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#58: SAFER Update with Lorraine Martin - COVID-19 Special
63 Plays5 years ago
In this episode, podcast series host Jill James is joined by Lorraine Martin, president and CEO of the National Safety Council. Lorraine returns with an update on the SAFER task force. SAFER stands for Safe Actions For Employee Returns. This task force, comprised of world-leading companies, is helping employers prioritize and plan for effectively bringing their employees back to work safely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Come listen and see what has happened since we last saw Lorraine in episode 55.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:10
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by Vivid Learning Systems and the Health and Safety Institute. This is a special edition of the podcast, which was recorded on May 26, 2020. My name is Jill James, the Health and Safety Institute's Chief Safety Officer, and today I'm joined by Lorraine Martin, who is President and CEO of the National Safety Council.
00:00:30
Speaker
If you think you've inadvertently clicked on the wrong episode because it seems like you just heard from Lorraine, I assure you, you are in the right place.
SAFER Task Force Overview
00:00:39
Speaker
Lorraine is back to give us an update as to how NSC and the Safer Task Force has met the goals Lorraine spoke of in episode 55 just one month ago. So Lorraine, welcome back. Thank you for having me.
00:00:54
Speaker
Can you remind our audience what is SAFER? I mentioned that as an acronym, but what is it and why is it needed? Sure. So SAFER stands for Safe Actions for Employee Returns. And as you just said, we started this about just shy of a month ago when it was very clear that we knew employers were going to need help to prioritize and plan for what they would need to do to bring their employees back to work safely across America and across all kinds of different industries in different kinds of work environments.
00:01:24
Speaker
And the centerpiece of SAFER is a task force that came together from Fortune 500 companies, leading safety organizations, various government agencies, public health entities, all dedicated to sharing whatever best practices they had and enabling the task force to sort of break up into smaller groups and then bring those best practices together, aggregate them, and then be able to provide playbooks or sort of roadmaps.
Task Force Composition and Resources
00:01:50
Speaker
for folks to use as they were bringing their employees back to work safely. So in some sense, sort of the conglomerate safety voice for workplaces to be able to navigate this very, you know, unexpected and complex in many ways, challenge that we all have to enable us. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like an amazing task force. Are there companies that are still joining in the effort? There are. So we have over 70 entities that are now part of the task force.
00:02:20
Speaker
Many of them, as I said before, are companies, but others are from different walks of life as well. And I think we just, as recent as this last Thursday, had two more folks join us. OK, very good. So people can reach out to you if they're interested in joining. Absolutely. Yeah, very good. Very good. So tell us more. You had mentioned that the task force has accomplished a lot today. Tell us more about what it is or a little bit about these playbooks.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, so the task force has been working diligently to really understand what could be most useful for the widest variety and impact within industry in the US. And first and foremost, we looked at all of the different sort of frameworks that big companies were using, especially ones that had global operations, and they were already coming back online in China, France, Italy, and asking, what did you need to do that? What kinds of categories of safety procedures and
00:03:19
Speaker
and practices were needed and we broke it down into six main categories. Physical environments, you know, how to create the environment so you can be safe. Medical issues such as temperature taking, acetation, let's get that word wrong, statements of whether or not you've been ill and where you've been, issues such as testing and tracing. The third one being mental health and a lot of plans had this and some didn't.
00:03:46
Speaker
Really asking yourself how are your employees in their mental state, in their well-being, in their understanding about these very big transitions of perhaps working from home or having other sort of personal demands on them right now with kids in school at home or parents to be taken care of. Just being afraid. Just being afraid of their own safety and health, absolutely.
00:04:11
Speaker
So mental health is the third. Communication needs a fourth. The good companies really have some very comprehensive ways of communicating where they are, what's changing, what their employees need to do differently. External considerations having to do with things that are happening around you that you may not control within your business. And then finally, employment and human resources tasks. So these six categories
00:04:35
Speaker
looked like the most important aspects of really good frameworks. And so we put them together in their own little framework. We got the best practices under each of them. And then we issued a framework that is the safer framework that then you can use to either bounce off a playbook that you've already developed or perhaps to provide the bones of your own playbook of how to ensure you have the best practices in those six key areas as you build
00:05:02
Speaker
as you build your come to work or return to operations playbooks.
Safety Playbooks and Universal Actions
00:05:07
Speaker
That was published since we last talked. In addition to that, we also published four key sort of tailored playbooks that have to do with the environment you're in. So ones for office spaces, ones for closed industrial settings, one for open industrial settings, and then the fourth for public spaces or places where you're interacting with the public
00:05:27
Speaker
or customers that you really have no control of, but you need to make sure that they're safe and you're safe as well. So it's the six areas in the framework. And then we slice for these four key kind of holistic work environments so that you had some very specific ways of navigating the uniqueness of those work environments. And those have all been published and put on the website. Folks nationwide have been using them to, as I said, either create their own playbooks or to have it as a touchstone
00:05:57
Speaker
a playbook they may have to make sure they've got everything that they need. Yeah, perfect. I've had time to take a look at some of the playbooks, and they really are great, Lorraine. I specifically was looking at the public one because a person in my life has leadership in a place of worship, and that's one of the industries that the public one touches on.
00:06:21
Speaker
And so I thought it was really great to be able to compare what NSC has put together with what their particular individual organization has put together and then what the state, you know, where the operation is taking place has put together. So you can kind of see like, is there anything we missed here? And like, what's common with these threads to really, really help employers shore up success for themselves right now?
00:06:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'm so glad that that was useful. And, and I hope that others do the same, that they use it as a, as, you know, kind of a gauge to make sure that they've got all the things that they need to keep, not only their employees, but as, as you said, in the public settings, all the folks that they come to interact with. Yeah. Yeah. Lorraine, what else has the task force been accomplishing? It sounds like this is a lot. Has there been more as well?
00:07:10
Speaker
Yeah, so all of those materials were put together by subgroups under the task force. So folks from all walks of life, medical, legal, HR, safety, came together to help create those. They also then stepped back and said, are there just some things that we just have to all do? Something universal that as you're looking at your actions that you can just
00:07:29
Speaker
You know, have on a little card and say to myself, did I take care of all of these? And we've been now putting out sort of just social media reminders on each of these just to sort of tickle everybody a bit and say, if you haven't done this, make sure you've got something here. And they're just as easy as I'm going to list them for you. Everybody needs to have a phasing approach. They need to know that they're that they've are transitioning to work aligned with the risk and the exposure for the for the people and for the work that needs to be gone. So phasing.
00:07:57
Speaker
Everybody needs an approach for sanitizing, making sure that their employees return to a workplace that is safe, that is clean, and that gets sanitized over time in order to protect them, whatever the situation may be, including physical distancing. Screenings, making sure you have a health screening process, however that might be for your risk profile, both for your employees and in some cases even for the public you might be interacting with.
00:08:24
Speaker
Hygiene, creating a plan to help sick employees, and what are you going to do if that happens in your environment? And how are you going to ensure that you can handle it on the spot? Tracing, for proper contact tracing steps, if you do have a worker that gets sick, and you have to understand how it might have addressed or impacted other aspects of your operation. Mental health, as we talked about before, training,
00:08:48
Speaker
Engagement plans for communicating and notifying your employees if things change because they will change. This is something that none of us can say we have all the answers today and certainly we're learning every day more not only about the disease, but what we need to do. So engagement plans communication and then assessments, making sure that you have a way
00:09:09
Speaker
of understanding how to assess your many factors for your organization. So those are just 10 kind of easy ways to say, am I looking at my challenge of being at work safely from these universal actions and making sure that they fit for my environment, for my employees, and for where I am in the risk profile. So just another sort of tip sheet.
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, it really sounds like this is something that can scale up and down for both small employers and large ones as well. It doesn't sound like something that's for a specific size of company. Yeah, that's really important to us because we have 16,000 members at the council and we really also want to consider any business in the US, you know, our customer as well to make sure that we're giving
00:09:53
Speaker
materials and guidance to anyone from a two-shop garage shop with two people there to 20,000 employees that are working in some kind of manufacturing environment. So it was important. And you do have to scale it to your risk, to your environment, to the operation that you have, ensuring that you're looking at your unique environment, literally your environment, the doors, the aisle ways.
00:10:22
Speaker
You know, if you have a manufacturing line, how far are people apart? Can you make it so that they can be further apart? All of those things are unique to your situation, but we're hoping that these playbooks and these tip sheets really do transcend some of that and really give you a guide no matter how big, small, where you're, how many sites that you have, and what operation you're conducting, they can give you a good framework to go forward safely.
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Lorraine, what advice do you have for businesses that are reopening or are planning to reopen soon?
Guidance for Businesses and Employee Well-Being
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, the first and foremost thing is to make sure that you're listening to your local guidance, city, county, state, federal, to assess your level of risk. It's not all the same. And it's really important for you to know the community that you're in, the rules that they've established, and specifically how the disease and the virus is progressing in your area. So first and foremost, start there. And my recommendation is follow the recommendations that are being provided.
00:11:24
Speaker
That's hard to do when we're all itching to get back outside and get back to what we're doing. And we want all these businesses to be back doing the thing that they love and the joy that they have of serving whatever mission they serve. At the same time, we need to do so safely because we really don't want this to be something that would take a step forward and then two step backwards. And if we don't do this carefully, it's likely that that could happen.
00:11:47
Speaker
And we will have cases of that. But make sure your physical workplace is safe, not only for the virus and the extra precautions we need, but safe in general. We know what safety looks like. I'm talking to, you know, the accidental safety podcast here. And we know that there's all kinds of things that we used to have to remind ourselves every day to keep safe and to make sure that we are aware. So double down on those. Make sure you're using all the PPE you always used before and then the additive
00:12:17
Speaker
protections that we're going to have today. So it's really important that employers really look at those procedures, monitor your situation, not only for standard health and standard safety, but for this new aspect and then be able to react. You might not get it right and you're going to have to adjust something. I was telling someone the other day, we're going to have to have a lot of humility
00:12:39
Speaker
as safety professionals. We're so used to knowing the answer and saying, you wear these steel-toed shoes and I'm pretty darn sure I got you protected. We don't know all that. We don't have all the answers. Right. Great word. In fact, it was used by Dr. Scott Geller in the last podcast that was released about humility and how it's so important right now. So thank you for that reminder as well.
00:13:07
Speaker
So, Kevi, in terms of consequences, what precautions, what advice would you offer for employers? What do you think could happen if employers aren't enforcing their rules or their jurisdictional rules when they begin to reopen? The most severe consequence is that we could put the health and lives of our workforces
00:13:32
Speaker
around the world and those that they serve at risk. And there's nothing more important than making sure that the people that are doing the things that your enterprise exists to do and that you, again, have joy bringing to the world, that they're able to do that safely. That's what we know every day and we have to know and double down and practice it even more so today when we have this health crisis in front of us. So we must prioritize safety to prevent both injuries and make sure that we're saving lives. So when I think about the consequences, that's where I start.
00:14:01
Speaker
We need to do this safely. We want our economy up and running, but for the first time across our entire nation, our economy's success is going to be based on how well we keep our employees and those they interact with safely.
00:14:17
Speaker
as they navigate this, and that's our job. So the consequences are big, but they also are great in a positive way if we can do this successfully so that we can get the engine running again. That's right. That's right. How do you feel geographics and the geographic nature of the virus and unique state plans add to all of this complexity?
00:14:40
Speaker
You know, what does NSC recommend or any other additional plans you have for companies to navigate, particularly those national ones? Yeah. And even since the few weeks since we last talked, Jill, it has changed so much. And thankfully, you know, things are starting to progress forward. There are places where the disease is beginning to abate, which is wonderful.
00:15:04
Speaker
But it isn't uniform across the US, and it's not even uniform across states. It doesn't know state or county boundaries.
00:15:11
Speaker
And usually, we like to implement solutions for safety and say, here's the answer and do it the same everywhere. And this isn't one where uniformity really is available to us. So we have to get the best practices. We have to be cognizant of state and local guidelines and current situation. And then we have provided some tools where you can go on. And we usually use the John Hopkins database, which shows
00:15:36
Speaker
where have the infections and death rates been and what kind of procedures are now in place. We also are partnering with the National Governors Association who are part of the task force because they have the central database for all the governor's rules and regulations and recommendations. So you've got to kind of cross correlate all of that and hopefully at NSC on the website we've made that easier than it might have been otherwise.
00:15:59
Speaker
Um, to, to be able to look at that, but my advice is follow the local rules. If you're in multiple states or multiple counties, you know, have someone help help, you know, keep track of all of that, because it isn't one size fits all. And we all need to make sure that we're doing this at the right time and the right speed based on what's going on for you, wherever you happen to operate.
00:16:20
Speaker
Yeah, and that's not necessarily news for employers who have been operating under federal or state OSHA jurisdictions. It's just adding another layer right now. It's really great to hear that you are curating and working with the, did you call it the Governor's Task Force?
00:16:38
Speaker
It's the National Governors Association, so yeah, it is a group that provides sort of a one-stop to get some of the advocacy and positions of the governors, and it's really, really helpful. Yeah, how assuring. That's fabulous. So what do you think are some of the top things employers should be thinking about right now, but maybe they're not.
00:17:01
Speaker
You know, you touched on it when you asked about the mental health side and I put that on our list. It's really important that you understand how much stress you yourself might be under as an employer, as a safety leader, the folks that you're leading and that are coming back to work and ensuring that
00:17:19
Speaker
You know, they're safe. They want to know that they're safe when they come back to work. So one of the things that I ask for you as you are looking at this, and many of our employees have had to be at work this entire time. You know, they aren't returning to work. They've been working. They've been in the grocery stores. They've been behind the drivers in our trucking and transportation business, our health care workers. But if you have had the ability to have your folks work from home or work in a different location to keep them safe, ask yourself,
00:17:46
Speaker
while you're returning them to a traditional work environment and when you really need to. Because some of that might cause you to just say, you know, I don't have to go back to what it was before. If I can add a degree of safety, let's keep people out a little bit longer. If I can still get the business done.
00:18:03
Speaker
Not everybody has that leisure, but where we do, we can reduce the complexity and focus on those environments where they really do need to be back into their traditional work environment. So you might not be thinking of it that way, but ask yourself why before you say when and then put those two together. So mental health and then really doing this when you need to do it.
00:18:25
Speaker
You're going to see a lot of different things about how your employees are behaving, what's on their mind, be patient. We talked about humility before because we're not going to always get it right. And when we don't have it right, we got to be quick to say, you know, we didn't know we needed to do X and we need to add that in and, you know, sorry, we didn't have it before, but now we understand this is important.
00:18:46
Speaker
We didn't know for a while that this virus could be communicated by folks who are asymptomatic. That changes a lot of dynamics for us. And just being able to say now we realize you may not look sick and you may not even
00:19:00
Speaker
uh, perceived to be sick with a temperature. And I still have to figure out how I make sure that you're safe to be interacting with other people. And we're going to learn more. Hopefully it will help us navigate this. But, um, you know, I really think it's important for you to be aware of your employees, meet them where they are, listen to them, make sure that you're, you're asking why and then when about returning to work environments. And finally be looking for those silver linings. Safety's top of everybody's mind right now.
00:19:29
Speaker
There's got to be ways that we can leverage that and just make this something that we don't lose, that we care about the health and safety of workers like we've never done before and we continue to do in the future. So that's one I would add to the list as well. Very good. Yeah, and you know, those silver linings is
00:19:48
Speaker
as hard as that sounds is when we're on this pause and really thinking like you had said is there a different way to do things do we need to rush back into it and some of those silver linings might be you know a reassessment and discovery of a way to do work that's more efficient or different or better for the consumer and the employee and you know we're a country of ingenuity for certain and there might be some really
00:20:16
Speaker
Excellent ingenuity that comes from this as well as one of those silver linings Yeah, so keep our eyes out and make sure you put them in your pocket so you don't lose them
00:20:23
Speaker
That's right.
PPE Importance and Resources
00:20:26
Speaker
Considering of the things that we may be taking in and out of our pockets these days, it might be personal protective equipment. What would NSC like to share with regard to personal protective equipment to employers right now? Yeah. There's a well-documented now understanding of some of the things that we need to have in place and that employees should do. Clearly, those are well articulated in our frameworks and I don't need to report those.
00:20:52
Speaker
Depending on the, the job site, you know, again remember that there's a lot of other PPE that needs to be continued to be worn goggles and garments and other kinds of things that have been in our workplace for some time and in some cases can help
00:21:07
Speaker
with the virus control as well, in addition to the standard PPE that's kind of been added to all of our lists. In addition to that, the availability of some of the PPE that we're all looking for is still an issue for a lot of work environments. So that's something we all need to be cognizant of. And it's certainly one of the areas the task force is going to continue to look at. So as I point you to going forward, the task force is going to be looking at where are some of these headwinds?
00:21:37
Speaker
these things that are kind of more holistic or systemic that are getting in the way of us implementing these frameworks in a way that's effective and making sure that we have available PPE, that it's trusted PPE and it's in the hands of the folks that need to use it is one of those potential headwinds. So it's just one of about a half a dozen of things that we've said, you know, even though we know what to do, we need to make sure that people have what they need and that the, you know, whether it's materials or
00:22:05
Speaker
regulations or guidance from federal governments. So we're going to continue to look at those things that might slow us down a bit. And I don't have that list for you now, but maybe in a couple of weeks I will. And we'll happily have you back. Lorraine, is there anything else you'd like to share about the work of the task force safer?
00:22:25
Speaker
No, she said there's anything you need either to test your plans or to build one if you haven't haven't done that. So please come to the safer website at nsc.org slash safer and pick up and use anything that can be of use to you.
00:22:39
Speaker
This will evolve, so come back again because it could be that things change and you may need something in a couple weeks that you didn't know you needed today and we may have a resource for you. So we're really just glad to be able to be back with you, Jill, and to share this with everyone. We so appreciate our task force. They have done all this heavy lifting here to help us make sure that we had
00:23:00
Speaker
So as you said, some tools that really can transcend size, scale, and industry so that we all can have the learnings of some of the best practices. So thank you for having me. It's always a joy. Yeah, thank you. And we will include in the show notes a link to the assets that you're talking about. And your team has done such an excellent job of curating them and making them so accessible. It's not difficult to navigate the website at all. So thank you so much. And thanks for coming back on the show.
Conclusion and Engagement Call
00:23:30
Speaker
And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you'd like to join the conversation about this episode or any of our previous episodes, you can follow our page and join the Accidental Safety Pro community group on Facebook. If you're not subscribed and want to hear past or future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like.
00:23:57
Speaker
You can also find all of our episodes at vividlearningsystems.com slash podcast. You can go ahead and leave a rating and review us on iTunes so that we can connect the show with more and more safety professionals like you and I and Lorraine. If you have a suggestion for a guest, including if it's you, please contact me at social at vividlearningsystems.com. Special thanks to Will Moss, our podcast producer. Until next time, thanks for listening.