Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#18: If I don't remember that, then I don't need to be doing safety.
139 Plays6 years ago
Podcast series host Jill James connects with Certified Safety Professional Rick, a home grown pro with over 30 years of experience. Rick started on a poultry production line and, building upon his interest in emergency response, worked his way up the ranks of the safety ladder for a major food industry brand. Eventually, he found himself supervising 160 professional safety staff and 350 occupational health nurses. Podcast fans will learn about mapping safety to organizational business strategy, the futility of ‘management without measurement’, and developing safety metrics from workers comp stats. Also, discover a fantastic internship opportunity available now. Bonus? Answer the most important question every safety pro must ask themselves.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction with Rick Halenga
00:00:10
Speaker
The Pearl brought to you by Vivid Learning Systems and the Health and Safety Institute. Episode number 18. My name is Jill James, Vivid's Chief Safety Officer, and today I'm joined by Rick Halenga, Senior Director of Safety, Health and Loss Prevention for Simmons Foods in Arkansas. Rick, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
00:00:33
Speaker
Yeah, you're welcome. It's great to have you here. For full disclosure, Rick and I have known one another in the safety field for, jeez, Rick, what do you think? Maybe something like eight years?
00:00:45
Speaker
Eight, 10 years, yeah, thereabouts. Something like that when we had a common meeting in our jobs around, specifically then, the poultry industry. Rick, you're a little bit familiar with the podcast at this point, and you know that our central theme is around how did we accidentally find ourselves in this field?
Rick's Journey in Safety
00:01:06
Speaker
And so I'm interested to hear your story because you've been at this a while now, haven't you? Yes, ma'am, almost 30 plus years.
00:01:14
Speaker
Whoa, whoa. So what's the story? How did you, I mean, you're in Arkansas. Have you always been from Arkansas or what got you into this? So I actually started working for a company called Harker's Foods in Northwest Iowa. Way, way, way, way long ago, back in 1985.
00:01:38
Speaker
And I started working on the production floor. And my first job was actually marinating chicken strips. And I worked my way up through the ranks and got myself into management. And my last job in management was what they termed, at the time, a production supervisor on second shift.
00:02:05
Speaker
Anyways, I was taking a supper break one night and I was thumbing through the local newspaper and I saw an ad for a position called the Iowa Safety Manager position for Harker's Foods, which at the time was part of Tyson Foods. We had been acquired
00:02:24
Speaker
in 1989 by Tyson Foods. Anyway, so I called the next day and luckily I did because that was actually the last day that the position was going to be posted and I already had several applicants. And so I threw my hat into the ring and through a series of several interviews was fortunate enough to get into the position and I was doing safety over three production plants.
00:02:52
Speaker
So Rick, when you're sitting at dinner that night in the plant and you read the ad for safety, what made you even think that, like, did you know what that meant? Or were you just thinking like, what's my next move going to be? Like, how did you decide that was what you're going to go after? Well, so I had been part of, uh, I guess what's considered now the emergency action.
00:03:11
Speaker
or emergency response team. We did hazmat and incipient fire response as well as first aid and CPR responder. And I'd always been intrigued by that. And I thought it was something that was very worthwhile and helpful to not only the company, but more importantly to the folks that were on my line and in the plant and the company that I worked in. So I thought, you know what? This is something definitely to explore.
00:03:40
Speaker
Cool. And so you landed the job. You've got three facilities. Is that what you said? Yes, ma'am. And so what did, what did that, was that like a rude awakening or were you energized by
Early Challenges and Support
00:03:53
Speaker
it? What was, I mean, you've been in one facility and now all of a sudden you have three and a totally different job. Yeah. So the, and I don't know how common this is nowadays. I don't think it's very common this
00:04:05
Speaker
anymore but back then my training consisted of 15 minute discussion a one-five minute discussion with my boss and he handed me the two CFR books and said let me know if you need anything.
00:04:20
Speaker
Had you ever seen the CFR book before? No and so I found out later why and that was because we had been obviously bought by Tyson Foods and Tyson had a fairly mature at the time safety program and process and the three plants I was with had never had one.
00:04:40
Speaker
it was always done by the HR manager as part of their job responsibility and again as part of it so obviously it was put to the back burner several times but anyways that was my awakening and when I went to some of the Tyson training for safety folks I was like absolutely blown away by first of all the amount of knowledge that they all had and second of all the amount of work that they did and it actually helped me go ahead and focus on things that I
00:05:08
Speaker
did not have or the three plants did not have and initially it started out almost completely just on the compliance side because we didn't have anything.
00:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, so literally, it was the CFRs. Yeah. Yeah. And so were your counterparts with Tyson? Were they helpful to you at that time? Or did they go, whoa, this guy's so over his head? Did anybody reach a handout and go, I'm going to help you? So we were part of what was back then called the Beef and Pork Division. And there were a couple other safety folks in that same.
00:05:47
Speaker
division they reached out to me and helped me out and provided me some templates to go with and I actually leaned on them quite a bit to say hey how what do you think to give me their interpretations and their solutions but also the corporate staff was very helpful as well they
00:06:04
Speaker
They were available to me. I had my first OSHA inspection, I think, within the first four or five months. We had had an incident that actually happened before I started, which may have helped drive getting the position. And OSHA came in and it was for an amputation. But they helped me out and it turned out actually fairly well.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah. So you were really starting from scratch. You said you were working on templates. You're trying to get written programs in place maybe for the first time or ones that were acceptable and doing training too. Yes ma'am. I mean the first one I did was Lockout Tagout. Well it was a good important one to pick in a processing plant. And then it went into Hazcom, Bloodborne Pathogens had just come out, Process Safety Management was still
00:06:55
Speaker
being discussed, it wasn't even out there yet. I mean, it was a brave new world to just put it that way. No kidding. So when did you feel like you got your sea legs? Actually, I still don't have my sea legs, quite frankly. Right? That was like a trick question because I know I say the same thing.
00:07:14
Speaker
Now, I mean, and that's one thing I know for all the folks that may be listening, that's critical and that is you're never, never have your sea legs and you always have to learn. And that's one thing I've learned myself through some painful experiences where you just think you got it nailed down and all of a sudden, boom, something else happens that you never anticipated.
00:07:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a double-edged sword for
Continuous Learning and Loss Control
00:07:42
Speaker
a practice, right? I mean, it's what keeps, well, some of us, at least for me, engaged, is the constant learning and the ability to be always learning if that's your thing and you like that. And it keeps you humble, too. Oh, definitely. That's for sure.
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah. So what happened next? You have these three plants. You're just getting started. What's the process? What happened next for you? So Tyson had a department called Loss Control. And it was focused on fire and ammonia response. So I was called by one of the folks
00:08:27
Speaker
in Arkansas asking if I would be interested in applying. And I'm like, okay. And I applied, but then at the time I wasn't where I could actually move because it was down in Arkansas.
00:08:43
Speaker
and so they hired somebody else and about six months later that person apparently didn't work out and so they called me again and this time I said okay I'll go down there and take a look and interviewed and I was successful and I relocated down to Arkansas
00:08:59
Speaker
and became their corporate loss control coordinator, I guess that's what it was called at the time. And my responsibility then was focusing on hazardous material response, fire prevention and incipient stage fire force response, permit required confined space entry and respiratory protection.
00:09:25
Speaker
I can't believe you remember all that. Yeah, I mean, it seems like it was yesterday, but that's right. And I was just traveling around the country doing classes on each one of those subjects. Basically, that was my full-time job. I mean, and that's a lot of subjects too, and none of them are small. And specifically the ammonia one, had PSM been passed by that time? And so you're trying to be a student of that too?
00:09:52
Speaker
So PSM had just come out and actually it still wasn't even being enforced when I started. And Tyson was, I was glad that they did this, they actually had in their engineering group, a PSM department, which at the time only included one person. But so necessary. Oh yeah, definitely. And it grew from there, obviously.
00:10:19
Speaker
Yeah, I would do one week long classes. I would fly out on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, get done Friday afternoon, fly home, do my laundry, pack my bag, and head out again. And I did that probably three weeks a month for six years, six or seven years.
00:10:39
Speaker
Whoa, Rick, that's a long time. Oh, yeah, I got my fill of training. And travel. Yeah, and yeah, it was something that I wouldn't wish upon everybody, but if something you like.
00:10:54
Speaker
do it because I got to see a ton of places around the country and meet a ton of great folks but it does wear on you. When did the travel piece get like I think I've had my fill or hasn't it yet? So from there and I thought so it sounds like my travel wore me out from there I became I actually moved into another position over
00:11:20
Speaker
Basically all of safety and all of loss control for half the company basically all the facilities west of the Mississippi and So Tyson at the time was around 90 production plants and about a about 70 75,000 team members and I had half of that and I had a few folks working underneath me But part of my responsibility was to get out and visit folks and work with operations So whenever they went out to locations
00:11:49
Speaker
my travel really didn't stop. So I did that for oh man until 2007 then I actually left Tyson technically as an employee and went to work for locked in companies and insurance broker. I did that for four years but I was Tyson's primary consultant.
00:12:12
Speaker
So I always say I spent a lot of time with Tyson because I did. They were about 1,700 hours of my 2,200 hours, however you want to do that, hours counting for a year.
00:12:28
Speaker
Sure.
Insurance and Presenting at NASA
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah. And the insurance industry really needed someone that they could specifically assign to that account because they're so huge. Yeah. And you were a great fit. Interesting. Two things I wanted to back up just in case anyone listening, if you and I didn't clarify what PSM stands for and somebody's new to the practice, it's process safety management, which is a law all on its own, which is difficult.
00:12:55
Speaker
Let's just put it that way. It's detailed and difficult. So you're with now an insurance company for a little while. What was the shift like or was it not really much different than what you had been doing because you were serving the same company?
00:13:14
Speaker
Well, I did my other part I had 18 clients total okay, and I had Two or three meat or food companies Tyson being one of them, but then I also got into aerospace I got into metal found foundries metal forging biopharmaceuticals Staffing companies
00:13:39
Speaker
And what was great about that is I got to learn, I got to practice the craft, but also I got to learn how to apply it differently. Because the principles are the same, but application is so much different. Exactly. And so which of those industries was most intriguing to you? I mean, they're all fun and interesting to hear about, but were any of them like, oh, wow, this is really fun to learn about this one?
00:14:06
Speaker
actually they all were because they all had such different applications for example metal forging was interesting but when you coupled that with aerospace because one of my clients was on the on the west coast and they actually actually made things like the shuttle rings or they made propeller shafts for nuclear submarines that kind of stuff
00:14:31
Speaker
And it was just absolutely fascinating, number one, to see how that process worked, but also how specific and exact they had to be because of the tolerances for the types of equipment and machinery that they were making stuff for. Interesting. So is this about the time I should be asking you? I know that you and I have spoken in the past and you mentioned something about presenting to NASA.
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know the story so like I'm kind of like dying to find out what it is. Is this about the time that the Nassau story comes into play in your career? No actually so that came out. Should I save it? Okay. No you can you can bring I mean it's it's actually one of those things that really I thought was a highlight because I was actually just traveling back from visiting some plants in 2013
00:15:20
Speaker
Okay, and I got a call on my phones like hello. This is Rick, and it was a gentleman who worked at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and he said hey the reason I'm calling you is ever since the space shuttle Challenger Happened one of the things that the management of NASA really wanted was how do we? keep
00:15:46
Speaker
Safety management alive and well and keep it in the forefront make sure folks are focusing on it And they said the the agreement was that every quarter we would bring in a different safety person from across the United States Bring them in and they would present to basically the rocket scientists
00:16:04
Speaker
and other folks obviously, but they, I talked to my boss at Tyson at the time and I said to me it's a great opportunity to spread the word about Tyson, but also the topic we were presenting was very, very important and that was how to manage safety in a multicultural environment. And so I got invited to go down there and I got to speak for an hour
00:16:33
Speaker
another part of the highlight was i got to go through the nasa museum which was had just opened down there where they had put all the the shuttles that still remain and stuff like that and then i got to tour so it's so awesome i've been there for the tour and it is fascinating so that's how that happened wow and how intimidating was that or was it more like exhilarating
00:16:56
Speaker
It was both. I mean, you're sitting to look across the audience and you're thinking, these guys have way more education I could ever have dreamt about. And you can't just go ahead and throw stories out. They all want it in context, being engineers and
00:17:11
Speaker
And so it's like, oh, good Lord, I was scared. Yeah, right. Did they ask you any questions? A few folks did. But I've done enough public speaking to be able to have some of those questions already asked in my head or answered in my head. So they asked them. But it was a very polite crowd, and they appreciated it. And I certainly learned from it, that's for sure. That's interesting. I hope and wonder if they're still doing that today.
00:17:40
Speaker
I hope they are because it's such a good program. Yeah, no kidding. So I wanted to ask you about, you had mentioned at some point in your career you started supervising people. Yes. Yeah, and when you say supervising people, you mean other safety professionals, right?
00:17:58
Speaker
So both when I worked production I ended up supervising the folks on the line but as I grew in the safety profession I took on when I got to the corporate level. At the height I had actually all the nurses and all the safety folks reporting to me.
00:18:15
Speaker
And when you added it all together, it was like 160 safety folks reporting to the organization up to me and then something like 360 or 400 nurses.
00:18:31
Speaker
But again, I had a director of occupational health, I had directors of safety operations, which had folks that cascaded up to them. So it wasn't like they directed to me, but I was over it. And as a, it gets, it's challenging, that's for sure. Yeah, I think, I think as a podcast guest, I'm just going to say you hold the record.
00:18:55
Speaker
of supervising people, which is not, well, first of all, that's a huge number of bodies, but it's also unique in many of the people listening are solo operators. Or maybe they have a couple of safety techs or a really small team with them, but nothing of the scope that you experienced.
00:19:17
Speaker
What was that like for
Integrating Safety into Business Strategy
00:19:19
Speaker
you? How did you tackle some of that? Did you do some mentoring with some of the safety people? Or did you wake up every day going, oh my gosh, I have all these people. How am I going to wrangle all these cats? What became your thing that you leaned into?
00:19:37
Speaker
So actually, and I have to credit all my bosses and also the organizations I was part of, at first it was very overwhelming and it was like, how do I get my arms around something this large?
00:19:50
Speaker
But the companies I've worked for have all really had a focused strategy, business strategy. And what I did is I inserted myself into the business, so to speak. So here's your strategic plan for operating the company.
00:20:09
Speaker
Where does safety play a role? Where does it fit? And inserting it into the business process was how I actually was able to say, this is a strategy. And I could take that strategy, sit down with my folks, and hopefully communicate it very clearly. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. But be able then, they would take that and push that strategy down to the folks at the plant.
00:20:39
Speaker
and then focus on whatever we do, it has to support that strategy. It helps get the business case buy-in rather than being the, oh, that thing we have to do. Well, and I think that the key there is not only telling them, here's what it is, but making sure that they go out and they communicate, this is what I'm gonna do to help you get where you're going, but also,
00:21:05
Speaker
helping ensure that everybody's aligned because the thing I learned very early on is if you don't have consistency, it makes it very difficult to manage. So we would set up processes and there was a very large initiative at Tyson where we basically set up a ton of environmental and safety management system processes, which definitely helped.
00:21:33
Speaker
We started integrating technology and using them to help support our systems, and it was something. If you're a safety person, you don't have that right now. If you're a single operator, I do not envy you if you have to try and do this all manually, because that's how we did it back, way back, and was everything was a big chief pad and pencil.
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah, right. That's funny. And so true. And so true. Yeah, I mean, the systems, I mean, that makes it right. I mean, that made it possible for you to be able to manage that many people because you didn't have to have a, okay, now what are you doing at this place? It's like, this is how we're doing it. And then people could, when they came into those positions, they could key into the processes and systems you already had in place and work with their coworkers who are doing the same thing, but in another part of the country.
00:22:22
Speaker
Well, and it's also, how do you manage something if you never measure it? If you say you're going to do something, when does it get done? Yeah, right. Right. How do you measure it so that you can make those financial asks, among other things. So guessing with that many people, you also had a budget.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah, we had a budget. It was quite large at times. And the one thing I will say is that the other thing I realized very quickly on, and that is that change is something that you have to expect. Don't just sit there and say everything's gonna be the same, because I will say my organization was very large and it would become much smaller. They would get restructured and in a company, a large company, even medium or even small companies,
00:23:09
Speaker
That's something safety folks have to anticipate and make sure that whatever they put together is going to Be able to be flexible but as far as budgets Yeah at at the height it was well into the eight digits And I've had a very much smaller. I'll just put it that way. Yeah. Yeah
00:23:32
Speaker
Yeah, other than being flexible, Rick, with budgeting, which makes perfect sense, I know I've talked to safety professionals just in the last month who because of shifts in their industry have had to scale back and had to pivot and decide, okay, now this is what I wanted to do, now this is what I'm going to be able to do and sort of triage what that is.
00:23:58
Speaker
But when it comes to budgeting for safety, even if somebody doesn't have a ginormous budget like you had, or if they've never developed one, do you have any tips on where they could start or just some best practices that you developed in your career? I think for me, the key was getting into the fight. When I said I integrated or put myself into the business, sit down with your operators and find out what numbers they look at.
00:24:28
Speaker
and then you can and see first of all obviously you've got some numbers already at your hand you've got the cost of salaries benefits that kind of stuff so that's your that's your I'll call it
00:24:43
Speaker
non-operational budget. You've got some of those that are always going to happen. But when you look at what actually matters from the operation standpoint, try and find those pieces of the budget puzzle that your
00:25:00
Speaker
either your people or your energy and activity fit into. So for example, if I'm traveling to facilities to do audits, okay, obviously I budget for travel and I budget for time away, but I also need to budget for things like, okay, I'm gonna need a computer.
00:25:19
Speaker
So you have to think about, you have to break it down to a very finite level of detail to be able to put those costs in it. And the more granular you can get, the better off you're going to be able to justify those costs. If you just say in general, hey, I need $5,000 for travel for this year. Well, when the boss asks you, what travel are you talking about?
00:25:45
Speaker
You need to be able to break it down and say, this, this, this, and this, and this. So you can prove that, number one, it's needed and value added. And number two, you're just not messing around. It makes sense and it fits the strategy. Yeah, you didn't pull the number out of the air. Correct. And it fits the strategy. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, perfect.
00:26:08
Speaker
So, Rick, you spent a long time with Tyson and somewhere along the way you earned your CSP, didn't
Transition to Simmons Foods and New Initiatives
00:26:18
Speaker
you? Yes, ma'am, I did.
00:26:20
Speaker
Tell tell tell the audience about that because you know, we started out with you marinating chicken strips Yeah, so some education happened along the way. Yes. How did that how did that work? So first of all, I got my college degree. I followed the 20-year degree program I got Mike I did adult education and earn my bachelor's and organizational management and then after that
00:26:46
Speaker
As part of my job at locked-in insurance brokers, my bosses there all had these credentials. And they said, you know what, Rick, it would be really great. It would help with your credibility is if you would go ahead and get this. And I said, OK. So I went ahead and applied. And at first, I had no clue how difficult it was going to be nor how rigorous it would be just to get accepted.
00:27:12
Speaker
And back then when I got it, it was, that was like 2005, six or seven. It was, wow, it was very manual still, not like the way it is today, but just the application itself took about eight hours to make. And then you send it off and you wait for, it seemed like forever, it was probably only a couple, two, three weeks. And then I had the opportunity to go ahead and take a couple prep classes and then spent,
00:27:42
Speaker
It seemed like months upon months upon months studying and prepping and learning how to take the test and finally sat for my ASP. And then five months later, I did my CSP. So I tried to do it all in one year. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, I will say this to anybody listening, guys, if you want a credential, if you can get it, get the CSP because it is definitely worthwhile.
00:28:09
Speaker
And you were traveling and yep Oh, yeah people in a budget and trying to do all that at the same time and have a family. Yep Yeah, well congratulations on that it's a huge accomplishment so Have we missed anything are we at present day and kind of like the audience to hear where you are now? Oh
00:28:29
Speaker
So about three years ago, I actually returned to Tyson in 2011. After lockdown? Yeah. They called and said, hey, we never filled your position. Would you consider coming back?
00:28:43
Speaker
It just worked out that I could. So I worked there for another five years in 2016. Again, because I'm getting up in age and the travel was really starting to hurt me. I was like, you know what, let me see if there's a smaller company. And it just so happened that my predecessor, who you know as well, left the company and there was an opening and they called me and asked me,
00:29:08
Speaker
and through a series of interviews and it took two or three months and then I was able to come to Simmons which everybody says well what's life at Simmons compared to life at Tyson because it's very similar companies everything divide Tyson by 20 and that's what I've done because it's almost worked out almost identically to the number of team members I have now to the amount of trips I take
00:29:37
Speaker
to the amount of stress, all that kind of stuff. That's how I answer when people say, so what's it like? Now, the Simmons is a family-owned company, which Tyson was public, and that's a very big difference. But it's also something that I really appreciate, because being a much smaller company, a family-owned company, it is something that is just, it's a breath of fresh air, I'll put it that way.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, does it feel in a way that a little more flexibility in that maybe they're, I don't know, do you get to be more creative or are there decisions that happen faster because it's just a smaller ship to turn?
00:30:19
Speaker
As far as speed of implementation, yes. As far as development, you still have the same questions, you still have the same challenges that you have to overcome, but once you get it, yes. What used to take me probably a year to implement consistently across Tyson takes me maybe seven or eight weeks at Simmons because
00:30:45
Speaker
Because it's so small, you can get a lot of questions answered in a very quick period of time versus having to be spread out almost worldwide and having to answer all those different questions. Were you able to implement some of the same processes you had before or were you stepping into ones that made sense to you? Both. My predecessor had done a really good job of
00:31:08
Speaker
of putting together a lot of processes and I was fortunate enough to be able to take some of my experience and just tweak some of them. Yeah, shout out to our friend Darren who had had the position before that Rick and I both know. So I wanted you to share with our audience the internship program you've got going right now at Simmons because I think it sounds so fascinating and a great way to give back to our practice.
00:31:37
Speaker
So, and I think everybody that's listening understands this. Our profession is not unlike other professional careers. We're struggling to have folks that can go ahead and fill in the spots as people like myself and even yourself. I won't consider yourself as old as me.
00:31:57
Speaker
We start to go off into the sunset, so to speak. Well, one of the reasons, one of the nice things about Simmons, they've had a good intern program and I was fortunate enough to get the support from our operations folks to get a safety intern.
00:32:13
Speaker
And so what we've done, and I actually, within an hour and a half, have two universities that actually have degree programs. Pittsburgh State University in Pittsburgh, Kansas, and then Northeastern Oklahoma State in Tahlequah. Have safety programs. Yes, they have four-year bachelor's in safety programs.
00:32:39
Speaker
and so I've got a very good group to go ahead and consider and I get a lot of interest from those folks. So anyways, what we do is we select through a fairly rigorous interview process
00:32:53
Speaker
an intern and then they come to us for 10 weeks and I break them up into that their 10 weeks stay into five different projects and I assign and I ask my safety folks to pick a project that's going to provide value to the
00:33:15
Speaker
to the intern, provide value to Simmons and most importantly help protect our folks and help them help my safety folks with just time because they obviously they're very busy. So what we do then is they for the two weeks are assigned to that safety person they help complete that project. At the end of those two weeks in that my safety person and they have to present to me the results of their project
00:33:42
Speaker
And that happens throughout the 10 weeks and at the end of the 10 weeks they have to present with all the other interns in the company their report out to our senior level executives.
00:33:54
Speaker
so they get experience doing it. Oh, yeah. And we also provide them with educational opportunities, for example, like public speaking or budgeting finance, business finance. We give them those courses along the ways. So I think it's very beneficial. And for the company, I had an intern two years ago that he was at actually a facility doing his project when the safety person at the location left the company.
00:34:23
Speaker
And it just so happened he had already been working there and they loved him and they said, hey, is there any way that we can just slide him into the position? I talked to HR and we worked through all those things and ended up that he was able to be selected.
00:34:41
Speaker
So good fit for the company. Yeah, and then last year and I've had them like this the last year's was from Texas A&M and she was a community health major and she lived locally and she got in so it's it's something that we really appreciate and definitely from a from a way to support our profession. It's something I'm very much a proponent of and
00:35:05
Speaker
Right. And I mean, you're giving them some real practical boots on the ground. I mean, in addition to the nuts and bolts of safety, but the things that you're talking about, like presenting in front of a management team and processes and systems and budgeting and all of that. I mean, you don't get that in a lot of internships. That's fantastic. So people listening. Yeah.
00:35:28
Speaker
We've said Simmons Foods. They have a fantastic internship program if you're looking. It sounds like Rick's got a pretty rigorous process to select those candidates too. Rick, I know we were talking about business and budgeting before. One of the things that I think you've shared with me in the past are calculations that you've developed and do on
Financial Metrics and Impact of Safety Work
00:35:52
Speaker
cost per labor hour and workers' compensation and what that does for you to help build business cases for safety initiatives. Can you talk about that a little bit? One of the things that we have struggled, and I think the industry I'm in has struggled, but also
00:36:09
Speaker
general industry as a whole has struggled and that is how do you put a financial metric on safety. So one of the metrics that's currently available is your workers compensation cost. Well obviously that's divided out into three basic buckets. You've got your total incurred which is everything, then you've got your medical only which is just your medical cost if it's below like three thousand dollars.
00:36:32
Speaker
And then you have your indemnity, which includes a lost time. It includes litigated claims, light duty, all that kind of stuff. And if it's over $3,000. So what we've done is we've said, okay, let's take our
00:36:48
Speaker
total workers comp incurred cost and let's generate almost like a rate. And what we've done to be able to fit into the other accounting metrics that we already currently have and that is let's break it down to how many dollars or how many cents per
00:37:07
Speaker
labor hour worked is work comp costing us. And because we also do all of our staffing and labor charges that way, almost down to the line, we're able to go ahead and parallel to that and provide them a metric that shows, hey, this is how much this is costing you in your specific area. And then we do that and on a quarterly basis, we give that number out
00:37:34
Speaker
by location and then update it throughout the year and at the end of the year we give the this is what you ended up at but what it does is it causes the operations directors which basically the same as a plant manager as well as the VPs of operations and group presidents to actually have to say are we doing good or are we doing bad and
00:37:58
Speaker
But the other, go ahead. Yeah, and you're comparing, it's a line like everything else they're already used to looking at. And it's not something far, yeah. Correct. And not to mention the fact that it also helps address all these different variables, like for example, jurisdictional challenges. So because what we're doing is, so for example, if you hire 600 more people,
00:38:27
Speaker
Okay, you've got 600 more people's worth of risk.
00:38:30
Speaker
Yeah. And you've got all that time that you want to add into your calculation. So for example, you may quote unquote have more workers comp costs than you did the year before, but you're also taking into account that you've worked 40% more work hours than you did before. So if you just go comp dollar to comp dollar, you can't adjust for all these different things that you deal with as a business day to day.
00:38:59
Speaker
So that's the beauty of this metric. And it's simply just take all the work hours and divide it into your tolls incurred comp. That's it. Simple math, right? Simple, not simple. First of all, the safety people have to get their hands on that data, which is one thing. But be bold and ask for it if you don't have access to it because it is the thing that you can measure.
00:39:27
Speaker
With with your with your work now the one that is the one thing I will caution everybody on because I had to learn this the hard way Because I thought we were doing a really good Year to year and that is if you have any temporary Employees or part-time team members that are not assigned to your company you need to call them or take them out because
00:39:49
Speaker
like a temporary agency covers work comp. They're not part of your, so if you're calculating your OSHA rates, your traditional indicators, you include them in many cases.
00:39:59
Speaker
but for the comp you have to separate it out because it has to be just your employees right exactly and and it would be wise to not of course ignore the temporary or contracted employees you'd want to you'd want to have that but it may be in a different in a different bucket because you'd want to be paying attention to their safety and their costs and that's where and that's where you definitely focus on the uh... the OSHA recordability because obviously you have to put them on your logs if
00:40:28
Speaker
Depending on how what your relationship is with the contractor, right? Right smart smart So Rick, I know that our our time becomes finite with you as a as a busy as a busy safety Professional today and I wanted to make sure that we covered You've been in this industry. You said like 30 years and you've had many changes and chapters in that time and
00:40:57
Speaker
What would you like people to remember as they're making their changes in their career? Every day, or as often as you can, well, let me back up. Probably the best thing for me was I realized early on that because of the amount of change and the complexity and how difficult the job was at times, sometimes I ask myself, why am I actually doing this?
00:41:22
Speaker
as a younger safety professional, I had to make some choices and the choices were actually, do you want to stay in this or in this profession or do you want to do something else? And how I decided that I wanted to stay was, what are you hoping to achieve? And that for me, that was to make sure that all the folks that I affect go home to their families each and every day. And I had actually an instructor one time
00:41:50
Speaker
I was in a class, I was actually getting my OSHA 501, and he, at the very beginning, wanted everybody to introduce themselves and said, how many people do you actually affect doing your job? Well, Tyson at the time had 115,000 people, and so I just did some rudimentary math. I said, okay, so multiply it by...
00:42:13
Speaker
Four which is four point whatever For what the standard American family was and I said about a half a million and everybody looked at me and they're like what I said Yeah, and I said I Every person in their immediate family I affect by doing my job and if I don't remember that I don't need to be doing safety And that's why are you doing safety? That is probably the most important thing to keep in mind
00:42:42
Speaker
It's not about glamor, it's not about money because then you wouldn't be doing this job. It's about truly caring about folks and doing the right thing.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah. And where are you making an impact? Exactly. And if you can't, or if you're not where you currently are, then that's maybe an indicator. It's time to move on. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Why you got into safety. Good. Rick, before we close things out today, is there anything else you'd like to leave our audience with?
00:43:17
Speaker
For the folks that are new to the profession, definitely ask. Ask questions. There's no shame. No one knows everything. And we've already mentioned that before. So please ask and don't be afraid to share either. Because a lot of times people will ask, and you remember this, Jill, from our time in the same industry. Sometimes people don't want to share because people think, well, it gives a negative light.
00:43:44
Speaker
Like, for example, just injury rates or some of the experiences that we had to deal with, people were not wanting to share them. Well, you know what? To me, then you're not doing what's right. Right. Right. We're all in the same boat together to help one another. And build the networks up. Please build networks up and use them. That's why I love
00:44:08
Speaker
what you're doing, Jill, and that is that this just helps because I wish I would have had this back in my day just to give me some insight and some context of things that I was dealing with.
00:44:19
Speaker
Yeah, and that we're all so similar in what we're trying to accomplish in sending people home. Wonderful. Thank you, Rick. I really appreciate your time. And thank you for joining the podcast. My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you very much, Jill. And thank you all so much for joining in and listening today. And thank you for the work that you all do to make sure your workers go home safe every day. You can listen to all of our episodes at vividlearningsystems.com or subscribe in the podcast player of your choosing.
00:44:49
Speaker
If you have a suggestion for a guest, including if it's you, you can contact me at social at vividlearningsystems.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.