Keys to Success: How EHS Leaders Can Be More Effective in Getting Workers Home Safe

Good afternoon and welcome to our EHS Today webcast, Keys to Success, How EHS Leaders Can Be More Effective in Getting Workers Home Safe. This is sponsored by Origami Risk. My name is Adrienne Selco and I’m senior editor of EHS Today. Before we begin, let me explain how you can participate in today’s presentation. First, if you are having audio difficulties or slides are not advancing, simply hit your f five key to refresh your webcam’s console. If you are running pop up blocking software, you will need to disable it to view the webinar. If you have any technical difficulties during today’s session, please press the question help mark button at the upper right corner to receive assistance in solving common issues. This webinar technology allows you to resize the presentation by clicking the maximize icon in the upper right corner to enlarge the window. We welcome your questions during today’s event. To submit them, simply type your question into the ask a question window on the left side of your screen and hit the submit button. We’ll be answering as many questions as possible during the Q and A session that will follow the main presentation, but feel free to send your questions in at any time. Also be aware today’s session is being recorded and will be available on the EHS Today website within the next day for you to review. You’ll be notified by email when the archive is available. And when the webinar ends, please take a moment to complete the feedback form that will appear on your screen. I’d like to introduce our speakers. We have with us today, Cameron Schwartz, who is sales associate for Origami Risk. Ray Brock, who is director, safety services, property and casualty, Prosperity. And Nicholas Marquis Riddell, who is Senior Safety Manager for Alta Fiber. For more about our speakers, please check the speakers details tab on your console. And with that, welcome all. Cameron, the floor is yours. Thank you. Appreciate that. Well, today, we’re going to be talking about what contributes to the success of EHS professionals as they strive to advance safety culture and improve workforce safety. Kind of our format today, it’s gonna be a panel discussion with kind of a q and a to follow, and we’ll be covering the following topics. What are some of the key challenges that safety leaders face today? What skills, traits, and methodologies can enhance your abilities as an EHS leader? And how can technology help enhance your safety program and help you along the way? Ray and Nick, I appreciate you joining us today as, we discuss these topics. Let’s, let’s go ahead and dig right in. So according to the results of a yearly survey by the EHS daily survivor, in the years leading up to the pandemic from two thousand seventeen to two thousand nineteen, respondents identified the same three topics of safety challenges, employee engagement, employees taking shortcuts or ignoring rules, and supervisor participation in safety programs. We actually sent out our own survey to EHS leaders of our clients and prospects as well, asking them the following two questions. What are your biggest pain points and challenges in your job? As well as what keeps you up at night? And so if we move on to the next slide, we’re able to see some of those challenges that were kind of shared, and so we kinda like to go through some of those. In addition to those three challenges that were already shared, their responses included the following, budget constraints, outdated regulations and standards, organizational silos and siloed data, employees viewing safety professionals as compliance cops, a lack of open dialogue with the c suite and executive leadership teams, loss of knowledge of safety procedures whenever people retire, the misguided view on the point of on the part of others where safety works against the organization rather than for it for the overall good, and that kind of due to a potential impact on production. Organizational reliance on lagging indicators such as, measurement of safety performance, limited availability of resources for those who need it, and gaining influence in the organization to justify action and investment. I know some of the ones that affected me, in the most ways were, you know, that odds with odds with safety and production and getting buy in and support for investment and safety. Ray and Nick, as you hear these topics shared by other EHS leaders, which ones stand out to you? Or do you have some additional ones you’d like to add from your own experiences? Yeah. Cameron, I have a team of twenty three safety professionals that partner with our clients to help them recognize hazards and prevent occupational injuries and learn how to do that on their site. So really, have also HR functions within our organization as well as payroll and in different divisions. So organizational silos, reputation and lack of open dialogue with with leadership are three areas that that have resonated with me when I look at this slide. So I feel like our goal as safety leaders is to be able to partner with our stakeholders, with our clients, the employees, leadership to initiate the programs that are gonna drive a safe environment, leverage the right technology in order to get that information in front of the right people quickly and reduce those that type of silo and and also provide more, you know, transparency of, where people are getting injured. Our reputation is built on really our ability for this quick turnaround on these types of projects and resources and their value to our our clients in providing a safe work site. That’s great. Nick, any anything you’d like to throw in there? Yeah. Yeah. Well said, Ray. You know, those are certainly challenges that we see as well at Alta Fiber. I think the two that kinda resonated with me, the reputation with the organization as compliance cops and our reliance on lagging indicators. You know, becoming a support function and and really being transparent about our goals across the organization and, what’s derived some of these, safety policies and procedures, and and really, relying on, those to help us kind of build an adequate safety program, and one where safety is first is mind. You know, having limited resources is what always been an issue, particularly in the technology realm, which is why we’ve been so reliant on lagging indicators. We really had to sell moving, stop looking in the rearview mirror, and start looking forward and, really, kind of getting our leading indicators, as a forefront to building our safety program. And that came really with, being on the field and and and working with some of our employees to to get some of these near misses and and really building a relationship with these folks and having, a visual reputation of where we wanna go in terms of leading indicators as well. That’s great, Nick. Thank you. I I know whenever I was in safety leadership and working with folks as well, kind of being able to get out of your office and go out onto the the work floor and being able to build those relationships, I found very important as well. And understanding, maybe even throwing on the right PPE and doing the task with them to understand what some of the challenges they actually faced with, you know, what what pains did they have at the end of the day because of the processes they were required to do in their applications. And then working with this the supervisors or working with the employees themselves to try to brainstorm, hey. How can we do this a little bit better? How can we make improvements without trying to affect that productivity of getting the job done and being able to go home satisfied that you’ve done a good day’s work? So I’ve I’ve found that kind of important as well. You know, as as we talk through these these challenges that we see, I I think it’s it’s important that we also realize and kind of talk about how we’re able to overcome these challenges. So as we kind of talk through those items that you brought up, you know, what are some of the ways that you’ve been able to overcome them within your career? Cameron, I’ll start. I think for our team of consultants being on-site, developing relationships at all of the organizational levels that have an influence over the safety culture are some of the ways that we’ve overcome challenges. And that’s been a challenge over the last three years to face to face interaction, which is important when you’re trying to get the buy in or understand on-site operations a little better. But our leaders within our organization were innovative and are innovative, and they try to plug in the right tools and resources to help our clients and their worksite employees, you know, implement effective controls. Part of that plan is helping our clients understand, you know, recognizing employees for the success in everyone’s effort and making sure that, you know, people are reporting, you know, the things that they need to report on-site. I just attended a school meeting on safety and part of the protocol, you know, that they use in the school in order to address safety issues. And I was just amazed to hear the principal, you know, the leader at this school say the number one reason why why students don’t report incidents because they think they’re gonna get in trouble. They think there’s gonna be some adverse reaction to it. And I thought, wow. I just, yeah, I just addressed this with, with a group of, you know, forty, forty five year old mechanics as well. And and that principal owned it. You know, he said, that’s on me. And he said, I need to change the culture within this school in order to get them comfortable with it. And I think I think we can look at that in the workplace. Nick? Yeah. Well well said, Ray. I I would add that, you know, building relationships with employees that are close to the at risk work, I think that’s critical and and really, kind of selling selling your safety programs and making sure that everybody’s on board. I think, an organizational, mutual understanding that safety is is the forefront of mind and most important, part of everybody’s, job. And having those leaders go out in the field and advocate for safety, on a frontline basis is critical. You know, having a a clear measure of success and sharing that with all of your business units and and and your different work groups. Defining a strategy, again, from the top down and making sure that everybody is in lockstep when implementing that strategy. And I think communicating that strategy appropriately within your organization is critical. Thank you. Appreciate that. You know, as we’ve kinda talked about some of the challenges we’ve we’ve identified, Nick, that’s a that’s a great segue into how we measure, and we kinda talk about what makes a successful EHS leader. As we recognize the keys to success for an EHS leader, the question really becomes how can it be put into action? There’s no single formula for a successful safety leader, but there are tools that can make a safety leader more successful. The EHS leaders we interviewed offered helpful insights that can be applied by those just starting in the profession as well as the seasoned veteran alike who are looking to improve employee engagement, introduce new processes, or even move forward with a renewed focus on transforming the safety culture of their organization. Keys to success include the following, being resilient, maybe being prepared for changes that come to the business, embracing empathy. I think we talked on that even a little bit earlier. Building a strong and open safety culture through communication, practicing what you preach as a role model, you know, that don’t do what I say, but do as I do, and following through with that. Identifying leading indicators and acting on them prior to an incident occurring. Lever and finally, leveraging the power of technology. Guys, whenever you see this list here, which of the ones stand out to you the most? I think, you know, one one that stands out to me, is leveraging technology. I think in the safety field, that part of it has evolved over the years. And, you know, there are there are different tools that we have available at our disposal and to be able to understand what those tools are and develop specialties within those or an acumen to understand how to use those tools. I think is critical in just furthering your success as an EHS professional. So figuring out what tools are used in your organization, even outside of the safety world or environmental world that that you live in and and figuring out how to plug safety into those or or how they align. You know, we have the environmental, social and governance that is really a critical part of organizations now. And, you know, there are different tools that are leveraged around that as well. So I would say technology is is probably what resonates with me the most. There there are two that really caught my eye. Excellent communication skills. You know, open and honest communication, I think, is essential, in a safe workplace because you need to be in line with employees, throughout the entire organization. Effective safety leadership means meeting with employees and having touch points and, to regularly discuss topics like new safety initiatives and current safety issues. And I think the most important part is collecting their feedback. Here at Alta Fiber, we really like to drive and celebrate a safety program that’s led by our workforce. This further emphasizes the importance of safety, and establishes the foundation of our successful safety program. When workers are encouraged to discuss safety matters, it becomes part of our culture, which I think is essential within the org. And the the ability to be fully present and proactive or getting ahead of a potential issue, actively being on-site and and present with the workforce, whether it’s conducting JSAs, site observations, and audits. We’re working with our stakeholders to proactively mitigate risks. A lot of our near miss reports come from stories, while our safety professionals are connecting with our employees, which we know is as everybody here probably knows, is one of our strongest leading indicators. You won’t notice these issues if you’re not tuned in to what’s going out through, throughout the different business organizations. And, this underlines the importance of having a strong presence, and and I truly believe it can be lifesaving. You know, you tying into that communication also, reminds me of a quote that we got from one our clients. When it comes to communication, the quote that was given us to given to us was, from Teri Rybacke, who’s the director of risk and safety, and shortage at Macy’s. And she said communication is key when it comes to safety. The more open you are with your colleagues, the more they trust you, and the trust is critical when you’re working to raise the safety awareness in your company. That, like, as I read through that and kind of saw that, like, definitely really resonated with me personally as that’s one of the the key sentiments that I’ve tried to use throughout my career within, EHS. You know, as we go through and and some of the other ones that that we see, you know, being prepared for change, never allowing yourself to get too comfortable, said Rod Courtney. He’s an he’s an EHS manager for Empirical. Even think when things are going well, you have to keep on going. EHS professionals must always be prepared to anticipate and adapt to change. And that means, you know, things might change in regulations and standards, changing risks associated with weather conditions or budget shortfalls, and overcoming organizational silos, in many cases, it may also mean that revisiting how a safety program is even evaluated and how success is measured might need to change throughout the process as well. So I mean, those are a few things that just kind of stood out to me and as I’ve read through responses that we’ve seen, from our clients as well. As we kind of move on to the next slide here, I’d love to be able to talk with you both as far as how you’ve measured success within your career, some of the initiatives that you’ve kind of gone through. And, why don’t you share with us what you’ve done? Well, we were talking about this before, Cameron. I think Nick manages the direct site and has direct relationship as opposed to, my team that that is more on a consultative role, getting involved with with employees through through the employer, to address issues. So my group is, you know, we look at, I think similarly with Nick, we’re looking at loss rates. We’re looking at, you know, comparative items so that if we see a spike in injuries, if we have some sort of baseline to compare it to, might understand that uptick in the frequency or severity of injuries a little better. So, we measure our success through relationships with our clients, through, you know, being able to convey how to provide a safe workplace and reduce those occupational injuries. And then on the other side, you know, our organization provides workers compensation to all of our clients through a national carrier. So we we’ve developed some initiatives around analyzing the incredible amount of data that we collect on prospective companies, companies that would like to come into our book of business and they do a whole bunch of different things and we collect a lot of data on them. So that initiative allows us to kind of drill into what we are and are not comfortable with, you know, within our workers’ compensation program and what our obviously our carrier wouldn’t be comfortable with as well to see if we’re missing any opportunities in there to partner with other companies. So that’s a higher level initiative with us. Now our clients’ initiatives get a little more granular in that they are they will have initiatives around program development, depending if they’re a property management company, targeting the right properties to look at and then making sure that there’s consistency across the board. So we provide support to help their initiatives and their scoring means by going out and doing some of the assessments. Ray, you mentioned that you work with a lot of different clients and you have customers that you’re working with. I’m sure you see that within a bunch of different industries as well. Even reflecting back on some of the questions we’ve talked about, what have you seen that’s been successful, for within like different segments as well? Would you mind sharing a little bit there? Yeah. I mean, I think when you talk about not only your EHS leaders, but the leaders in the organization, I think companies that are involved in their organization and not only know employees names, but Nick, I think you had mentioned this before. They understand the operations and they understand when something’s not going to go right in the operation. I have we’ve literally been able to provide data of where a new VP of operation comes in and very short time later, the injuries go up or down. Like you can literally see that leadership get plugged in. So I think really where I see the success around our clients is having the leadership understand how they affect not only operations, but also the, you know, the injuries that are around the operations. Also, the frequency that a person is visible is definitely, I think, directly affected, directly affects their losses as well. So, it’s kind of getting out of that office. And I mentioned it before COVID for us really put a barrier up that, you know, we had to figure out a way around it. We leverage technology around that. Finally, the only other thing that that I’ve really noticed with us and also with our clients is is, I guess, what I would call complacency. Like the last two and a half years for a lot of organizations, for for many organizations, they saw a downtick in injuries, you know. And if you see that over the course of two years, you can just say, well, just keep the ship steady. Don’t mess it up. And I I think the the leaders in in safety are out there continuing trying to find ways to be innovative around creating those safety controls. Nick, what are some of the items that you’ve measured success or know, if you can give an example? Yeah. Yeah. I I think, you know, Ray gave a very elaborate great answer there. You know, for us at Alta, I I think our biggest measure of success is employee engagement in some of our our safety initiatives and programs. You know, we also measure success by a top down understanding of our safety management system, our safety strategy, and our expectation that safety is the most important job of everyone in the company. And like you said, Ray, we accomplish this by being present through all areas of the organization. You know, the very first discussion we have with our executive team down to ops level management is is where our current KPIs are, our safety initiatives, and the overall health of our safety programs. And to me, success is measured in that way, engagement of employees all all throughout the course of the or all throughout the entire organization. When we go on to job sites and we ask our employees, hey. What are some of the life saving rules that that might be impacted during this actual work process? And they can give a a good defined answer and then follow that up with some with with some feedback for our safety team. That’s a wonderful measurement of success and probably one of the best ones in my opinion, and that’s what we really drive for from a cultural perspective. But, yeah, Ray I I think Ray had a great answer, and and I really don’t have too much to add outside of that. So Thanks, Nick. Yep. You know, as as we kinda move through the kind of the rest of the presentation here, it kind of circles back to one of the keys to success that we saw was leveraging technology. Leveraging the power of technology requires that the right solution be in place at the organization. And for those still relying on paper forms or spreadsheets or outdated software systems that aren’t quite designed to be able to handle EHS specific programs and metrics, building a case for organizational investment within EHS software may seem like a little bit of a daunting task. Here are some benefits that we’ve seen based on our experience with Origami Risk and would love for you guys to chime in as well. But some of the items we’ve seen, as we’ve worked with our clients and our prospects is the ease of use to ensure accessibility to all employees across all demographics. Mobile functionality to ensure that access on the field with the ability for real time reporting. Configurability, meaning that you don’t need a lot of custom coding to be able to modify your screens or intake forms, portals and other features, including the options for administrative self-service, which is huge this day and age. We have so many clients and and companies that have those resources internally, allowing them to get into our platform and be able to, be able to make those changes themselves is so important. The regularity with which the product is updated and whether these are associated charges, or if there’s fees for updates and feature enhancements, that’s pretty important as well. Workflows and automation to cut down on the repetitive manual tasks so that safety professionals can really focus on safety rather than data entry and even sometimes a second time of data entry, right, and follow-up items and kind of getting rid of that, that manual process. If we have software to be able to assign, track, and trend corrective actions to ensure the issues don’t slip slip through the cracks, get lost in emails, in paper memos back and forth. That’s an important feature. Integration options for connecting with third party systems like HR systems, payroll systems, and other platforms that are that are used really to manage critical data. Automated dashboards and reports that allow visibility into potential issues without requiring someone to continually update the numbers or or get that PowerPoint updated for that executive review. As we kind of look through all of these technology kind of bullet points here, Ray and Nick, how has technology helped you be successful? On my part, Cameron, I think it helps us do a quick assessment and turn around our information in a timely manner. I think what’s great about utilizing technology is that if you have an internet connection, which most of us have, wherever we go in some form or manner, we can get data back to other people that need to use it. And so that being able to access the information everywhere is important. And it can also help create tasks and help with the follow-up on it. Because if you’re managing a lot during the day, technology can help remind you to step back and and address some of the items that, you know, that are still outstanding. Yeah. I think for for me, you know, throughout the years, we we as a company have made several acquisitions, and and we truly became a global company. I think we lacked kind of unified processes, policies, and and reporting procedures. And and I think above all, it’s a sing above else, a singular safety culture. I think we needed to take back and kind of create an onboarding blueprint and develop governance for our global operations. And I I think, really, technology was essential for that. The configurability, the mobility, and ease of use, especially being in telecommunications, were all mobile was was essential. You know? And having such a wide footprint, with different companies in our, different companies in different sectors within our portfolio, it was imperative that they have a one stop shop, for some of these processes. And the work flows and escalations were appropriate as well to better suit serve our client groups and our stakeholders. When we can’t be on-site, it gives us an opportunity to really create a instant feedback loop with some of our more remote employees. They can see, a potential hazard. They could see a near miss, etcetera, and they can report it to us, and we can instantly start working that and and provide feedback to the broader group. So for me, that that’s really how technology has helped us within the last few years. And, really, we’re growing. We’re growing at an exponential rate. We’re we’re putting fiber in in in the market and out of market, northeast, west, and everywhere. And as our VP says, world domination is is kinda what we’re looking forward to. And as we scale, technology has really helped us kind of create dashboards, I I think which is essential to get a snapshot of some of our our indicators in in in our industry to to really look at what we need to hyperfocus on and and really, what we need to look at to really be proactive within our sectors. So I I know whenever it comes to this topic as well, I I have a little bit of a unique perspective given the fact that I was in IT before I got into safety. And then, as being a safety professional prior to coming to Origami, I’ve been involved with the organizations where we didn’t have a system in place, and it was all manual and paper. And, you know, you would have an incident that happened, and you whenever that happened, you had a checklist of items you had to go through where you had to fill out a certain form and you had to make copies, and you had to scan it or fax it to, you know, the corporate location. And then you had to make phone calls to notify the right people that, you know, a serious incident had happened. And, you know, as myself and other safety professionals within that initial organization that I got involved with safety, you know, you miss maybe miss a step in the process, and that can be detrimental to where, you know, a key leader didn’t get that notification and had no idea that somebody within their purview had been injured. So that’s really something that speaks to me is whenever special whenever we talk about that workflow and automation to where it’s set up and when we hit those right triggers that, you know, the the the magic happens. Right? And the right people get notified. So that way your business can make the right decisions at the right time to be able to, you know, help somebody get through a difficult situation, especially when it’s involving an injury or maybe an environmental release or something along those lines that you can get the right people there at the right time. So technology, obviously, to in my perspective, not only because I work with Origami, but just in general is so important, especially this day and age. All right, guys. Well, as we kind of step out of the of the back and forth with some of these topics, we’re going to be stepping into the Q and A session of our webinar here. If you’re attending today, please enter any questions you’d have for our panelists and myself today, and we’d be happy to answer all of those we can with our time remaining. Before we jump into that Q and A though, I’d like to share with you a couple of resources that Origami would like to provide for you. First off, grab your cell phone, grab your tablet or mobile device, and be ready to scan some of these QR codes. And this is a little bit of a shameless plug here, but within the Origami application, we integrate with QR technology on a regular basis. So you can use a phone, be able to scan and and access features within the system or be able to work with the data that you input or get out of the Origami application. So, but this QR code that you’re scanning right now is going to take you through our website and it’s going to take you to our EHS maturity assessment. This assessment will ask you some questions from your vantage point if you’re a safety professional of where your safety program and the culture of your safety is at within your business. Feel free to take it and get some results. I would also encourage you, that you also share this assessment, not the results, but share the assessment itself with some other key leaders within your business. This tool alone that we’re providing can offer you some insight and information into your internal organization and maybe some of the gaps that are in your safety program between your vantage point and then maybe the vantage point of somebody from operations or somebody from HR or within your risk management team, whatever, you know, wherever they’re sitting at the table, they can also take this assessment. That gap that you see between your assessment and their assessment could enable you and your business to improve your communication of items that maybe they didn’t realize that you already have in place within your safety program, or it may even identify an area of opportunity where you can work together with other leaders to address the changes that you’re needing. The next resource I’d like to share with you as well is our white paper on what it becomes to take an EHS to become an EHS leader. This white paper covers some of the topics discussed today as well as some meaningful information when it comes to the adoption and usage of EHS technology within your business. All right. Well, those are the main things that we kind of wanted to cover today. It does look like we might have some questions. Okay, great. I want to thank you for the presentation. Before we get into the questions, I just want to remind our audience that at the end of the webinar, please take a few moments to complete the feedback form. So let’s start with the first question and I will ask this to Ray. How do you suggest approaching leadership when trying to gain executive buy in to safety initiatives? I would suggest a lot of pictures. I think as you are proposing an initiative or you are trying to convince leaders of something, you know, your information available, but I think keep it high level. The last thing that you want to do is go into that meeting and, you know, start running down a rabbit trail when you’re trying to get something accomplished. So I do think, you know, I joke about it, but I do think they like graphs. They like to see visual items of where you are and then also, you know, where you could be. And then, you know, the supporting data, obviously, you’re going to be prepared. You should be prepared and have that supporting data so that, you know, they can understand, okay, so this is where we want to get to, this is how we’re going to get there, and this is the reason why we need to do this. Depending on which part of senior leadership that you are meeting with, you may have to provide a little more data. If you’re meeting with the CFO, they’re probably going to have some more specific financial information they need if it’s a large investment. Ray, just to kind of tag right on to that point with the data, I think it’s really important even as we thought through some of the challenges of getting that buy in and the resources to be able to make those changes. Understanding the process, of what you might be trying to change for a safety initiative. Right? Understanding, you know, if it’s especially with my background in in manufacturing, how long does this process take that if especially if it’s something for production, we’re trying to make something, this step of the process takes this long. If is what we’re trying to initiate or make changes of, is it going to add time to that production? Is it going to cost us eventually more money because we’re trying to put in additional protocols or make those changes? So understanding the business impact of what some of those safety challenges can be important. But then also coming with that data to say, by the way, this specific process has also caused these types of injuries, and here’s the losses we’ve sustained because of, you know, legal fees or, you know, any type of medical follow-up that an employee’s had to have through the injuries sustained through this process. So, I guess that would be kind of my take from that manufacturing perspective as well that, you know, just bringing the data forward and understanding the true the true cause and issue being brought forward. So that way as a team, you’re able to talk through it and come up with a game plan. Yeah. Good point, Cameron. I would just quickly add on that, you know, find people in your organization to challenge the data and ask maybe some of the questions that you can anticipate in that meeting, you know, just to further prepare. Okay. Thank you. The next question I will ask to Nick. What communication channels do you use to drive technology engagement and adoption? Yeah, so that’s a great question. And recently have implemented Origami. I feel like I can answer this one appropriately. We’re lucky enough to have a great communication team. So I think it started planning, having a communication plan throughout the entire organization around the implementation of Origami itself. I think it also implied, you know, having conversations with folks that were gonna be fully engaged and utilizing the programs or or the technology we’re getting ready to utilize and roll out and how it impacts them. So we can get ahead of some of the questions we’re gonna ask and and communicate those directly to the employees as those questions come in. And we can have appropriate answers, and we can make sure we build and implement our programs around some of the concerns that folks might have without causing a a a significant interruption. The easier it is during implementation, the easier your communication plan is gonna be. So so I think getting ahead a lot of those questions and engaging some of the groups that are gonna be your power users in the actual programs as well. Hey. Check check some of this out. Why don’t you kind of mock an incident for me with this new platform and and tell me give me some feedback? And then really communicating maybe some of the issues they have with the broader group. And I think the most important part is getting in front of the employees that are gonna be entering these incidents, near misses, and some of your leading indicators and lagging indicators and really showing them how to walk through actual incidents from an end user’s perspective and making it easy as possible. And I think that’s done through training, figures training. It’s done through getting in front of them and actually walking through the incident and just constant reinforcement, whether it’s annual or every three years. And from from the time that they’re onboarded to, recertification, safety training, it’s it’s something that we we constantly, reinforce throughout the organization. And I think another key component is getting the the frontline managers ready to go with this technology as well. So, you know, really, makes the communication part part seamless. You know, we we we hit it in a couple different ways. We we did a company wide broadcast from our our, CFO, our, CEO, and our, COOs, as well as some of our safety leadership, as well as the directors down to their frontline managers. So, that that’s kind of how we went about it, and I I found that to be pretty effective, and being available, because there are gonna be other questions as well when you do start to implement and communicate, new technologies. Okay. This next question, I’m just gonna throw out and whoever wants to jump in. What are some of the best proactive KPIs that you have come across in your careers? So so for me, you know, there there are plenty. Ones that we track, and and we celebrate are near misses. You know, that’s kind of the bread and butter of a lot of our safety program. We we track training hours. We track employee engagement in some of our, not required initiatives. We have supplemental training. It’s called our safety lesson plans. You know, that’s conducted by the frontline managers. Those have been some that that we’ve really kinda grasped onto and have been really effective, particularly around the near miss, and we’ve we tend to incentivize those, pretty hell heavily and and really try to get our our employees to to help us. You know, they’re the eyes and our and ears in our in our in our safety program, so we really need their feedback daily. So those those have been effective for me and and our company. You know, we we also do have our lagging indicators, our our motor vehicle incidents. You know, we we put them over a million miles, you know, types of incidents and root causes of those incidents as well. But those are very much rearview mirror indicators, and and we’re looking to be more proactive. Job site assessments and job hazard assessments as well as audits and observations have been a real key to our success as well. Great, great points on that, Nick. I think you mentioned observations and kind of around behaviors have created some great conversations at our client level, like just, you know, spending time watching and also asking employees. You know, I think it’s you’ve got if you’re going to spend time to do these behavioral observations, you should probably give some consistency to it. So there should be some questions around it, but I don’t you know, we try to avoid just making sure that you’re checking a box on it. But, I agree with all your other leading indicators. I think those are fantastic. I just I think around some of our clients have had some really good changes in their workplace around looking at behaviors of employees. I know one of my favorite metrics to track is just the closure of items in general, whether it’s closure of an investigation or closure of, an an audit being done, closure of corrective actions, and the amount of time from the start to the end to to see, you know, how are we doing as a team of, you know, an incident happens and how how soon did we get to it to truly investigate it? Or a corrective action was assigned to because we found a failure within an audit. How long did it take for a maintenance team or somebody to be able to resolve that corrective action to be able to prevent something bad from happening in the future. And especially going back to having that technology in that system, when you can actually give those metrics and be able to follow-up on those items, I think that’s a powerful KPI. Okay. Thank you all for that answer answers. The next question is, how do you try to change the safety culture when managers and directors are not holding their employees accountable for the incidents? Nick, do you want to start with that one? Sure. Yeah. I I in my opinion, I I think and this is why I keep on saying safety culture starts from the top down. It is, I I think, extremely important for for all the way up from the CEO down to have the same mentality in terms of safety. It’s the most important part of everyone’s workday. It’s what we’re gonna talk about at the beginning of every meeting. It’s what we’re gonna close out of of every meeting. It’s it’s imperative that that we all work together to make sure that our employees get home the same way they came to work. And, I think that mentality trickles down. I I I know it trickles down because we’ve seen it firsthand, within the Alta Group. So, really, that’s where I start. You start with with the leadership and executive team, and and you get their buy in. And with that, I believe, comes director and management buy in. That that’s just been kind of my experiences with it. Now we all know there’s gonna be some bad apples. Those tend to get weeded out very quickly when, again, it’s it’s one of the most important elements of of your organization. Ray, any any thoughts on that as well? Yeah. No, Nick. I I think I think Nick’s spot on. I mean, when we talk about these areas, it really does start at the leadership level and understanding from an employee level where, you know, why these issues are happening. So it could be sometimes if you’re just having these conversations and getting the right people in the room, you can have an effect on the injury rate. But sometimes you just don’t have the right people in the room. So if and you don’t have the right people addressing the situations. So, and from another standpoint, it needs to be important to everyone. So if it’s not important to a level to, you know, address safety issues in the workplace, then it could be that we’re not selling it incorrectly. And we need to possibly change the way that we’re looking at this to convince people either upline or downline, you know, wherever they sit in the organization that this is important. Okay, the next question is for Cameron. It’s a little long, so hold with me on this. We often confuse culture with behavior and believe that behavior is an artifact and can be evident and measurable, which arguably they are not. From your experience, what are some of the behavioral data points that although subjectively measured can actually provide a valid picture of areas where culture needs to improve? Man, that’s a great question. And as you work with different businesses, all of us have, behavior and culture and safety can really mean a lot of things to a lot of different businesses. In my experience, whenever we’re talking about that behavior based safety, I think it depends a lot on how you establish that program. One of the best programs that I’ve seen, is actually, part of the Milliken safety solution or Milliken safety program. And they focus a lot on that safety behavioral, piece of it to where it’s not going after people or or pointing fault, but just looking at more, looking at the behaviors more objectively. And one of the ways that you do that to be able to build that culture is kind of going back, you know, Ray, to your story earlier of you going to that school and the the teacher and the principal saying, you know, hey. We want to build a culture where people can come to us and share their concerns. And so that’s one of the things that I liked about this program was the fact that, when you do a behavior based observation, you’re actually not sharing the name of the person that you observed. Because as soon as you observe that person, maybe a behavior to where you see something that isn’t safe, you see something that, is not a great process. If you don’t identify the person, but you identify the process, then it’s easy to come together as a whole, as a group and talk with that, you know, department or whatever and say, Hey, here’s something we’ve observed and we’d like to collectively work and figure out a way to improve this process. Where if you make it about the person that was observed doing it, then or like if a supervisor tries to back end that observation and say, hey, who was that that you observed doing that, you know, unsafe act or that unsafe condition was identified, then it destroys that culture. So when we can look at those items that can become more, topic based, that more people can look at without pointing fingers, I think that’s where we can start to build that culture through those behavior based safety elements. Okay. And then Cameron, another question for you. Are some steps that I can take for my company to prepare for a safety management system? Oh, man. That’s a great question. So I’m assuming with that question being asked that you don’t have a safety program in place. And hopefully, you’re at least getting something on paper. Right? You have some forms to be able to track incident data or or you’re, you know, capturing near misses, incidents, and and determining if they’re recordable or whatever that might mean. The first step I would take is getting that information into a spreadsheet or an internal database. I think that’s a great first step. And the reason that’s important because then you can start looking at the metrics of how many incidents have we had this year. And most likely, depending on the size of your business, you might have somebody that’s kind of good with Excel that can kind of help you through this to do some counts and look at some charts and graphs. That once you start capturing that data, you can start to understand your business and maybe see some trends that you’re able to do without having, you know, a a system in place. What that also does for you, and this is actually something I did personally, was that when you’re ready to move into a situation where you’re able to, you know, sign up with Origami or or go into some of the safety management system, typically, people that are doing the implementation for you can take that data and be able to incorporate it into your system to where you’re not starting from scratch. You’re able to bring that data along to where you’re able to see some historical information and then be able to act upon that data as well. So that would be some of my recommendations of, you know, if you’re just getting started out and wanting to figure out the next steps prior to coming to a system. Ray or Nick, any ideas on that as well? Cameron, I agree with what you said. I think it needs to be customized as well. I don’t think there’s a boilerplate template that you can put into place or it’s not going to be effective at defining behaviors in your workplace that can make significant changes, be it to your culture or your injury experience. So I think, you know, it’s time to call a friend, you know, and that, you know, maybe get an outside reference and, you know, talk to them about your operations. And I’m a big, you know, advocate of bringing people in and, you know, getting an outside opinion. Sometimes you’re too close to the situation, but if you can get somebody in to identify those subjective data points, then I think, you know, then it’s just a matter of getting the data in. Yeah. Yeah. I would have to agree. I I think you both kinda hit the nail on the head. You know, engage as many employees as you can, as much as the leadership team as you can, because you kinda wanna know how it’s gonna impact all all different avenues of the business and really build build a system that’s gonna cater specifically to your groups. And and it’s gonna be utilized by all groups because we all know if it’s overly difficult, you’re not gonna get data, or you’re going to get bad data and pencil whip data. So make sure you’re building it and cater it specifically for the groups that are going to be impacted by the actual technology. Okay. That covers our questions. And I want to thank everybody for a wonderful presentation. I’d like to thank our speakers, Cameron Schwartz, Ray Brock, Nicholas Marquis Riddell, and our sponsor Origami Risk on behalf of EHS Today, have a productive remainder of the day. Thank you.