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#48: Baby's first incident
74 Plays5 years ago
Podcast series host Jill James interviews Iowa farm girl turned safety pro, Nicole. Her path to safety began in early childhood, when a life-changing incident resulted in the loss of multiple fingers. Listener’s will hear some familiar themes as Nicole shares her journey, and take in more than few remarkable stories from her work in insurance brokerage. You’ll learn about safety in the agriculture industry, related insurance considerations, and benefit from her unique perspective on risk mitigation. This is underexplored territory for much of the greater safety community.
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 48 of 'Accidental Safety Pro'
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 48. My name is Jill James, Vivid's Chief Safety Officer, and today I'm joined by Nicole, a safety professional who works in the insurance brokerage industry in Iowa. Nicole, welcome to the show.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hi, thanks for having me.
Nicole's Iowa Farm Upbringing
00:00:33
Speaker
So Nicole, you are in Iowa and I understand that you grew up as an Iowa farm kid.
00:00:41
Speaker
Absolutely. Pretty stereotypical, I guess you could say. Born and raised originally in the northeast corner of Iowa. Grew up on a diversified crop and livestock farm. We raised row crops like soybean, corn, alfalfa, things along those lines. In addition to that, we also had livestock.
00:01:02
Speaker
had finishing hogs, we had beef cattle, we took a little time in the dairy side of things and so kind of got to dabble in a lot of different industries in regards to that side of the farm life. I grew up every day doing chores. Yeah, I was going to ask, what sort of responsibilities did you have on the farm?
00:01:25
Speaker
So we started off milking cows when I was probably I say from the time I was born until the time I was about four or so. So that.
00:01:35
Speaker
That part of my life, I don't remember too vividly, but you know, dairy cattle, that industry is cows got to be milked no matter the day, no matter the weather, no matter what time of day, things along those lines.
The Farm Accident and Family Impact
00:01:48
Speaker
So it's not a lot of family vacations or time away from the farm. Right. Right. You can't skip out on work. Right. Our family vacations were farm. Yeah. Right.
00:02:00
Speaker
So lots of lots of feeding cows, lots of round veiling, harvesting crops, just generally maintaining, building, vaccinating animals, taking care of animals, things like that. The fun side of it, I mean, outside of actually participating in the daily activities, but
00:02:16
Speaker
The fun side was showing cattle in FFA and 4-H growing up. We would always have our project cattle and then we would get to raise them and break them to lead. Then we would get to show them. That truly probably was our vacation, the week of the show. Yeah, hanging out at the county and the state fair, right? Yeah. Did you make it to the state fair ever with your cattle?
00:02:46
Speaker
So state fairs are a little different because you don't actually have to qualify to get to the state fairs. You basically just kind of sign up and then you have your cattle weigh-ins and things like that. And so you get to show they're based off of whether or not you signed up. So we never did the state fair just because it was
00:03:06
Speaker
our county fair was always one of the very last county fairs and so that would have been like three weeks of straight showing. Too long to be away from the farm. I speak as if I know what I'm talking about here. It's only because a young man in my sphere of influence raises sheep and horse and
00:03:34
Speaker
and has shown at the fairs the last number of years and so I'm one of those fair roadies who goes and watches sheep shows and horse shows and I'm learning a lot along the way but it is a giant family commitment is what I've learned.
00:03:50
Speaker
Massive, massive. One thing that my family has gotten really big into recently is going to the draft horse shows and watching them. We had some family ties to a team that does that. And so going and seeing all the behind the scenes work, there was some ridiculous stat that they told us. I think that it took like 32 boxes of hair dye to color the horse's hair.
00:04:15
Speaker
if they were yeah like if they weren't because basically with the draft horses they want them all to be a similar color so if you've got one that isn't quite the same color then they want them to look uniform I had no idea they're massive yeah yeah the draft horses themselves are massive
00:04:34
Speaker
Well, and here I was just admiring the fact that like their tails get braided and stuff. Right? And it takes an insane amount of time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It takes an insane amount of time. Not all of them get their hair dyed, but I would say it's, it's the ones that are more to the like roan, whitish, light grayish colors just because they're so varying in color.
00:04:57
Speaker
Wow, horse beauty salon, who knew? Right. Interesting. So I'm curious to hear how this Iowa farm kid life led you
From Farm Accident to Safety Career
00:05:09
Speaker
into safety. And I know that you had an event when you were a kid. And so I'm interested like how that all ties in.
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, so this actually goes back to the time of life where we were milking cows. I was involved in a farm accident with my dad while feeding cows. TMR is a feed mixer wagon, essentially, and so you put in a bunch of different ingredients, it mixes it together, and then it kind of has an auger where it
00:05:40
Speaker
spouts out the feed as one once it's mixed together and TMRs back then used to have like these little ledges around them and so we would always sit and ride on the ledges while it was being driven through the freestyle barn which was I'd be pretty common we did it every day
00:05:58
Speaker
However, on that particular day, my dad had parked the tractor and wagon in front of the milkhouse to go run and say something to my mom. While he ran in there for not even 30 seconds, I was a very adventurous two-year-old.
00:06:16
Speaker
had climbed up the ladder on the back of the feed mixer wagon and gotten my hand caught in the sprocket and chain that runs the mixer on the inside. So I ended up losing a few fingers in that fun little stunt, I guess you could call it. Wow. Two years old. Two years old. Yeah. Do you remember it? I don't remember the first part. So me telling my story is what I've been told from my parents. But I remember standing there
00:06:45
Speaker
After it had happened like looking at the ground and seeing the aftermath essentially the blood and like Screaming but that's pretty much the only part that I remember. Yeah, but I only had older brothers as well And so they gave me this really cool cast that basically covered my whole hand and went all the way up to my shoulder and so that kind of came my My defense mechanism against my brothers blocking your brothers. I just had a club for a few months
00:07:15
Speaker
for a while you're poor dad he must have been beside himself oh yeah he was absolutely absolutely mortified and we would joke with him for a while because there was a long time where he was very reserved from letting me help on the farm after that and so once my brothers all graduated and were out of the house i kind of was like okay well now you don't have any choice so you have to let me do this
00:07:41
Speaker
sort of a thing, which is kind of funny because he never shied away from asking my mom to go do things, but I was always the last resort just because of what had happened. Yeah, he was traumatized for you. Right, right. You had a very typical, let's call it typical accident, right? A machine guarding issue with a chain and sprocket with an in running point and you got sucked into the nip point.
00:08:04
Speaker
Right right yeah, and it's actually it's kind of amazing because and my fingers kind of look like the AT&T cellular tower And so right and so the amount of right yeah the amount of Fingers that I lost was pretty slim to none for a two-year-old to
00:08:26
Speaker
be involved in that kind of a situation. So I guess I'm pretty fortunate in that realm because it could have been much, much worse with the slightest change of events.
00:08:37
Speaker
Right. Right. Interesting. So you have your own personal safety story. Right. Right. Or yeah, accident story, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not going to say that that's what led me to safety, but it definitely, as I kind of fell into the industry and the career, it definitely is something that we joke again with my dad now that he was just setting me up for a career in safety, which he still doesn't find funny, but the rest of us do.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, and similar in my life as well, nothing happened to me. However, my father was involved in a farm accident when he was a teen, I think he was 18 years old. This was way before I was born, or my parents were even together, and something happened with a flywheel on a farm that struck him in the head.
00:09:32
Speaker
And it was a traumatic head injury and he was hospitalized for a really long time as I'm told by my mother. And he lost his frontal bone of his head. If you can imagine someone who doesn't have a frontal bone.
00:09:49
Speaker
And back then, medicine tried to patch it with some synthetic thing so that there would be something to replace the skull bone that was shattered. And he was allergic to it and his body rejected it. And so I grew up with a father who had a farm incident happen to him who did not have part of the frontal bone of his skull. The only thing separating his brain from the outside world is skin. Yeah, that's crazy.
00:10:17
Speaker
Right? And so as a kid growing up, we were doing, well, I guess, hazard recognition and controls in my house growing up constantly because it was, you know, we were all very mindful of dad's head. Right. You know, like he can't get, like literally can't get hit in the head. Right. Right. And so, you know, when you, you've got that, you know, classic kitchen cabinet above the refrigerator where you maybe pack all the cereal boxes and you're,
00:10:45
Speaker
your kid and you want to like just smash it shut and it might come popping back open. Now you did not do that in my house because it could hit dad in the head and take him off. Right. Yeah. And I mean, that's how you grew up. So you had that experience and that was your level of common sense around the farm. Whereas the traditional level of common sense around the farm is this is how we do it. And this is how it's been for 50 years. And so that level of risk perception is. Yeah.
00:11:14
Speaker
a lot farther away from where it should be. I have no idea if that colored the reason why I chose the field that I did, but I certainly know that I was basically born into a world of identifying risk. You got off the farm eventually, Nicole. What happened with your
Educational Journey and Insurance Internship
00:11:35
Speaker
career next? I did. I went to Iowa State University, which is
00:11:40
Speaker
agricultural school through and through. They're known for other things but obviously as a rural farm kid knowing agriculture that was kind of the only path I wanted to go. So I went to Iowa State and I changed my major lots of times, tried to dabble in other areas outside of agriculture and ended up coming back to agriculture just because it's where my roots were and it's where
00:12:04
Speaker
where I felt at home. And while I was in the agricultural business major, I had the opportunity to intern for an insurance carrier doing risk management consulting and loss control type work for the farm accounts that they worked with specifically. So I worked on the farm side of things.
00:12:27
Speaker
That's kind of how I fell into the insurance industry. I honestly didn't even know that that existed as a role. Sure. Many of us didn't. Right. Until I was in it. And then once I graduated college, that same carrier then gave me an opportunity to
00:12:45
Speaker
work full-time for them in the commercial eggs side of the house. So I worked primarily with traditional commercial agricultural type accounts in the Midwest. So a lot of grain elevators, feed mills, cooperatives, fertilizer plants, implement dealers, you name it, traditional agriculture, I worked with it.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, right. So Nicole, you use the term commercial agriculture. And then there's family farms. I don't know if that's an actual term.
Agricultural Safety Hazards: Combustible Dust
00:13:20
Speaker
And then there's corporate farming. When it comes to the discipline of agriculture, would you divide it in three sections? Or what do those terms mean?
00:13:33
Speaker
I don't know if I would divide it into three sections because once you get outside of the commercial realm, you've got kind of your, when I worked for the carrier, they used to call it specialty egg. And that is kind of the farms that are larger, but they might also have some level of commercial exposure.
00:13:55
Speaker
a commercial exposure that's basically a company exposure. So if it's a fertilizer operation or if it's a larger farm that they also kind of expanded into fertilizer operations, if they're applying and doing custom application or things like that for other individuals, there's a level of insurance exposure from a business commercial standpoint.
00:14:21
Speaker
There's a lot of gray area and there's, I wouldn't say there's necessarily three groups specifically, but you most definitely do have your family farms. Not that they are all small, some are quite large in multiple generation family farms, but typically those farms are diversified between both crops and livestock. Or in Illinois, they're very, very big on row crops.
00:14:47
Speaker
They've got a lot of family farms that are specifically just corn and soybeans, just because the ground is so healthy there for row crops that they don't want to use it on livestock, essentially. So it kind of depends on your location as well. But you do have those farms that are diversified between crops and livestock. You do have the larger farms that might be specifically
00:15:11
Speaker
in one specific area. So you've got maybe somebody that's just specifically in cattle production or cattle reproduction, or they are specifically only in row crop, things like that. Or dairy cows. And then once you get past that, that's when you open up the door to the commercial type operations where you do have those business exposures from an insurance standpoint.
00:15:37
Speaker
And then further, you've got the vertically integrated operations. So let's say it's a hog operation and they're completely vertically integrated, then they are raising their own crops. Those crops are then turned into the feed at their own feed mill that they feed their own pigs with, and then they've got
00:15:57
Speaker
the sow units and they do their own farrowing and they do their own finishing and things along those lines. So they're completely vertically integrated. Right. Right. Makes sense. Makes sense. And all of them, I mean, regardless of whether it's a family farm or this vertically integrated, all the all in between has employees or can have employees. Right. Yeah. For, you know, risk and risk abatement, not that there isn't risk with
00:16:24
Speaker
you know, a family farm that doesn't have employees, there's risk there too. But by way of the work of safety in our practice, agriculture is a big sector for us to work in. It's a huge sector and it's kind of a niche area where in all honesty there's not a lot of resources that are safety specific for which is
00:16:44
Speaker
is a little disheartening just because I mean, the farm accidents happen so frequently and they happen so often on the area of the industry where it typically tends to be those family farms where OSHA might not directly apply to them based off of employee count or things along those lines. And even though the risks are still there and they still have the exact same hazards,
00:17:12
Speaker
In all honesty, they might even have more hazards just because they're operating a lot more leaner than maybe a more corporate farm. But the risks are still there. And unfortunately, they just don't maybe necessarily have the resources or the guidelines like some of the larger farms or the more commercial operations do have.
00:17:35
Speaker
Yeah, or held to the expectations or maybe even the understanding of what some of the hazards are. I think about the fact that farms, oh man, confined spaces, right? So many confined spaces and growing up in the Midwest myself, it's like the classic
00:17:59
Speaker
The classic examples of things that go wrong on farms is someone dies in a grain bin. You read it in the paper, you hear it on the news, you hear it in your local community and you're like, what again, really? All the time, right? Yeah. All the time. Yeah. It's baffling to the mind that
00:18:22
Speaker
that after all these years, we haven't figured out what those hazards are and how to prevent that. I mean, we know what the hazards are, but how we get that information. Right. How we reach that audience and give it to them, right? And I kind of struggle with it to myself just because
00:18:42
Speaker
I see it so often in the areas that I live of things along those lines. And my dad, he's always, I wish you would stop looking at me like I'm one of your accounts, which cracks me up so that, you know, we can't turn it off. Sorry. Sorry, not sorry. Right, but I'm not actually sorry. But no, I think that there has just been a disconnect because there hasn't been the expectation for
00:19:11
Speaker
those farms to resort to the same level of expectations that are maybe held on the commercial side and things like that. And from a regulatory standpoint, that would be incredibly hard to do just to stay on top of and focus on and things along those lines.
00:19:31
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah it's it's kind of a personal mission of mine to figure out how we can work on that. Yeah, well and you know maybe, maybe those of us who have you know people who are listening and who have their own circles of influence or those of us who
00:19:47
Speaker
who do writing about hazards, safety hazards, or talking about or presenting about it, maybe we could all do more to use agriculture as examples.
Gaining Credibility in Agriculture Safety
00:19:59
Speaker
I think there's lots of classic examples that many of us can lean into, and maybe we could do a better job of bringing agriculture into the conversation. Right, right. It is a very kind of niche industry.
00:20:14
Speaker
So and it's also a tough industry because it kind of Parallels construction and the fact that it's almost kind of a air quotes around cowboy mentality. Yeah that You got to be able to walk the walk and talk the talk the second that you walk in that door and and show your credibility and if you say anything that
00:20:38
Speaker
I guess counteracts your credibility, then it's going to be really hard to get that back and try and get them to understand where you're coming from. But the second that they do have that credibility with you, then they're like, yeah, tell me more. I want to understand how we can better do this. So at the end of the day, they are truly genuine and caring people. It's just that they...
00:21:03
Speaker
don't think that people understand the industry that they work in. Right, right. Yeah. And so how has that gone for you? You said that you said that you were offered your first job in the in the in the carrier world, insurance carrier. And so and you're still in the insurance world now on the brokerage side. But how has that worked for you with credibility and buy in as you're talking with people? What what's worked for you?
00:21:29
Speaker
It's actually helped me pretty tremendously and that's kind of what turned me on to the safety industry in from the get-go because when I was hired for that specific carrier essentially they told me you know we can teach safety to anybody but agriculture is something that we need people who have that experience and so once I started working for them they essentially just started teaching me safety from day one and how to recognize those hazards and
00:21:58
Speaker
In all reality, working specifically in the commercial agricultural industry, I've gotten
00:22:07
Speaker
vast knowledge in how those commercial operations work and the types of hazards to notice and things along those lines. And so being able to come into a niche industry like that and be able to have the background and then also be able to address those hazards on top of it has been huge for my credibility. So that's 100% thankful for that because that's kind of how I was able to
00:22:33
Speaker
Break past those barriers. I mean especially walking into a grain elevator that has a general manager that's been there for the last 50 years of his life and he Doesn't want this insurance person to be there in the beginning and not only that but then this insurance person that's gonna tell him about safety walks in the door and it's a early 20s
00:23:00
Speaker
Girl from that just graduated college, right? So there's that there's that barrier immediately to help break down to so being able to really truly know the industry and the hazards of it and Be able to walk that walk and talk the talk because of the training that I received honestly was The only way to break down those barriers
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah, right.
Grain Industry Hazards and Maintenance
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, when you talked about, you know, the hazards that are that are specific to the agricultural industry, they do really have some
00:23:33
Speaker
specific things that you don't often see in other places of employment. It's not like they're necessarily exclusive by way of hazards to egg, but you don't see them everywhere. And so maybe for our listeners who are wondering like, what are some of those hazards, if I'm thinking about going into this, or maybe someone's listening who's working in egg or is from a farm or has family farm,
00:23:58
Speaker
people. What are some of those things that you typically see by way of hazards? Right. So the biggest and I would say probably most glaring one is combustible dust and grain and feed milling specifically just because just the way that the properties are set up and the way that the elevators run and the conveyors and how
00:24:22
Speaker
how long these elevators have been standing, essentially, and how much they operate. There's a lot of combustible dust. It's not something that you're ever going to be able to get rid of. So you have to learn how to effectively manage it. And so that's one of the biggest ones, especially because property is typically one of their
00:24:48
Speaker
large areas of exposure outside of work comp, obviously. Just to back up a little bit, when we're talking about combustible dust, for people listening, some of our listeners may have heard about explosions that have happened in elevators. If you live anywhere in an agricultural area and you pay attention, you likely have heard that happening. That's what you're talking about is,
00:25:16
Speaker
combustible dust and so ways to mitigate around that is housekeeping for one thing and then reducing sparking hazards is another thing. So when you're doing your work, are you coaching and informing people about housekeeping methods and how that works?
00:25:34
Speaker
Right. So that's obviously housekeeping is, as you stated, one of the most important ways that you can help mitigate it because it's not going to be able to be engineered out. So housekeeping is one of the first things that we always talk about clients with. And it's, um, what does your frequency of cleaning look like if we have a grain spill, um, maybe down in a boot pit underground? How, what's our response time in cleaning that up?
00:25:59
Speaker
How often are we evaluating the type of extension cords that we're using in this area or the type of outside of housekeeping? I guess we would look at electrical too and making sure that we don't have any broken conduit or Any areas of junction boxes that are exposing live wiring thing like that things along those lines But from the housekeeping standpoint, it's not just only frequency. It's
00:26:28
Speaker
Do our employees also understand how much that could affect a dust explosion? Because a lot of time people, again, combustible dust is one thing that you're not going to be able to engineer out. It's just a part of the process. And so since they're so used to it being present of how much time are we spending on educating them on
00:26:54
Speaker
what level of dust is acceptable versus not acceptable and how are we mitigating that dust? Is it something that we're using an air compressor and suspending the dust up into the air making it even more of a hazard or is it something that we're brushing it down and
00:27:11
Speaker
what can we do from a building structural standpoint, things like that. And so it usually typically always starts with housekeeping, but then it does trickle into electrical and how they're maintaining that. And then also preventative maintenance is big too, because a lot of times the sparking incident, I guess, that would start this combustible dust is from a maintenance issue.
00:27:36
Speaker
Right. So we've, yeah, go ahead. Yes. Yeah. Give an example of that. Right. So fairly often it's specifically because of bearings that are running in the, in the elevators and the head pulleys and the boot pulleys. And so essentially,
00:27:54
Speaker
It's what is our greasing program. How often are we greasing it? Do the people that are greasing it understand how to properly grease it or are we just greasing it until grease starts squirting out and we think it should be good. So it's climbing up to the top of the elevators and looking at every single bearing that's up on top of those head pulleys and how much grease is trickling down the ladder.
00:28:20
Speaker
or how much grease is around the bearing itself and having those conversations about do you understand that over-greasing actually is just as big as a hazard as under-greasing because you can blow seals which then
00:28:35
Speaker
introduces your sparking hazard things along those lines. Um, yeah. And so that bearing specific is massive. I would say the other major area would probably be, um, the elevators itself. There's a lot of sensors that grain elevator specifically look at using, whether it's a hot bearing detection. Um, so you can hopefully catch it before that spark does
Dust Management in Grain Elevators
00:29:02
Speaker
happen. Or there's motion sensors that.
00:29:05
Speaker
track the speed of the head and foot of the elevators just to see if they're operating at the same speed or if there's any kind of slippage because there might be a catch somewhere in that elevator. And then you've also got alignment sensors too, which can go off if the belt that the buckets of the bucket elevator are on are shifting
00:29:32
Speaker
or deviating too far left or too far right. And so they might be digging into potentially the concrete or the metal there. And then that friction could cause the spark, especially. Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's, it's, um,
00:29:49
Speaker
There's a lot to know and a lot to look at. There is. And some of our listeners might be going, what were some of those words she was using? And maybe just for people who aren't familiar with a grain elevator, maybe we should try to explain what a grain elevator does. Because it is literally elevating a grain product and then processing it perhaps in some area of the building, the elevator itself, or sending it to bins.
00:30:19
Speaker
you know distributing it somewhere else and so that grain has to be picked up and like you had mentioned um um what was the term that you use for the bucket the bucket elevators yep you know like if you can imagine well little to big-ish buckets scooping up yeah it continuously it looks almost like uh yeah it almost looks like a a brick except it's a bucket so it's open in the middle
00:30:43
Speaker
And basically, there's just a continuous belt with all these buckets on it. And then once it gets down to the boot, which is underground, and I guess I should probably step back and talk about what a boot pit is. I know, but yes. Sometimes I just go off in tangents and I get into the weeds.
00:31:08
Speaker
Essentially, when the grain comes into the grain elevator, it usually comes via the semi. Then the hopper bottom trailers, they open up the hoppers on the bottom, and then the grain then feeds into a pit, which is down underground.
00:31:23
Speaker
And that is where it will essentially be conveyed and taken up by the bucket elevator. So essentially the buckets on this continuous belt that are in the elevator will pick up the grain and haul it up to the top. And then once it gets to the top of that elevator,
00:31:40
Speaker
it will then be distributed to different bins depending on where the the manager I guess decides to put that grain and then they they will put it into different bins based off of moisture so they can kind of get a good mix mixture of it or they don't want
00:32:02
Speaker
moisture to be too high in other bins, or if the grain coming in is way too wet, then they might have to run it through a dryer first and things along those lines. Yeah, you don't want your grain to mold. Right, right, and because when it does mold, it starts fires. A whole nother issue. Yep, yep, a whole nother issue.
00:32:23
Speaker
Yeah, so you talked about preventative maintenance and when I was with OSHA and doing inspections, which included elevators, one of those things that we would be looking at is I need to look inside the boot pit and I need to ask about maintenance things and I need to see how much dust is in there and I need to ask you what sort of equipment are you using for cleaning the dust? Is it non-sparking?
00:32:47
Speaker
If you're using some kind of vacuum system, isn't it on sparking? And teaching people about how wiring needs to be enclosed. So that's all part of what you do on a daily basis.
00:33:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know guys, we really went, Nicole and I would have gone into the weeds, but it, it, I mean, you had said the hazards are unique and they are, and they're, they're very critical, you know, for, for a long time, you know, many people listening know that OSHA has special emphasis programs to do inspections and target particular industries or types of activities and
00:33:29
Speaker
that industry has been one of them, particularly around elevators for a long time because these things that you're talking about are so critical. So what about some of the other more unique or common hazards that you see in agriculture?
00:33:45
Speaker
I mean from there's there's a ton of different angles to go but on the grain side from the workers comp side there's obviously bend entrapments which we see way more than I wish we did and then you've got your general's walking working services slip trip fall type hazards because we've got employees that are climbing up ladders on these bins that might be
00:34:10
Speaker
100 feet in the air or we've got employees that might be loading semis or driving feed trucks and so that essentially would require them to climb up the ladders on the back to be able to maybe
Temperature Hazards in Agriculture
00:34:25
Speaker
close the tarp on the trailer of the semi or if they're delivering feed that means that they are going out onto individual farms
00:34:33
Speaker
And they have then got to make sure that the spouting on their feed truck matches up with the bins at the site. So they have to get out of the truck and climb up the bins on site and take a look inside and climb down. So we've got a lot of hazards from that perspective on the workers' compensation side. And two, one that is often missed is
00:34:57
Speaker
the temperature, right? Because this is an industry that works every single day, no matter the time of the year, because animals have got to get fed, things have got to be taken care of, harvest is pretty much a 24 seven operation. And so we've got to talk about the summertime, the heat stress, and we've got to talk about the wintertime when it's
00:35:17
Speaker
30 degrees below outside and we got to go clean out a bin. Not only are we talking about safety specific, but we're now also addressing what does that temperature do to your body and what do we need to do to help mitigate that hazard so that from the temperature standpoint, you know how to, um, I guess identify when there may potentially be an issue. But outside of the grain industry, uh, some pretty unique hazards are on the fertilizer side and the chemical application side because
00:35:47
Speaker
We've got a lot of mobile equipment operation that is on the roadways and so we've got to work on the training that we have and specifics for driving on the roadways with an applicator that you might have to get all the way on the shoulder and you're still going to have cars that
00:36:05
Speaker
Try to take your back tire off because things are that wide right right or Not hitting light poles things along those lines and then with the chemical applications and dry fertilizer applications in addition to mobile equipment you've got the mixing process so
00:36:23
Speaker
the PPE and potential hazards of working with anhydrous, anhydrous ammonia, or just general chemicals that we are going to be mixing together to make a specific type of chemical application for this particular field. When we get to that field and we've got to dump and rinse out, what is our protocol for how we flush out that?
00:36:45
Speaker
things along those lines. Has your communication and personal protective equipment and knowing what you need. Yeah and it's very specific too because you've got the anhydrous and you've got liquid propane too.
00:37:01
Speaker
because that's partially why I love working with cooperatives so much is because they are so complex and they have so many hazards because they've got the agronomy side both from an insurance and a safety perspective.
00:37:17
Speaker
They've got the agronomy side of applying chemicals and working around those chemicals. We've got the grain side of all the hazards we just addressed. We've got the feed side where they're looking at from a food safety perspective and a safety perspective and a combustible dust perspective. So that is tricky as well. And then a lot of these cooperatives are also dealing with refined fuel and LP and home delivery. So then it gets into the NFPA guidelines of, okay, leak checks and
00:37:45
Speaker
Our customers that we're outreaching, do we provide our right to know annual information? Do we make them sign off on it? What's our protocol for new customers when somebody moves into a new house in our area? And there's just so many different aspects that all have their own little nuances and niches that
00:38:06
Speaker
It's partially why I love the industry just because it's very complex and it requires a lot of a lot of detail and knowledge and learning. And I think it's fun. Some people might not. Well, you know, you have a lot packed into your head, Nicole. Right. And it's fantastic to hear you talk about it because it's not, you know, the hazards aren't, it's not one thing.
00:38:32
Speaker
It's so many, which keeps the job exciting, right? It does, it does. Every day is never the same, never the same, that's for sure. Yeah, and keeps you learning. Right, right, right. For sure. Yeah, so I know one of the things that you and I talked about when we had a quick chat before, when I was trying to get you to agree to be a guest, which thank you, by the way.
Risks and Experiences with Man Lifts in Agriculture
00:38:55
Speaker
We are talking about man lifts. Well, first of all, the sexist term man lift, which is a way for people to be moved regardless of their sex. And you find them very often in agriculture. Can you talk about what that is? I mean, we can find them in other industries too, but not as often as we find them in agricultural settings. So can you describe what that is?
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, so a man lift is essentially a way to get to most commonly they are used in grain elevators in the agricultural side of the world or also feed mills that have multiple floors because you've got to be able to get up to the very very top of the grain bins or the concrete silos or the head house or wherever you're wanting to go.
00:39:47
Speaker
to be able to see and work on the railing around the top of it or make sure that we don't have any mold and grain or we're working on greasing bearings things along those lines. So there's essentially it's a way to take you all the way up to the top. A lot of times that is
00:40:07
Speaker
150 feet in the air, 200 feet in the air, things like that. But these man lifts are typically like a of what I say, three foot by three foot box. Maybe that's basically got expanded metal as your cage. And then you just hold on to a button that says I want to go up and you got to hold that until you get to the floor you want to go on.
00:40:34
Speaker
And then you jump out. And if you let go of that button, oftentimes you might get stuck in between floors. It happens. So I was always sure that my finger was about white by the time I got to the top, because I never wanted to get stuck in between floors. Right. And there's different configurations of these man lifts as well. And I mean, who knows why just general staircases weren't built into these areas. I'm guessing for space.
00:41:03
Speaker
you know like they just took too much space so someone came up with this idea of we're just gonna be able to convey people from floor to floor through a different means and so the the kind that you described is one kind I've seen ones that look like kind of teeny tiny phone booths that are more like in clothes that go up yep and then the one that I've had the most personal experience with is something called an endless belt man lift yeah and that looks like a big giant
00:41:31
Speaker
Treadmill belt if you can imagine that like kind of about as wide as a treadmill belt actually maybe a little bit wider Yeah, that's got these and it runs vertically yep throughout and and so like you said 150 200 feet so if you can imagine a pulley on one end and a pulley on the other end and this big like treadmill belt that runs vertically that has these little steps and
00:41:56
Speaker
I don't know if we want to call them a step, a place to stand every so often. It's kind of like a little platform. Yeah, a little tiny platform. Right. Yep. And and you have to like kind of the belt stops running. It never stops running. And so you have to time it and then jump on to that little step and then right about where you would suspect something to hold on would be right in front of you as you're facing that belt is like a little cup.
00:42:20
Speaker
that you just grab onto your life. And then you take a ride. And they're not enclosed. There's not a guardrail system around you. It's open. And birds maybe could be flying around as you're in these areas. And then when you need to get off on a floor, you have to be able to see the floor coming and then step backwards and off.
00:42:47
Speaker
as the belt continues to run. There is like a handbrake on the side, like a rope that you can grab to like for an emergency stop, but that's about it. Yeah, those are wild. Those are wild. They're pretty intense. They are pretty intense. Yeah, I experienced my first and only in my career workers compensation claim for myself.
00:43:09
Speaker
after I had ridden one of those. I did not fall, so spoiler alert, I did not fall. But I was working for OSHA at the time and I needed to get to the roof of a grain elevator where a man had, because of a lockout tagout issue, had gotten his hand pulled into
00:43:31
Speaker
a pulley system at the top of the elevator. And I needed to get up there to be able to do my investigation. And so the option was the man lift or the ladder on the outside of the elevator. Which that ladder is just a straight ladder that goes up 200 feet in the air. So it's kind of a last resort.
00:43:51
Speaker
kind of the last resort. I had never written on one of these before. And so I'm like, I knew in my head, I'm like running through the regulation for man lifts. I'm like, okay, I'm going to send up a couple people before I get on this thing. And I told the people from the elevator, I said, when I get to the top, pull me off, like literally pull me off because I've never stepped backwards off of one of these things before and I'm going to need some guidance.
00:44:18
Speaker
And they're like, yeah, we'll let you know. And so I'm riding up and I have my eyes closed most of the time because it is pretty frightening. And I get it's pitch dark. It's pitch. Yeah, it's dark. And so these guys at the top are like, we can see you, Jill. We can see you're coming through, you're coming through, you're getting to the top. Get ready to step, get ready to step. And I'm like, pull me off. And they did. And they're like, wow, you weren't kidding. And I said, well, like.
00:44:41
Speaker
I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of heights but this is my job and I have to do it so I'm shaking like a leaf by the time I get to the top and you know pull myself together in order to do my job and then have to of course write it back down and the next day or that evening I broke out in hives from like the top of my head to the tips of my toes just horrendous hives yeah and I went to my dermatologist and I said she's like what happened and I said I think I got so scared
00:45:10
Speaker
I got hives." And she's like, no, that doesn't happen. She said, but you are allergic to mold and there's a certain amount of mold in the dust and grain. And I had just experienced enough dust to have an allergic reaction, which lasted six weeks.
00:45:27
Speaker
Oh, wow. I know, right? Yeah, that's not exciting. It was crazy. So that's my that's my experience. I've been on a couple since then, but it would not be my it would not be my choice. So when we talk about endless belt man lives and man lives in general and safety. Yeah, what what have you what have you learned about those?
00:45:51
Speaker
So first things first, I will start off with the time, the only time that I've ever had an experience with one of those man lifts. I was very young and just fresh out of college and kind of naive to the process. And I was like, well, I like
00:46:12
Speaker
I am telling these guys that I know exactly what I'm doing. I can't sit here and say, no, I'm not going up that. That's going to ruin my entire credibility. So I was like, I got to buckle up and do it. That's what I had to do. Right, exactly. But yeah, so when I worked for the carrier that I worked for, they basically kind of said, if you see one of these, we don't want it.
00:46:38
Speaker
And so in my mind, I took that as, okay, man, these are bad. We don't want these. I guess I also associated with that, that they were no longer supposed to be in use. And so it took our conversation for me to look into it a little bit more. And then luckily one of the
00:47:00
Speaker
individuals in my network that I was reaching out to who also works specifically in Ukraine, I was like, no, they're actually still legal. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I've been living a lie. So I definitely had to email you and say, Hey, wait a minute. I totally misspoke. Right. Yeah. I mean, and they, and there are a few safety considerations with them, but honestly, there's, you know, it's,
00:47:24
Speaker
They also can be a sparking hazard in a dusty environment for certain, and they do have brakes on them like I talked about, and those brakes have to be inspected. Anyway, and there's speeds associated with them and guarding the shaft that they run through so people can inadvertently fall through the shaft and things like that.
00:47:48
Speaker
Yeah, so you had, we were talking about that you were working on the carrier side of insurance, and now you work on the brokerage side.
Insurance Roles in Agricultural Safety
00:47:59
Speaker
You know, how long were you have you been in in each maybe and and if you don't mind explaining to our listeners the difference between a carrier and insurance carrier and an insurance broker, that would be that would be great.
00:48:13
Speaker
Yeah, so on the carrier side, I spent about three years in the traditional agricultural specific, loss control specific realm. And then on the brokerage side, I've been here for about a year and a half. So still a newbie to the safety industry, but
00:48:33
Speaker
Doesn't sound like it, Nicole. Well, that's good. That helps. But so essentially the difference between brokers and carriers are carriers are your
00:48:48
Speaker
basically the ones that are going to be paying out your claims or it's who you have your policy through. So those are your travelers, your triangle nationwide, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, things like that. So those are the types of carriers. There's
00:49:03
Speaker
a ton of ones that are specific working solely in agriculture, ones that solely work on personal lines, so auto at home things along those lines. So we work primarily with the carriers that deal with commercial businesses and operations. And we've got our niche carriers that we use for some of those niche industries, things along those lines.
00:49:25
Speaker
But then the broker side is almost like a consultant. So basically we work with clients to help consult on where their exposures are, what types of insurance that they should be buying or should be looking at buying.
00:49:41
Speaker
how much exposure that they do have with their operation. Maybe they don't know that adding this specific area to their business opens up a whole new can of worms from an exposure standpoint on insurance. So we have different areas of our brokerage. We've got a safety team and then we've got
00:50:01
Speaker
advocacy for claims, handling things along those lines. We've got our marketing team, which helps us with renewals. We've got our sales team. And so basically all across the board, whether it's claims handling, safety, program design, things along those lines, we're essentially kind of a consultant. And so we help our clients in their purchasing process of
00:50:25
Speaker
what to buy, how to buy, how to handle claims, how to handle safety things along those lines. So we are kind of that extra, extra resource before the carrier because often the carriers are operating at such a large capacity that
00:50:42
Speaker
Sometimes it's hard for them to put a face to the name and things along those lines. I guess we're kind of that middleman to help you navigate those resources and insurance products. Yeah, and help you find and make the best choices for the carriers that are out there.
00:50:58
Speaker
Right. And the ones that are suitable for your industry or have the most accurate products for your exposures, things along those lines. And cost as well. Right, exactly. Because ultimately, you're right. You can under-insure, you can over-insure and things along those lines. And so it's finding that balance and that happy medium and where our client's level of risk retention is. And safety, people work on both the carrier side and the broker side.
00:51:28
Speaker
And those are services that are available to employers.
00:51:32
Speaker
Right, right. Yep. So the, uh, safety on the carrier side, typically there are your loss control individuals, which are the face of the carrier. So that's going to be the one that is on site, maybe doing walkthroughs or providing with some extra training materials, inviting you to training seminars, things along those lines. They typically also have specialists, whether it's fleet specialists, uh, food safety specialists, grain specialists, agronomy.
00:52:02
Speaker
depending on if it's a niche carrier or not a niche carrier, things along those lines. That can help with more of your general questions or your more specific questions, I guess I should say. And then on the broker side, we've got with our specific brokerage, we've got a team of safety consultants that focus on transportation and then also the general industry side of safety. And then we've got
00:52:28
Speaker
me specifically, I work in a different department. So I work with all of the clients that are in my department specific. So although agriculture is my specialty, I do focus on safety with all of the clients in our department. So I am becoming much more of a generalist in addition to that as well.
00:52:47
Speaker
And so I'm basically kind of a day to day contact touchpoint safety consultant. I guess you could say whether it's there's a specific claim and they're looking at accident investigation and did we find the true root cause things like that.
00:53:05
Speaker
revamping programs or structuring goals for the year, things along those lines. Yeah, and these are services that are available to employers as part of their premiums that they're paying, as part of their fees. It's not something that is an additional fee.
00:53:21
Speaker
Right, so on the brokerage side, it's usually all included in your premium. There might be something that maybe is outsourced from a third party or something that maybe the brokerage will eat the cost for, or maybe it's something that the client wants to pay for because they want to have that extra ownership into it, things along those lines. Carriers for the most part, a lot of the times the stuff they have is included in your premium.
00:53:43
Speaker
But sometimes there are additional services that may require some level of fee. So also part of my role here is to kind of help our clients navigate where's the most cost efficient and effective way to get this service. So whether that's a third party, whether it's our internal team, whether it's a carrier of things along those lines.
00:54:04
Speaker
Yeah, I know I used in my previous, my last previous job, I use my broker to help me figure out how to do some air monitoring for hexavalent chromium. And so the broker was able to source an industrial hygienist for me who was able to do that monitoring for much less dollars than had I went out and found an industrial hygienist and hired them myself.
00:54:34
Speaker
That was something that wasn't included in their services, but they helped me source that and source it in an affordable manner. Then also the paper trail stayed with them too. I had what I needed and the broker had what they needed and it was good. A quick turnaround too.
00:54:54
Speaker
Right, yeah. And oftentimes, a lot of people don't know that those services or that type of capability exists. But we do, we're here. Yeah, that's great. You're right. A lot of times, people don't know they exist.
Safety Resources from Insurance Services
00:55:08
Speaker
So when people are trying to tackle safety, whether you're a safety professional yourself, or maybe you're just getting started, or maybe you're an employer who's like, I don't have a safety professional, but I know I need to get this stuff done.
00:55:22
Speaker
you can lean into your insurance carrier, your insurance broker, or both for help and lots of different topics, whether it be training or helping writing a program or a policy or system or doing monitoring like we were talking about. There's so much you can help with.
00:55:40
Speaker
Right, right. And there's some things that from the carrier side, too, that they might not be, they can provide guidelines, but they can't give you sample programs, things like that, from a liability exposure. And so that's our job, too, as the broker to say, OK, well, we can get this portion from this carrier that you work with and this portion from this carrier that you work with, because they might have multiple, depending on lines of coverage, things like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Makes sense.
00:56:09
Speaker
Well, Nicole, as we're wrapping up our time with one another today, I'm curious, do you have a favorite section as you're doing this work? Or maybe favorite right now that you're really interested in digging into?
00:56:24
Speaker
So obviously, the agricultural side is kind of where my heart lies, just because that's where my roots are from. But since I have been a generalist, more or say, in our brokerage department, construction is one that I find very intriguing just because of the fact that, like I said, there's a lot of parallel with the agricultural industry about
00:56:51
Speaker
just the way that the relationships work and things along those lines. It's also very, very complex too, just like the agricultural industry is. Not to say that I don't like manufacturing because I definitely have spent some days in a going down a little wormhole of CNC machining safety videos.
00:57:15
Speaker
They're also complex. Right, right, right. So they all have their own little complexities. And I would say construction might be one of my next favorites, but I truly enjoy continuously learning. And so right now, I like being able to have that generalist nature just because I can continually learn so much about the manufacturing specific complexities and construction specific
00:57:43
Speaker
I most definitely am up for any kind of challenge that comes my way.
00:57:47
Speaker
Hmm. Well, Nicole, you're you're just getting started and the amount of information that you've got packed in your head is impressive at this point in your career. And any any any employer would be lucky to have you come into their facilities. Well, thank you. Thank you. Good luck to you and your continued career. And thank you so much for sharing such fabulous details with our listening audience today. Really appreciate it.
00:58:13
Speaker
Thank you for letting me get real super nerdy about agricultural. That's what this podcast is all about, sister. Perfect. We have to have a place to get together. Right, everybody? I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Jill. You're welcome. Thank you for spending your time listening today. More importantly, thank you for your contribution, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers,
00:58:38
Speaker
and your ag workers make it home safe every day. If you'd like to join the conversation about this episode or any of our previous episodes, follow our page and join the Accidental Safety Pro Community Group on Facebook. 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 that you'd like. You can also find all of our podcasts with their transcriptions at vividlearningsystems.com slash podcast.
00:59:06
Speaker
We'd love it if you could leave us a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect with more and more safety professionals like you and I. If you have a suggestion for a guest, including if it's you, you can contact me at social at vividlearningsystems.com. Special thanks to Will Moss, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.