Who is Ultimately Accountable for Safety?

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Brye Sargent, a professional workplace safety coach and trainer with over 20 years of safety management experience across multiple industries.

Brye believes that EHS professionals are undervalued in the workplace and should receive far more support implementing safety programs from frontline supervisors and managers.

Furthermore, because safety impacts all areas of an organization and has such wide-ranging benefits, she argues that HSE professionals should be seen as a member of the executive management team.

Brye shares great practical tips on making this a reality and achieving safety accountabilty, including how to encourage co-worker involvement, compromise with operations, and collaborate with leadership.

Her coaching business is called The Safety Geek, she hosts a podcast and YouTube channel and offers online safety management resources and courses to up-and-coming EHS professionals.

♪ [music] ♪ - [Mary] My name is Mary Conquest. I'm your host for "Safety Labs by Slice," the podcast where we explore the human side of safety to support safety professionals. We move past regulations and reportables to talk about the core skills of safety leadership, empathy, influence, trust, rapport.

In other words, the soft skills that help you do the hard stuff. ♪ [music] ♪ Hi there, welcome to "Safety Labs by Slice." There's an increasing recognition that safety is intertwined with organizational systems. As I've been speaking to guests, I frequently hear their refrain that safety is not a silo.

Today, we want to focus on where the buck stops, to coin a phrase. What does the concept of accountability mean in the context of the safety industry and who is, ultimately, accountable for safety? To help us explore this, we have Brye Sargent. Ms. Ms. Sargent is an experienced workplace safety professional who specializes in training and coaching up and coming safety managers.

She focuses on building safety culture through improved management support and commitment, along with employee involvement. Brye has over 20 years of safety management experience in over 15 different industries. She's trained more than 100 safety managers throughout the United States and believes that the element missing in most safety programs is an understanding of the how-to of management support and the impact of safety on all areas of the business.

She hosts "The Safety Geek Podcast" and YouTube channel. Brye joins us today from Ocala, Florida. Welcome.

- [Brye] Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

- Yeah. So, let's get into this. Everyone always wants to know where the buck stops, so, let's talk about accountability. First, let's make sure that we all understand what you mean by accountability. In the context of safety, what does accountability mean?

- So, accountability...and, actually, it's kind of funny, when you look at the definition, because accountability means that you're holding somebody to account. So, basically, you're holding somebody to follow the policies and procedures and rules that you've set up at your company. And what happens is a lot of people say they have accountability but they don't, and accountability actually comes down to a five-step process.

So, what I have learned over the years in working with tens of different management teams is that, when I say, "You need to hold people accountable," they'll agree and they'll nod but then they don't know how to do it because they don't understand the five-step process to accountability. So, I really think a lot of our management teams need some training on that, at least that part of accountability.

So, the five-step process for accountability, the very first step is commitment. So, you have to create something, right, in our case, it might be a safety-policy procedure, an SOP, a JHA, whatever it happens to be, and then you have to get approval and commitment from the management team that they agree with it, that they're like, "Yes, that's a policy we want to have at our company."

That is step one. Now, once you have that commitment, then you need to train everybody on it. Because you can't hold people accountable if they're not properly trained on the policy or procedure. So, then you just train everybody on whatever it is that you guys are committed to. And then step three is assigning consequences if they don't follow that policy. There has to be consequences for accountability to happen.

Without consequences, you cannot have accountability. And consequences can be anything that you choose those to be. It could be, you know, "We put our kids in the corner," right, that type of thing, it could be that you're terminating them, you're suspending them, you're writing them up, you're doing a verbal warning, whatever it happens to be, you're retraining them.

There has to be some level of consequences. That is step three. And step four is authority. The person that is holding the other person accountable, they have to have authority to actually administer those consequences and authority over that person as well. And the fifth step is the one that everybody messes up, and that is consistency.

You have to consistently hold people accountable over and over again. No matter what, you always follow your policy. So, that is accountability when it comes to pretty much anything, let alone just safety.

- I was going to say, "This sounds an awful lot like my parenting life."

- I know, right, it's 100% like that.

- And not to diminish or take sort of a paternalistic look at workers but it is how it works. You don't have to speak down to someone to hold them accountable.

- No, absolutely not. And, in fact, that will hurt you if you're speaking down to them. You have to treat them like an adult and treat them with respect when you are administering the consequences.

- And I imagine that some of the commitment, obviously, it's from management, but some of it, those consequences have to be understood before, right? Because if someone is choosing to not follow a policy, they don't have complete information if they don't understand the consequences, the potential consequences of an accident or of, you know, maybe there wasn't an accident, at this time, but, yeah, that sort of thing.

So, that segs nicely into my next question, which is, what is the relationship between authority and accountability in workplace safety and how does this affect safety management systems?

- I love this question because so many times, the management teams look to safety managers to hold everybody accountable for safety but safety managers have no authority over the employees. Zero. And when I say "authority," I mean we can administer consequences, I've written employees up before, but because it's me writing them up, it doesn't mean anything because I cannot fire that employee.

That is the ultimate accountability. And when a safety manager does not have that ability to fire the employee, you cannot administer consequences that are meaningful. It's just going to be a joke, it's going to be a piece of paper in their HR file and maybe one day, they'll use against them. But it doesn't have any meaning to it. Now, I've been in the situation where I've been a safety manager with higher fire authority and I had zero issues getting my safety policies followed because I had authority.

But that's not the case in most places. In most places, the person that has authority over the employees are the front-line supervisors or the department managers. So, those are the ones that actually have to implement safety policies and procedures so that way, they can have that accountability with those employees or they can hold those employees accountable.

- Yeah, and I think you just succinctly outlined the silo, right? And I hear this from safety managers quite a lot that it's a source of stress, right? "I'm supposed to create and enforce but I actually have no enforcement authority." So...

- No enforcement authority. They want us to wear that safety-police hat, and we can't. We can't be the safety police, it's impossible.

- Yeah, and on the part of employees then, it's a bit confusing, right? You've got competing priorities coming from seemingly totally separate places.

- Yeah, and anybody who's ever reported to two bosses understands this because you have one boss telling you one thing and another boss telling you another. Who do you follow? The person you're going to follow is the one that has authority over you, which is going to be your front-line supervisor.

I, actually, recently did a podcast where I talked about having a corporate boss and a local boss and how you manage that. It's the same exact thing, you always are going to report to your local boss because they're the ones that are going to fire you. So, it doesn't matter if they have conflicting priorities, the priority is always going to lie with that front-line supervisor, or your local boss, whoever that happens to be.

- Yeah, you have to think about how will people act when push comes to shove really. So, traditionally, a safety manager designs and implements safety initiatives, takes care of safety reporting, keeps up to date on regulatory issues and new developments in the industry. So, how do you think, given what you've said, that this role should shift?

- Well, I think the role should shift to exactly what you just said. Unfortunately, what you just said is not how it is in the real world. They do have to do all of those things but then they also put safety managers in charge of training of the employees and they put them in charge of, like, being the ones to complete all the projects and do everything that has to do with safety.

That's a safety issue. You know, "Safety manager, you go fix it," they put us in charge of those things. They put us in charge of procuring everything needed for the project, and we may not be the experts at negotiations or procurement or purchasing. Right? So, I think what needs to shift is that we need to stay focused on what we are good at in our wheelhouse. We should be the coach of the coaches.

We should be creating the materials and the resources. We should be training the management team on how to do safety. We should be auditing their results and doing reports and reporting back to them as to how good or bad they're doing. But we shouldn't be the one actually doing safety, safety should be done by the front-line supervisors because they have the most authority over those employees.

- Yeah, it seems to me that having the safety person in charge of all of that is a handy way to abdicate responsibility, whether that's conscious or not, for safety. Right? I mean, safety is a pretty scary important thing to be in charge of. And maybe, as a manager, you don't really want to deal with it but... Can you tell us a little bit more specifically about safety training and how you think that that should look?

- Yeah. So, first off, the reason why we actually got into this position, if you really, like, think back and you have this small business and you're doing all the work, right, and safety is definitely part of that small business and they know things need to be done, training inspections, writing policies, and everything, and maybe, at that point, somebody on the team was doing it themselves. So, then they hire a safety manager and they're like, "Oh, thank God, now we can just, like, put all this work on the safety person because this is a safety training, it goes to the safety person."

This is why we've ended up in this position because there is no clarity on what our positions should actually be. And the reason why I believe the front-line supervisors should be not only doing the training but doing the investigations as well, doing the coaching, doing the observing, all of that, the reason why I believe that front-line supervisors need to do that is, when an employee is hired, this is their direct contact with the company.

This is the person that they are closest to, that they are always going to listen to first. So, if you think about it, I'm a worker and this person comes up to me and says, "You know, you're supposed to inspect this machine before you use it," and the front-line supervisor comes up and says, "oh, it was inspected last shift, just ignore her."

Who are they going to listen to? They're going to listen to their front-line supervisor. Even if that other person was the department manager and not the safety person, the department manager went up to them and said, "Hey, you have to inspect that before you use it," and the front-line supervisor comes up and says, "nah, don't worry about it, it was done last shift, they just don't know," who are they going to listen to?

The front-line supervisor. So, the safety manager going out there and sharing the company policies and procedures and training on how to correctly do something, they're going to listen to it, right, they're going to gather some information from it. But what they actually do when they get on the floor and they're doing their job is whatever the supervisor tells them to do.

So, if you flip the coin over and you change it to where all the training, all the coaching, all the observations are done by that front-line supervisor, guess what, you have now just built this culture because now the person that they listen to most is telling them to do it the right way. And, of course, they're going to follow it the right way. So, unfortunately, this is not how things are set up at most organizations because they look at it as, "The supervisor does not have time to do that."

There's the, "Why did we hire a safety person if you're just going to have the front-line supervisor do all the safety stuff?" So, that is the gap that we need to close.

- Yeah, I'm kind of, as you're speaking, I'm thinking, you know, safety isn't accounting. Like, everyone, as a small business grows, you want to get a bookkeeper and, eventually, an accountant, and many people are very happy to hand that sort of thing over. But yeah, safety needs to be a little more intrinsic.

And the other thing that you're talking about is really relationships, right? You're kind of leveraging, you're taking advantage of the fact that workers already have a close relationship with their line supervisor or, you know, whoever they directly report to. And so, why not take advantage of that relationship?

It gives safety, as a concept, more authority.

- It really does, it really does. And it changes the whole culture of the entire business when you do it that way. I mean, even if you think about it now, most businesses are set up where they have an HR manager, but the HR manager isn't going out on the floor and making sure people are following the labor laws and things like that. No, they're monitoring from the side and then they're going to the supervisor and saying, "Hey, you need to, you know, do this, this, and this."

Right? They don't expect the HR manager to be going out and doing the things that they expect safety to do. But, for some reason, even though we're both in the people business, HR is, and quality is, and safety is, for some reason, for those positions, they don't expect it.

- You have any inkling as to why or it's just an observation that you've seen?

- The reason why is because I think they don't understand our job and that there is a very poor communication cadence in that very first step of accountability. So, one, they don't understand accountability, first and foremost, which most businesses don't. So, you have to make sure they understand accountability.

But that first step is commitment. And too often, the safety manager will come in and just be like, you know, "Well, this is the regulation and this is what you need to do," and they just give them this one option and they just go, they shove it down their throat. So, of course, they're going to sit there and be like, "Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure," but that's not true commitment. True commitment is when everybody, as a team, is collaborating together to make whatever policy or procedure that you have.

So, what I teach my students is that you always go to them with two to three options, you never go to them with one option. Yeah, we have regulations but, you know, to me, regulations don't matter that much. To me, regulations are a C-grade. So, when I'm managing safety, I'm shooting for the A plus grade, so, I'm always going above and beyond those regulations anyway.

But I would probably give them three options of the bare minimum, the world-class level, and a compromise in between. And then we collaborate as a team to come up with something everybody can agree on, instead of the safety managers just saying, "This is the way it has to be." When you have that collaboration, you get true commitment to the program.

- Yeah, when you first mentioned commitment, I thought, "I bet a lot of people are tempted to skip over because it's hard." It's hard to get people to agree and align, as they say in businesses. And, in fact, our listeners, we interact with them on LinkedIn, and one of the most difficult things, one of the most crucial things and one of the most difficult things that they need to do as safety managers are the same thing and that is getting buy-in.

Which is another way of saying "getting commitment."

- Yeah, totally. I hear it from my students too, that is the number one issue that they just don't understand.

- So, you had a good tip there about going to people with options so, you know, they have some agency. Is there anything else that you would suggest?

- I think that you need to create a really good communication cadence, something that you follow for everything that you do. That actually starts with employees. So, when you see a hazard, you don't immediately go and fix that hazard, unless it's, you know...you know what I'm talking about, the bigger things.

Your first step is kind of like...I mean, come on, you're missing a light switch, you're going to fix the light switch, that type of thing. But you have an issue, your very first step needs to be "let's go to the employees and let's talk to them about it." And then you take those ideas from the employees and then you put that up your cadence to your management team.

Maybe you go up your line of command to the front-line supervisors, to the managers, before it gets to your executive team for commitment and approval. And then, once they've approved it, it then goes back down that communication cadence to tell everybody what we're doing. This could be going back down face-to-face or it could be we're going to do a training and say, "This was approved."

But you've involved people along the ladder, right, so that, when you go to put that policy out, they might not 100% agree with it but they'll see that you tried to include their opinion in it, you tried to include everybody in it. And this is the best compromise that you can come up with. I had somebody one time, because I said that safety should always be a compromise with operations, and somebody said to me one time, "Safety should never compromise. There's one flat way of doing it."

And I'm like, "That's not really true." There might be when it comes to regulations, of course you have to lock out the machine or wear fall protection, but those things are never going to get you to a zero-incident safety program, it's always the best practices and things above and beyond that are going to do that. And, to me, that comes to a compromise. And I think a lot of people have missed the definition of compromise, that compromise means not everybody gets what they want but they get a little bit of it.

And you take that compromise and you go, "Okay, this is what we're doing right now." And guess what, next year, you do a self-evaluation and you set a goal and you make that program just this tiny bit better, and every year, just a tiny bit better, tiny bit better. And you are swaying them from their original belief to what you wanted to create to begin with, which is a world-class safety program.

That's why it doesn't happen overnight. So, going back to your question, the way that you change it, is having that really good communication cadence and then understanding that you're not going to get everything you want, and that's okay because it's only for today. So, and you put processes in place so that you're always re-examining it and making it a little bit better.

- And I think that the communication that you're talking about actually circles right back to authority because, if you're going to put a new policy in place without talking to the people, that it's going to affect the workers, it's going to surprise them and they're not going to like it. But if it goes up and then comes back down the way that you've described, it's going to have more authority as well because, you know, they've already participated in that.

- Exactly - I had another thought...

- And there's other steps that you can put into the process to make sure that employees and managers are just included and entwined in every single piece. Because when you're doing a safety improvement, it's never just like a one and done and that's it, there's usually a process and an action plan. So, one of the things that I teach my students is how you take every little step of that and entwine those people in there so that way, they know.

And, I mean, the most important thing, when you do it the right way, let's say that you are implementing a program that people disagree with, right, and now, all of a sudden, that warehouse supervisor has to now enforce a policy that he disagrees with. When you've done the communication cadence correctly, they can't not enforce it because their boss or their boss's boss has approved it and you have strong accountability within your organization because step one was training everybody on what accountability means.

- So, let's move into something else here. Do you think some safety managers might be reluctant to give up the role of a safety trainer? If so, why and what would you say to them?

- I've actually seen this a lot where safety managers believe like they're the professional and they're the only ones that can train on it. And what I would say to them is that, then you are destined to stay at the manager level and you will never be a safety leader. Because a leader is somebody who creates another leader.

And in order to do that, that means you are responsible for training those front-line supervisors how to train on that safety program just as good as you. So, and what's nice about it, when you have this in place and you're doing it the right way, you're spending all your time just developing programs and developing the training materials and helping the front-line supervisors and perfecting everything.

Where, if you were out there doing all the training yourself, that's taking up all the time that you could be spending doing what you do best, which is stopping accidents from happening. You know, a lot of people think you were hired to do all the training but no, you're hired to reduce injuries and accidents. So, if you're spending all your time in the training room, how are you preventing accidents?

You're not. I mean, I guess you could say the training is preventing accidents but that's, to me, training, they really only retain a small amount of that training. The beauty, like, the secret sauce in safety training is when you take it further and you go out onto the floor and actually observe and coach and make sure that they fully understood what you trained them in the classroom.

So, if that person, that front-line supervisor is the one doing the training and they're doing the coaching and they're doing the observing, you're really going to solidify that SOP.

- Yeah, and I think it's unrealistic to expect safety managers to really embed themselves in a super useful way with every different kind of position. Right? Like, the direct supervisor already knows and probably was sort of on the tools, as they say, before they became a manager, right?

So, they really understand the way the work is done or the pressures, the constraints. And it's a lot to ask of a safety manager to understand all of that for every position, right, because it's multiple different kinds of positions.

- Exactly. And plus, by you doing this, you're showing respect to that front-line supervisor, that you respect their experience, their knowledge, and their skills. And in return, they will respect yours. And then you end up becoming a partner with that front-line supervisor. Right now, what I see is a lot of people butting heads with their supervisors instead of partnering with them.

- I think what you're talking about too, and this is the thought that flew away from me a little bit earlier, is change management. Right? The idea, when you're talking about, you know, you make a compromise, sure, but that's not the end of the story, you're managing change slowly in such a way that people can absorb it.

And, I mean, human creatures don't like change and they can move towards something safer. So, maybe a piece of advice you're kind of giving to young or new safety professionals is, "Be patient. You can make change over time."

- Yeah, and it has to be made over time because the way that we change behaviors, as human beings, like, first you have to understand where our behaviors came from. Right? They come from parenting, so, it's however we were raised, and we can't change that. They come from experience, so, any past experiences you have. Like, I had a supervisor one time that had his foot run over by a forklift.

You never saw him out without steel-toed boots after that, right? And we don't want people to experience that. And the third way is knowledge, which is what we're sharing, as safety leaders. And the knowledge change takes time because they're stuck with these beliefs from their parenting and their past experience where they've walked past forklifts all the time and never had their foot run over.

You know, that supervisor might've just been dumb and he had his foot in the wrong place. No, that wasn't the case, it was just you lucked out, you know. So, it's getting them to see what happens to other people and sharing the knowledge with them over and over again and being patient, because that type of behavior change does not happen overnight.

You can force it, and that's what a lot of people try to do with their safety-police hat, and they try to force it with disciplinary action and, you know, yelling at them and consequences and all of that. Ideally, we want to change behavior, and the way to do that is through conversations and coaching and observing and having this discussion. So, it just takes time, but you'll get there.

- Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, humans are not exactly inherently logical. Like, "Oh, I've done it a million times," that doesn't matter, you know, the next time you do it, it could be that time that you get injured. So, but we don't seem to think that way.

- No, we don't.

- If organizations were to rethink safety management in some of the ways that you're suggesting, what do you think the benefits would be? And conversely, do you think there would be any drawbacks?

- So, honestly, the benefits that I have seen for organizations that have really good robust safety programs with really good safety culture is they end up working more efficiently, they end up having better quality items, they end up having less turnover in their employees, and they actually have employees that recommend other people to work there, so, it's easier for them to hire.

And you actually make a better product as well because now the employees have some skin in the game, basically, they take pride in their work and they might offer suggestions as well. And then the obvious, if you have a safer workplace, you're not going to have the claims. But I try not to focus on that because executives don't speak in that kind of language.

When you start speaking in the terms of injuries and accidents, they go back to the illogical mind of, "That won't happen to us." Until it does, right? So, you want to make sure that when you're speaking about the benefits of safety to your management team, it's in whatever their goals are. Because a strong safety program actually helps them reach their goals.

Now, the drawbacks, what they believe the drawbacks are is time and efficiency and productivity. So, what I love to do is a side-by-side test. It's, like, "Have them do it the way they've been doing it and now have them do it following my SOP exactly and let's see who does it quicker." And then, "Who can do it that way over time?"

Like, I used to have this packing employee that stood a certain way and they believed that they were packing as quick as possible because they never moved their feet. But what happened over time was their back was getting tired and sore and their productivity slowed. So, I shifted their table, I made them, I actually forced them to take one step on every packing.

And, at the end of the day, I said, "Hey, how's your back feel?" And they're like, "Oh my gosh, I feel so much better." And their productivity actually jumped up like 5% because their back wasn't sore throughout the day. So, sometimes you actually have to demonstrate that there is that benefit there. The downside might also be that the company may see is that we're putting the work on the front-line supervisor the time that they thought we, as safety leaders, would be doing.

So, now they're paying a safety leader but then the supervisors are still doing the training. But that goes back to teaching them about accountability and how authority works and why it can't be the safety manager doing it. And, you know, we're talking safety here but this applies to quality as well. I've seen a lot of quality people get put in the same exact position as us.

And it's the same thing, quality should be taught by the front-line supervisors.

- So, what do you think is the biggest challenge standing in the way of this kind of shift of thinking about how safety is integrated into the organization?

- I think we have two challenges. One is the accountability piece of them not understanding it. And just so you know, I actually created an infographic for your audience. If you go to thesafetygeek.com/slice, you can download a five-step infographic on accountability that you can use to help train your management team on.

So, I think that's the first piece.

- That's fantastic.

- Because, like, I've literally been in a corporate office of, like, head executives. And when I say, "Well, you have to hold them accountable," they're like, "yeah, we're doing that." And I'm like, "No, you're not." And I was like, "How do you hold people accountable?" And they couldn't tell me. So, like, they had no concept of how they do that.

So, I think that is one of the biggest hurdles. The second biggest hurdle is that a lot of people come into safety management through...like, it gets dumped in their lap or they promote into it, they were a warehouse supervisor who is now the safety person. It's not like they went to college for business management and safety and then got this job as a safety manager, some people do that but the percentage is very low.

So, most of us are just like me where it got dumped in my lap and now, 26 years later, here I am, right, and I love what I do. So, what happens when you have that level of leadership is that they're not confident in themselves because they don't have the confidence yet. So, we have to get them to be confident enough to actually speak to the executive management team.

I can't tell you how many times I've been with my safety managers when they talked to the executive management team. And when they're with me, they're like this and they're all like, "Yes, we need to do this," then they get into the meeting and it's like, "yeah, we have to do this thing." And it's like, "They're not going to listen to you," so, you have to have that public-speaking skills and those things and actually earn your seat in that c-suite.

Because that is where we need to be, we should be seen as a member of the executive management team. But unfortunately, too many people see us as the level of a supervisor, and that's not true. We impact the company, we are the only department that positively impacts every other department and we're the only department that can say that. So, if we have that much of an impact on the company, then we are an executive manager, whether you have that title or not.

So, you have to be able to approach it that way of you deserve to be here, you deserve to be heard, your voice matters, and you are valuable to the company. And unfortunately, a lot of the safety managers coming in, they don't know how to express their value other than, "We reduce injuries," and that will never work with an executive management team.

- Do you have any tips for, like, basically pitching your worth? Which sounds horrible, but I mean it's kind of what we're talking about here.

- Yeah, you have to understand how your company measures success. So, you need to be at those managers meetings, you need to be at those operations meetings, not just because they're making decisions that are going to affect your department but because you need to learn what they're talking about. So, that way, when they're talking about they want to hit a certain case count or they want to get a project done within a certain time frame or they want to hit a certain efficiency rating, you can then promote your safety programs in a manner that shows them how doing it safely is going to help them reach their goals faster.

That, if you do this the right way, it will improve efficiency by 1.5%, it will increase case counts, like my packing girl, 5% in a day. You know, so, you have to be able to talk in those terms to sell your worth. I also think that you need to work with the HR team and really drill down into what your exact costs of a new hire are.

Don't pull the number off the internet, I know that you can, but what they will do is look at you and say, "You just pulled that off the internet." You need to actually work with your HR team and see how much it actually costs your company. And a new hire doesn't just cost according to HR, right, so, you have the HR work of putting the job out there, of interviewing, of hiring them, and all of that.

But that new hire is not 100% productive for usually 90 days to 6 months. So, what is that productivity cost that you're going to have for that new hire? How is that new hire going to slow the people around them down because now you've connected them with a mentor who's training them how to do the job so that mentor's productivity is going to go down? Really, drill down and get that cost because a true, like, robust safety program with a company, you end up having a really low turnover rate where people just don't leave.

Because when they're comfortable at the company and they like the work, why would they leave? And they're safe, you know. So, you have to make sure you have those costs, and those are the things that you talk about. And I love to share my results compared to productivity. So, what was our productivity?

What training did we do this month? And look at the productivity that went along with it. You know, "We did a safety training on lockout–tagout this month, and look at how our machine productivity went up by 3%." Now, of course, it could've went up with anything because the correlation is not the causation thing. But still, own it.

Own it and take credit for it because nobody else is. So, let's take credit for it, as safety managers, and show them that. And that's how you should be speaking to your team.

- I think we talked to, even in the introduction, about empathy. Which I think can be seen as sort of a wishy-washy term, but this is actually a really practical example of empathy and it connects to talking to the workers about how they actually do their job and what constraints they're under.

So, if you can kind of empathize with managers, or rather the c-suite, what that means is understanding things on their terms, which is exactly what you're saying right now. Right? Like, if they're looking at operations, they're looking at efficiency, and they're looking at dollar signs.

- Yeah, they are. And then we're just talking injury dollars. And that's just not enough, it's never going to sway them fully, you just have to be able to talk in all the terms. And just another tip for you guys out there, and this one I hate to share but it is 100% true and there's been lots of psychological research about this, when you're talking to your c-suite managers, dress the part.

We have a very casual workplace because we end up, you know, we have to go out on the floor, we're doing coaching, lots of us are wearing safety vests and jeans and maybe just a button-up or something, hard hat, and all that good stuff. Right? You cannot walk into the c-suite like that. If you want to be taken seriously, so, what I try to teach my people is that you keep that suit and tie or that dress shirt, hanging in your office so, when you have a meeting with the c-suite, you're dressing the part.

So, that way, they take you more seriously. And unfortunately, it shouldn't be that way but that is the way it is. And another little tiny psychological thing, for those of you that have never met me in person, I'm extremely short, very very short. So, I used to always keep a pair of heels in my office so that when I went to do a presentation to the management team, I was actually in my heels and it would raise me up.

Because there is a little implicit bias that short people are not as smart as tall people, that's why all of our CEOs are so tall. So, I love psychological research, but it is true.

- Yeah, it's interesting. And it's something that we don't want to, or we say, "Oh, that doesn't affect me," or, "I don't think that way." But I've observed it too. I'm tall but I have short friends. I've observed, you know, people just not necessarily taking people, women in particular, as seriously.

So, it's unfortunate but, if you know the game, then...

- The little tweaks that you can make that could put you over the top. Because if you think about it, you go into a meeting of executives and everybody's in a suit and tie, and there you are in your safety vest. You know, it's just like, "No, I'm just as good as you." So, dress the part. So...

- Yeah, that's, like, a non-verbal way of projecting that.

- And it'll give you more confidence.

- That's true. Even if it doesn't project it to other people, it should project it to yourself, which is going to translate in the way you carry yourself.

- Yeah, and then another tip is always do the superman pose before you go in there. You sit for 10 minutes, go in the restroom and do it, and do the power pose. It totally works on your brain, I'm telling you. I do this one sometimes too, and you will walk into those executive management meetings with so much confidence. And you'll kill it.

- I've got to try that then.

- Definitely.

- Do you have any stories or experience about how leaders have reacted to some of the changes that you're suggesting in the past? Like good reactions or bad or...

- So, I've had both because I've done it wrong. Right? So, that's how I've learned from experience. So, I believe, like, I've done my trial and error and I know the way to do it right now. So, you can't just say, "Well, front-line supervisors need to be doing this training, I'm just going to pass it on to them." That is not the right way to go about it. Actually, this goes back to my five steps of accountability, and you have to really train them on that and get them to understand that authority and consequences piece and then say, "Because of this, I am not the right person to do this training most effectively."

Like, "Yes, I can do it but I will not be as effective as you would be. So, I want to help you do this the right way. And let's see..." and then try to treat it like an experiment, "Let's see how the results are. I did this training three months ago, I know what the results are, let's see how it is when you do it," and, "let's try it out."

Right? And then you're going to give them all the tools. But the most important thing when you're actually transitioning this is that you should not be dictating how they do this training. You should train them how to train, you should train them on the policy and procedure, and you should give them lots and lots of resources. Those resources could be the actual training, they could be toolbox talks, they could be PowerPoints, they could be videos.

But then you give them autonomy to choose what works for them. And that might not be a 30-minute training on hazard communication, it could be a 5-minute toolbox talk on how to read a label, and that's good enough for today. And then next week, they do a five-minute toolbox talk and demonstrate how to read an SDS and have everybody practice in their group.

You know, or they walk around a machine and they point out what needs to be inspected or they have employees point out what needs to be inspected. I teach them how to train in a method that they feel comfortable with and I just give them autonomy to do it. I don't care how it's done, you have to remember what our end goal is. The end goal of every safety training is that the employee knows how to do the job, follow the SOPs, even when you're not looking.

And the only way to do that, like, put it in their hands and they'll figure it out. Because that supervisor is then going to coach and observe them afterwards as well. If you have a proper system set up, they'll coach and observe on that training as well. So, they'll know whether or not their training was effective and then they'll go, "I'm wasting my time with this training, let me figure out another way. Let me go to Brye and get some more ideas."

You know, and maybe even have a quarterly supervisors' meeting where you brainstorm different ways to do the training topics for that quarter. So, once again, you collaborate with your supervisors.

- Yeah, so, the safety manager is moving into a more supportive role. And yeah, I'd agree that, you know, the direct supervisor is also going to know their audience best, they're going to know whether a toolbox talk is more effective for this audience, for this, you know, group of workers, than a video or whatever, all the different options. Which is also good, I imagine.

So, we've talked about c-suite, but bringing it into these managers who would be implementing this stuff. So, one, you've just said, "Support them, provide them with options, give them autonomy," is there anything else that you could suggest that would move them from hearing...when you say "shared accountability," I hear "more work for me."

I think that some of them might react that way. Do you have any other... Yeah, I mean, you've given a lot of practical ideas but is there any other thing that comes to mind?

- Yeah. So, what I would say on that, I had a conversation with a operations manager one time, he managed a whole department of supervisors, and he was just amazing in how much he supported safety. Like, when things were not being done right, like, he was right on top of it, contacting his supervisors, getting things fixed right there.

And I sat down with him and I said, "Why do you do it? Why is it that I texted you about a box being on the floor and you stopped everything to pick up this box?" And he said, "Brye, what I have learned over the years is that a safe workplace is efficient and it lets me do my job better. It's easier for me to get work done when the safety policies are followed."

So, unfortunately, when you're making this transition, your supervisors are just going to see it as more work on them. So, that's why I try to compromise it and make it like 5 to 10-minute toolbox talks or pre-shift meetings where you bring things up, or you're only coaching 5 people a day, you do one observation, you know, a week or 2 observations a week.

You try to do that compromise as to what they can fit in with their schedule but you're not taking up all their time, and you try to teach them that, as you are working, you are coaching. So, the coaching isn't an added thing, it's how you're working currently. So, I would shadow supervisors and say, "Right now, you can point out that they're lifting improperly. Right now, you can tell them that they need to unblock the exit," or like that.

Like, "You're walking through here anyway, it's literally going to take you 10 seconds." So, that's one way. But then, over time, they will see just like that operations manager did, that when things are neat, and clean, and safe, and everyone's following the rules, their jobs are easier. Their jobs are hard now because they have so many freaking fires to put out.

Well, you're not going to have that if you have a safe environment, if everyone's following the SOPs. You don't have fires to put out, you have employees that are empowered to fix issues without running to you with every little thing. So, it just takes time though, unfortunately.

- Yeah, you made a very powerful case that, you know, "I'm not giving you more work, I'm actually making less work in the long run for you."

- Yeah, you just have to get through those growing pain...

- Yeah, it takes people time to see that, of course. And like my teenager, she has to do things her own way first, even though we told her not to, to discover that...yes.

- [crosstalk] actually did though.

- Yeah, have you ever, like, you plant the seed, like, you see that they're doing it wrong but you're like, "If I point it out that you're doing it wrong, it's just going to make you repel against me," or, "rebel against me." "So, let me just plant the seed and then I'm going to walk away." I would do that even with employees, like, I would be like, "You know what, I was reading this article, and it said this and this. I don't know, I just saw you doing this, and you should try it out."

And I just kind of like plant the seed, and then I come back and I'm like, "Hey, did you try it? I'm wondering if it's working. I had somebody else ask me about it," you know. And it's just another way to kind of get that nudged.

- Yeah, exactly. So, there you go, safety professionals, your persuasion skills, your influencing skills, your change management skills will all be much better if you have children. Or rather if you have to parent them.

- Yeah, take care of teenagers.

- One more question... Yeah, if you get through it. I've one more question before we switch to some kind of fun stuff, and that is, for the safety managers out there or professionals out there listening, looking for a new job perhaps, are there things that they can look for? Are there red flags maybe in...because we all know that some organizations can't be changed.

So, if you're looking at a job description and thinking of applying for jobs in safety, are there clues that might help you understand where the organization is at in their sort of safety maturity?

- I don't think you would see it in the job description but I think you would hear it and feel it in the interview. So, when I interview for a job, I am not being interviewed, I am interviewing the company. So, I always end up starting with, "Tell me what your expectations are? What is your biggest issues?"

You know, "Where are you struggling most? What are the first three things that you want me to do when I get started?" And then, from those answers, I can kind of feel what the culture is going to be like. And if this is extremely important to you, like, I believe everybody could change, I have literally worked for companies that people have just told me to my face that they wish I didn't even exist.

And I turned them around, you know, so, it's like, "Oh, okay, that's good to know. All right, that's my starting point," and then you just turn them around from there. But if that is, like, super important to you, because I do believe that people need to enjoy their work, like, I love this profession and I would hate for somebody to be in a position where it drove them out of this profession, then just keep looking.

Like, if you feel those things, then don't take the job. And too many of us try to take the job for the money, and money is not everything, you know. So, I would just, like, be like, "No, I'm searching." You can even put that in your cover letter. One of my things that I love to say is that I love to play by the rules and I like to work with companies that are truly looking for an exceptional safety program.

So, if that is you, then please consider calling me, you know. So, even in my cover letter, I am selling myself to them. And now, I'm not saying I'm going to take their job, I'm saying, "I'll consider it if you meet my requirements." You know, and I think that comes down to confidence as well is that too often, people are just like, "I just need a job, I'll take anything."

To find the proper job, it's going to take time. You have to be patient. So...

- Yeah. I think that back and forth, you could probably sense pretty quickly if they are wanting to just put you in a silo, like, "Oh, we're just hiring you so we don't have to think about this anymore." I think that attitude would come out pretty quickly. And like you said, that doesn't necessarily mean no, depends how big a challenge you want to bite off, right?

Like, it's all information.

- Yeah. And I guess I like challenges, so, it's just never bothered me. I'm like, "I'll change you."

- It sounds like you've succeeded if you've taken someone from "I wish you didn't exist," which is a horrible thing to say to anyone, to being on your side, there you go. So, my next three questions that I ask every guest, and this one, I'll have to alter a little bit because it starts, if you were to develop your own safety-management training curriculum...

Well, I think you may have done that.

- I have done that.

- So, let's say, if you were to be asked to develop a training that was specifically non-technical that had to do with human skills, core skills, what do you think the most important skills are in that realm to develop in tomorrow's safety professionals?

- Most important skills would be listening, for one, and negotiation. Because that is what safety is about, it's negotiating with your employees, with your managers, with everybody, and just trying to come up with that compromise.

- Okay. And now, if you could travel back in time and speak to yourself at the beginning of your safety career and you could give young Brye only one piece of advice, what would that be?

- Finish that darn degree because you don't want to do it when you're 40 years old. Yeah. That was not fun.

- Okay, you're not the first person to answer something similar. There you go, kids.

- I mean, I actually went back...and so funny is that, when I was in my 20s, I studied psychology and dropped out. And that is what I ended up getting my degree in when I was way older than 40. So, yeah. Not fun.

- Yeah. Well, I mean, there's some consistency. And maybe, if people are looking for advice, pay attention to what you're initially interested in because it tells you something about yourself.

- Yeah, that's so true.

- So, this last one I like to call "tool time," I want to ask what your best most practical...you've given a lot of tips but maybe resources for safety managers who are looking to improve interpersonal skills. So, those could be books or websites, they could be frameworks or concepts.

- So, just because I enjoy psychology so much, I enjoy psychology-based books, but my favorite ones are habit books. So, "Atomic Habits" I read every single year because of the fact...but, when you go to read it, don't read it from the viewpoint of, "I want to improve my habits," read it from the viewpoint of, "this is how habits are created," because that's what you're doing in safety, you're building safety habits.

So, what can you do to build safety habits with your employees? So, I love anything based on habit training. The other thing is, because there is so much on our to-do lists, like, I remember my to-do list being like 200 items long of things that I had to repeat, it was crazy, it's hard to juggle it all and there's so many moving pieces, I love the book "Getting Things Done" by David Allen.

It's a really old book but it is still relevant today to help you organize your work and your time. "Eat the Frog" by Brian Tracy is really good too, about making sure you do your hardest work first so that way, you eat the frog and just get it over with so that way, you can move on to the other stuff.

So many times, we end up, like, coming into our office and checking our email and our inbox and letting all the fires take over our time, and that's why we don't make progress in our programs. So, if you can create a system that you can actually focus on what is most important. "The One Thing" by Keller...

I don't know, I can't remember his last name but it's Keller because he's a realtor. You know, where he's like, "What's the one thing you could do today...?"

- We'll put it in the show notes.

- Yeah, "What's the one thing you could do today that will move you closer to your goals?" That's another one I've reread a couple of times. And just tools-wise, like, I had to DIY my safety program my entire career. Like, a lot of people think, "Well, I can't move up in safety because my company won't give me the resources to do all the things for safety.

I don't have a marketing budget, I don't have the fancy G Suite software," and all of that. I DIYed my safety program with Microsoft Excel and Word for 20 years. So, become an expert in Microsoft Office, and that's all you need. And guess what, you look amazing because you're not costing this gigantic budget. So...

- Yeah, being resourceful. Another one that comes to mind, so, I've read some of those, including "Getting Things Done," I go back to that one quite a bit, is "The Power of Habit," Charles Duhigg. And yeah, the reason I mention it is because there's an entire chapter on...Alcoa? Is that the name of the aluminum company?

- Yeah. Alcoa.

- And a safety manager, yeah, who revolutionized safety through habits. So, and actually the fate of the company. Anyway, it's interesting, check it out.

- That's cool. It's on my list, I just haven't read it. But yeah, you have to make sure that you're approaching it with the mindset of, "How can I use this to improve my program?" not necessarily, "how am I reading this to improve myself?" I do it both ways. Like, obviously, I want to improve my own habits but, when you learn how habits are formed, it makes it so much easier to go like, "Okay, that's how I need to influence them."

That's the whole plant-the-seed thing and start really small and work from there. That's habit science.

- Interesting, thank you.

- You're welcome.

- So, where can our listeners find you on the web? You did mention your site but...

- Yeah. So, you can find me at thesafetygeek.com. From there, it pretty much links you everywhere. I do have a new professional development network that's going to be starting up soon. So, there will be a link to that at thesafetygeek.com too. You can also find me at YouTube, which, if you just do a search for "The Safety Geek," you'll end up finding me.

My logo has got like a G with a hard hat on it. And I have a podcast called "The Safety Geek" that you can find on all the little podcast services that are out there. And I've been really good about posting consistently there, so, I'm super proud of myself. And yeah. But you can pretty much find me anywhere. You search "Safety Geek," you're going to find me because I totally geek out about this stuff.

- Excellent. Well, we're glad you do. We're glad that you decided to geek out with us today.

- No problem.

- So, thanks so much for joining us and, to our listeners, for tuning in.

- Thank you, it was a lot of fun. ♪ [music] ♪ - Safety Labs is created by Slice, the only safety knife on the market with a finger-friendly blade. Find us at sliceproducts.com. Until next time, stay safe. ♪

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