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#102: Understanding Psychosocial Hazards in the Workplace
305 Plays1 year ago
Safety professionals have done a good job of mitigating physical hazards for as long as occupational safety has been an area of focus. But how do employers go about creating a work environment that is free from psychosocial hazards? Dr. David Daniels joins us in this episode to discuss what, in his view, is the most significant hazard people are exposed to in the workplace.
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Transcript
Introduction to Jill James and Dr. David Daniels
00:00:06
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded February 23rd, 2023. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer. And today my guest is Dr. David Daniels. Dr. Daniels is an EHS professional, podcaster, speaker, consultant with ID2 Solutions, a National Safety Council board member, a thought leader, and culture warrior.
00:00:32
Speaker
And as Dr. Daniels says, is also the son of a 14-year-old who got lucky. Dr. Daniels joins us today from South Fulton, Georgia. Welcome to the show. Good to be here. Good to be here.
Dr. Daniels' 40-Year EHS Career Journey
00:00:45
Speaker
Well, Dr. Daniels, how long have you been at the EHS career? Well, the truth of the matter is if I count all of the years, it would be, this year would be 40 and a half.
00:01:02
Speaker
Wow, you might hold the record on this show. Well, yeah, because now some might dispute that because I actually started in a fire rescue service. And people don't, even in the fire service, don't see themselves sometimes as safety people. But I figured out that I was a safety person pretty early in the fire service career. And finally realized I got dumped into the lagging indicator side of the system.
00:01:31
Speaker
and prefer to be on the leading indicator side. How did you get into the fire service? I was working construction in Seattle, Washington. And matter of fact, I tell this story. I was out on a sign crew. That was back in the days when they grabbed some kid. I think I was 19 or, yeah, about 19 at the time, working a construction job. They don't give you any training at all. They put a sign in your hand and say, it says stop and slow.
00:01:59
Speaker
And you go stand out there and you do traffic. Again, no training. I don't think I had a vest or anything. Just stand up there with a paddle. And it doesn't get cold in Seattle all that often. The weather tends to be pretty mild. But this particular winter, it was cold. And I recall thinking to myself, I wish a car would just come around the corner, hit me and kill me, and take me out of my misery. That's pretty extreme. Uh-huh. That's how bad it was.
00:02:27
Speaker
That's when I knew I needed to find something else to do. So a colleague suggested, Hey, I'm going to, this is what, you know, within a short period of time, Hey, I'm going to go take the test to become a firefighter. You want to go? I said, sure. Uh, we went and took the test. I passed it. He failed it. And the rest is history. Oh my gosh. Wow. And how long were you in the fire service?
Witnessing Deaths and Realization of Hazards
00:02:45
Speaker
Um, active for 32 years. Oh my gosh. And so you started out by talking about leading and lagging indicators within the fire service. What did, what did that look like?
00:02:56
Speaker
Well, the lagging indicator part caught up with me quickly. I saw my first person die in front of me at 21 years old. I saw my first colleague get killed about a year later. And there was something about that that didn't seem to register with me. It didn't make a whole lot of sense.
00:03:15
Speaker
They told us that bad things would happen, but when you see it, up close and personal, and over the course of the career, I stopped counting at 19. I think there are probably more than that. And so when I talk about safety, when I talk about a lot of these issues that some folks have read in books,
00:03:38
Speaker
I guess I feel a little bit differently about it, because these are real people when I, you know, so I've, you name it, you name it, I've seen buildings collapse and people riding on motorcycles without the right gear and people ride bicycles run into buses, I mean, you name it, you just you just name it. But in every single solitary case, there was
00:04:04
Speaker
There was a hazard that was not identified, not assessed, and not mitigated. And in virtually all of them, there was a psychosocial route to the hazard as well that was just not paid attention to. Somebody said something, didn't feel right, didn't look right. Their sixth sense kicked in and said, I probably shouldn't do this. They overrode it, and something negative happened.
00:04:32
Speaker
Well, did this sort of awareness come to you pretty soon into it? And then did you think like, gosh, I want and need to do more and different? Or what happened for you guys? Well, it actually started pretty early.
Formal Safety Roles and Dual Certification
00:04:48
Speaker
I was fortunate enough to be hired in one of the first recruit classes. So recruit class 41 in the Seattle Fire Department was the first class hired after we switched to a 24-hour shift.
00:05:00
Speaker
And after, someone decided that wearing a self-contained breathing apparatus was actually mandatory. Because prior to that, none of my instructors, it was only mandatory for me. They didn't have to do it. So when I got out on the fire truck, I came out of training with training. I didn't have the experience, but I did have training.
00:05:27
Speaker
Building fire that I went to was on I still remember was on 39th and Albion place. I'm not sure what's there now but in Seattle and northern part of Seattle near the near the campus of the University of Washington, so I ride up on this 1964 fire truck riding on the bat We pull up the big apartments on fire my officer gets off and goes one direction the driver goes another and they leave me standing there and
00:05:56
Speaker
literally. So again, I'm 21 years old, have never done this before for real, and they just ran off. And so I put my, you know, my metal survivor self contained breathing apparatus on my back and went into this building kind of bumped in a bunch of people, nobody asked me what I was doing. Nobody I had a number on so it said I was a recruit, nobody asked me.
00:06:19
Speaker
So I wandered around in this building on fire and you know, and eventually came back out and took my mask off and they, we hopped on the truck and didn't even talk about it. Because that was the culture at the time that people just kind of did whatever they did. And again, that that's this whole thing about being fortunate is had I been in, uh, in, in the industry, maybe two years earlier, I wouldn't have put that mask on because that's not what they told people to do.
00:06:48
Speaker
And I could have ended up like many of my colleagues with cancer. I could have ended up like other colleagues who got lost, trapped, and killed in buildings on fire. I could have gotten thrown off the back of the fire truck like another of my colleagues did. But the Lord was just smiling, or my mom's prayers were working. Maybe it was a little bit of both.
00:07:09
Speaker
Mm hmm. You got lucky. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when did you start making a shift and and getting interested in health and safety? So my first health and safety interest occurred would have been early 90s. I was at a again at a at an incident in downtown Seattle when the electrical vault was on fire. And I can hear I can hear it popping out. Yeah.
00:07:38
Speaker
and watching the buildings go dark in downtown Seattle, block after block after block. And so one of the battalion chiefs comes over to me, and I'm a captain at the time, and says, hey, you're going to be the safety officer. I go, OK.
00:07:49
Speaker
what's that mean right exactly i had no idea what it meant i had no idea what my role was they were checking a box because that's at the time what we did we checked the box um and you know so i eventually ended up uh being uh assigned as a battalion chief safety officer and the deputy calls and says hey you know we're we're trying to do a better job at
00:08:13
Speaker
You know, having folks in his office and so go see if you can figure out how to get a certified site. Okay. So I went to, I went to a group called the evergreen safety council. Come to find out they had a safety and health specialist certification program.
00:08:32
Speaker
That was fairly highly regarded in industry, but nobody in the public sector had ever come to a class, at least I didn't think so. So I went to the class and come to find out it also. Everything that they taught was consistent with the NFPA standard, National Fire Protection Association standard at the time.
00:08:50
Speaker
So I was the first person to get a dual certification as a safety and health specialist and a fire service health and safety officer. And that was now 30 boy, 33 years ago.
00:09:03
Speaker
Oh, it's so fun to hear people's origin stories when we're at the tip. That's awesome. So that was my first credential, and it's still hanging. It's hanging on the wall right next to me right now. As a matter of fact, the credential, I don't think they even have it anymore. And in the next year or two, they're going to stop supporting it. But I keep it because it was my very first one, and you never forget your first.
00:09:30
Speaker
That's right. That's something to be proud of.
Focus on Safety as Atlanta Fire Chief
00:09:33
Speaker
That is cool. Yeah. So were you able to, you know, you got the job as safety officer. Were you able to do some things with it in the fire service or did you make a shift? Yes. So the safety officer or safety, you know, credential
00:09:49
Speaker
It helped me be a better fire rescue person, I believe. It also got me in a little bit of trouble because not everybody agreed with me. So I got my first fire chief's job. That's how I ended up here in the Atlanta area. And one of the reasons that I left Seattle and came
00:10:09
Speaker
to the Atlanta area to take the chief's job was the trauma around the people I'd seen getting killed in Seattle, to be quite honest. I didn't realize that until after I got here that I had to process some of my own trauma. And so some of the people that worked with me at the time, I think they probably thought I was insane because I was so hyper-focused on safety. But it was...
00:10:39
Speaker
Again, we tend to see the world through our own eyes. That's right, through our own lived experience. And I was probably overly cautious in some areas, but I didn't want to have to be responsible for one of the 450 people that I was responsible for, for one of them getting killed. That was a bit much for me.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah, I feel that. I feel that. I mean, based on my own experience, too, with witnessing workplace death, your lens changes and you're like, oh, when you see anything close or near a near whatever that experience was, you're like, ah, yes, yes, yes. So that also so again, that focus on safety that, you know, I ended up becoming the chair of the International Association of Fire Chief Safety Committee.
00:11:32
Speaker
And, of all things, also ended up being on the board of directors at the IFC, you know, in this safety role. So, so again, anyone who hung out with me long enough knew I was safety was my thing. And the, the buildings on fire and you know the
00:11:49
Speaker
confined space rescue all that stuff I mean the while on the one hand it's a it's it's a rush I gotta tell you there's nothing like it but there's also this you know part of me that says that the vast majority of these occurrences these incidents they don't really have to happen that way
00:12:07
Speaker
And every time they do, somebody is paying with their bodies, in some cases with their lives, with their hard-earned money, and they can be prevented. All of them can. I haven't seen one yet that couldn't have been prevented, but, you know. Neither.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah, folks, they didn't know what they didn't know. And, you know, and it happened. So you've you have a PhD. I'm guessing you did a lot more studying and safety. You want to bring us up to speed on like, how did that happen?
PhD Research on Psychosocial Safety
00:12:41
Speaker
And I want to hear about your passions today. So so my PhD is actually in occupational health and safety of all things.
00:12:49
Speaker
And where did you find a university for that? Because listeners might want to know that because we all know we just can't pick up health and safety degrees at any old university. That's right. Capital Technology University just outside of DC. I do have to be honest, it was the
00:13:06
Speaker
Second program that was in I was in one earlier early on and I was going to do organizational leadership or something but one thing led to another I got to the point of, you know, being a BD or all but dissertation and you know just kind of wasn't interested. I mean, some of it had to do with the institution at the time I won't call their name.
00:13:28
Speaker
But they didn't treat me the way I wanted to be treated. So I said, I don't really need to do this anyway. So I stopped. And fortunately, I ran into the folks at CapTechU. So the program is run, the dean in charge of doctoral programs actually lives in Scotland, I believe. And the thing he told me is he said, we don't do academic hazing here.
00:13:55
Speaker
And I was all over that, because I don't believe in hazing. I was hazed. In the fire service? Oh, absolutely. Everybody was. And I didn't like it. So I don't believe that we have to haze people to get them to do
00:14:16
Speaker
to excel. So anyway, that's what really helped me. And shout out to my advisor, Dr. Linda Martin, who had it not been for her actually not hazing me, I wouldn't have finished. Because I'm not a kid. I'm not 23 years old. And I know my profession already. And so my research was focused on the lived experience
00:14:41
Speaker
of black workers' exposure to psychosocial safety hazards in the American workplace. And it opened my eyes in a lot of areas. Two of them, particularly, I didn't find a lot of research being done on black workers in general.
00:14:59
Speaker
from a safety perspective. Some of that has to do with our long history of not seeing people who look like me as human anyway. But the other has to do with the lack of focus around psychosocial hazard mitigation. Yeah, talk about that. I mean, if this term sounds
00:15:20
Speaker
new to people who are listening, how would you or how do you define it?
Understanding Psychosocial Hazards
00:15:26
Speaker
Well, I define it in my definition. So in my research, I found 10 different definitions from eight countries, and I found over 80 examples of a psychosocial hazard.
00:15:38
Speaker
Oh, wow. So what I try to do is synthesize that data, that information into a more concise definition, at least in my scholarly opinion. And so my definition is a psychosocial hazard is a psychosocial factor that is perceived or experienced by the person exposed as a threat to them that in turn affects their behavior.
00:16:08
Speaker
Psycho, how you think, social, how you interact. And that is, in my view, the most significant hazard that people are exposed to in the workplace bar none. I wouldn't disagree with you for one second.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a couple of examples so people can kind of imagine that in their minds? So and again, I'm going to give you a couple that are actually listed. There is a international standard, the International Organization for Standardization. It's created a standard, ISO 45003. It is descriptive, not prescriptive.
00:16:51
Speaker
And it's in support of ISO 45001, the safety management system standard. But in 45003, one of the hazards in this long list is role ambiguity.
00:17:08
Speaker
So how is that? So I'm hired. I get a new position, whether I be hired or promoted into a new position. And people don't tell me really what my job really is. Either I don't have a job description.
00:17:23
Speaker
One of my last W2 employers didn't have a job description for me and my master's degree is in HR. So I know how to write them. I know how they should be put together. And every job that I've had working for other people for the last, oh, I don't know how many years I've had to write my own job description because the people who were supposed to write them either didn't write them
00:17:46
Speaker
or didn't update them. So I was being held, some of this is personal on my part, you're holding me accountable for things and I don't know that I'm wrong until you tell me. I don't know that I've erred in some way until you say, well, you did that wrong. Well, how was I supposed to know that? The job description, I know I didn't get hired to be a mind reader. And that creates a tremendous amount of stress
00:18:14
Speaker
for people who are, and this goes into even being a safety professional. So I know you hired me. You said I was a safety manager, safety director, vice president of safety, whatever it is, until I actually start acting like it.
00:18:29
Speaker
and start kind of identifying these areas where we need improvement, then all of a sudden, not so much. Yeah, right. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Don't go that far. We didn't mean that. We didn't mean that. We said that, yeah, safety is our number one priority. But in an organization over there recently, until workers started showing up with holes in their shoes,
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah. Their safety shoes had holes in them. And then when I did my job to make sure that they got proper shoes, it's like, well, what are you doing? What do you mean? What am I doing? That's my job. Been there done that exactly with the shoes. Yeah. Come on now. They only get a certain number. No, they get as many as they need to ensure that they don't get a foot injury because that's actually going to cost you more. So again, the role is ambiguous to the extent that
00:19:24
Speaker
people say one thing, but then they act in a different way. And that creates stress for people who care, get stressed. And ultimately, so the hazard called psychosocial has risk associated with it, depending on how vulnerable you are to that risk, that risk often manifests in the form of stress.
00:19:53
Speaker
And stress can kill you. It can kill you. And again, in the United States, because we are behind the other 30 countries in the world who have actually identified this as a real safety hazard thing, it is in their legislation. As a matter of fact, Canada has a really strong standard.
00:20:16
Speaker
that's been in place for 10 years. Australia has legislation actually that just went into effect last fall, if I'm not mistaken, has some really strict requirements that you can end up being fined, or in some cases, if connected to some other aspects of that legislation, or even arrested.
00:20:37
Speaker
And again, there are other countries around the world who take it this seriously that psychosocial hazards are just as important as biological, chemical, ergonomic, physical, and other safety hazards.
00:20:49
Speaker
Couldn't agree more. We did have a podcast guest a while back, Dr. Marnie Dobson, who did an episode with us on workplace stress being an epidemic in the United States. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And so interesting to hear that other countries, yeah, legislated around it.
Psych Health and Safety USA Podcast
00:21:08
Speaker
Well, and the shameless plug here, I host a podcast myself called Psych Health and Safety USA.
00:21:15
Speaker
And the podcast is sponsored by a company from Australia. It's one of five globally. They have one in Australia, one in Singapore, one in Canada, one in the UK, one here, and just recently start one in Australia focused on schools. But the one here in the US is very different because I have to introduce people to the concept. And the other thing that I'll mention is psychosocial hazards
00:21:41
Speaker
connected to but not the same as psychological safety because that's the that's the Amy Edmondson has done a great job but one of these days I love to meet Dr. Edmondson and if I got her permission to hug her because she has helped people understand how important psychological safety is but that's that's now a cottage industry to itself it is yeah talk about the difference
00:22:11
Speaker
The difference is psychological safety is not an occupational safety and health concept. It is a management and leadership concept. And again, it is important to be able to bring your whole self without fear of retribution or people giggling and laughing when you bring your whole self to work. That's important.
00:22:31
Speaker
But if you do not monitor, so identify, assess, and mitigate the psychosocial hazards that you're exposing people to, you will not get or keep psychological safety. So again, they're connected. But most people who talk about it are not safety people. They are leadership and management people. Or there's a lot of conversation from the mental health community. And again,
00:22:59
Speaker
I don't say that because anybody owns it. Nobody really owns safety, to be quite honest. But we come at it from a different perspective. So when I talk about psychosocial hazards, I talk about them similar to the other hazards. But here's what I'm finding, is particularly in what people perceive to be low hazard occupations,
00:23:21
Speaker
You know, they're not doing construction. They're not doing mining and oil extraction. They don't think they have major hazards. But what they do have is this epidemic of psychosocial hazard exposure
00:23:36
Speaker
And that's also connected to your lack of being able to recruit people that you say you want, to retain people you say you want to keep, or to keep people safe you say you want to keep safe. You'll never be able to do that if you continue to expose me to this hazard over and over and over and over and over and over again. And when I bring it up,
00:24:00
Speaker
You minimize my feeling about this to say, oh, you're just being soft, or you don't understand. No, everyone understands how they feel.
Creating Hazard-Free Environments
00:24:11
Speaker
How do we go about, how do employers go about creating an environment, a work environment that's free from psychosocial hazards? How do they create them? You do it the same way you keep your organization or occupation free from other hazards.
00:24:29
Speaker
What is the hazard? How vulnerable are we to it? And what are we going to do about it? It's really pretty simple. But the other thing that I will say is safety as an occupation, at least in my view, is a product of industrialization.
00:24:47
Speaker
So many of the hazards that we've talked about for the last 100 plus years have been the product of industrialization of machines. And so we have done a pretty decent job of mitigating physical hazards. As a matter of fact, go back to the fire service here for a second. People don't generally die in fires at work. They die in fires at home.
00:25:17
Speaker
because we've made the built environment or the workplace really, really safe from fires. We have lots of fire sprinklers and extinguishers and smoke detectors and escape plans and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
00:25:32
Speaker
Some of it's actually important, some of it's redundant, but I won't get into that. But we've been hyper-focused on that issue and have forgotten about how people are feeling. And so again, the way we, again, identify what is, so I created an instrument, and I'm happy to share it when people bring me in to work with them, I created an instrument in my research called a psychosocial hazard inventory.
00:26:02
Speaker
And very simply ask people, have you been exposed to this? That's it. Can you give an example of have you been exposed to, can you fill in the blank for just like one example? Again, let's go back. Have you been exposed to role ambiguity? Have you been exposed to cases where your skills were underutilized? Have you been exposed to situations where you had time pressure?
00:26:31
Speaker
much of the research from a safety perspective that I came across is quantitative in nature because as a society you know particularly in the United States we bought in on Robert Taylor's idea about scientific management everything's got to have a number
00:26:49
Speaker
all y'all who went to business school, that's what you saw when you're in business school, numbers and graphs and charts and there's this leaning towards quantitative measures of everything. I believe we are lacking qualitative measures of how effective those things are though. Because psychosocial hazards are about how people feel about things, not the 10%
00:27:17
Speaker
increase or decrease in some number. So a gentleman by the name of Dr. Myron Golden as a matter of fact said that people do things for one reason and one reason only.
00:27:31
Speaker
because they feel like it. It's not it's not complicated because they feel people people sign up to work in your company because they felt like it. There was something about the advertisement that made them feel like putting in the application. People took the promotion. People you know people drove a certain way because of how they feel. But then when we analyze
00:27:55
Speaker
the failures in the system that result in property damage, exposure to carcinogens, to safety-related things that work fatalities. We tend to look at the quantitative measures and not the psychosocial, not the qualitative reasons for why did people do that? What was going on in their head when they, and then fill in the blank?
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah, the first time I was introduced to that concept was from an industrial psychologist back with the tail end of my career with OSHA. And we were talking about, I think we were focused on investigating accidents, things that happened. And he gave all these questions that had to do with things that you never would record.
00:28:44
Speaker
Like what happened to the employee last night? What was going on in their whole life? When they arrived at work today, how did they feel? And it was all of these things
00:28:54
Speaker
that were multi-factorial that led up to the event. And it was the first time in my career that, oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So again, back to Dr. Edmondson's concept of psychological safety, bringing your whole self means also bringing things that the employer may not want at work.
00:29:17
Speaker
Right. But that's that's the gig, folks. Yeah. I mean, that's it. You can't separate the person from their experiences. So yeah, some of them are going through divorces. Some of them do have sick parents. Some they do have a bill that didn't get paid. And sometimes the building get paid because you aren't paying them a livable wage. That's a whole nother conversation.
00:29:38
Speaker
There are things that are going on in people's lives and somehow you have people who believe, oh, they just need to leave that at home and come to work and do their part. You know, the reality is they can't. They can't, they can't. And if, if you are really interested in safety and really interested in retaining good people who actually want to do great work,
00:30:04
Speaker
You need to be concerned. If you look at a system and the system is not producing what you want it to produce, W. Edwards Deming would tell you that 95% of the issue is with the system. It's not with the people. So why is it? Why is it that every time someone gets injured, we blame the person? Oh, they should have.
00:30:31
Speaker
always always always it's the easiest it's the easiest lazy it's the easiest laziest thing to do but guess what if you and this again this is what i found in some of my fire service experiences we had a situation in seattle and january 5th 1995 four firefighters were killed in a frozen food warehouse when the floor collapsed
00:30:53
Speaker
The concrete floor collapsed. In Pittston, Pennsylvania, less than two years prior to that, the same thing happened.
00:31:04
Speaker
So it's about the systems that people are using, not the people that are in those systems. And that's where our focus should be. And this is where this other term, psychological health and safety comes in, because that's about the systems that are in place to address the existence of psychosocial hazards.
00:31:25
Speaker
and create an environment where you can actually get psychological safety. Yeah. Dr. Daniels, you've mentioned as a society, we're not into how people feel. As we're trying to, you know, people are listening and thinking, ooh, Dr. Daniels is on something here. I wonder how I can start bringing this into my workplace and you've given some ideas today.
00:31:47
Speaker
And if one of those starting points is trying to pay attention to how people feel, and maybe that's not a starting point, you can correct me. How would it be? I do have a starting place for you. The first person is looking in the mirror, and how do you feel? That's the issue. Because safety is not for other people. My job as a safety professional is not to make anybody else safe.
00:32:17
Speaker
My job is to be safe myself and assist people with information that will help them decide whether or not they want to get in this boat or not.
00:32:27
Speaker
It is not, and that's something that emotionally I've had to over the last, you know, two, three years, as a matter of fact, have had to, to get a perspective on your problem can't be more important to me than it is to you because that creates stress for me. So again, if you do not want to wear a seatbelt,
Leadership's Role in Safety Culture
00:32:52
Speaker
That is your prerogative. Now, the consequence to that at this particular organization may be that you don't get to ride in our vehicles. We're not angry with you. I don't believe that you discipline adults.
00:33:09
Speaker
I don't believe in discipline, period, to be quite honest. Particularly corporal, but I don't believe in that. I believe that we should find ways to correct the behavior of folks when it's not consistent with whatever environment that we're in. But this idea about we're just gonna make them, you can't make people do things if they don't want to.
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, because when you're not looking, they're going to do it anyway. So again, I have to look in the mirror and go, how important is this to me? And I want to model the behavior. And if in my circle of influence, there are other people who I am now responsible for, my number one job is to create a safe environment. So safe environments so they can get things done. As a leader, and again, leader as
00:33:55
Speaker
I make the distinction between leaders and managers. A people leader, your number one responsibility is to create a safe environment for those who say they want to follow you. Period. There's nothing else more important. Nothing. Because as you create a safe environment, they will get the work done. Your job's not to do the work. It's not even to get work done. It's to cause work to get done.
00:34:21
Speaker
When we spoke previously, Dr. Danies, you mentioned a book called the Master Communicators Handbook. Is that something you want to talk about and how it intersects with our conversation today? Yeah, the book, and again, I picked the book up at a meeting of the World Future Society of all places.
00:34:43
Speaker
And they're talking about how futurists and I consider myself to be one of those as well. We get these lofty ideas about the future and what's great and all these things that are gonna happen, but we sometimes forget about what people are actually hearing or what they want to hear. And so what the book talks about is the importance of making sure you're focusing on the person who's receiving this information,
00:35:09
Speaker
what they're hearing, and not always so much on what it is I want to say. Another book called The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey, the seven habits guy, his son wrote The Speed of Trust. And he talks about in that book the fact that we evaluate ourselves based on our intent. We evaluate other people based on their actions, what they do. We don't really know what their intent was.
00:35:37
Speaker
And now I've added this part, but then what we do is we assign intent to other people based on what we would do. That's so true. Based on the story that we're making up in our heads about someone else. That's exactly right. But what we often don't do is check the story. Because just because I told myself in my head, this is what's motivating. So that person didn't do this because they just weren't following the rules or they were lazy. All this judgmental language, particularly from a safety perspective about
00:36:07
Speaker
you know they didn't care and they those workers and and that that that that i i've had to help you know i've had to speak to myself about not getting because i would get angry about that to be quite honest i don't i don't take kindly to people being mistreated uh being you know abused and yeah you can't do it to me
00:36:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's that's our role, right? I mean, I mean, as at the heart of our occupation, I think of us as being, you know, worker justice, where, you know, the things that get my ire are when people have been mistreated as human beings.
00:36:47
Speaker
Well, yes. And so again, unfortunately, this country has a sordid history of exploitation of human beings.
Safety, Exploitation, and Justice at Work
00:36:57
Speaker
And as much as we want to say it's over, it's not. It is impossible to have a environment of safety when there's exploitation going on. This is not possible. And you may say, oh, well, we didn't have any injuries. OK.
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah, you didn't have anything you can see. But emotionally, physically.
00:37:21
Speaker
And often the reason why you don't see it is that nobody will tell you because they know that if they do tell you that there will be repercussions for them. So it's not possible to have safety and exploitation. They don't coexist. They don't. But on the other hand, if you have an environment where the purpose of us being here as human beings is to do something great,
00:37:47
Speaker
is to treat each other with dignity. And I know that sounds utopian to some people. But I believe that those are the organizations, particularly into the next generation. They're the ones who are going to make the money. They're the ones who are going to get the best workers. They're going to get the best partners, the best business partners, people who are doing this. And this gets into the foundation behind Star Trek.
00:38:16
Speaker
How did I go there? How did you go there? Yes. My ears are perfect. So when Gene Broadenberry and the folks, when they wrote Star Trek, in the Star Trek universe, people don't get paid money because money's been eliminated because you've got a replicator to meet everybody's basic needs. So people are working because they want to contribute to society. I may not see that in my lifetime.
00:38:45
Speaker
But that's what we should be working towards, as we automate. It ought to make things easier and safer for us. Not that you, do I need a job? Well, I need a job to get my basic needs met. But if our basic needs were already met, would people work? I think people would, because we want to contribute. We want to work together. We want to do things that are important. And yeah, we can send a machine to take the risk. Again, this doesn't get into the whole conversation about,
00:39:14
Speaker
you know, sentient AI and all that type of stuff. That's a little bit outside the conversation. But I mean, a machine doesn't have feelings. Human beings do. So when we put the machine to lift the thing that the human can't, it should make it easier on the human, not more difficult. So again, ultimately, we should be striving for.
00:39:35
Speaker
environments that are about achieving great things, whatever those great things are, and money should be secondary to that. I know that's difficult for capitalists. I get it. I understand. But frankly, I don't do this stuff for money, to be quite honest. I really don't.
00:39:53
Speaker
I don't mind, you know, am I making money? I really don't. But this is about, for me, it's about a calling. And as the good book says, some are called and few are chosen. And I think that, you know, this is one of the reasons that I was placed on earth is to do this. So it's difficult to buy me.
00:40:17
Speaker
And when we're fortunate enough, the older we get, the easier that is to see for some of us, right? That's correct. But I'll tell you, and I just had, I met some young people and had them on the podcast talking about what millennials and Gen Zers, what they think about safety.
Gen Z's Perspective on Workplace Safety
00:40:43
Speaker
I was just going to ask about that because the things that you're talking about, I feel like the rising Gen Z'ers who are entering the workforce now are aware of the things that you're talking about today in a way that, and I have a child who's a Gen Z'er,
00:41:00
Speaker
And I just see an awareness that doesn't exist in the other generations. Well, guess what? It's our fault. And here's why I say that. So these kids always wore seat belts. These kids had padding at their elementary schools, and they fell off the jungle gym. They wore a bicycle helmet. We told them about stranger danger. And we have raised them in this safety-focused environment. And then we wonder,
00:41:28
Speaker
They are more in tune with their emotions than a lot of their parents are. That's not a weakness. It's a strength. And as they are coming into the workforce, they're going like, well, hold up. Hold up. You all been telling us, you've been telling us to go into this industry and it ought to be a career for us. But then we see what people did to you.
00:41:48
Speaker
We see you lost your job and your pension got invested by a bunch of unscrupulous people and we lost our house and they've had all that other stuff going on with them. So they're more they care more about the one planet that we're on right now that we can actually get to and live in. So they're actually the reality is they're just smarter than us and they're not going to put up with some of the nonsense that some of us have put up with.
00:42:10
Speaker
over the course of our lifetime. And so this goes back to now. So do you want them to work with you at your org? Because they aren't going to work for you. They're going to work with you, but they're not going to work for you. So if those that are wise, so there is this pyramid that says that data sometimes becomes information, sometimes becomes knowledge, and ultimately becomes wisdom.
00:42:38
Speaker
The whys out there are figuring out, if I really want to be ahead, I want to create an environment where these kids, some of them are kids, when they come here they're going to feel good about being here. They're going to know that I care about them as a human being.
00:42:53
Speaker
that I'm not here to exploit them, that if they need time off, I'm going to give it to them.
Unlimited Time Off and Work-Life Balance
00:42:59
Speaker
As a matter of fact, there are some companies, I think one of the big tech companies has talked about no time off requirements, specifically no, whatever time you need off, take it.
00:43:09
Speaker
Yeah, our company HSI has that. OK, so this is becoming more the trend. This is not going to be the exception. This is going to be the rule. The question is, do you want to be in on it or not? Or do you want to continue to do it the same old way? I'm the boss. And people will do what I tell them. Well, you're going to eventually be in a room talking to yourself.
00:43:30
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, the Gen Zers and probably the younger millennials are more into talking about their feelings and their mental health in a way that our older generations, you and I included, never did or felt safe to. And they're modeling and leading for us now in a way that's just beautiful.
00:43:51
Speaker
I am so glad to see it because I've always talked about it. And that's one of the things that got me into trouble. But fortunately, I was raised to be my own person and think my own way. And it was by my mom and my aunt. I'd share that part of my story. I've never met my dad ever. I had no male role models at all.
00:44:21
Speaker
And so I had to learn some of this stuff on my own, but I learned from the two of them, you got to be your own person. And we can't, my mom never, she never, she said, she never said, I'm trying to be your mom and your dad. She said, I'm your mom. I don't know about some of that stuff about being a man. I don't really know. So you're probably gonna have to figure it out. So I did.
00:44:40
Speaker
But I do believe that what we traditionally allocate to women, compassion and caring, and I think some of that rubbed off because I'm that dude. I'm that dude who cries.
00:44:56
Speaker
And again, some might say that it's soft or whatever and I wear pink. All that kind of stuff because that's how it was raised, but as I have more birthdays, I value that perspective because it's centered on how I feel and how other people feel and that is important.
00:45:16
Speaker
It is and she did a good job. She did a good job. I want to talk about when we when we right before we hit the record button you were starting to share a little bit about something that you did today the day of this recording that's pretty exciting. Do you want to talk about it?
00:45:35
Speaker
So I had the opportunity. So about two years ago, I think we were oh, wow, we were we were right in the in the throes of the pandemic. And I jumped on a webinar. It was an organization. It was a webinar about addressing racism in your organization. It was this big corporation. I can't recall who they were. And I wouldn't mention and an association called the National Association of Black Compliance and Risk Management Professionals.
00:46:01
Speaker
So I really enjoyed the webinar, NABCrop for short. They facilitated the webinar and this company was, I'm not sure even what the relationship was at the time and they sent me a follow-up email and asked me, you know, what did you think about the webinar? It was pretty cool. Would you use some of the tools and whatnot? I got like, I'm not sure.
00:46:19
Speaker
And the reason I said that is I looked at the profile of the company and there wasn't a bit of diversity in their group, so I didn't believe that they were serious about, you know, it's not what you say, it's what you do. What you do speaks so loud I can't hear what you're saying. So that encouraged me to join NABGROP because this is a group of black professionals from the compliance and risk management space
00:46:47
Speaker
And so I joined. I mean, I joined a couple. I like what they were doing. And they were still pretty new at the time. So I joined up and I says, hey, have you all ever had any leading indicator people? I says, well, I'm an occupational safety. Oh, we'd love to have you. So I formed a group, an industry work group. We call it the Safety and Security Industry Work Group. And it is the only predominant, what is the only group of safety professionals
00:47:15
Speaker
that are black and is run by black people. That is fantastic. And right about the same time, there was another group forming in Canada. So we are the safety and security industry work group of NABPROMP in the US. And in Canada, there's a group called the Canadian Association for Black Health and Safety Professional.
00:47:36
Speaker
And I found them on LinkedIn, to be quite honest. But we're both fairly new, fairly small organizations, but we are the only two black associations with safety professionals that we're aware of on the planet that we're aware of. Now, we love to hear the other one, but most of, and this is not to be pejorative when I say it,
00:48:00
Speaker
But most of the safety-related organizations have predominantly European people and mostly men. That's it. That is what it is. And again, I've said this before, but in my research, I found out that when the OSH Act was passed in 1970, the 535 people who voted on it were 98% male and 98% white.
00:48:29
Speaker
And again, the act has been very effective in reducing duty-related exposure and injuries and fatalities, but not for everybody. And again, that is not a criticism of the act itself or the people who created it, but an observation of the limitations.
00:48:49
Speaker
because the act itself still says his employer his work it's as if there aren't any women in the workplace that's right and the thing that you ride to the top of the green elevators called the man lift exactly so it is and so when i have these conversations about the connection between safety diversity equity and inclusion it is not to say that i'm not one of those people who's going to bash old white people are bad people and white men are bad i'm not saying i'm saying if
00:49:17
Speaker
If everyone who the system is supposed to protect is not involved on the front end, the system can never meet the needs of folks who are not involved in the first. I don't gender identify as a woman.
00:49:32
Speaker
I'm an ally. Matter of fact, I want to consider myself an accomplice. So I'll get in the car with you. But there's some things that I can't speak for the experience of a woman. I have a wife and a mom and daughters and sisters. But there's something I just can't speak to. Women need to be able to have their own voice. Black people, Hispanic people, disabled people, LGBTQ plus people, whoever.
00:49:58
Speaker
We all need to have our own voice on how things affect us and have that be considered. Well we can't, yes you can listen to everyone and yes it can be safe for everyone. It's harder so that means that the PPE, honestly, I believe that all PPE should be custom built. I do, honestly.
00:50:20
Speaker
We're all different. We're as unique as our fingerprint. And you're so right about the OSH Act.
OSH Act Limitations and Safety Progress
00:50:27
Speaker
And our last guest, Carla Davis-Magit was talking about, you know, it's gotten us this far, but it's not going to take us to the next place. We're sort of at this stagnant place in our success right now.
00:50:46
Speaker
In part, it is for exactly what you're talking about. It's not addressing the whole of the workforce. That's correct. And again, I believe that the key to addressing the whole workforce is addressing the identification, assessment, and mitigation of psychosocial hazards, because that's where our problems lie. It's not us looking different that mean much. We think differently.
00:51:15
Speaker
That's the issue. And we think differently. Yeah. When, you know, I think about the complaints that I responded to when I was an investigator with OSHA and the times that I came across things like the complaint was coworkers shooting one another with nails and the nail gun, coworkers looking over the bathroom stalls at one another.
00:51:41
Speaker
You know, like, those are the those are some of the things that you're talking about, you know, and then it's like, I can't apply a lot to that. Right. I mean, pretty hard to find a standard in the OSHA Act that's going to tell you you can't shoot the nail gun at your colleague. Yes. You know, I mean, like, that's that's tricky. And so then, you know, what did I lean into? Oh, you lean into the general duty. Absolutely. Isn't anything else. And you have to look through the 300 logs and see if there's
00:52:10
Speaker
There's been an injury, so you can substantiate it. And then, oh, I happened to work for a state plan that did have some workplace violence things that I could apply. I mean, gosh. I mean, it shouldn't be that hard. And there are real things that happen to real people every day. That's right. But again, if we were in 30 other countries,
00:52:30
Speaker
Yeah, right. Yeah, they figured it out. And also, but even here in the US, the proclamation by the Surgeon General about the importance of mental health and the statements by the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization and the International Organization for Standardization, there's enough
00:52:54
Speaker
standard out there. There's enough good practice out there that says, why are we waiting for a law? People do safety things for one of three reasons. Some people do it because it's the morally right thing to do. Some people do it because they think they're going to save a buck. And some people do it because they have to.
00:53:10
Speaker
Why is it that we always cater to that and not try to, there are people out there who want, they just don't know how and that's something that I try to do in my practice for those who are interested in my consulting practice is help you figure out how to do that. It's not really as hard as you thought if you get somebody to tutor you a little bit. I might get people going and you can figure it out past it. It's not really all that hard. It does require a change of mindset though.
00:53:37
Speaker
You know, circling back to the associations that you're part of now, and I asked you about what happened today. I don't think we got to that. Yes,
Encouraging Black Professionals in Safety
00:53:46
Speaker
I did. I did not. So so so today we had is today the recording. Anyway, we had a webinar and the title of the webinar was is safety is the safety profession for me?
00:54:01
Speaker
And it was asked from the perspective of, you know, we're black people, is safety a place for us? And it was, you know, it was a kind of a loaded question because the answer is yes. Because the safety profession is for any and everyone who wants to be there.
00:54:16
Speaker
And so the idea was to get people in both the US and Canada who just happened to racially identify as white people because to realize that yes, there is a place for us. Yes, it is a noble occupation. Yes, as a matter of fact, we were fortunate enough to have as a guest only the second black woman to serve as a regional administrator at OSHA. Oh, who is?
00:54:44
Speaker
OK, Billy Kaiser, shout out to administrator. She as a matter of fact, I met her about nine years ago when I was working with the city of Atlanta. She was in region four here and it was just an honor to have her because she's a trailblazer. Yeah, she is.
00:55:00
Speaker
And she shouldn't be the last one either. In 2023, when we're talking about the first or the second or the only, that says we've got work to do. And again, I'll let OSHA or anybody else know, we've got an association. We know people. Call us.
00:55:20
Speaker
We can find people for you. That's right. That's right. Dr. Daniels, you started mentioning mentors a second ago, you know, find yourself a mentor. And also, I think you have something to say about, you know, kind of the way you frame things for yourself and how you move in your career and thinking by asking yourself,
00:55:42
Speaker
10 year, you're 10 year from now. So yes, and you're 27 year old self. Do you want to talk about that is something that maybe listeners can maybe perhaps be interested in applying. Yes. So even from a mentorship perspective, it is difficult to be mentored when I haven't met myself.
00:55:59
Speaker
because I think sometimes people spend a lot of time looking at other people and what have they done and the first person to meet is myself and I do share that I met myself at 27.
00:56:14
Speaker
uh... matter of fact i might have been twenty six to be quite honest okay uh... so uh... matter of fact there was a particular thing that occurred in my life so i yeah i'm pretty certain i was twenty six at the time and i made a decision that a lot of people thought was you know really terrible to them but it was what i needed to do at the time and there have been a lot of consequences that have come for that and i don't apologize for the decision because what i needed to do at the time
00:56:41
Speaker
And so getting to know what was important to me and not having my mom, my siblings, people around me decide for me.
00:56:51
Speaker
And they say that your brain tends to form right around 25 or so there anyway. So maybe my brain just got fully formed. I said, I need to do this for my own reasons. But after I met me, I also got introduced to somebody else who really helps me out quite a bit. That's my future self. There's a, as a matter of fact, credit to a TED talk I watched once called The Psychology of Your Future Self.
00:57:15
Speaker
And if we had a conversation with ourself in the future, what would our future self say about the decisions that we make today? And my 10-year-from-now self, we've gotten to a groove.
00:57:29
Speaker
that virtually everything I do, I try to consider, how would my tenure from now self, what would he think about that? And if he doesn't want to do it, I'm not doing it, period. Those are the ones that are, there are some that's not, I'm not really sure, that's worthy of conversation. But if he says like, no, answer is no, period. Name the story, conversation over. And so until we do those things, even mentorship,
00:57:55
Speaker
can take us in directions that we won't enjoy because we don't know ourselves yet. So once I know me, then I can go, so who's on this similar journey that I'm taking? Who's going, you know, who's interested in some of the same kinds of things? Who may be down the road where my tenure self wants me to get in there already?
00:58:17
Speaker
So unfortunately, I lost one of those mentors here a little less than a year ago. And shout out to then, he was a fire lieutenant. His name was Angelo Dugins. And he took me under his wing when I was in recruit school and mentored me throughout the vast majority of my fire service career. And he, again, recently passed away. Again, unfortunately, I have cancer.
00:58:43
Speaker
And I have never met another human being who in a work setting that caused me to feel safe and feel like I could be myself and, you know, encourage me instead of telling me that's a ridiculous idea. He told me, he said, when I said, look, I wanted to be a chief and I was 22, he says, well, why not? Let's try it.
00:59:04
Speaker
He knew it was going to take a while. He helped me study and didn't discourage me, but simply, so you want to try, let's try that out. And created this kind of safe space. He was a really, really important person in my life. And I think that's what we should be looking for is people who we can meet along the way.
00:59:22
Speaker
Not that they can point the way, but we can meet along the way. If they haven't really gone that way, it's kind of difficult for you to help me do something you don't know anything about. But people that you can meet along the way are very precious. They are. I had the great fortune of meeting myself when I was 28. So similar to you, from a pivotal experience as well. Sure.
00:59:46
Speaker
You know, I'm thinking about our listeners listening to this and maybe that's resonating with some who are like, oh yes, I remember when I stepped in to myself. And for anyone else who that feels fuzzy for,
01:00:02
Speaker
You know, maybe think about what stirs in you, you know, what stirs something into you and where when that happens, you know, whether it's stirring you into action or stirring you into that's not a line I'm willing to cross. Yes.
01:00:18
Speaker
Where does that come from? And it's probably when you figured out who you were. And, and carry that forward, right? And as you're pointing out with mentors, Dr. Daniels, you know, I believe in looking for what I might call earthly angels along the way, you know, like people, people, if you're looking for them are in your path. They are, they are, they are. And the other thing too is, is don't depend on any one person to give you everything that you need.
01:00:45
Speaker
Because they can't you know they say don't you know don't meet your heroes The challenge is it's it's not it's not the hero. That's the issue. It's you yeah It's your expectation of the hero because even the heroes are humans. They're not perfect neither Are you they don't know everything neither? Do you they can't do everything neither? Can you?
01:01:08
Speaker
So if we adjust our expectations and say, look, for this person, this is what I get out of the relationship with this person or this group. And if I can't get everything, you know, the something that I need, I don't need to discard this relationship. I need to make a new one. I need to make a new and add to, you know, add to it. I had the opportunity to attend a program at Harvard some years ago for senior executives in state and local government. And they, one of the things I walked away from, walked away from the program with was this concept that
01:01:45
Speaker
Dr. Daniels, as we're wrapping up our time today, I'm curious about you are 40 years into your career. You are obviously excited. Where are you taking this next? Or what's got you fired up these days that you're going to continue? So first of all, my life plan is to go to 110.
01:02:04
Speaker
Relationships are primary and all else is derivative.
01:02:10
Speaker
I did that specifically in my late 40s you know there's at the time you know with where medical research and all so I didn't make that up I mean yeah I believe that's possible and if it's not that's okay so and so everything that there's some things that I don't do because I want to make it to 110 you know so and what I'm doing right now is finally
01:02:34
Speaker
Finally, working full-time for myself instead of part-time for myself. I worked full-time for other people and part-time for myself for years. And in many cases, my frustration was around, why is it that they're limiting me?
01:02:49
Speaker
Well, I was limiting myself by doing that. Why is it that they're treating it? I allowed that to happen. It is exciting to be on the cusp of this explosion of focus on how people feel in the workplace. I'm convinced of it. I believe it's going to happen. I'm doing everything that I can.
01:03:13
Speaker
In every organization I'm attached to, I'm having this conversation with them about how important it is to address how people are feeling about things. And so I want to be around to see some of the fruits of my labor, so that's what keeps me fired up and keeps me going.
01:03:33
Speaker
That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Keep it up. And my gosh, we all have so much to learn in this regard. Thank you so much for your time today, Dr. Daniels. It is my pleasure, Jill. And hopefully we'll have another conversation similar at some point in the future. I would love that. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly,
01:03:52
Speaker
Thank you for your contribution toward the common good, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals like Dr. Daniels and I. Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer. Until next time, thanks for listening.