concepts and they went back to their board, and they said, this is what we're going to implement going forward.
00:33:05
Speaker
And the gentleman was from a foreign country and he is the CEO of the company and he goes, this is what we're going to establish. We're going to take a risk on this to see if it could change the trajectory. And being as they had already seen the changes inside of the operation side, they decided we're going to do it in safety.
00:33:23
Speaker
The safety program, yes, it has problems, just like any other safety program, because keep in mind, it's a philosophy. So it's changing the people that are out in the field from understanding, yes, this is what we did in the past, but this is what we're moving from, and we're trying to build around, quote unquote, that we know that there's gonna be a problem. And that whole thing of having them self-report was the biggest issue we ran into at the very beginning, because it was,
00:33:49
Speaker
Well, what's going to happen during my review? If you're telling me that right now it's okay for me to self-report, are you going to remember this when my review comes up in three weeks, four weeks, five months? How is that going to affect? And it was really having the organizational leader turn around and say, no, we're going to take a look at it and what happens happens and we're going to learn from it. And keep in mind.
00:34:12
Speaker
numus reporting, error reporting, they're going to go up quite a bit if you go down this concept because you want to have that open and honest conversation.
00:34:23
Speaker
And hopefully you're going to continue seeing severity going down and down and down. Right, but you have to understand that at the very beginning, it's going to spike because you're going to realize right now this drive to zero that you might have been practicing our working line. This is where everything's going to come out of the woodwork and people are going to test it at first. They're going to say, here's one and let's see how you're going to react. And here, maybe here's two. And they want to see your reaction in the moment that if you have a leader lose it, they're going to turn around and go, okay,
00:34:50
Speaker
hold everything back because boom. And then the problem was that when we started to do the change inside of the organization, the majority of the leaders that were there were still being bonused off of how many incidents they had or did not have. So it was very difficult at the very beginning. You had to change a lot of things. It was very difficult at the very beginning because it was like, well, we want you to report
00:35:12
Speaker
but you're going to affect me financially slash personally, because this is going to, you know, my take home money for my bonus and I might get quarterly, yearly, monthly, is going to suffer until we have this built into the system.
00:35:27
Speaker
because this was a conversation, this was a conversation with inside of the organization where the CEO was fine with having the conversation and he ran with me and said, we're going to move forward with it. And it was so weird because it was like, I didn't expect you to have that kind of response. I thought it was going to be the ramp up, the buildup is normally when you're trying to change any kind of culture to this extent, you need to bring in what I call quote unquote, a big name person or somebody from the outside. They might be saying exactly what your safety person is saying, but they need to hear from somebody else.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yes, I often tell people you can't be a prophet in your own land. You have to bring in that prophet even though you're saying the same dang thing. Oh, wow. Did they end up changing the way they incentivize the leadership?
00:36:13
Speaker
or how did that how did that work so that they weren't in congruent well they essentially ended up changing how that actually was handled and they went more from i won't say a performance base in regards of how they were doing in safety it was more along the lines of they started doing it very shortly and there was a select failure there where they started saying okay let's do it based off of the amount of
00:36:36
Speaker
near misses that you return and then they called something else leadership walks, which essentially are audits and the amount of audits you turned in. And then that became a weird thing too, because you would see the lows and then the peaks and the valleys and the spikes because they knew that at a certain time it needed to be turned in.
00:36:52
Speaker
So it was, we'll say it was a learning scenario over two to three years before. I won't say that it was perfect because no system's perfect or no philosophy is perfect, but that where they got it where they understood and it was that aha moment of now we feel like we're going into the correct trajectory of what we should be doing.
00:37:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And so is it what what ended up happening or is it still in process? What sort of Rewards Were found well the way that I look at it is that this is going to always be an ongoing journey I don't think that you ever get to a portion where you're you're the safest company on the planet now Somebody might be able to deem you with that title, but it's something that you're always going to learn but it's
00:37:37
Speaker
Even the way that the interviews are conducted now is so different because you go into this organization and they talk a little bit about human and organizational performance during the interview. Now, you don't understand that that's what's going on during the interview, but it's one of those things where they're making sure that you understand basic foundations before I bring in. It's just great to see overall.
00:38:02
Speaker
Well, congratulations on that. That sounds like a fantastic success story. And if our guests who are listening, if they've not heard of human organizational performance, including these five concepts you were talking about, what resources might you direct them to if they want to dig into this a little more? Well, they want to dig into it a little bit more, depending on how little and how much. Of course, the Department of Energy has volume one and volume two that's available, and that's a free download from their website.
00:38:30
Speaker
And then there's other organizations that are out there. You can go to safetydifferently.com, not owned by me, by the way. Just wanted to make reference to that. And then Dr. Todd Conklin, who I did reference a little bit earlier, he has some pretty interesting books out there titled, once titled The Pre-Accident Investigation. And then there is another book called The Five Principles of Human Performance. They're interesting books. At least you'll start getting and understanding the concepts of how this actually ties in.
00:38:59
Speaker
Thank you for that. Thank you for that. I'm sure our guests are going to be looking into those resources. But I have to give Car Blanche on there because I know that I mentioned that Todd Conklin book. There is an audio format of it and I edited that book or I produced it in the audio format. So if you hear my voice on there, that was not the reason I mentioned it.
00:39:17
Speaker
understood. Dr. Conklin is well known in the safety arena. Absolutely. Yeah. So what happens with the career next and when does safety FM enter into the mix?
Creation of Safety FM
00:39:30
Speaker
Well, the funny part was that I noticed that this worked inside of an organization and I said, hmm, this is something I'm not going to say that we can repackage and sell, but I know that there's other organizations that need it. So I decide that I'm going to shift from being just at a location where I want to turn around and do
00:39:45
Speaker
just normal work every day, I wanna go out and help different organizations, because this organization that I'm working for, I will say quote unquote, the regional director at the time, or what are they titled? The regional director of safety. So I'm overseeing multiple states, and I have to go, there's so many other people that might be interested in this. So I started becoming a safety consultant, and decided that these are the concepts that I can go out there and use. And then I noticed that the fastest way to get to people, especially as of late, is podcasting.
00:40:14
Speaker
It's podcasting and really being able to get information out there. And I was like, is there really a big market for people that want to listen to safety podcast? And I pulled up some and I was like, yeah, they're interesting. But then I looked at it and I went, but there's nothing that's being done in what I call, quote unquote, the radio fashion or the radio aspect of doing safety.
00:40:36
Speaker
and I said, what if I went down that particular path and we start an internet radio station and we do the podcast just to see if we get people to respond? Well, I was surprised. I thought we were just gonna get maybe a couple hundred people and I was way off my rocker.
00:40:54
Speaker
We've got thousands of people to show up to listen to our podcast and to listen to our radio station. And it's just been amazing just in regards to the response, the people that are on there. And because we were able to develop it in a radio show format, we've had great people and great hosts such as yourself that have allowed us to take your podcast and re-air them on safety FM.
00:41:17
Speaker
And it's great because it's not just me talking because that can get kind of old relatively quick, but it gives you different concepts. So you'll listen to somebody maybe in the morning and they might be able to, they might be talking about VPP and you might talk to, listen to somebody in the afternoon and they might be talking about behavior-based safety because what I want it to be is I want it to be one stop shop in regards if you can listen to all things safety, but it doesn't have to only be the version of safety that I believe in. I want it to be different points of views of safety.
00:41:46
Speaker
in different arenas, because it doesn't make sense if I sit around and I talk to you about transportation safety all day, or if somebody talks to you about mechanical failures and mechanical safety. I just wanted it to be so different. And I wanted people from different walks of lives besides being the host, but the guests that are on the episodes. Yeah. And Jay, and why do you think, I mean, I have my own theory on this, but why do you think it became so successful that safety people flock to information?
Evolving Safety Profession
00:42:15
Speaker
Well, I think that what happens is people want to go and get some information and be able to jump out and not have to sit through some long courses. And now that's my opinion. And then you have to also notice that our little safety industry, the demographic is changing.
00:42:31
Speaker
And I'm not going to sit here and say, old people need to leave because it needs to be done. And it's all about the millennials, because sometimes when I started talking, people think that that's what I'm saying. But we have a lot of people that are retiring out of this. And we have a lot of new people that are coming in and you have to actually source the information to the way that they receive it currently.
00:42:50
Speaker
I'm gonna tell you, I'm not the best podcaster, I'm not the best radio host, but I'm able to get information to people in the format that they want it. And I try to bring brand recognition for some of the people that are on, for people to go, okay, well, today we had somebody on and this person was from Tesla.
00:43:09
Speaker
Well, I know Tesla. I like the Tesla car. I know they have a battery system. Well, boom, let's hear what Tesla does. And that's just an example. And it's just being able to get in, get out. And I think that that's what's caused some people to be interested in it. And it's just weird because
00:43:25
Speaker
there's so many people wanting information and I'm sure you you go through the same thing the amount of people that I interact with on a weekly basis just contact me and saying hey I heard this on your podcast could you give me more information or more direction in regards of where can I obtain more information I think it's great because
00:43:42
Speaker
I don't want to just be a place, but I also want to be a reference on where you can come and go. I might not have the answer because there's no way I can answer everything about safety, but I can give you general guidance or direction on where you can go to obtain the information. What's your thought process on it?
00:43:59
Speaker
Yeah, so when you use the term little safety industry, I think that's really where it's at. We do have a pretty small profession, all things considered. I mean, it'd be interesting. Wouldn't it be great to know how many safety professionals are there in North America? I think that would be interesting, but we're a tight-knit group. And so many of us solo operators,
00:44:25
Speaker
need people to share information with us and we're always looking for something and I think you absolutely hit on the next iteration of safety professionals and you're right people are retiring out of the industry and
00:44:40
Speaker
and you know there's a bit of a shortage by way of safety professionals and we have this new demographic that's joining us and they happen to be very technology savvy which i think is why these podcasts are landing with them and they also happen to be
00:44:58
Speaker
Really business savvy as well, and I'm not sure why that's the case, but it seems to be Maybe a shift in in safety professionals as it is and I just don't want to be connected I know when when we came up with this podcast the accidental safety pro it came as a result of a request by our focus group and
00:45:20
Speaker
We have a focus group with Vivid Learning Systems and we're talking about, you know, what to say to professionals need, how can we support them right now? And the resounding request was we just need to be connected to one another because we're, you know, sort of islands often and we go to the conferences. Some people get to go to conferences and when you do,
00:45:43
Speaker
You're kind of mired in the business of the conference and learning what you can learn, but you don't get to connect with other safety practitioners to find out how do they actually do this work. And others just don't have the ability to go to conferences because of cost or it's becoming possibly outmoded in some industries.
00:46:02
Speaker
And so the request was, let's start a podcast so that we can share information with one another and, you know, dip into it, like you say, on your own time, in your own way, and meet you where you are on topics that interest you in your work. And so that's my take on it. And maybe that's similar to, sounds like it's similar to yours. Well, I think it's funny that you mentioned it that way. Cause I also remember your, one of your first episodes when you were talking about the focus group and you turned around and you said that you decided to do a podcast and you had to tell people inside of your group of
00:46:31
Speaker
What is a podcast? Well, actually, they had to tell me. Oh, OK. They had to tell me the focus groups. Right. The focus group said podcast. And I'm like, what is that? I know what a webcast is, but I know what a podcast is. And, you know, my my my marketing department was, you know, very instructive. So this is what a podcast is. Why aren't you listening to them? And and so, you know, I'm like giant podcast fan now. I love podcasts. I probably I know that I listen to some every day.
00:47:01
Speaker
It's just part of my normal routine of educating myself, not all safety podcasts, but other ones as well. I can't believe it. I know, right? So Jay, the burning question then is, do you listen to other podcasts that aren't safety related? Yes, I do. I listen to quite a few podcasts and I listen to a little bit of everything. I'll tell you, probably some of the stuff that I listen to is things that I find interesting and people are going to be like, you listen to what?
00:47:28
Speaker
I mean, I'll listen to anything related to, here we go. A male soap opera version of what we call wrestling. So I'll listen to some of those because those things I find so intriguing, especially if I can find something that's talking about an older wrestling scenario where all these backstories and I don't know why I find it interesting. There's also one that's called The Minimalist and that one just really talks about minimalizing everything inside of your life.
00:47:53
Speaker
There's some that I listen to that are very popular, but they're not quote-unquote kid friendly, but I do like those too. Now, I have to ask you a strange question. I'm gonna kind of go back on the subject a little bit. When you decided to, or when they brought to you, better saying, the whole scenario of doing the podcast,
00:48:11
Speaker
Why did you agree to do with the podcast if you weren't number one familiar with it? And how did you feel about doing a podcast starting off? Because if you're not familiar with it also now you're going to be the face or the voice better thing in this case
00:48:24
Speaker
Yeah, easy answer. And you just turned back into the interviewer, Jay. Sorry about that. No, that's fine. This is excellent. Well, it's because I love to collect stories. I love to collect stories. I love to tell stories. And when we were talking about how could we make this happen, my marketing director said, Jill, what are you going to make the focus of this podcast? You have to have a theme around it.
00:48:52
Speaker
And I said, well, I guess it's what the leading question when I meet a safety professional, a fellow safety professional, the first question I always ask them is how to get into it, because I'm genuinely interested in the story, in the path that led to the career. And, you know, it's it's always a winding road, as we've established, no two people have the same sort of trajectory to get into it.
00:49:18
Speaker
and it often has something to do with something that happened and stirred something deep within them at a heart level that is also the reason why they stay at it. Just like you've told today, you had this event happen that you became part of with this motor vehicle accident and it really stirred something in you that kind of changed the way you operate.
00:49:44
Speaker
And I bet you still think about that and kind of lean into that. And it's maybe still what drives you to do what you do. I would, I would definitely say sure idea because it's, it's that story. And of course, as you know, the, the more you're involved with this, the, the worst things you see is really how it works out.
00:50:02
Speaker
And it becomes interesting because it becomes part of your presentation and what you give to people. And it's not trying to cause an emotional event or to stir the audience, but it's more along the lines of understand if you possibly put some things in place, you can avoid this scenario. And it happened to me and I don't want to see it happen to you.
00:50:22
Speaker
Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah, same for me. Love it. Yeah, so my podcast that I listen to that are not safety related, I listen to one called The Beautiful Writers. It's all about people who are professional writers, some very famous writers, and they talk about their writing discipline and how they kind of work their craft.
00:50:47
Speaker
and when they write and how they write and what resources do they use to write upon and do they type do they use a pencil do they use programs what time of day do they write how do they get creative where do they come up with their stories beautiful writers i follow that one and a really intriguing one lately i've been listening to is one called family secrets it's all about stories as well
00:51:13
Speaker
and another one called Masterclass, people telling their stories. Again, this is the theme. I love listening to stories, I love telling stories, so it's all about people telling their stories. And those are some of my favorites. Well, that sounds very interesting, especially the one about the writers, something I probably need to look into, especially down the arena that I've been going through as of late. I want to reference this to you. Somebody told me this recently, and this might be a little bit off subject, so I apologize. But that term Masterclass,
00:51:42
Speaker
Yes.
00:51:59
Speaker
I do not only maybe because of the way this particular one is framed. I get where that person is coming from because there's an assumption with a title, if you look at it just from that perspective, that there's a linear path. And follow this path, you will become a master.
00:52:18
Speaker
And I guess if maybe if you've lived a little bit of life we all know that you can be masterful at something and find your own way to become that and in fact becoming masterful or being a master of something means that you've really developed it on your own and it's what's inside of you and it's not something that you've taken from someone else.
00:52:44
Speaker
Does that make sense? Does that make sense? Because I don't find it offensive, but the way that the person reacted, I was like, hmm. So you mentioned the title, I said. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, Jade, look at your own career, right? I mean, are you a master at what you're doing? Yes, I would say that you are. And the method that you used to get there, if I were to draw your path right now,
00:53:09
Speaker
it would be sort of this maybe up and down sort of bouncy line where you were you know you started in one place you you used all of your resources that you had whether it was
00:53:26
Speaker
using your education and developing things like the theater of the mind and you found a mentor and then you're like okay and I'm gonna be a consultant but then I'm gonna dip back into industry and I'm gonna practice all these things that I learned and then I'm gonna go back to school and I'm gonna gather a bunch more information and I'm gonna get back into industry I'm gonna be a consultant you know it's just like you kept testing and educating yourself along this path and
00:53:52
Speaker
And it's really fun to listen to the story and kind of how you did that entrepreneurially for yourself in your career. And I think it's pretty, it's pretty remarkable. Well, I appreciate you saying that, but I'll tell you, I look at it and I go, I don't feel myself like a master of anything. I still feel that I want to learn as much as possible. I try to get as much information as I can day in and day out. And I'm always doing some kind of research or studying on maybe a subject that I don't understand or something new that I can use
00:54:21
Speaker
for the consulting services side of the business. Right, same, same, absolutely. I think my partner in life has hung this sign in my house one day.
00:54:36
Speaker
And he said, my name is for me. He wrote it for me. He's like, I'm Jill James. And he wrote in my age at the time. And it says, and I'm just getting started. And that's really true. So I look at that often. And I'm like, yeah, I'm just getting started. I'm continuing on my path, as are you. So how many years have you had to sign up?
00:54:59
Speaker
You didn't give it age, I'm just asking a question. No, I'm right. I'm trying to think because I've scratched out the age and I keep rewriting it. And I think four times I've rewritten my age on that note. So that happened a couple of years ago.
00:55:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, right. Anyway, so Jay, speaking of what's next. Yeah. What iteration of life are you on now?
Expanding Safety FM Network
00:55:23
Speaker
What's next? What's next for you? Well, right now I've been putting a lot of focus on the safety FM network piece in regards to really trying to get in new hosts onto the, onto the network. That way we can have different aspects on there. And what I've really been able to do as of late, which I think is kind of interesting is we're able to go to some of these conferences and we're able to do keynotes.
00:55:43
Speaker
and actually have them broadcast on safety fm so that's been pretty fun i'm being able to go out on the road and being able to interact with people and do those keynotes i don't do the keynotes i'm saying other people doing the keynote that we just hear them and then some of the other aspects and the people that i get to meet so i've been doing a lot of that and then of course the standard consulting business as it goes but
00:56:05
Speaker
It's just interesting seeing the interaction with people and how they're interested in something that originally when it started, I started off in a little room inside of my house and now it's become this monster that I'm more affiliated now to being part of safety FM than my own name. So I just kind of find it kind of interesting.
00:56:27
Speaker
That's pretty cool. Good for you. Congratulations on that. What an interesting and great career path. That continues. And I'm going to have to tune in and listen to some of those keynotes. I'm fascinated by listening to people who deliver keynote addresses. I love to listen to how people craft messages. I'm just as interested in the message as I am in the way that people pull them together.
00:56:52
Speaker
Right, and the interesting part is, of course, getting that message in front of however many people are at our ex-conference, and really being able to relate probably to a good 90-95% of people that are in the audience. Because those are how those things are driven, and without doing it, without showing any kind of nerves,
00:57:10
Speaker
and making it sound authentic every single time you do it. Cause I've been to some conferences where the keynote is, you know, I might've been at one and the person was the keynote there and then went to another one and they had, they were the keynote somewhere else and it's the same story, but they make it sound like an authentic original story every time that they present it. Like it was the first time they ever said it.
00:57:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's a gift. That's a gift and it takes absolute practice and yeah, it's just fun. It's fun to do that. I've had the opportunity to deliver a number of keynotes in my career and it's so fun. It's so humbling and you're right. The amount of energy that you have to bring to
00:57:56
Speaker
to bring it to the audience and understand that they have never heard this before even though you've said the words over and over again and and what it kind of takes to do that is um yeah it's it's it's hard it's work but it also is so rewarding and so fun at the same time
00:58:14
Speaker
I almost look at it like a comedian out on the road where they're actually going out practicing their craft before they have a major recording that's actually being done. That's probably about the best way that I could use as an example, at least in my head in regards of doing it. And as of late, I've been doing more and more speeches and I noticed that there's an art to the whole thing. And believe me, there's some people that are excellent at it. I won't say that I struggle at it, but it's just one of those things where I'm doing it and I'm just like, this is so different than sitting behind a microphone.
00:58:43
Speaker
It absolutely isn't art, and maybe Jay, maybe we're gonna have to do a whole podcast just on the art of presenting, right? Well, I have a really good source that, you know, I recently put you in contact with that, you know, that's what she does. She actually outsources people in regards of doing the actual speeches and that kind of stuff. And she's a very interesting person because she deals with so many different, what I call, quote, unquote, personalities. Yeah, right, and curating that, yeah.
00:59:12
Speaker
Well, Jay, before we end our time today, I want to make sure since we've mentioned Safety FM a number of times, tell our audience how to find the station and the pocket. Well, we have different ways on how you can actually get to us. You can actually come to safetyfm.com. If you want to stream us live, you can go to safetyfm.live. We're also available on the inside of the Apple Store under Safety FM, which will get you directly into our app and inside of the Google Play Store.
00:59:39
Speaker
and we're kind a little bit of everywhere. If you're not sure on where to find us, like I said, safetyfm.com, or you can always come to our Facebook page, and we are listed right there in Facebook, and you can stream us live right there inside of the Facebook player.
00:59:52
Speaker
Fabulous. Thank you, Jay. It's just so important that we continue to help our industry and keep us all together, our little safety industry, as you put it, so that we can all learn from one another. And I really appreciate the resource that you're providing. And I so appreciate you sharing your story today, finally. I loved hearing
01:00:13
Speaker
Well, Jill, I appreciate you having having me on. And number one, I love what you're doing in regards of the aspect on your how you're doing it and the way that you make people feel when you're doing the interview. It's like having a conversation where they've known you for a while. And the way that you bring it up in the whole simple matter of. Did you become a safety professional by accident? Just how you start that off. It just makes it's just that comfort level on how that interview is going to go going forward.
01:00:39
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. And thank you all so much for joining in and listening today. And thank you for the work that you all do to make sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. Special thanks to Will Moss, our podcast producer. You can listen to all of our episodes at vividlearningsystems.com or subscribe in the podcast player of your choosing.
01:01:02
Speaker
on YouTube or on your website or at vividlearningsystems.com. If you have a suggestion for a guest, including if it's yourself, please contact me at social at vividlearningsystems.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.