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#98: How to Use Data Analysis to Improve Your EHS Program
114 Plays2 years ago
There are many hats to be worn as a safety professional, and data collector/analyzer is often one of them. Jill sits down with Arianna Howard to better understand how safety data analytics and software systems play a role in the EHS environment. Arianna is a Manager of EHS IT Data Platforms and Digital Software Systems in the electric vehicle manufacturing industry.
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Transcript
Introduction of Ariana Howard, EHS IT Data Platforms Manager
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome back. This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode is recorded November 28th, 2022. My name is Jill James, HSI's chief safety officer. And today my guest is Ariana Howard. Ariana is manager of EHS IT data platforms in the electric vehicle manufacturing industry and joins us today from Denver. Welcome to the show, Ariana.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hi, Jill. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. You are so welcome. So where would you like to start your story?
Ariana's Unexpected Start in EHS
00:00:42
Speaker
How far back in the way back machine does your EHS life begin? I think we can start in college. It's probably a pretty good place. OK. So I was kind of a lost college student. Didn't really know what I wanted to do. Probably switched my majors about five might be an understatement.
00:01:03
Speaker
And, you know, jump from pre-med to pharmacy to chemical engineering and somehow ended up in the environmental science program at the school that I went to, which, you know, was in the south and the coast and was very focused on like soil science, you know. But, you know, we did a little bit, it was mostly environmental focused and I was on our school job board one day and I saw HSE intern.
00:01:30
Speaker
And all I saw was $18 an hour, and I was like, yep, don't know. Sold. Don't know what this acronym stands for, but I'm going to go find out. It was only a few minutes from where I was living at the time and seemed to be kind of, you know, I was a junior in college, so it seemed to be, you know, something interesting. So I went to the interview and obviously, you know, learned what HSC stood for.
00:02:00
Speaker
wow well i mean that's that's the thing with our profession right like that's exactly what mine was i saw it on an internship thing and nobody's gonna want that and you're just telling me they even gave you an interview and you didn't know what it stood for yep i was like let me go do some research and
Career Growth through Challenges and Opportunities
00:02:17
Speaker
figure this
00:02:17
Speaker
out a big benefit for me was that I've been in the military since I had the day after I graduated high school so people tend to see that on a resume and they're like oh you seem like a responsible human adult so we can teach you everything you need to know and that's really how it started
00:02:35
Speaker
I was basically, you know, we just had one, you know, HSC person at the site, the manager, and I was kind of doing glorified data entry at the beginning. And then, you know, I worked in oil and gas, you know, we manufactured parts that we sold to oil and gas companies. And not, you know, every few years, there's a downturn, right? Gas prices go up and people get laid off. And I'll never forget one day I walked in,
00:03:03
Speaker
and the office was empty where my boss normally sat. And then I got a call from HR and I was like, oh no. And I went in there and they were like, so we would like to keep you and we basically need you to do his job. And that kind of propelled me into what was actually a specialist position.
00:03:28
Speaker
I was still going to school at the time and I ended up doing that for about a year and a half and I learned a lot. I spent a lot of time with plant manager, spent a lot of time on a plant floor, understanding what a good manufacturing environment looked like.
00:03:43
Speaker
Looks like and that kind of started everything for me. So it was for me. It was purely like I need to pay bills But then I kind of realized you know and and I'm from South Louisiana so I was working, you know in a in a manufacturing plant outside of the main city and
00:04:03
Speaker
You know, and I was the only person that looked like me, you know, these are all guys that that have a lot of, you know, a lot of experience a lot of machinery experience. And by nature, you know, know what they're doing and are pretty safe and so who am I to come in and say, Well, you need to be wearing this and you need to have this PPE on you need to do this and we're going to have this safety committee meeting so it was
00:04:26
Speaker
You know, a huge challenge, but also I learned so much because I kind of, I've learned in the military, you kind of shut up and learn from the experts. And, and that, and that I would say was, I couldn't have asked for like a better foundation to my career to, to, to kind of start there. So.
00:04:46
Speaker
That was really good, that was really good, the learning that you got from the military. So you were doing this when you were between like junior, senior year in college? Yep, yep, I was still in college. And your major, then did it change when you jumped into this job?
00:05:07
Speaker
No, I know that like, you know, EHS
Navigating Job Changes and Importance of a Good Resume
00:05:10
Speaker
or like safety degrees are more common now. But at my school, that was kind of the closest thing to it. Yeah. And, and so no, I just stayed in my major and finished. And that was kind of the turning point of like, I was guaranteed a job there pretty much, you know,
00:05:27
Speaker
Um, but they only operated there. They were headquartered in Houston, um, Texas, and we wanted to move. So I had to, you know, kind of put my, put my time in and say, um, I'm departing. Um, and then I moved to Denver, Colorado with absolutely no job, um, in a net and trying to figure out what the next step was from there. Yeah. So how did you figure that out? What did that, what did that process look like?
00:05:55
Speaker
Oh, it looked, it looked about, you know, 600 different applications if I went back and looked through my Gmail. Truly, I knew, I mean, I worked in the service industry, I've been in the military, like, I knew I could move here and make money to pay bills. And I didn't want to, you know,
00:06:14
Speaker
I really did take the first thing that came and that was kind of this administrative EHS position for a government contractor. But really what it really did just gave me time to find a job that I wanted. And I realized actually after a few months that I needed to kind of refocus and revamp my resume. And I swear the moment I did that, I got like three calls.
00:06:40
Speaker
in one week. So having a good resume should not be underestimated for anyone looking to break into the field. Right. So anyone who's listening right now who's like, I'm in the process of updating my resume, what were some of those key things that you changed, Ariana, if you remember? I think so coming out of college, new grads tend to
00:07:06
Speaker
really just focus on the things that they did in school which I think you know that's important but when you're looking for that like first career job like I mean any kind of internship during college is obviously gonna set you apart so I highly recommend that if I didn't have that experience I don't
00:07:26
Speaker
I don't know who knows where I would be today. So I highly recommend that. And then instead of putting 50 projects that you did, maybe pick one or two that you can actually talk about in your interview. And I'm sure we'll talk about this later, but I think especially if you're doing anything in data, anything that can be manipulated into a project, that's experience. It doesn't necessarily have to be real world use.
00:07:54
Speaker
I always say less is more. Sometimes we feel the need to fill up our resumes with a lot of things and accomplishments. And it just gets bogged down and too hard to read. And so, you know, less is more. And the further you get into your career, the harder that is to do because you want to talk about everything awesome that you've done.
00:08:11
Speaker
you know, I would really say just kind of focus on any internship or co-op experience that you may be able to get and then one or two projects and you know, you don't probably have to list every award you got for the duration of your entire college career. I can say that we get so much pressure about like your GPA and like what school you into in this degree and I'm sure for certain positions in certain places like
00:08:38
Speaker
that is super important. I don't think anyone ever asked where I went to college or what my GPA was. I mean, I've clearly finished school and I have a master's degree now, but, you know, we get tied down into the details. And at the end of the day, it's, are you willing to learn? Are you ready to learn? And, you know, are you interested in this? Right. Right.
Passion for EHS and Endless Learning Opportunities
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you for that insight. That's really good. Hey, I want to back up for a second to that job in Mississippi when you kind of first got that
00:09:08
Speaker
EHS, HSE role kind of sprung on you. What intrigued you about it as you learned more? Almost. I'm kind of somebody that likes to continually learn and likes a challenge. And I think that there is no limit to the amount of information that you can learn when you're in environmental health and safety.
00:09:34
Speaker
And any job you work is going to be different, right? You might be doing 50% environment, 50% safety, 75, 25. So that kind of depends. I think for me, it was like figuring out what was going on because when the layoffs occurred, I hadn't really, you know,
00:09:53
Speaker
I hadn't really learned that much, not in a negative way, but I didn't really know what I was doing. I was expected to like, at the very least, be able to participate in the
Embracing Technology in EHS
00:10:02
Speaker
monthly manager meeting and report on our safety metrics. And I didn't really know where to start because I was just doing a lot of administrative stuff. So I literally started just going through his office, opening up folders, figuring out what permits we had, what we didn't have.
00:10:19
Speaker
And I leaned a lot into our corporate management, but that had also changed. So there was just this huge turnover and we're all just trying to figure it out. And I think at that point, I really, really leaned into the people and leaned into the shop supervisors and built that connection with them. And, you know, as much as I like say, oh, I work in tech data and, you know, I'd rather like be heads down doing, building a dashboard and like being in a meeting.
00:10:47
Speaker
I do enjoy working with people and I think that that drove a lot of it. I genuinely enjoyed going to work and like working with those people every day and I think that that was a big part of it. Wonderful, wonderful. So you move to Denver, you send out 600 resumes. You get a bite. Does that take you into the electric vehicle industry where you are today?
00:11:13
Speaker
No, no, not at all. So I actually, you know, was able to fortunately land in an environmental consulting position at a really well established environmental consulting firm. And
00:11:29
Speaker
It was air quality focused and if my old boss ever listens to this podcast he'll tell you in a minute that that was not my that was not my forte I would say I respect all airheads is what they like to call themselves anyone who can tear apart a title five or
00:11:50
Speaker
those regulations are constantly changing and that's essentially what I got hired to do. And then what kind of happened was our firm is very big on merger acquisition due diligence audits. And what tends to happen is you have a lot of oil and gas, 99% of that is error related.
00:12:11
Speaker
So we kind of became like the go to office for like these types of audits. And that propelled me to get onto the field and I was, you know, traveling and spending somehow auditing sites in North Dakota with.
00:12:28
Speaker
know 15 feet of snow on the ground but yep let's go see if there's oil there. Oh yeah that's rough North Dakota winter and that's me as a Minnesotan saying North Dakota is worse. Yeah so but what was happening was I was seeing a lot of you know we would we would ask you know you're doing merger acquisition people we want to find out where the glowing green goo is you know to put it shortly
00:12:51
Speaker
Um, we, we, I actually got my first taste of technology where we were, I realized we were doing, you know, um, we were doing all of these on paper. So imagine going to, you have 150 sites, but you're going to get a sample of 30. You're still doing 30 different sheets of paper checking to see like, is there oil at the wellhead? Is there this, is there this all these checklist items? Um, and so me and one of my coworkers worked on, worked on a tool that they had already purchased, but didn't really use yet.
00:13:18
Speaker
to capture all of this on an iPad or on a phone, right? And that seemed, what now seems so simple was not back then because it was, no one else was really doing it. And super manual. Yes. And not just that, you got to come back to the office and like do something with that data, right? And write a report. Ariana, that's just so interesting because how many years ago, kind of about was that?
00:13:47
Speaker
That was probably honestly not that long. I would say 2016, 2017. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it sounds, I've been in this industry for 28 years and when I started working for OSHA,
00:14:03
Speaker
all of the work that i did was on paper it was all in it was all in um triplicate form and you had to use a black pen and push really hard with the black pen to make sure it went through the carbon yes literal with a scissors cut and paste with a glue stick pictures that were my evidence that i would then send to an office and all this stuff was then
00:14:24
Speaker
you know, typed by administrative assistants. That was 28 years ago. And you're talking about 20. Yeah, I'm talking, I'm talking five, six years ago, you know? Yeah, I often say our industry is just so not tech. And I know we're going to get to the good tech news in this conversation, but it's just illustrative of how far our profession has to go.
00:14:49
Speaker
And what do people love to say? Well, we've always done it that way. That's right. And usually that's tied to like safety, a safety thing, right? Yeah. Tech and data get the same response usually. So, you know, so you're so you're so you're traveling around 15 feet of snow in North Dakota with a pen that's freezing up and you're trying to keep the ink warm so you can fill out the paperwork. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then, you know, my mind starts turning and
00:15:18
Speaker
And I'm like, there has to be different ways to do this. And not just what I'm doing, but I need to gather all this information. Where's your copies of your engine test for the past three years? Where's a copy of all your record-keeping requirements for all of your air permits for all your engines? And we would get just this huge
00:15:40
Speaker
just Dropbox of just dozens and dozens and dozens of PDFs. And at a certain point, you just have to spot check, right? How much is this deal worth? What's the threshold? Okay, it looks about right. And then I luckily got exposed to what was probably the first EHS software that I'd ever heard of. And then
00:16:04
Speaker
And then at that point, you know, I started to collaborate with some other teams outside of my office and, you know, did some, some GIS work, um, and, and just started kind of messing around with data. Um, and then I was able to, to work with a totally different team, um, from a company that we were acquired. And I really got a taste of, of data analysis and big words that I'd never heard of, like,
00:16:29
Speaker
SQL and Python and and I honestly this was it's funny because it was right at the start of the pandemic and I would just hop on zoom with a co-worker and watch him like what looked like magic you know like on the matrix there's just like programming on a computer and you're like
00:16:47
Speaker
You know, just just hitting the keyboard. That's what it felt like at the time. And I was like, I have no idea what this man is doing, but we're getting somewhere. We're going to build a dashboard out of it, I think. And and that was that was kind of it. And at that point, I realized I want to do what I do now, but I want to work more.
00:17:05
Speaker
With data and technology and apparently there's like 50 other software that do this thing And that that's what put me back out on the hunt. So hmm wonderful So yeah, you you're back on the hunt. So how did that how did that hunt go less less resumes? I know
00:17:24
Speaker
Yes, actually, I googled like EHS software consulting or something. And the first hit came up and it was a firm that I ended up working with for about a year and a half. And that's all they do. That's all they do is EHS software consulting, selection, implementation.
00:17:43
Speaker
Sustainment, maintenance, reporting, everything about EHS, from GHG reporting, but the configuration of what the system needs to do to match your process. It was an amazing opportunity and really great exposure into what was out there. Truthfully, I thought I'd be there for 10 years.
00:18:06
Speaker
I'm like, I'm going to stay here and I'm going to become an expert on these two or three software and then see where the world takes me. And then I was approached by my current company and they basically wanted me to come do the same thing, but in house.
00:18:23
Speaker
And at that point it wasn't the job, I knew I could do the job. And it was more of people, you know, culture, product, taking all that stuff to consideration. And it was really funny because I go open up my Gmail now and I think I was looking for my old resume to update it. Because this was the first time that I had been approached for a job.
00:18:47
Speaker
It's kind of fun when that happens. Oh, man. That's awesome. I thought that clock was going to be ticking for another 10 years before that happened. And that and when I googled when I looked up resume in my Gmail, I found all the you know, all of the thank you for submitting your application. And I just I was very grateful and realized, you know, sometimes it if you put in the work, things can happen a lot quicker than than you think that they are.
00:19:16
Speaker
um and and so yeah and then i ended up here and uh now it's been almost a year so that's awesome so let's let's break down your title in case that missed people when i was doing the introduction because this this is you know this isn't a title i don't think i've had anyone on on the podcast with your title before and for people who've been at this for you know as long as me or longer or maybe just starting out might be like
00:19:44
Speaker
What? This is a thing in this industry? Or in our professional practice rather. So I said that your title was Manager of EHS IT Data Platforms. Can you break that down and kind of give a day-to-day of what that
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, let's go word for word. Yeah, yeah, okay. So EHS, obviously Environmental Health and Safety, and that is in there because I work under the EHS group. So I don't work under IT, I work under EHS. And so, well, what makes me different from an EHS manager of commercial, for example?
00:20:26
Speaker
Well, I do all of the IT stuff. So I am the translator. So I take very complicated ask from IT when they ask for what's your requirement? When who's going to do user testing? Who's going to do all of these things? And I put that in plain English words for my EHS colleagues.
00:20:51
Speaker
And then I do the, more so I probably do the opposite. So you're an EHS manager and you have this inspection that you, you know, have been doing on paper, but you want to, you want to put it in the platform.
00:21:06
Speaker
you wanna use it in our software. Well, you tell me and then understanding what our software can do or what it can't do, we have a conversation and I figure out your requirements and if we can't use that, well, maybe we can use an internal tool. So IT could be our internal business IT or maybe it's the software partner, right? Or maybe even a consultant, you know? So I'm that translator and it's really important, I would say,
00:21:36
Speaker
I think having that EHS background made a world of difference. I don't think I'm in a space to go get a CSP, you know, I'm not I'm not I moved away from the day to day, you know, operations. But I still understand what someone means when they say lockout tag out.
00:21:54
Speaker
Or fall from heights or ISO 14,000 or ISO 45,000. So understanding that terminology I think is super important. And so that's a big part of what my title is. And then more than anything, I'm the administrator of the system. So we have an EHR software that we utilize and I am the day to day, you know, person.
00:22:18
Speaker
um that oh I can't you know how do I do this or how do I run this report um I'm I'm that person um hopefully you know as our company grows and the team will grow and we'll have some more support there but you know I am the expert if I don't know how it works then I can't expect anyone else to work um and I did that from the consulting side but I think the biggest difference being in-house is that your job doesn't stop there right so you're they're using the system and they're
00:22:48
Speaker
We're getting a lot of data in there, and then what? And that has been, I would say, the pivotal point in my career now, where you do a lot of project-based things when you're a consultant, or maybe you work for the software provider, third party, whatever. That is very different than being in-house, and that data actually meaning something.
00:23:10
Speaker
And so that's the data part of your title. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Take us there.
Data Analysis: Enhancing Safety and Decision-Making
00:23:16
Speaker
Let's go there. Yeah. So, you know, I essentially turned it to a data analyst and I had to go, you know, I feel very lucky because I feel like a lot of people are transitioning to the data analyst data data analyst position more than anything, maybe over a data engineer or a data scientist, because a data analyst, just like I pivoted off of VHS and got into the
00:23:38
Speaker
I went to the software side first, and now I'm more on the data side, but you can do that with anything. Maybe you work in finance, but you don't want to, and you want to do more technology. You can be a financial data analyst. What if you're an educator? You can be an educational data analyst. You can do data analysis on anything with anything, something like Excel.
00:24:01
Speaker
And so there's so many free resources and content providers out there now that it's a movement, I would say, especially since the pandemic. And it is an amazing way to pivot into technology. EHS, I think it's pretty niche, but other fields, it is a growing world of job opportunity because businesses want to be data-driven more than anything.
00:24:30
Speaker
So, I had to go learn the things, you know, I, I hope I'm not gonna lie I did not know how to build a dashboard, you know, in January, and so to be able to, to, to do that now, you know, I'm by no means an expert, but I can.
00:24:46
Speaker
I can do a lot of things. And just like with software, I can answer the questions, I can make changes, I can do modifications. And now the vision for the next few years is to really enhance data analysis and really drive more into predictive analytics and not just, what do we say, the lagging indicators. Right, right. So how did you, Ariana, how did you teach yourself data analysts and analysis rather?
00:25:14
Speaker
um youtube no seriously not joking um i'm sure yeah yeah it's how we learn everything yeah i will i will definitely plug um data camp and maven analytics as two very very good resources those are paid but you can get a really good year-long subscription and they will teach you everything there is to know about data analysis um
00:25:38
Speaker
And they start you off with the basics. Literally, what can you do in Excel? A lot. You can build dashboards in Excel, which don't cost anything, right? And I want to caution people because you should learn what your company uses. And there's a million tools that do the same thing.
00:25:55
Speaker
Power BI versus Tableau or, you know, there's there's the most basic thing you can learn is is SQL structure query language that is that's a little bit more technical that's basically looking at data tables on the back end and pulling certain information. Oh, I want to see.
00:26:12
Speaker
XYZ from this table within this time frame that only has these keywords. It's very powerful and I'm honestly still learning it. And I know that, you know, and that's the difference between going, that's the back end, you know, really speeding up what you're looking at versus like going into running a report in your front end software and trying to click around and maybe filter on some things.
00:26:35
Speaker
And most users, that's fine, but depending on what kind of analysis you're doing, that's really where SQL can come into play. And then more than anything, people don't want to see those reports, to be honest. How do humans learn? Visually.
00:26:51
Speaker
So learning some type of data visualization skill is extremely, extremely important. That could be your entire career. You know, they're a BI analyst. That's all they do is build dashboards.
00:27:09
Speaker
but they but it's not just the what you see at the end it's how are you getting all those all that data in there is the data clean is the data correct and and then how are you presenting it in a way that you know i i honestly can't remember the fact but there's like it
00:27:24
Speaker
If I send you an Excel report of every injury that your company has had versus if I give you a dashboard, it's going to be like 0.25 times a fraction of what it's going to take for you to comprehend what you're looking at versus an Excel report. I would say that's kind of where we are now.
00:27:45
Speaker
What's the data saying? And then you really propel that once you've kind of established what you're looking for and how you improve your business. And for EHS, how do you make people safer? Yeah, so talk about that. Talk about the impact on EHS.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, I would say that, you know, there's exploratory and then there's like explanatory right you're, you're asking people to look go like log.
00:28:21
Speaker
Different things and let's take near misses or a concern report, you know, I would say every good EHS software has Just a place where you can click a button and log up issue that you see, you know So yeah something or I saw something
00:28:37
Speaker
I saw this palette in the middle of the thing or I saw this forklift almost hit another forklift. There could be any variation of things or this almost happened. You take all that data and you figure out where the trends are. You figure out, okay, is forklifts our problem?
00:28:57
Speaker
What's going on? Is it, do we need more training on XYZ? Do we need to make sure our policy for fall from heights is clear? Do we need to involve our ergonomics team? So those are, you know, those are like, I guess the implications, but obviously you can start really basic. I mean, there are things you're required to do, right? You're required to report to OSHA. So, you know, those are the KPIs that people, you know, that's the black and white stuff.
00:29:24
Speaker
How many injuries have you had? How many of them are recordable? Those are things you have to disclose. There's no way around it. But then there's leading indicators that aren't necessarily, you don't have to disclose that, but you can use that maybe internally to kind of drive improvement. That could be training data.
00:29:43
Speaker
You know, or like I said, near misses is a really big one because it hasn't happened yet. So where do we really need to put the, you know, put the focus maybe it's job safety analysis, you know, risk assessments, you know, those types of things and then you can really like
00:30:01
Speaker
You can really drive that data to show maybe you need to go to finance or you need to go to operations or you need to go and say, hey, we need this on all of our mobile trucks or we need to put safety barriers up in this place because this thing keeps happening in this spot at a certain location. And they're going to be like, well, how do you know?
00:30:24
Speaker
And then you pull out the data, and it's very black and white. But you have some cost-benefit analysis. You have data to back up why you need more money or what the overall investment is. Hey, you could not do this, but this might be what it would cost down the road.
00:30:42
Speaker
in workers comp claims, right? So there's, I mean, there's a million ways to slice and dice it. It really depends on what your company's like focuses and what the driver is at the time. And we know the economy is changing rapidly. So that could really change, you know, day to day.
00:31:00
Speaker
So Ariana, you said before that you serve as an interpreter, in a sense, to the EHS team, of which you are part. So you analyze the data, you build ways for it to be consumed through visualization, like you were talking about.
00:31:21
Speaker
And so when that's presented to the EHS team, are they looking at your data and making decisions or are you presenting it to them as that interpreter and saying, Hey, I'm noting these trends. Here's or is it a kind of a combination of both, you know, like
00:31:40
Speaker
It's a combination of both, I would say. And interestingly enough, it's not just DHS. I find that a lot of people who are interested in it is operations, the people who own the people that are inputting this data, and they could be far removed from EHS.
00:32:00
Speaker
Now, of course, they might have an EHS person they're working with, you know, but that they can go to if they have questions. But I find that they take a lot of responsibility and pride. You know, it might be along the same metrics of quality or, you know, other things that they're tracking and safety might be a piece of that. But I would say more than half the requests I've gotten for data doesn't come from EHS. It comes
00:32:23
Speaker
It comes from operations. And so what the driver, what the hope is that they're using that data in EHS is reviewing it from their standpoint, right? Because they're going to care about different things. And then they're kind of partnering together to come up with solutions for their business unit. But for me, a big goal in the coming years is to really
00:32:48
Speaker
drive a lot of those recommendations. I think a lot of it has been exploratory more than explanatory, I would say. And so, you know, building from the ground up, so we're still figuring that part out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when you're talking about, you know, operations and other people outside of EHS who are, who are looking at consuming and making decisions based on the data that you're pulling, are you creating specific dashboarding just for them?
00:33:19
Speaker
So I feel like any person working in data is going to be like, hmm, what is she going to say? Oh, no. I asked a controversial data question. No, I think that there is, I mean, yeah, dashboards are extremely controversial. I will tell you that because a lot of times people think the dashboard is going to solve their problem. And then you go, you know, and it's really urgent. We need it today. And then you go look at the views and it just sat face.
00:33:47
Speaker
And you realize people have barely touched it. And so there is a balance, I think. Some data analysts will tell you, you should not create the same dashboard for multiple groups. And I think for all intents and purposes, that's honestly the best way to go. That's why you use tools that have features like filters.
00:34:11
Speaker
But maybe, you know, group A cares about wants to drill down or group their things a little differently, right? I think that that's important. But I also don't think you should overcome it, you know? And so I kind of go into it with, yes, I will build that same separate one for you.
00:34:29
Speaker
But you have to understand that any maintenance for it, you know, might not be like the day of they requested and also like empower those users to learn a little bit because once I've built the foundation like
00:34:44
Speaker
it's 99% done, right? So maybe you don't want to see top five this you want to see by percentage, you know, having a little I think everybody is a data analyst a little bit if you care about it enough. And so I try to empower them to, to learn a little bit, you know, so that they can keep up with it themselves. But in saying that it is not a free for all. I really, really lean into our my EHS colleagues to
00:35:14
Speaker
to make sure that we're answering the right questions. And then what you tend to find is like group A is asking for something different than group B when they really should not be. And then that kind of drives a higher level of conversation. Like, well, what is their leadership telling them? Why is that leadership not aligned?
00:35:32
Speaker
And so, because we're talking about one group of metrics, safety metrics, right? Why is group A asking about this leading indicator and group B is asking about that lagging indicator and they work in the same place. So, you know, you start to really find out what that ask is and I just ask and ask and ask, I keep asking why. And then a big question you ask is, well, what are you gonna do with this when you have it?
00:36:01
Speaker
And that tends to kind of drive conversation really well. And they say, well, I need to have a weekly thing, then I need to show my team. Okay. That's, that's a good answer. What are you going to do with it when you show it to them? Is the expectation that, you know, it's, it's, we're putting people on blast, you know, is the expectation that, you know, we want to.
00:36:24
Speaker
Like what is the actual end goal? And so when I say requirements gathering, that's kind of what that conversation looks like is, you know, who's owning this request? What's the ask? What happens if I don't give it to you? If I tell you no right now, what's the implication of that?
00:36:43
Speaker
you know, is it, will I have to go run the report manually? Or is it like, eh, I just thought it was going to be something nice. Yeah, exactly. And I'm all for, you know, wanting to see things big picture and not have to click a million buttons. I totally understand that frustration with any software, you know, you just want to get to the, to the meat of things. And we ended up coming to, you know, a good, a good compromise. I would say,
00:37:09
Speaker
every time so far I've been able to deal with it but I have had to say no sometimes or I realized they're asking for something that's already there but they're just calling it something different right because that happens a lot in the industry that I work in you know you come from that's in the industry if you if you come from this company now you were at this company you called it this this metric you know something else right and so I find that very important because
00:37:37
Speaker
just to ask because usually we're talking about the same exact thing we just came up with some like techy word for it that's right yeah i mean vernacular definitely matters for sure yeah um i want to zoom out for just a second from our conversation this is so good
00:37:54
Speaker
And I'm wondering about any of our listeners who might still be operating, you know, like you did when you were working with the Airhead team on paper and they're like, what is she like, what is this technology she's talking about? You're talking about EHS software, EHS platforms, but Ariana, can you talk?
00:38:16
Speaker
about the context of what that means and what it can do outside of incident management, which is a great example, but it does more than that. And also, full disclosure, HSI has an EHS software platform. We are one of a number like you were talking about, but can you just give a high level for people who are like, ah, this really exists?
00:38:43
Speaker
Yeah, definitely because I was that person who I didn't know until I googled it and then I learned all the big names and realized that, oh wow, there's entire jobs that just configure these platforms. Obviously, you know, I would say incident management is probably one of the highest uses I would say of EHS software. I would say the second one is environmental, right? Luckily for me, we don't have a lot of air.
00:39:11
Speaker
So that was like, I would probably say the first question I asked in the interview is like, how many air permits does this company have? And we, you know, so, but a lot of environmental management, you know, I mean, these systems can do really powerful things. They can, they can, I would say a lot of if you've done air, you have a lot of Excel sheets with a lot of awesome formulas in it. And these softwares can do those things for you and automate your job.
00:39:36
Speaker
and your reporting and your requirements and threshold tracking. I mean, we have digital inspections, you know, you can essentially get rid of every piece of paper or excel sheet that you use and transform it. Concern reports, waste tracking, I mean, there is an endless amount, you know, and the powerful part about these systems is integration, right? Integration with your
00:40:01
Speaker
human resource software integration with your vendors that you work with with purchasing with finance um you can really manage everything from your phone these days with with all of the cloud providers that you know and and no plug for any certain ones but you know big ones enable on intellects hsi you know that there is entire i mean companies that only do this and what's really really cool um is that
00:40:28
Speaker
They are constantly at the forefront of technology and I would say a big one is AI and machine learning and we're implementing that very heavily right now and it was never something that.
00:40:44
Speaker
I thought was you know not even on the consulting side that's I you know the cool part about being in house is you get to do these special projects um and and a lot of these softwares are are staying you know keeping the keeping up with the rat race of how fast technology is developing um and definitely have a challenge in front of them to continue to do so and we're probably not even going to get to it in this call but the sustainability esg and you can have it all in one place
00:41:13
Speaker
It's important not to try to make a, what do we say, a square fit into a round hole, but 90% of the time you can have a single use platform to do almost everything that you need.
00:41:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and that's something that's gonna be really familiar sounding to the listeners who may be like, gosh, I'm using, you know, five platforms, 10 platforms, 15 platforms to get my work done, and then I still have this collection of paper-based systems.
00:41:46
Speaker
That I'm using and you know you might be looking at your at your cohorts in your in your work environment You know like accounting and HR like you mentioned and operations who have their own platforms to do their job to pull up to Every single day and EHS is like when is mine? Well guess what?
00:42:05
Speaker
It's here. It's been here. Yeah, I know. I'm surprised how many people I talked to, you know, and, you know, I was talking to a guy the other day, and I'm like, well, why are you, you know, why did you get back into the workforce? You were doing this. And he's like, Oh, I've been working in EHS software for 25 years. And I'm like,
00:42:25
Speaker
Man, I didn't even, and I mean, some names that I definitely haven't heard of, but at this point have been bought 10 times, so they're probably just enabled now. But they were the beginning of the beginning, and now we're cloud, software as a service, typing a URL on your phone, and you have single sign-on from your work email, and you can quickly log something.
00:42:51
Speaker
And it's pretty low effort. I think some of those early ones were SDS management systems. Yes, chemical management is a huge one. I think those are some of the first entry points. And now you have software that will automate the entire process for you. Even chemical reporting.
00:43:10
Speaker
They'll do everything up to filing your tier two reports for you. And so there's definitely no limit. And it's really exciting to see, you know, a lot, all of these startups and kind of what they're doing. I think at this point, if you're going to get into that industry, you have to find your niche because there's so many big players now. And so you have to find, just like with anything else in business, you have to find the gap.
00:43:33
Speaker
that no one else has how can we make you know that person's job easier and so it's been really cool you know being in house i get all the emails everybody wants to talk and check out our software i mean 3d 3d auditing that that integrates with your ehs information system and automates the auditing um there's there's like really i mean wearables wearable technology you know from from
00:44:01
Speaker
buzzing on your wrist if you get too close to a voltage or you know all kind of AI on security cameras there is an endless amount we even have a feature on our software that that rates you as an AI that rates you as you type out your description of your incident or your concern and it'll you know we like to they like to game everything so it'll give you
00:44:25
Speaker
you know there's six check marks and if your incident description isn't great you'll get two and they're red and if you get a if you get a buff four they're they're green and and that you know human nature is to want to win the game so yes yes yeah you tend to uh put a little bit more effort in but that gives us better quality data to actually use
00:44:45
Speaker
Right. So it prevents the person from filling out the classic form of do better next time. I looked to the wrong way. Human error, right? Human error. Yeah. Definitely top five of what it calls analysis. Yeah. I've seen a few of those. Yep. Yep. And it's constantly developing. So it's, you know, you have your traditional things that it can do, but you know, there's definitely a lot of providers that are doing a lot. So. Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:15
Speaker
So thank you for that zoom out. I appreciate it. Zooming back in, I wanted to ask you about in your work now about benchmarking. And what does that mean for the EHS profession? And like, what are you looking at?
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think that word is thrown around a lot, especially when you're talking about GHGs from an emission standpoint. That's the hot topic right now. People have been doing sustainability reports for longer than a decade consistently, but it's always a question of what does our investors care about?
00:45:53
Speaker
What do our customers care about? What does our executive leadership care about? What do our employees care about? And you tend to look outward at your peers, your competitors, similar industries, different industries of maybe the same company size, product, and you tend to start to compare. And you say, OK, well, what are they telling people that they're focused on right now?
00:46:21
Speaker
you want to be careful obviously you know greenwashing is a thing and you know want to just do things to check the box but and i'm by no means a sustainability expert that's uh definitely on my learning roadmap for the next year hello new youtube video right yeah okay um but that is you know but you you hear about it a lot there and i honestly think it's important to do just
00:46:45
Speaker
from the safety aspect to environmental data of course but you know what what is going on in other you know i i have a couple of newsletters that i get where you're kind of trying to keep up with like where where are things happening where's where's where's the goss you know um and but that's really good insight into what should we be looking for so i think that there's like formal benchmarking and then i think there's like
00:47:06
Speaker
Oh, that thing happened there. Let's go. What are we doing? You know, to prevent that, you know, lessons learned, right? Because you have lessons learned internally, but if you're not doing, you know, you're not calling up your competitor company and saying like, tell me about all your, your safety problems.
00:47:23
Speaker
Right, exactly. I mean, you might be spying on their websites and seeing what they're putting out front and center. Yeah. And that's where those reports come in, because a lot of times those sustainability reports, which they mostly are today, cover a lot more than just emissions, right? They cover worker safety, worker health. A lot of it is diversity, equity, inclusion. Now we're leaning more into the ESG, where it's finance.
00:47:52
Speaker
making sure that pay equity and ethics and all of these other things, but safety is always gonna be a big part of that and how we treat workers and what we're doing. And so I think just keeping, a lot of people say they couldn't get into medicine because there's always something new to learn or some new surgery technique. And I think it's the same for EHS. There's new regulations,
00:48:21
Speaker
Things that change and you you really have to be you know able to dig into that content and keep up so that Doing the right thing and not falling behind, you know Yeah, you gave some you gave some really good examples of where you might get some of that benchmarking data Do you also look at places like do you fall down the rabbit hole hole of the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Looking up who
00:48:49
Speaker
What's the average TRIR for our industry last year? How are we doing? I think that's the closest thing, you know, when you're looking at how are like people who do what we do.
00:49:02
Speaker
Yeah, what are they doing, you know, I think that that's a good measure. When you're just, you know, maybe starting and don't really have a target, right, you don't know what your target should be. And so I think that that's a great way. I don't think it's an excuse. Like, I don't think you should use it from a point of
00:49:21
Speaker
hey, theirs is, you know, their TIR is this, but ours is this, so we must be fine, you know? And we definitely, you don't want to go down that rabbit hole, so I think there's something to be careful of a benchmarking, but also it is, you know, there is some positive viewpoints of, okay, we're doing something right, so let's just figure out how we can do it better. Or, oh, we are way off the radar, so we really need to get in a room and figure out, you know, what the problem is.
00:49:49
Speaker
Right, at least some of that BLR data can at least give you a little bit of context as to where you might compare with others in your industry as a starting point. Yes, absolutely. That's a really awesome thing to do.
00:50:08
Speaker
Because a lot of that data is available from those annual reports. So it gives you a starting point. And I need to correct myself. I just said BLR. I'm at BLS, so that means Bureau of Labor Statistics.
00:50:21
Speaker
and that's a government website where, as I said, can be a rabbit hole that you can look at data eight ways from Tuesday, which can be super fun if you're a big nerd. 2021 data just came out, I read the other week. Awesome, awesome. I do tend to really like looking at their stuff. And then do you also benchmark against yourselves? Do you get together and say, okay, what do we want to look at?
00:50:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we're a pretty new company, so we still have a lot of building blocks to put into place, but that is definitely the goal. You have to set a foundation, and we're still in that process.
00:51:09
Speaker
you know that's for sure going to happen but it's not you know some of these companies have 50 years of data to look back on right and it's very easy to see whoa in the 50s we had this many injuries and you know in the 70s this regulation came out so we were we had you know it by nature it lowered and then oh in the 2000s it spiked again and that was because of this you know so
00:51:35
Speaker
It's definitely a challenge. I think benchmarking is probably the best way to go right now because we don't have 50 years of data. So, you know, for newer, you know, and I would say obviously electric vehicle industry is pretty new. So, you know, you have something to go on, but but even 10 years is nothing. Right. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Your career and what you've done in EHS is just really interesting and admirable and self-teaching part.
00:52:04
Speaker
What do you want to say, Ariana, about options in this field?
00:52:13
Speaker
It's important, well, one, I would say the most beneficial thing is your experience today, right? Especially if you work in EHS is if, I mean, let's say you want to do what I do, you probably have more EHS knowledge than I do. And so now you just need to figure out which part, you know, you still need to learn. And that might be, it might be starting over a little bit, right? It might be taking a more entry level position.
00:52:40
Speaker
But or it might be leveraging your expertise and going into consulting right every software company that builds environmental air mission calculation software needs an airhead they need someone that understands emission factors and Regulations and that is a perfect switch to get into that You know get into the back end of that software and and honestly consult internally
00:53:08
Speaker
So that's a really good way to pivot into it. And just generally, I think in EHS, it's, you know, you have to remember, like, you mostly, unless you're super lucky, you're probably doing 80-20, right? You're probably doing 80% environmental, 20% safety, or no safety at all. Or you're doing 80% safety, 20%. And so, you know, if you're feeling stuck or,
00:53:31
Speaker
you know, plateaued, or you feel like, I know everything there is to know about this thing. Don't waste that experience, you know, use that as a way to kind of pivot and, and, and transition, you know, into, into a new role where you can still leverage that experience, but, you know,
00:53:48
Speaker
You're going to do something totally different and then you're really going to be an expert. There's very few people that I meet that have all three, right? Occupational health, safety, and environmental. That's the golden trio right there. But maybe you're more interested in something versus another.
00:54:10
Speaker
I mean, it depends on where you work, right? I mean, I've done work in all three, like you're saying, and different jobs in different places, like you're saying, it was a different mix. Some was really heavy in one area and really, you know, light in another, and it just changes depending on where you're working.
00:54:29
Speaker
Definitely. Definitely. And what the business focus is at the time or like what position needs to be filled, you know? Before you know it, you might be the safety plant manager, but you know, they just, the environmental manager just won the lottery and moved to Hawaii. So now they need you to come figure out the air permits.
00:54:47
Speaker
and you're gonna get online and you're gonna figure it out and you're gonna ask questions and then in six months you're like well now I know environmental too yeah right right and I think that's just kind of how it happens so yeah thank you for that let's let's flip that let's say someone's listening and they're like oh I don't want to do that but I want an Ariana
00:55:08
Speaker
Like, you know, I mean, because there's people who are listening are like, Oh, I want this data. I want, I want, I want this. I want a platform. How, how do you think someone who might be thinking that right now might find someone like you?
00:55:25
Speaker
I think that one, if you know, let me know because, you know, it is hard to find people, colleagues, you know, I think that that's been a big struggle, but I will say that your biggest resource is going to be really established environmental consulting firms that have a digital solutions arm.
00:55:46
Speaker
you know, that they specialize in selection, which I think is super important. Like you do not want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the wrong software if you can avoid it. Investing 50 to 100 and hiring them is totally worth it because it will save you incredible amounts of money in the long run because you need to make sure it fits your business, right? You need to make sure it fits your budget, all of these things. But then, you know, those same firms also do
00:56:15
Speaker
They will help you translate your excel sheets and your PDFs to the software and then they'll also help you maintain it and really integrate it into your overall digital world. The firm that I worked at didn't do that.
00:56:35
Speaker
And you know, they just didn't. That wasn't something that they focused on. And that's why I kind of had to pivot to somewhere that did. And my knowledge base grew because they knew what they were doing. So there is no shortage of that, you know, from a consulting standpoint. I honestly, as a professional, I recommend that.
00:56:54
Speaker
even when you're talking to a vendor or vendors, only because they have an unbiased opinion, right? Usually they partner with multiple platforms. So they're not going to tell you have to buy this one, you know. And so it really gives you that like zoom out perspective of here are your business requirements. Here's what I need this thing to do, and then kind of go from there. And then if you're lucky, you can hop on LinkedIn and maybe find someone with EHS IT in their in their drop.
00:57:23
Speaker
Well, and that's another really great way to search. I know when, you know, so you're a unicorn, so this is good. This is good job security for you. But you and I met at a tech conference.
00:57:38
Speaker
And I think you mentioned there's two. Yes, yes. Do you want to talk? Yeah, do you want to talk about that as another as another resource for people? Yes. How do I find this? There is a conference of unicorns. And it's very interesting, right? So so so name has one. I don't National Association. They stand for actually just call him name all the time. And yeah, and I mean, there are
00:58:07
Speaker
obviously well-known, um, environmental, you know, membership group, you know, tons of information constantly, webinars, um, corporate memberships, individual memberships, networking events, um, they do their huge forum, they do a, a conference, I think they just had that in October, they do a women's leadership conference, they actually had that in Denver, um, and then they also do a digital solutions conference, um, and I was able to go to that, um, this past April in, um,
00:58:35
Speaker
And that was, I mean, awesome because I got to meet people that, you know, use the same system I use and, and, and our years ahead of, you know, we're our businesses and kind of do some lessons learned. It's interesting though, because more than 75% of them.
00:58:55
Speaker
are EHS managers that are tasked with doing this thing that I do. So I always have a place in my heart for an EHS specialist or manager that's like, yep, we just bought the system. It's your job to manage it. Good luck. Because most companies won't budget for a position like mine. And so I'm super grateful that I was able to find that. And I think it's because
00:59:20
Speaker
My leadership team had that in previous roles, and so they're like, nope, we have to have that, right? And sometimes you wonder how companies function without it. So it is a great investment, and it doesn't, you know, I think at that conference, oh, Verdantix, that was the other one that we met at. That was at an awesome resort. Verdantix is like a huge, all they, I love them because they constantly, all they do is have research analysts.
00:59:47
Speaker
that constantly survey EHS leadership, executives, managers about everything there is to know about EHS software. So their membership is definitely worth it because they have tons of information and free information as well. And so I was fortunate enough to be able to go to that and meet even more people and really get to hear from some great speakers. We heard from the vice president at Boeing when we were there. And what was really cool was watching what these other companies
01:00:16
Speaker
you know, are doing with what I could be doing in five years or 10 years, right? Because these are well-established companies. Right. Yeah, we heard lots of great examples about what people are using artificial intelligence for, and you know, some of the examples you gave earlier.
01:00:34
Speaker
So it kind of gives you one road mapping perspective like, oh, that's a good idea. Maybe I need to put that into my budget for next year. It's a great, great thing to do if you are tasked with implementing a software and you don't know where to start.
01:00:49
Speaker
Maybe you're not ready to hand over $50,000 to a consultant and you just want to go check it out. All the software vendors are there and we'll be happy to buy you dinner. And get your card and the next week you will get lots of emails. But it is a great way to just kind of get firsthand look of what's out there, you know, kind of dip your toe in the water. It's really cool just to kind of see the innovation and network in this community is extremely small.
01:01:19
Speaker
There is no one that I met at a conference that I haven't had on LinkedIn that was connected to five other people I was already in network with. None of which do what we were doing. That's right. I kept referring to it as a boutique conference. Yes. Compared to the National Safety Congress and Expo, which is enormous and wonderful, and this is just different in a different way. It definitely is. I don't go to big safety conferences or
01:01:45
Speaker
I honestly haven't had interest in it because for me it would be more beneficial to go and like it might be smaller you know and not as like many dinners and things like that but you know the networking is is really really really key and you know you just can't you just can't get that just you know creeping on people on LinkedIn.
01:02:04
Speaker
That's right. That's right. Oh, wow. This has been so good and so informative. And I hope that you've offered an awareness for people who might not know about EHS platforms, but also an awareness of what else you can do with this career. Yeah, it's just great. Ariana, is there closing thoughts, other things that you'd like to share with the audience?
01:02:35
Speaker
No, I just want to thank you for having me on. And I know this is kind of a niche thing that people don't hear too much about, unless it's coming from a software provider trying to sell you their product. That's right. So hopefully, feel free if you want to put my LinkedIn in the notes. It's totally fine. Happy to connect or talk to anyone about my experience and if they have any questions or need any advice.
01:03:03
Speaker
That's wonderful. That's generous. And thank you very much. And thank you for everything that you've shared. And congratulations on being, you know, a leader, a leading unicorn in this aspect of our profession. It's wonderful.
01:03:20
Speaker
Oh, thank you so much, Jill, for having me. Really, really enjoyed it. You're welcome. And thank you for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. Making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day.
01:03:35
Speaker
If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more EHS professionals, like Ariana and I. Special thanks to Naeem Jarisi, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.