The Evolution of Safety Education

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Pam Walaski, Senior Vice President of the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), who uses her considerable experience to teach the next generation of HSE practitioners.

Pam shares her insightful views on the current state of safety education. She highlights the key gaps, limitations and challenges and explains which elements need to evolve.

Safety professionals will also learn about Pam’s personal journey from “safety cop” mentality to seeing workers as the solution rather than the problem. This mindset shift has significantly influenced her approach to safety education, and rapport, empathy, respect, and dignity are key themes in this compassionate interview.

Pam helps EHS professionals to stop thinking in terms of “right” and “wrong” and instead focus on learning, evolution and being open to change.

- [Mary] Hi there, and welcome to "Safety Labs by Slice." I often ask my guests about what they see for the future of the safety industry and how they think safety certification or education should evolve. Today's guest teaches the next generation directly and is here to talk to us about issues surrounding safety education. Pam Walaski has been an occupational safety and health professional for nearly 30 years.

She's a member of the ASSP, or American Society of Safety Professionals, where she's held multiple roles over the years, most recently as a director at large on the society's board of directors. Pam is currently the ASSP's senior vice president. A longtime conference presenter, she's also a member of the society's Risk Management Practice Specialty, and the Women in Safety Excellence Common Interest Group.

Pam helped develop and now instructs the ASSP Risk Assessment Certificate Program. She's an adjunct faculty member of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Safety Sciences Department. Pam also works as a senior program director with Specialty Technical Consultants, where she specializes in safety and health management system assessments, integrating risk management programs, and conducting third-party audits.

Pam joins us from Western Pennsylvania. Welcome.

- [Pam] Hi, Mary. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

- Good. I'm looking forward to this one. I always like talking about education. But let's start with sort of broad strokes. You've been in safety for over 30 years. Have you seen changes in the safety industry's attitudes and approaches to work over that time?

- Definitely. Thank goodness for that. Yeah, and I've been speaking a lot about it and writing about it. About 10 years ago, I started to become aware of what I still call emerging approaches to how we practice safety.

They go by a variety of different names, and you've had several of the thought leaders on your program before, safety differently, human and organizational performance, the use of learning teams, safety I and safety II. Those have really become ways in which we change the way we practice primarily by looking at how we do occupational safety and health from a systems perspective, as well as from a perspective that is a whole lot more willing to look at the worker as the source of solutions as opposed to a problem that has to be solved.

And that's something that Todd Conklin says a lot, workers are solutions to be harnessed and not problems to be solved. And so most of those approaches look at the worker as the source of knowledge and information about how work is done and how to do work safely. And when we engage those workers and use their skills and their expertise, it really completely flips the way we do things.

It takes us as professionals out of the role of a safety cop or a compliance officer, sort of that almost parent-child way of interacting with workers, and it's really been very refreshing. And so I would say for the past, at least for me anyway, for the past 10 years or so, I've really been exploring that and thinking about how if I wasn't getting the results that I wanted with the kinds of things that I was doing, then maybe it wasn't the worker, maybe it was me.

Maybe I needed to change my approach. And I've had a lot of success by really just kind of rethinking it that way. It's been a very effective way to change things for me.

- When we spoke before, you mentioned that a lot of these exciting sort of emerging approaches in safety, but you also said that if we're really going to see a significant shift, that it has to start at the educational level. So, I'd like to talk a bit about that. Do you think that's the fastest way to change things, the most effective in the long term, or maybe both?

- I think it's the most effective in the long term, I don't think it's the fastest. But what's happened to a lot of the folks that I know is that we come out from our educational institution, or we join the field from a craft. I was a social worker first before I was a safety professional.

And we learn things, and then it takes us a while to unlearn things. And as long as our educational institutions at the undergraduate and graduate level are still focused on some of the non-systemic and different approaches, then what happens is people graduate and then they have to learn different ways of practicing safety.

And so if we're really going to see the shift, the transition from what we're doing now to what we need to be doing differently, it really, I think, it has to start at the education level. We also can't forget about the folks that are out there practicing right now. And that's important.

And we have to continue to work to help provide resources and share information. But the long-term solution is to change the way we educate folks in the first place. And I think that's going to take a while because as people come out of their undergraduate or graduate programs, they may be 21 years old and they may be entering the field for the first time, or they may come out of graduate school may be a little bit older, but still they're typically earlier in their careers, as opposed to folks like me who are sort of at the back end of our career, so to speak.

- This show is about the human skills needed in the safety industry over and above the technical skills. Do you see any shifts in attitudes specifically towards the importance of core skills like listening, empathy, building rapport? And I'm asking shifts in either with the students that you're seeing or with the longtime safety practitioners that you have contact with as well.

- I'm certainly seeing that with safety practitioners. I've always said the technical skills are the easy skills. They can be more easily taught. You know, for example, here in the United States, our regulatory authority comes from OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They have thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of regulations, depending upon what task you do, or what industry you're in, or what hazard you're being exposed to.

And each one of those regulations has dozens and dozens of little rules about how high a guardrail has to be or how high you need to be before you have fall protection. Those are things that you can learn very easily. And as you work with the regulations and get to know them and do certain things over and over again, that information becomes pretty solid in your head.

I can spit out those answers to those questions about confined space entry and working in trenches and things like that. That's the easy part, if you will. It takes time to learn it. You need to know where to find the answers to your questions, but you can learn it quickly. The soft skills, the people skills, those are skills that you'll learn pretty quickly you need if you don't have them because you'll find lots of problems with engaging with not only the folks in your workforce but with the leaders in your organization and figuring out how to communicate both verbally and orally and deliver presentations and those kinds of things.

So, I think those skills are more challenging to teach. I don't see a lot of that in the institutions that I'm currently involved in, either directly as an instructor as an adjunct faculty member or in other programs that I'm familiar with. I don't see a whole lot of that. That tends to be in most undergraduate programs, things like learning to write properly or speak properly, deliver in presentation.

Those tend to be the elective courses. They're not the courses that are part of your major. Your major courses tend to be the technical kinds of courses about fall protection or fire protection or things like that. And so, depending upon how well you do or don't do in some of those electives, you can certainly graduate without being able to write a complete sentence very well or being able to develop and deliver a presentation on a particular topic.

And I do see that a lot with younger professionals coming into the field. They do not seem to have a lot of those kinds of soft, non-technical skills. So, I do see that as an issue.

- What about things like empathy or rapport, like writing, to some degree, it's a skill that can be taught, for sure, do you think things like listening well or having empathy are teachable?

- Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think they're not traditionally taught, and I think that's a little bit of a gap, but I think lots of people can learn how to improve to become more empathetic, to learn better how to establish rapport and how to engage with folks. I think those are all very teachable skills.

As I said, though, I don't see them a lot of times in undergraduate programs. And I think what happens is a person gets hired and their organization realizes they have that type of a deficit and provides them with some type of professional development, or has them take a course, or perhaps the organization has internal programs for developing those skills among their workforce.

But those aren't traditionally part of most educational curriculums either at the graduate or undergraduate level.

- Yeah. So, give me a picture, and also for our international listeners, what does safety education in the U.S. look like? So, what kind of programs are available? And then you have touched on what skills are taught a little bit, and are they consistent? Is there a lot of variation between different programs, or is there consistency?

- Well, like most educational programs, there are certifying bodies. And so in the United States, the ABET is the educational organization that certifies certain types of programs, undergraduate and graduate programs. And that's kind of the, if you will, the gold standard for educational programs.

It's a very rigorous curriculum and there are ongoing reports and outcomes that you have to produce. And there's a regular onsite audit process that occurs every certain amount of years. And an organization...an educational institution, excuse me, can say that their program is ABET-certified.

On the other side in the United States, again, like most countries, the Bureau of Certified Safety Professionals, BCSP, and another organization, the global credentialing organization that deals with industrial hygienists. They also qualify, they don't certify, they qualify programs.

And so an organization who is not ABET-certified can submit their program curriculum to BCSP, and they can be qualified as what they call a qualified academic program. The advantage of that to someone who's graduating is that if you're pursuing a BCSP certification, it gives you a leg up on someone who graduates from a program that isn't a qualified academic program.

And so there's certification, which is very rigorous and very strict, and there's qualification, which is not quite so. There are very few ABET-certified programs in the United States in occupational safety and health. There are lots of qualified academic programs through BCSP.

- Oh, interesting. Okay. So, the qualification is still an advantage, though. Like ideally, you would have both.

- Yes, exactly. Ideally, you would have both. You know, for someone who is an academic, and I'm not an academic, I'm an adjunct faculty member in a number of universities, but for someone who's an academic, the ABET certification is really what if you are running a program, chairing a program, or you're a full-time professor, an associate professor in an educational institution, that's really what you want to have is ABET.

But many programs are just not capable of getting that particular certification. It's a heavy lift. It's a lot of work. And so the qualified academic program through BCSP gives them another avenue to at least put some sort of a stamp of approval, if you will, on their program. And so they're both advantageous, one is a little bit more rigorous.

- Is there a lot of consistency if one were to choose between, I don't know, 20 different safety programs in the U.S., if you've sort of corrected for those, like they all have the same level of either qualification or certification ability. Can you expect to learn very similar things or...?

- I think that there's probably a whole lot more alignment with ABET programs because they're so much more rigorous and the criteria is so much stricter than a qualified academic program. But both of them have some consistency among them. Under the qualified academic programs, I think there's probably a little bit more variability in the types of courses that are offered and how they're offered, and the kinds of things that come out of those particular programs.

Whereas an ABET program, I think is going to be a whole lot more...one ABET program is going to look a whole lot more similar to another ABET program.

- You teach both undergrads, which for the most part, I assume are young adults, and graduate courses, which you've mentioned are often working professionals that have come back to improve their education. How are these groups different in their approaches, and do you have to teach them differently because of that?

- Absolutely. So, for the most part, the students in the undergraduate programs that I'm involved in generally tend to be just out of high school, going straight from high school to college. That's the vast majority. However, I would say, and I've been teaching undergraduates now for four years, I am seeing a transition to more working professionals who are coming into undergraduate programs.

And they are either taking a break from their work or they're finding a way to slowly but surely take classes and continue their jobs. I had one person in the class that I taught last semester who was a security guard in a correctional institution and worked the night shift and use the daytime to come for classes.

And so we're seeing more and more of those. At a graduate level, you see less people that go straight from undergrad to grad, and so they generally tend to be working professionals. In the graduate school programs, most of them that I'm engaged with are either completely asynchronous or are at least virtual. I don't teach any in-person graduate classes at this point.

I have one class that I teach, a lecture, a live lecture via virtual platform once a week. And the other classes are all asynchronous where there's work online and there's an opportunity to grade and have discussion boards. And those are all working professionals who are taking the asynchronous classes as a general rule.

- Yeah, that's a much more flexible delivery method for people who have a lot more responsibilities, frankly, than full-time students.

- Yes, yes, absolutely.

- Or full-time young adult students, presumably with no children yet. So, what do you believe needs to change in the formalized American safety education? What's working and what's not working?

- It's interesting because a couple of the schools that I work with have really begun to incorporate some of those concepts that we were talking about at the beginning of our discussion into their programs, into not only the courses that they offer, but also and probably more importantly in the practical opportunities that they give to the students.

Generally for the working professionals, it's not so much internships because they're not able to do that, but there's a wide variety of capstone-type programs and activities where they are doing research on a particular topic or working very closely with an organization to help develop a program. And those kinds of curricula really give the student an opportunity to not just learn, but to practice some of those skills.

And you see more of that in there. So that's a really nice refreshing way. And I think there are a number of universities that are deliberately sitting down and saying, we need to figure out how to incorporate some of the softer skills and some of the less technical skills about engagement and different kinds of things.

And so I've seen a really nice transition or beginnings of a transition, or at least in the schools that I either teach at or have some association with, and I know what they're doing. On the undergraduate level, I think there's still the technical skill set, there's less changes in those particular programs.

That's been my observation.

- Is there anything that...maybe not overarchingly, but is there anything that isn't working that bugs you, we'll say, that, you know, that's the bee in your bonnet in terms of this kind of education?

- There is one challenge that graduate schools have, and I find that to be a problem that I don't know how they can solve it, but there are folks who are coming into the profession at the graduate level. So they may be doing a variety of different things. I've had people who were physical therapists. I've had people who were in completely not even related fields, but meet the criteria for entrance into the graduate program.

And they go through the graduate program and they graduate with a master's degree, a graduate-level degree, and have never actually practiced occupational safety and health in any setting, because at the graduate level, that opportunity to do that sort of in-person internship is not there. And I think that's a real challenge because we're seeing people who are coming out with these very high-level degrees who have no practical experience.

And I think that's a real challenge. And I think there are going to have to be some ways to try to figure that out. I wouldn't want to see someone who meets the criteria for the program not be admitted because they lack practical experience, but I think that that's a challenge. And when that person enters the field, I think they're at a deficit, because they have a graduate degree, but no experience at all.

Most of the undergraduate programs that I'm familiar with either require or strongly encourage some type of an internship before you leave the program, and many of them tend to be a full-time 10 or 12-week internship. So, you've had at least one very intensive practical experience opportunity by the time you graduate. So, that's a problem.

- Yeah. And I can see the challenge in delivering that because a lot of the graduate students are working professionals, maybe not working in safety, but still working and still needing to, you know, pay mortgages as they're...

- Right. Right. And, you know, interestingly enough, the American Society of Safety Professionals, we have roughly 36,000 members, and the majority of our members did not enter safety through a traditional undergraduate role. Most of them came in through a variety of different ways. Some of them went back and got a degree, a graduate or undergraduate.

Or some of them were craft workers who had a passion for safety, and the organization kind of slowly brought them in, and they eventually joined the safety department and became members of ASSP. But the majority of people don't follow that traditional educational route. And if that's the case, then we as an organization and as a profession, really need to do some deep thinking about how we can best prepare those non-traditional professionals to be the best that they can be, to provide them with the education that they need, when they need it, where they need it, and how they need it.

And I think it's going to force more and more organizations and educational institutions to sort of rethink how they're delivering education. We certainly saw a rise in virtual and online educational opportunities. So that's a big transition.

So maybe the next step is to move into, at least for our profession, some different ways to begin to prepare people as they enter the field.

- And how rigid are current safety programs? Is there a lot of space to bring in new ideas, new approaches? And here I'm talking more about classroom, quote-unquote, "whether that's virtual or not delivery."

- Right. In my experience, and again, I'm not an academic, but in my experience in the ABET certification program, there is not a lot of room that the requirements for what must be taught and the types of courses that must be offered don't leave a lot of room for changes, edits. I participated for a number of years on the advisory committee of an educational institution.

I was one of the industrial members of the advisory committee. And I remember going through when ABET had made some changes in their curricula and we spent a lot of time trying to help the faculty and the chair of the department figure out how to meet the new ABET criteria.

And I remember, and this was maybe seven or eight years ago, there were a lot of changes that involved taking away some of the labs that the program offered, where they could get the practical experience in using industrial hygiene, air monitoring instruments, and practicing fire safety by learning how to evaluate fire suppression systems.

And we had to take away some of those labs in order to meet the new ABET criteria. So, there isn't as much wiggle room there in my experience, limited experience. Here in the United States, the BCSP-qualified academic program, I think is a little bit more flexible, has a little bit more room to provide a variety of different things.

And then in addition, there are state standards. You know, each state's educational department, at least in the United States, has their own set of requirements for different kinds of certifications. So, there isn't a lot of room out there in a traditional educational setting.

- Yeah. There's only so much time in a semester, and I suppose if you add anything, you're starting to make hard choices about what to remove.

- You have to take something away. Every time you add a course, you have to take something away. And what do you take away?

- Yeah. And so are there other sort of oblique ways to influence education? Like, I'm thinking more in terms of student demand. And maybe student demand isn't the best way because it's hard to know what to demand, you know, if you're just starting.

But I'm just curious if there are other areas, loopholes for change.

- I think at an undergraduate level, I think you're right, there's probably not a lot of student demand. Because when you're 18 or 19 and you've just come out of high school, you really don't know what you don't know and what you need that you're not getting. I think at a graduate level, as we begin to see more and more working professionals pursuing degrees, I think you are going to get some feedback from those folks in the institutional programs saying I need more of this, or I need more of that, or I'm picking this program because it's got this, and I don't want this program because it doesn't have that.

So, I think working professionals probably provide a whole lot more feedback and input to the organization. And I think, at that level, I think you have a little bit more flexibility with the material that you're teaching to provide different opportunities, activities, engagements that allow folks to participate and learn those kinds of skills, empathy, and engagement and rapport.

And I think you get a little bit more opportunities to do that. I know I certainly in the courses that I teach, I try to incorporate a variety of different experiential learning opportunities that focus on that type of skill and that kind of skill building. Wherever I can find a way to squeeze it in sometimes into the semester, I certainly try to do that. And I know lots of other folks that I'm familiar with who also teach do the same.

- At the top of the interview, I think you mentioned the concept of unlearning. How does that fit in? What things do people perhaps have to unlearn, first of all, if they're younger and like just coming outta high school? And secondly, if they've been in the field and, you know, they've obviously developed their own practices, and do you find them coming in and saying, "Well, that's not right?"

- At an undergraduate level, they generally don't say, well, that's not right, unless they had some experience working. But they do come in with views about people and how they work that come from their family of origin for sure. And I've seen and heard some undergraduate students express some feelings about people and people who work and whether they want to work or like to work.

So, some of that theory X and theory Y stuff that we used to talk about, some of that comes out in how they view things. At a graduate level, I think you do get more people who in different kinds of formats say, well, I've been in the field for 10 years, and that's not worked for me and here's what I've had to do.

And so you do get a little bit more of that kind of engagement, that kind of input about things that don't work that they learned. I think, you know, we've spent a lot of time with some very old-style theories about occupational safety and health from, you know, folks like Heinrich and some of those other folks that taught us about the pyramid and some of those things that we've had to change.

But I do think the more you spend in the field, the more you realize that some of the things that you learned either aren't helpful or just don't work. And you have to learn to manipulate and change in order to be successful.

- It's probably some great discussions as well in the graduate programs because you're getting people...they're working, but it's not like any one work position or company is going to look like another one, right?

- Yes. Yes. The downside, though, sort of the downside is that at graduate level, you do see more asynchronous programs. And so the engagement, so in most of the asynchronous programs that I'm involved with, there is some sort of a discussion board. And usually, on a weekly basis, there's a prompt and people produce information and then they respond back and forth.

And the idea is that they discuss and engage and share. That may be the only real engagement they have with their fellow students. Other schools have tried to find ways to incorporate different ways to do that. One program that I work with does a seminar, if you will. Everybody who's enrolled in the program is enrolled in a seminar. And every Sunday afternoon, there is a live lecture with a guest, and there is interaction and discussion via Zoom or one of the other platforms that are out there.

And that's a way for the students to actually have some, if you will, face time with each other and with other professionals. And that's sort of their way of saying, we need to manipulate that a little bit. Another program that I work with has a weekly Zoom call. It's just an open call for one hour.

The instructor opens up the Zoom platform and anybody can come in and talk about an assignment or ask a question, and so they have a little bit of an opportunity to engage with each other. So, there are different ways that you can improve on that lack of face-to-face time or live virtual engagement at a graduate level. But many of them, other programs that I've taught with have no live time at all.

And so the people that they're learning with are pictures on a profile on the platform. And I think that's a real challenge that needs to be addressed.

- Yeah. Well, there's a balance because as you've already talked about, there needs to be a certain amount of flexibility for people who are working throughout their program. But yeah, their engagement is also an important aspect of learning. So far, we've spoken specifically about the American safety education system. For listeners outside of the U.S., what would be sort of more generic advice for finding ways to...let's assume that a listener is thinking, I'm not in the U.S., but I'm also not happy with the education system in my own country.

Where would you suggest that they start looking in order to try and influence change within their system? And I realize every system is probably a little bit different.

- Sure. I would say that most countries have some type of a certification process, an organization that accredits programs or provides for certification. So, I'm a certified safety professional, that's through BCSP, but there's other kinds of certifications that are not associated with BCSP. There's tons of them out there.

And so that's another way to do it. You know, look at what the criteria is to achieve that designation or certification, and that's what you want to match your educational program to. Because if you need X, Y, Z in order to achieve that particular designation and the program you're in teaches A, B, C, you're going to have a mismatch. And so if you look at different kinds of accrediting bodies or organizations that provide certifications for safety professionals, excuse me, those are the places that I think you'll find some things that you can use to incorporate into your search for an educational program.

- This is kind of an odd question. It may vary between certifying bodies, but do you think that certifying bodies are, in general, open to people coming up to them and saying, hey, I don't like the...or I feel that you need to add or change or, you know, some of the, not restrictions, but the regulations that need to be met from the top.

Are they interested at the top?

- I've never seen that. I've never been asked. I've never found a way to participate in something like that. Many of those organizations, though, have boards of directors or some sort of a board that helps oversee the organization. And that might be an inroad. You could become on that board, you could join that board and perhaps have some engagement or get to know that person.

Most of those folks are working professionals, and you could do it that way. But I'm not familiar with any certifying organization that does that on a regular basis, that seeks that input.

- I think maybe because of that, it might be an opportunity, you know, because if they're not used to it, they may be quite excited about someone who is interested enough to reach out and that sort of thing. I don't know, listeners, give it a try. I think that would be an interesting experiment.

- That's a good question. I mean, I know that BCSP occasionally has opportunities for people to help write the test questions where they'll bring a panel of subject matter experts in, but that's as close as I've ever gotten to anything like what you're suggesting. But I think it's a great idea. There ought to be more of that.

You know, maybe ABET or other certifying organizations like that need to have opportunities for working professionals to provide input.

- So, now outside of the formal undergrad and graduate programs, what's the role of ongoing professional development for safety practitioners? So, I'm talking more about, I suppose conferences or maybe one or two-day courses, that sort of thing. How important is it, and what kind of skills do you think that they should be looking to develop?

- Almost all organizations that certify or provide a designation, CSP or CIH, require continuing education credits in order to maintain that. And they usually offer variety of opportunities to earn those, whether it's writing an article or volunteering on organization, or doing a presentation, or taking a course.

And so most of those have a really good variety. And so if I'm a safety professional and I'm really looking to improve my skills, some of these skills that we've been talking about, rapport and empathy and learning more about some of these different kinds of approaches, there are plenty of ways for me to take courses, attend conferences where people are talking about those kinds of things and earn those points.

And so it's kind of a win-win. I'm learning something and I'm earning those points.

- So, that's one way that safety professionals can do that. And there's a lot of larger organizations that provide professional development funding for their members, their employees, excuse me. And they'll provide a certain amount of money per year to take this course or go to this conference or whatever.

So, that's another path for someone who wants to explore and expand and perhaps learn more about how to approach how they practice safety a little bit differently. So, those are both really good ways for folks to do that. Most safety professionals that I know tend to be lifelong learners. They really are looking to keep learning and trying new and different things.

And I find them to be as a whole, a group of people that are really open to hearing about new and different things, and they want to learn and they want to be engaged, and they want to improve. So, I think most of us take advantage of a lot of those different kinds of opportunities.

- I don't know if this is a fair question, but do you think that there is a type of person or personality that goes into safety? Like, from my observation, I'm talking to thought leaders and that kind of thing, I can see that safety people care deeply about other people. They care about keeping them safe.

Is there anything else that you...and you've just said lifelong learners, is there anything else that you've noticed as a theme.

- I've certainly noticed the theme of people that are passionate about keeping folks safe. You know, there are many, many, many more lucrative careers than occupational safety and health. Oh, you could certainly make a good living, and I've made a very good living over the course of my career.

- But if money was all it was, then...

- You probably wouldn't be in occupational safety and health. So, I do find, by and large, the passion for keeping people safe and doing the best they can for their organizations and the people that work for the organizations. I find almost everybody that I've encountered over the years really has a strong passion for that. And so I definitely see that.

I also see folks who, as I said, are lifelong learners. And those are really, I think, the two key similarities I find among the folks that I've gotten to know over the years in my profession.

- Yeah. I said it's not entirely a fair question because it's not as though you can speak for the entirety of all safety professionals, but from your experiences.

- We're a bell curve just like anyone else. You know, there are some folks who probably should not be in this field. There's no doubt about that. But I've never seen us being any worse, if you will, or having more of those folks who shouldn't be in this particular field than any other field that I've encountered professionals.

That's not been my experience.

- So, now I want to move into a slightly more personal question about how has your safety practice changed over the years. What approaches, if you can think back over the whole span, what approaches have you reevaluated and what changes did you make?

- I think, as I was saying at the beginning of our conversation, I think there was a number of years ago when I sort of began to think about...I wasn't necessarily getting the results that I thought I should be getting. I would do a safety brief before a shift, and I would go through some information and I would ask for questions and everybody's head would be down.

And nobody would, you know, volunteer or I would be chairing a safety committee in an organization and just not getting that kind of engagement. Or I was finding myself on the side of too many disciplinary kinds of situations where I felt very uncomfortable. I felt like I was in a parent-child role.

And the more I began to think about that, the more I began to think something's not working. And very serendipitously, I was introduced to some ideas around safety I and safety II and safety differently. And I started to read. I started to listen. I started to engage. And I said, "Oh my goodness, maybe it isn't them. Maybe it's me."

And the more I read, the more I thought about it, the more I listened, the more I realized that I was the one that needed to make some changes. And once I began to do that and began to implement some of the strategies and the tactics associated with those approaches, which are based upon rapport and empathy and respect and dignity of folks, and really putting that front and center, I began to see better results.

And I began to see a whole lot more of what I went into this practice in this field for in the first place. And I began to enjoy it more, and it felt like I was being more successful. And so that was sort of the journey that I went on. And ever since then, when I started to see some things, I've done a number of presentations and I've written some articles.

And, you know, the focus has been, we need to think about what we are doing, and if we're not getting the results we like, we think we should be getting, then maybe we have to do a little introspection and really think about the way we're doing things and begin to shift the mindset, not who failed, as Todd Conklin says, but what failed. Those kinds of ways of thinking about work and what happens in work and work environments, and creating opportunities for people to do their best work and provide for the way that they want to be working and to do the things that they like to do.

- I think you hit on something that has been a theme throughout pretty much everyone that I've spoken to on this show, but it's never quite been put that way, and that is the dignity of the worker. I think that really touches a lot of things. It touches their autonomy and their expertise, and yeah, I think that's a really great way to put it.

- You know, work has dignity in and of itself. And, you know, I think one of the ways in which we all hope learned about the dignity of work was during the pandemic, when essential workers showed up day after day after day after day, at the time in the pandemic when we knew very little about what was going on.

We didn't understand transmission as well as we do now. We didn't necessarily know how to keep people safe. People were dying, people were sick, and yet every day people came to work and they did their job the best they could. And then they went home. And then they came back at their next shift and they did it again through that entire pandemic. And that was a really significant thing for me when I really began to think of that of how many people went to work day after day.

You know, healthcare people certainly are one of the professions that was on the frontline, emergency responders, police officers, those folks. I mean, they were out there doing it day in and day out. And, you know, that's some dignity right there to be that kind of a person who's willing to do that every day, day in and day out.

- Is there anything else that you'd like to add? Anything that we didn't cover that you think is important or that you've been thinking about lately maybe?

- No, I think we've hit on most of the stuff. To me, the most important thing is that we are a profession and we have to constantly evolve. And even though 30 years ago or 40 years ago, we might have believed certain things, like any profession, we've evolved and we're continuing to evolve. And, you know, as a professional, I take it to be very important that I try to evolve and modify my practices and implement the kinds of practices that show the best possibility for an outcome.

And so I think, you know, even though we've made some changes over the years, I don't think that we as a profession have to feel like we were doing it wrong and now the way is right. It's just an evolution and we'll continue to evolve. And 20 years from now when I'm no longer working, maybe, hopefully, people will be doing different things.

And, you know, that's an important part of any profession. And I think we have to give ourselves credit for being willing to be open and learn and evolve.

- Well, I have a few questions that I typically ask guests. And the first one, though, I'm going to alter a little bit for you because usually, I ask them, if you were training tomorrow's safety professionals, where would you focus that sort of interpersonal skills? But that's kind of been the topic of the whole show. So I'm going to make it harder and say, if you could choose only one interpersonal skill that you could add to, or, you know, wave a magic wand and it would be taught in all safety programs, which one would you choose?

- I think respect, respect for other people, respect for people that you work with. Learning how to show respect, learning how to be respectful. I think that's probably one of the biggest skills because when you respect people and you show that respect, some of those other skills come right along with it.

You know, if you're respectful of someone, you're going to be empathetic, you're going to be able to establish rapport, some of those other softer skills that we've been talking about. And I think they all come from a basic respect for other human beings and their worth and their dignity.

- And if you could go back in time to the beginning of your safety career since you had a career before safety, what is one piece of advice that you might give to yourself?

- You can always change. No matter what decision you make, you can always change. I did. After 15 years in one field, I switched and have had what I considered to be a very fulfilling and successful career. And it's something completely different. And so one of the things that I tell my students a lot is, you know, if you are deciding on whether to take a job or not, take it.

You don't have to stay there for the rest of your career. You can always change. If you've made a decision that isn't working out, nothing is set in stone. And being willing to say to yourself this isn't working and I need to do something differently is an important skill. And I probably wish I would've learned that sooner, but I know it now and so that's the big thing.

- Yeah, agreed. How can our listeners learn more about any of the topics in our discussion today? Are there any resources, you know, books, or projects, or websites that you like to recommend?

- There's a number of them. There is a Safety Differently website. It's called just safetydifferently.com, and you'll find a lot of work by Sidney Dekker and some of the other folks there. There's another really excellent website. It's called hophub.org, hop, human and organizational performance, hub.org. People like Andrea Baker and Todd Conklin and Rob Edwards all post presentations and articles and all kinds of resources on there.

And you can find lots of really great information there. Read anything you can by Todd Conklin, read anything you Can by Sidney Dekker. those are two people who have been very influential and have written lots and lots of really good books. Another one of my favorites is a woman by the name of Rosa Carrillo, and I believe you told me she was on your program before.

She wrote an excellent book called "The Relationship Factor in Safety Leadership." That's another good one. And if you start there, you'll find your way around to other places and different places, and that's what I did. You know, I picked up a book and that just kind of led me in a lot of other different directions. There's also a couple of great podcasts. Todd Conklin has one called "Pre-Accident Investigations."

Two folks, David Provan and Drew Rae, have a podcast called the "Safety of Work," which is another really good one. And again, once you start looking at podcasts on safety, you'll find a whole lot of really good ones. So, just start somewhere and you'll see it branch you out.

- Yeah, I often tell people just go to the index. If you like the book, look at everything that.....not the index, the...

- Resources. The bibliography.

- The resources and references.

- Absolutely. Absolutely.

- So, if our listeners wanted to reach out to you, how could they find you on the web?

- Well, they could find me on LinkedIn. I'm fairly busy on LinkedIn. I post and read other posts and share information there a lot. They could also get in touch with me via email. My company's email s pwalaski@stcenv.com. And I also am on Twitter.

My handle is @safetypam. Those are three really easy ways to get ahold of me.

- Great. Well, thanks so much for being with us today, Pam.

- You're welcome. I've enjoyed it, and I can't wait to hear the next speaker that you have.

- Listeners, we love you. If you're new to the show, don't forget, we have over 60 episodes published. So go back, take a listen. Many of the people actually that Pam just mentioned, we've spoken to. You can learn more about each episode on our website, and that's safetylabs.sliceproducts.com/episodes. And from me to the "Safety Labs by Slice" team, it's an honor and a privilege to work with you.

Bye for now.