Helping Safety Managers Move From Surviving to Thriving

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Subena Colligan, former safety leader in the US Air Force and Kimberly Clark, who is now an EHS transformation coach and consultant. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Occupational Health and Safety, is the vice chair of the board for Global EHS Credentialing and founded her business, S. Coligan Coaching in 2021.

Subena has experienced burnout firsthand and now dedicates her worklife to helping safety professionals move from surviving to thriving. She shares her personal experience of burnout and provides practical tips on prevention and recovery - at both an individual and organizational level.

She believes that the safety profession is especially susceptible to burnout because HSE professionals are so selfless, often don’t consider themselves as employees and have limited opportunities to work from home.

Subena describes the six different causes of burnout and stresses the importance of organizations focusing on prevention. She highlights the benefits of agile strategies to help team members thrive and introduces the concept of an energy inventory to maximize positive workplace experiences.

Safety professionals are urged to prioritize their own wellbeing and not work too many hours - it’s the quality - not quantity - that matters!

♪ [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." Many OHS professionals go into safety because they care about others and want to create healthy workplaces. But sometimes it's difficult to turn that empathetic eye inwards and recognize when your own health is suffering in what can be an incredibly demanding job.

Safety practitioners tell me that burnout rates are high in their profession. So, it's worth examining the specific stresses of EHS roles and learning how to manage your own work-life so it's healthy and sustainable. Our guest today is an EHS transformation consultant who has experienced burnout firsthand and now works to help safety managers move from surviving to thriving.

Subena Colligan is an Air Force veteran and consultant who has dedicated her career to leadership, thought leadership, community, and influence as they relate to occupational health and safety. Her experience includes EHS leadership roles in the U.S. Air Force at Gulfstream Aerospace and Kimberly-Clark. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in occupational health and safety and is the vice chair of the board for Global EHS Credentialing.

In 2021, Subena founded S. Colligan Coaching, which offers amongst other things, professional development services, including leadership coaching and advising, strategy and planning support, soft skills training, and resource management and allocation. Subena joins us from Atlanta.

Welcome.

- [Subena] Hi, Mary. Thank you so much for that incredible introduction.

- Oh, well, I mean, you're the one who made it happen. So, your present focus on energy management systems stems from personal experience of burnout. Can you tell me how that played out and how it shifted your approach to health and safety?

- Absolutely. When I was in my late 20s, I was personally requested to lead the second-largest site in my organization. And here I am, I've done my time in the Air Force, proven my leadership, my technical skill, and this vice president says, "Come help us shift our culture. We've appreciated the help that you've done."

So, I get out there, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, I'm like, "Yes, I am going to make sure the people at this site understand just how great an EHS program can be." Just a little backside to that, they had the highest injury rates in the organization and the entire company across the globe, and just there was not a lot of confidence in health and safety.

Most of the reports of hazards were anonymous, which really showed just where they lacked that confidence in what we provided. However, 14, 15 days in, I went right into a 10-day audit, which was excessively long.

They also confirmed what we knew about our health and safety program, and then they offered...not offered, they threatened to drop us from our registration for our health and safety program along with our environmental management. And if that wasn't enough, the first two weeks into this new job, I lost a person on my team, so that was technical expertise.

I had seven regulatory visits, two depositions with lawyers for preexisting conditions. And that was my first six months.

- So, layer after layer.

- Layer after layer. And I worked in that capacity at that intensity for a little over a year. And right about that year point is when I just broke. And people say, "Well, what does that mean?" Like, I literally couldn't. I couldn't. I don't even...my body had broken down on me.

I had no understanding. I couldn't see any light. There was nothing else. I didn't know what else I could do other than breath and the basic functions that my body just did for me. That experience, which happened pre-COVID, really led me to be a part of what is now 50% of the workforce experiencing burnout.

I understand that from the health and safety perspective and all of the demands on us as a profession, and I had to do something to lift that weight of the bricks off of my shoulders.

- So, when you say 50%, is that EHS professionals or is that general workforce or...?

- That is across industries. Across industries, all professions, about 50% of people, no matter where the source is, we're landing somewhere between 49% and 52% of respondent having awareness that they're in burnout. And that's the other side of it. Burnout happens when that stress, that negative stress, because not all stress is bad stress, but that negative stress is perpetuated and you just continue to experience it and eventually, it starts to chip away and have an adverse effect on your physical, mental, behavioral aspects of your life.

And a lot of times we don't see it. What's even worse, Mary, is that sometimes because we are in such a selfless field, we get this badge of honor for putting in too many hours for doing the impossible with the resources that we have and experiencing burnout and saying, "Man, I'm so exhausted. I couldn't even pay attention at my kids' game."

And sometimes you get a pat on the back and say, "Yeah, you're doing it right. You're giving it your all." And we don't really know that we're impacting our lives and ultimately, the ability for us to lead our programs and influence people the way that we need to, to fulfill our role.

- Yeah. There's sort of, you're right, a badge of honor or maybe a martyrdom depending on how you look at it that can get a little unhealthy. You know, it's great to be resourceful. It is not great to have to be resourceful all the time. There's a difference there. So, you had this burnout, how did this change things in your workplace? So, presumably, you got to a point you said where you just couldn't, how did you turn that around and then how did that translate into your work?

- Yes. So, I was the EHS manager. So, I had a team. I was not the only person experiencing burnout. However, I was the person most responsible for moving our team into enjoying their work again. The first place was awareness. It always is.

You don't know that there's a hazard unless you know that there's a hazard there. So, it was identifying there's issues and finding the root of that. And the root for us was that we lacked having a strategy. And that strategy gave us a framework to meet the vision and to be able to ask for the right resources to get to the next place.

The next piece of that though was identifying what was missing for my teammates. So, it wasn't just about me. Yes, I had to pull myself out, but I was also responsible for making sure my people enjoyed their work. And that I was able to really work on that with asking people what is it that they wanted to see done? What did they want to accomplish?

What would give them value and meaning in their work? And then what work was required of them that maybe they didn't enjoy, right? It was more draining. It's a lot harder to, you know, wash the dishes when you don't really feel like washing the dishes, but maybe the next day it takes 10 minutes and it was fine. And so we really incorporated what everyone else enjoyed into that strategy so that they could see where their workload was and be valued for the work that they enjoy doing, but also understanding that they were rewarded for the work that they enjoy doing.

And those are three components of either workplace satisfaction or of burnout because if they're not in line, it burns you out quicker. If they are in line, you feel satisfaction in your job. And when we did that, I have one person that reported to me and HR called him the grumpy guy, but it wasn't me.

I would never call him grumpy. But one day he came into work and he was just whistling and humming and he was singing. And that was something that we went from hearing negative comments and gripes at work to the positivity and talking about grandchildren and what they were doing for the weekend, and just that overall good feeling.

And that was more rewarding and really helped fill my cup as we were on that journey as well.

- So, it sounds like you kind of worked from the inside out.

- Absolutely.

- So here, I want to pause a minute and just make a distinction between individual safety practitioners and organizational issues. So, in this case, it was a bit of both, right? But I hope that today we can talk a little bit about both, both how an individual person, safety practitioner, can work with, prevent, kind of understand this better, but also organizational issues because, obviously, it goes beyond one person usually.

So, how are the approaches to energy management different, depending on whether you're talking to an individual or to an organization?

- Yeah. Mary, I think it's important to fully understand that burnout recovery is individual. Burnout prevention is organizational. And burnout prevention is truly understanding the well-being of the organization as a whole and the people in it, and creating a structure for individuals to thrive. Because we all come from different experiences, what fills your cup may not fill my cup, right?

But if we're all working and we all have an unattainable workload, or our targets are constantly shifting, that's organizational. So, starting for...if there are any folks listening that are in burnout and understanding that burnout is an individual recovery, what I share with my clients often is just start with one.

And with that, I think about, I'm not a huge football person, but I love football on Sundays for the camaraderie. And Peyton Manning is one of those people that I think about. So, Peyton Manning went from being a football...like Super Bowl-winning football quarterback to not being able to throw a dart.

He got surgery and he just lost the function in his arm. When he went on that journey of recovery, he didn't think about getting back to the Super Bowl stage, or even whether or not the NFL team he was on would drop him, he thought about that one thing he could get done. And that was to be able to throw a football again. The first time he got back out there, he tossed the football and it dropped straight down.

And I shared that specific story because starting with one takes away the impossible list when you think about, "I just can't, I don't know." And a lot of times people will want to just quit. I had a client reach out and she said, "I'm going to quit my job. I'm quitting."

Very rational woman. And I'm like, "Well, what's happening?" Well, truly, it was because she hadn't taken any vacation time. Her workload didn't align with her values and what she enjoyed doing. She didn't feel rewarded for the work she was doing. She was constantly battling different people in the organization and she was like, "The best thing I can do is quit."

But that would not have solved the issue. What she needed to know was what brought her joy. Spending time with family, disconnecting for a little while. And so starting with one, just picking one thing and just focusing on that one, whether it's spending time with family, assessing your values, looking at the work that you're doing. You may just be in the wrong place.

Maybe what you enjoyed doing before is not what you enjoy doing now, and making that shift may be what brings you out.

- So, it's really interesting that you're talking about prevention and recovery because I was going to ask, where is that line? Like, it's never all one or the other of responsibility, right? Like, who is responsible for well-being? Is it the person? Is it the organization? I realize it's somewhere in the middle, but where do you think in the middle it is, if that makes sense?

- Yeah. So, the organization is responsible for providing the structure of well-being. So ensuring that there is an effective strategy in place that employees are appropriately resourced, making sure that they have the right training, the right tools to do their job, right? Like, those resources are extremely important so that people can do the work that they want to do. Another area that is super important is belonging and community in the organization.

So, not just fitting in, but truly creating an organization where people belong and they don't have to force themselves to fit. It's like that toy you try to stick the square with the rectangle, right? And sometimes you can make it happen, but there's so much effort to do that.

And that also leads to burnout, so DEI at the Safety Conference in 2022, it was a big topic, but it's so important because from an organizational structure piece, that is the responsibility of the organization.

Understanding what your values are, what work you enjoy doing, your limits, and what you're capable of doing or willing to do is the responsibility of the person. But they have to be empowered to say, hey, I can do this or not. And so it goes back to the organization and each person is different.

So, it's not a one-size-fits-all. Rewards systems are not one-size-fits-all. So, having leaders, caring leaders, in positions to be able to create environments where individuals can explore and they don't fear the innovation and/or being able to just say what is so important to them.

Even if it's not the overarching opinion of the group, what's important to them so that they can show up their best selves, so that they can support the mission of the organization every day. There's a lot there.

- Yeah. Well, what I'm thinking is the EHS or OHS professional is kind of stuck in the middle, right? Because on the one hand, they've got their own personal well-being, the things that you talked about, knowing what you love and understanding your limits and that sort of thing, but on the other hand, for the organizational piece, they're also kind in charge, but not fully in charge of that.

So, they're in charge insofar as they're in charge of well-being that's in their kind of portfolio, but, you know, they're not the CEO, they can't make leadership resource teams properly, for example. So, it's a tough spot to be in.

- Yeah. So, I think every department has the exact same issue. If finance doesn't have the resources they need to properly manage their portfolios, then you run into this issue and you can't make the CFO give more money. We run into it across the board. I think where the OHS profession is extremely unique is that sometimes we don't consider ourselves as employees.

So, we feel this way of protecting everyone because it's in our charge, is part of our ethics for those of us that are credentialed. And just in our gut that you protect people and we're selfless in that because we go to battle, we're making sure people have the right personal protective equipment and they have the right tool to do their job.

They're getting to the root cause of what caused an incident. But when we are not prioritized in well-being, it actually inhibits us from being able to truly share and give our all to our programs. Because if I'm just above water, if I'm just making it, I'm not in a place to innovate. I'm not in a place to be excited about the work that I'm doing.

And that's where we really have to take a step back and look at how we classify ourselves in the workforce as well.

- Are there any other ways in which you think OHS professionals are a little bit different when it comes to burnout, or is that kind of the main thing, that awareness of yourself as an employee?

- Yeah, I think there's twofold. One is awareness that we are a part of the workforce. So, when we say 50% of people across the board are experiencing burnout, we automatically go out and look outward and say, okay, so if 50% of my workforce not looking at the person to the left or right of me, which is so, so important.

But I think the other component is that a lot of organizations still do not have a clear understanding of what we do, and they don't understand fully how to provide us resources and how to support and how to delineate the responsibilities. Because when it comes to well-being, it's a full organization function.

Part of like the base level is that people are physically safe at their job. If you're not physically safe at your job, that's a problem. That's where we come in, we're a part of the foundation. But if leaders across operations, human resources, if they don't have the right training, the right skill set, the right soft skills, and they're not being held to that requirement of ensuring that people are adhering to policy, that they have what they need, that they're doing the things that they're supposed to do, and that they also have the voice to express that they are not feeling well within their environment, then it increases the likelihood that they have a physical incident, which then falls right back on the safety professional.

So, it's just this cycle. And the best organizations, the organizations that get it right, they prioritize the well-being of people and then they create value for the shareholder. The organizations that are all about production, all about getting the product out, all about getting the job done, they tend to lag because people are not necessarily the priority.

It's about the shareholder value. It's about making the dollar. It's about making the product and hitting the quota, and the in-between, we definitely feel it. And some of us have had the opportunity to work in great industries our entire careers. Others of us are still just on the uphill battle.

- Yeah. I was going to say so. Sometimes, as you know, a place is either so toxic or so just misaligned with who you are and what you want to be doing that the only solution really is to leave. And then sometimes places are fantastic, but there's a lot in between where there's a possibility, you know, like in a toxic workplace, you know there's no possibility.

I'm not going to fix this. I'm not going to...they won't listen. They won't change. When you're living in that in-between space though, where you think, this might just be a lack of education on their part, or where you think there's still hope, what would you recommend to safety professionals? How would you recommend that they approach that situation where they're not ready to leave, but there could be improvement?

- Yeah. So, this is my favorite part, Mary. When people ask me this, and my clients will ask sometimes. I just had a call last Friday where this question was asked. And my recommendation every time is to do an energy inventory. Like, well, what the heck is that? If you use a planner, if you journal at the end of the day, it's just simply writing out the tasks and/or interactions, so meetings, whatever.

And just taking that feeling, either that gut feeling if you are a feeler, or thinking through what that interaction was like. Was it positive, or was it negative? So, when you're on the fence of that, what was it that was positive, negative? And are the positives outweighing the negatives?

Because every work environment will not be perfect, and that's okay because we're not perfect people. We contribute in some way. And if it's more positive than it is negative, really bolstering that positive interaction that you're having. So, whether it's specific tasks that you're doing, committees or groups that you're working on, and understanding what makes it exciting for you and what makes it feel positive and incorporating more of that into what you do.

On the negative side, understanding that you will not fix everything, that it's not possible. However, you can take a look at some of the areas that you can directly influence. So, for my team, one of the issues that we had was that when there was an incident in the workplace, they would immediately call us and say somebody cut their finger.

And it was like, here you go, dropped on your lap. Well, we needed our leaders to have the basic assessment skills right away to say someone cut their finger, why? And then identify some of those issues. So, we went from having it dropped on our lap to providing our teams, our operational leaders with OSHA 10 training.

So, they got basic understanding of OSHA training. They got basic understanding of reporting. They understood what makes an effective system and how to respond with empathy to their employees when something happened. And the shift that we saw was by the time we got the incident report, our managers were saying, "Hey, someone cut their finger. It was because we didn't use ceramic knives. We still had a couple of the straight-edge knives around. We did a sweep of the area. We got those taken away. At our stand-up tomorrow, we'll have a conversation about why we need to use the right cutting tools."

And like real-life story, not even making this up because it's Slice, even though we did bring Slice in, but it was shifting and giving the operational leaders the right training, the right tools, and rewarding them. And that went all the way up to our vice president of saying, these are the different behaviors and this is how we need each level of the organization to interact.

And that allowed us more time and space to engage in what needed to get done, but also our area of genius as well.

- Yeah, I was thinking it's like you're spreading, and many people say this, "Safety can't be siloed. It can't be proprietary in this one department." You are spreading some of those very basic assessment skills up to leadership, which yes, it gets people to buy in because they understand, I suppose, right, now they're doing it.

- Yeah. And it's just a benefit. So, if that manager moves to a different department, they move to a different company, they've got basics to protect their teams. Their teams have confidence in them that they know what should be going on, what they should be doing. And now, if they do it the right way, these leaders empower their folks to say, "If this isn't right, I need you to stop and say something."

And it just spreads and it sets the precedence and the expectation. So, taking that little bit of time is really engaging so much more in multiples across industries and expectations. And as they rise in leadership, it's incredible. I had one director, he never asked his safety people about what happened.

If there was an incident on the floor, that manager was expected to come with a root cause analysis and a solution. And when I sat, that was my very first meeting, then I sat like that and he came from outside of the organization and he set this precedence, and every manager that got promoted to director under him had the same expectation and they owned the entire process.

And what's beautiful about some of the best companies in the world, you'll hear, like, they'll say one something like, One Slice, One S. Colligan, like One Launch, One Netflix, right? They say one because it's about ownership and you act as an owner. And a recent study showed that the best CEOs, that is the approach that they take.

Even my county commissioner came out with a new slogan, one Corp [SP], and it's about having ownership at every level for what you do to ensure the success. And simple changes in your strategy and your vision, and providing the right resources for people to make the best decisions to have that ownership can completely shift the conversation of burnout and well-being.

- Going back too, I really like this concept of an energy management audit, I think you called it.

- An inventory. Yes.

- Inventory. Okay. So, you gave us an example of how you would do that as an individual. Is there some kind of correlation on the organizational level of how you would...like, can you take an inventory of energy management as an organization?

- Absolutely. So, a lot of times or sometimes you can see a post-meeting like survey and asking simple questions like, how did this meeting go? Was there one person that overwhelmed the meeting, right? These are anonymous responses, hopefully.

But those are some of the most simple ways that you see it in organizations. Other ways that you can take a look at it is during feedback sessions or regular cadences. One, I would highly recommend that any leader in an organization have regular one-on-one sessions, even though we feel like we don't have enough time.

You can get that feedback, but you can ask a couple of simple questions. What hasn't gone so well in the past six months? What has improved in the past six months that you would like to see go forward? And a lot of times, you'll hear from those pieces of feedback where energy is not being aligned for that person.

You may hear like, oh, well, I get all of these risk assessment surveys or whatever, and maybe it's just because they're not aligning to data management, right? They want to be out on the floor talking to people. And so you just take that information and you keep compiling it to fully understand what's happening in the organization.

Feedback outside of the organization because it's spread across for safety and asking how are your interactions with people? And someone may say, "Hey, you know, I've noticed that Mary, she's just been a little bit more chipper when she comes to the weekly meeting." And that may also give you some insight as to, okay, so something is going well, let's dig in a little deeper and see how we can continue that momentum.

- I had a thinking earlier too when you were talking about the managers doing some basic analysis when there's an injury, it's kind of like you're pushing them into more systems thinking, which is something that a safety professional has to do.

- Yes. So, energy management is truly about a system. And what happens is somewhere...it's a cycle. We talk about the market, the market is cyclical they say. There's a bear market for so long, then there's a bull market. Like, the seasons are a cycle, right, where we have summer, winter, spring, fall. Your energy is also a cycle.

So, I am not a morning person. I wake up in the morning and I have a very specific routine that enhances my ability to have a smile on my face, which includes consumption of coffee. That is a part of my cycle. However, late at night, that is when I thrive.

I will send you emails. I can get very detailed work done like after 7:00 p.m. That's my cycle. And some people may notice that for their cycles, they are just more engaged. Cycles are influenced by systems, right?

So, systems are putting all these pieces, things, strategies, actions together to work in conjunction with one another to achieve an outcome. And so when you have that system in place, it's understanding the cycles that are influencing the system.

And that's really your system around you is influencing your energy and you are influencing that system as well. So, it's a big cycle and the more awareness, the more information you have around it, the more you can manipulate it, I guess you could say, anticipate it's outcomes. I can anticipate the outcome of my day if I don't follow the system that I have in place.

If I don't wake up and work out, drink coffee, have breakfast by 10:00, I'm no good. I can make it work, but then I've allowed my system to fail. My energy is low. I'm probably snippy and my customers don't have the best interaction. The same thing happens within your health and safety systems, which is why they're so important.

- So, I would think too that the system itself has to kind of account for that, right? I mean, we all know we have days that are a little bit up or a little bit down based...it might seem on nothing or based on how we slept or whatever, but if there's no slack in the system, if everything must always be the same, I would imagine that would make it kind of a more vulnerable system, like easier to break.

- Absolutely. And before this show, we talked a little bit and I shared that one of the things that I'm really passionate about and truly how my team and how I consult teams to get out of these vicious cycles is through strategy, right? Having a set standard of what you are doing with a vision to achieve an outcome. The strategy helps you to define your system.

And strategy is defined by hard-to-reverse decisions to achieve a future outcome. But hard to reverse does not mean impossible to reverse. It still needs to be agile to make changes. So, because you have to account for humans, and we are not predictable.

The weather is not predictable, pandemics, not predictable. So, you have to be able to be agile enough to make some changes. And I'll share...my system, right? I have my things that I do in the morning. And a couple of weeks ago, I looked and I said, "You know what? I'm tired. I don't want to get up and do this. I'm not working out. I'm not drinking coffee."

I drank coffee, but it wasn't after my workout. I sat on the porch with my spouse and what I needed was time for connection and sitting in nature, just enjoying, had to deviate from the system that helps me to function in order to accommodate for where I was mentally and emotionally at that time. Those deviations help you to stay on track long-term.

- You reminded me of something else that we talked about is that you were clear on making a distinction between goals and strategies. And since you just kind of touched on that, do you want to clarify what is the difference and why does it matter?

- Yeah. So, it matters a lot. At the beginning of the year or at the end of the year, we'll sit down and say, these are my goals. Boom. We're going to have zero injuries. But strategy is the framework that identifies the resources and truly the problems that you're trying to solve to achieve those goals. And it's different, right?

Because you may go in and say, "We're going to have zero injuries." Okay, "Why do you have injuries in the first place?" That's a big deal, right? Because you just throw something out there sometimes, and if you don't have a true way of getting there, then filling your reward bucket is really hard because now you have this goal and you don't achieve the goal because you didn't have the resources or the roadmap to get there and it feels like failure, but it's not that you are a failure, it's that the system wasn't designed to give you the greatest chances of achieving that goal.

So, having a very strong strategy is essential. Have a strategy for everything. And that's what the best companies that are run, they have strategies and they're agile enough for each department to have them as well. And that's really, really important for that distinction too, making sure that there's agility in there.

And that you're preplanning for failure. Why would we fail?

- Yeah. There's an old adage, and I don't know who said it, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

- Yes. The plan has got to be there. And the diagnosis of why you have a goal in the first place, very, very important.

- So, when we were talking before you mentioned that burnout is only part of the picture when it comes to energy management. What are kind of the other factors that fall under that energy management umbrella?

- Yeah. So, under the umbrella, we talk a lot about burnout, but then there's mindset around other ways that you're spending your energy. So, the biggest that I think is actually one that's going to take the most challenge for us to address is high performance.

We live in this society of hustle culture, right? Like, the person that's always going and doing is the person that's rewarded. What I'd like to say is that if you show up eight hours, nine hours a day playing the championship game, you are bound to be injured, right?

You're just 40 hours, 40-plus hours a week, you are running and playing like you're in the Super Bowl, somebody's going to get hurt. But what we truly need is this rest, practice, play championship because high performance is important at times and then cycling back through that.

So, there's truly four areas, which is burnout, high performance, stress. Stress is the third component. Stress can be good or bad. Too much of it in either direction can lead to burnout. And then there's this optimal performance. And this is like, you ever feel that time in your life you're like, things are just...all the green lights are happening when I'm driving.

I'm getting all the yeses and the emails. I'm knocking these projects out. Like, you are just smooth sailing. And we actually need more acknowledgment that that is our best performance is in that optimal performance space where you're not exerting a lot of energy, but you have a high motivation to get things done.

So, spending more time in that space, less time in high performance, it's important. But thinking that you have to burn or keep going, going, going until you burn out is not healthy. Burnout, obviously not, but then managing our stress as well. Stress is good sometimes though.

- Yeah, it is. I've heard stress described as it could be excitement, right?

- It can. Yeah. Like, you know, we stress ourselves out all the time if you think about it, right? Like, when you go take on a new venture, you're stressing yourself out. You're stretching your ability and your capabilities. And that's important because once you've got that new skill set, it actually falls back into your optimal performance range because now it's there.

So, you stretch yourself to get it, and now it's just a part of your being and that's okay. You can just go do it and it's fine.

- You mentioned before, the six areas of burnout.

- Yes.

- What are those? What's that all about?

- So, there are six key areas. The Mayo Clinic talks about it some McKinsey & Company also brings it up, but if you are experiencing burnout, it's because three or more of these areas are out of alignment for you. So, the first is workload. You have too much work to do, or the work that you have to do does not align to you.

That's a bad thing. Values, if your organization or even people around you are not in alignment with your values, it can lead to burnout. Fairness, are people or you treat fairly in the organization? Community, so we talked a little bit earlier about fitting versus belonging.

Reward, are you rewarded? There's a book called "The Five Languages of Appreciation." That's a play on the five love languages. And then the big one is this lack of autonomy. And that's really having control over your life, right? And having control of what you do and where you are.

In this space, I think that's where we see so much of this work from home versus come to the office and that values gap that's happening because of it, because it's like, "I can get the same work done at home. Why do you want me in the office just to look at me?" So, I think that one is coming up, especially now as we just have new ways of working in this environment.

- Yeah. Yeah. A whole bunch of people have discovered...I've worked remotely since 2009, and a whole bunch of people have discovered that this is a thing and it's like, yeah. But it is testing autonomy because companies are showing their cards in a way about how they feel, you know?

It really feels like if you're not allowed to work from home, maybe they don't trust you.

- Absolutely.

- On the other hand, for some people, the office is much better and that's their preference.

- Yeah.

- I don't think we can solve that debate, but it's got to do with the autonomy that you're talking about.

- Absolutely. And then the health and safety profession, many people do not have that option, right? So, our frontline workers, the people that are producing products that are working in customer-facing functions, physical customer-facing functions, they don't have that option and they deserve to be protected. So, for some of our health and safety professionals, they cannot make that adjustment. They need to be there to physically be in the space where they are responsible for people.

And I commiserate with people that are like, "Oh, where are all these health and safety work-from-home jobs? I would like that." But, you know, it's different. It's different for each person. It's different for each function. And I think when we talk about fairness, so I mentioned that if three or more areas are out of alignment, so if you say, I have a lack of autonomy because you're going to tell me where I have to be and I don't feel that it's fair, well, now you've got two.

And then you say, well, I value my time. I value my work. I value what I do. Well, now you've got three areas. It's no wonder that people are experiencing burnout in the way that they are at this point because it's easy. Put that on top of the fact that your workload is out of proportion and your recipe is complete.

- And for the last two years as I've been fond of saying, and in a pandemic. Like, that's just this baseline stress that we've all been dealing with in different ways.

- Yes. Absolutely.

- So, what are your sort of top tips for safety professionals who want to take care of their well-being and prevent burnout, and for the ones who are in burnout, it's too late, but need to kind of crawl out of there?

- Yeah. So, for my folks that are currently experiencing burnout first, because it's so hard to even take new information. So I appreciate you. Just start with one area. So, of those six areas, identify one that's out of alignment for you and understand how to get it back in alignment.

Switching jobs may be the answer, but that is not always an option for everyone. So, understanding what it is that you need. If looking at the six is too much, I highly recommend starting with values. Your values will help to direct your boundaries, and that will allow you the space to say, "I value my son's soccer game every Friday at 4:30. I will leave work at 3:30 every Friday."

And that may be your starting point. So, recommend that for values. On the organizational side, highly recommend an effective strategy. That is so important because having a framework and vision for how people are interacting, where their area of genius is being employed, how they can expect to be rewarded, the fair systems in place, it solves so much for the organization and it also helps you to move responsibility to the appropriate places.

It's so important to have a strong and effective strategy, not just the goal setting that happens in a couple of days before the end of the year. Say, hey, I need... Sometimes we get it in February, like, hey, you haven't done your goals, or it's midterm time, it's June, we need your goals for, you know, your performance report in December.

But truly leading an organization with an effective strategy where people are bought in, they understand where they are contributing, and they love it. They're excited about it. It really helps to navigate some of those other six areas on the individual level because they have something concrete to connect to.

- So, yeah, something from both ends really will...they feed into each other, right? They strengthen each other. So, I have a few questions that I like to ask at the end. I ask every guest these or variations on them. If you were to develop some kind of program like post-secondary program to train tomorrow's safety professionals and you had to set up, like, there was mandatory soft skill training, where would be your focus?

Like, one or two areas that you think would probably serve them the best in terms of just discussing, understanding, and developing those skills?

- Absolutely. So, the entirety of my business was set up on the soft skills that I achieved over time. And the first, it's not going to be a surprise, Mary, business strategy because it allows you to understand and influence people at all levels of the organization, extremely important.

And the second would actually be business acumen. Because it allows you, again, to connect with other people and you can get this empathy for what other functions in the operation are doing in order to make sure the organization as a whole is functioning, the company as a whole is functioning so everybody gives their paycheck when they're supposed to.

And we're employed, but also appreciated for the work that they do as well in the organization.

- So, instead of departments complaining about other departments, there's a little bit of understanding of like, well, they have these different pressures, unique pressures, and if they're falling behind, well, maybe that's why?

- Yes. And, you know, we talk about people not knowing what we do, but then I ask people, do you really know what they do? And when you can at least have empathy at a basic level of what someone else is doing, it makes the world more kind in general.

- So, if you had to go back in time to the beginning of your safety career, or could go back in time to the beginning of your safety career and give yourself one piece of advice, what do you think that might be? This is the toughest question. I know.

- It is. But, you know, I don't know if it's that tough. I think I would've told my early self that it didn't matter how many hours you put in, it was all about the quality of your work.

- So, not bowing to external pressures to put in 40, 50, 60 hours or that kind of thing?

- Exactly. I was indoctrinated into come work...you should be working 12 hours to show that, you know, you're dedicated and you're in it. And I think I would've avoided burnout so much earlier if I would've known that I just needed to put in quality work, and also fill other buckets of my life.

- Good advice. So, how can our listeners learn more about some of the topics that we've discussed? Are there books, or websites, or projects, or groups that you recommend?

- Absolutely. So, one thing, shameless plug, I actually send a regular newsletter via email, so you can sign up on subenacolligan.com. We talk about all things soft skills for occupational health and safety professionals. One of the books that I recommend is a book that I received during a leadership training in industrial hygiene.

And that is "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz. And he is absolutely incredible when it comes to really gaining self-awareness because this journey actually starts with self in leadership. And then regarding strategy, I highly recommend "Good strategy, Bad Strategy" by Richard Rumelt.

He is what they consider the godfather of strategy and a professor at UCLA.

- Where could our listeners find you on the web?

- Absolutely subenacolligan.com, where you can reach me by email, sign up for the regular email newsletters that I send out all about soft skills in the occupational health and safety profession. And you can also follow me on LinkedIn at S. Colligan Coaching or Subena Colligan.

- That's all the time we have for today. So, thank you for listening, and thanks so much, Subena, for lending us your time and perspectives.

- Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Mary.

- And my thanks also to the "Safety Labs by Slice" team, managing team energy from behind the scenes and doing a fantastic job of it. Bye for now. 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.