S5Ep10 Baking SafeStart into your Culture: Three Ingredients you must have!

You’ve got the ingredients (SafeStart) but do you know which recipe to follow to ensure success? Rob McManis of Snohomish County PUD discusses his upcoming Human Factors Conference Session: Baking SafeStart Into the Culture of Your Business' Safety Pie.

Host: Danny Smith
Guest: Rob McManis 

Transcript

Danny Smith
Host
00:08
Welcome back to SafeTalk with SafeStart. I'm Danny Smith and you are great listeners. Have no doubt a clue as to what's coming up in February in Kissimmee Florida. If this is your first time with us, well I guess we should say where you been hey, it's great to have you with us. I guess we should say, just in case, catching everybody up here, we are holding our 2022 Human Factors Conference on February the 8th and 9th in Kissimmee, Florida, and I know it's just an absolutely horrible spot to be in wintertime. 

00:42
We're recording this mid-October and I've had the privilege of being down in the Orlando Kissimmee Florida area a couple of times the past couple of weeks with some conferences, and I can tell you, even being from Central Alabama and enjoying what we've still got some very nice warm, kind of end of summer, early fall type weather going on here. Man, the weather in Central Florida was just absolutely amazing and I can't imagine what it's going to be when it's cold here and cold in other parts of the country in early February and we get to go back to Florida and it will hopefully be fairly warm there then and a nice little break from the winter as well. So I can't really wait. I'm really excited for it and, beyond just the weather, I'm really excited about the conference itself, and today we've invited one of our guest speakers at the conference to just give us a bit of a peek into what he'll be presenting, and for our listeners who've been around for a while, the name's going to be very familiar. Today we've got Rob McManus from Snohomish County Public Utility District with us, and I interviewed Rob and Wendy Vlahovic from Snohomish a few months back about their successful implementation of SafeStart to their roughly 1,100 employees. And Rob and Wendy attended our last conference in 2019 and we're proud to say that they're returning this winter as well and bringing a whole new group of fellow employees with them. Rob and his group have just some wonderful, wonderful success stories, and that's a part of what he'll be sharing with us. Rob's a Navy veteran, so thank you very much again for your service, sir, and, as I mentioned, he is going to be presenting at this conference. 

02:24
And have you had issues in the past? I guess we would start by asking where people resist some things at times just because they have become, shall we say, flavor of the month. Heck, I had one group that said it would even become kind of flavor of the day or flavor of the hour in their group. So yeah, it can be pretty rough out there. So Rob's session is going to provide three key ingredients to ensuring the sustainability of your safety program in your business just to teach you how to fold SafeStart into your existing programs, to provide continuity with your safety message and to sample how to take the blame away to provide the best results in accident investigation. So with all that, I was a little long-winded there. But, Rob, welcome back to the podcast. Really great to have you back with us again. Well, thank you, Danny. 

Rob McManis
Guest
03:18
I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you again. It's always fun and Wendy and I are certainly counting down the days until we could head to sunny, warm Florida. Winter has set in here. The low last night was 47 degrees. We've had buckets of rain, so warm, sunny Florida sounding really good right about now. 

Danny Smith
Host
03:39
Yeah, I think here in Central Alabama we got down into the mid-40s Fahrenheit the other night as well and, yeah, I actually had to turn the heat on for just a little bit. It's first time for the winter, I guess, for us to do that, so a little early but nice and pretty outside today. But man, Orlando sounds great for February, that's for sure. So let's talk a little bit about what we're going to be doing at the conference. It's going to be a great time just of sharing, learning, networking together and just a lot of fun, and it's always a great opportunity just to learn from each other, and that's one of the great advantages of a conference like this, and that's a part of why we've asked Rob to be with us. 

04:20
Today At the conference, Rob will be presenting a session called and I love this title Baking SafeStart into the Culture of your  Safety Pie. First of all, Rob, great, great title. So I would imagine your presentation would really help when we think about that dreaded well, flavor of the month, right? So what flavor of the pie are we looking at here? 

Rob McManis
Guest
04:44
Absolutely that's the goal of my presentation is to really pass on what we've learned so that the company can really put SafeStart into their business and not and in all aspects of their business, and how we did it and how we successfully made that happen. 

Danny Smith
Host
05:03
Great and I guess with anything when you're looking at what you're baking or cooking. Not that I'm a great chef by any means, but I guess you got to start with the ingredients, right? So tell us a little bit about the ingredients that you're gonna be using for this. 

Rob McManis
Guest
05:17
Absolutely well. The first ingredient really were the three keys to our success, and those three keys were senior leadership engagement. The second one was an active and engaged steering team, and the third was incorporating SafeStart into the day-to-day business life. 

Danny Smith
Host
05:35
That makes perfect sense and I agree with you wholeheartedly on all three of those. Can you give us some examples of those, starting maybe with the senior leadership engagement? 

Rob McManis
Guest
05:45
Absolutely. Yes. I'm gonna be going into a lot more detail for each one of those at the conference, but let me give you an example of how senior leaders can engage and how they have it. At our company we had an assistant general manager it's really the vice president equivalent at other companies and he shared a story at a meeting that had managers and safety chairs there's about 100 people, which is about 10% of our business. 

06:17
It was a story that was very that had just happened to him. He was taking a shortcut after parking his car and he was in a hurry, as we are a lot, and he decided to take a shortcut over, which had him stepping over a two-foot wall and walking through a planter. Well, as happens, he caught his foot on the wall and tripped and landed in the bushes. His car keys flew away. He also lost his coffee mug and he fell out of his hand as he was bracing himself and he actually temporarily lost his keys. He later came back and found them, but he was in such a hurry that he gathered his briefcase and his coffee mug and headed out to his meeting. 

07:04
But to have senior leaders like this and he was very well respected, managed and oversaw at least 200 of our employees to have them be able to share their foibles and their poor decisions and really so that employees, the rest of the company, realizes that they are human too and that human factors affect all of us. I do have a new story, a separate story, that is very, very impactful. I'll be sharing at the conference. I won't tease that, other than to say you've got to come to the conference and this one is really a significant story by one of our senior leaders and I'll share with you how that impacted us. 

Danny Smith
Host
07:51
If you don't mind, I'd really like to back up and just think about that story that you shared there about the assistant GM and kind of analyze that for a moment. Did you talk about the states and the errors that were involved with him there? 

Rob McManis
Guest
08:06
Rushing was certainly a big part of it. He was frustrated, as most of our senior leaders are. They're very over scheduled so he was late and that was frustrating him. So rushing and frustration for sure, and complacency. Not only had he probably stepped over that wall and walked through that planter, he'd seen others do it, and it just. It catches you when your guard is down, complacency does, and, as we've found, it always seems to be lurking around and it takes advantage of us when we're in one of the other states. 

Danny Smith
Host
08:42
That really makes sense and complacency it's almost an automatic check mark on a lot of the stories that we hear. You know, as Larry says, it's one of those things that, even if it's not the number one contributing factor, it always does seem to be lurking there in the background just a bit, doesn't it? What about errors for your assistant GM there in that story? 

Rob McManis
Guest
09:07
Well, his hands were full and his eyes were not on task. His mind certainly was on where he needed to be and not on the task at hand and the loss of balance. 

Danny Smith
Host
09:18
Sure, and I think about that and how many times that, as you said, you know he's probably seen other people do that I'm sitting here thinking how many times if I've done something like that just cut through a planter at an office, at a grocery store parking lot I'm just thinking about the number of times I've done that as well. So you know thinking about that, you know think about those critical air reduction techniques. What do you think he could have used there? And I guess that's really the important part, right Looking at the Right right? 

Rob McManis
Guest
09:51
That's the aspirin for the headache. Yeah, self-triggering on the rushing and frustration. It's hard to do in the moment but knowing that he was late, self-triggering certainly could have helped him On his complacency. He really needed to work on his habits, not taking shortcuts on it. 

10:10
Shortcuts are a form of rushing as well, so those really do go hand in hand. And then looking for things that that can cause you to lose your balance traction grip. In this particular case, I'd like to modify that habit to maybe think of things that can cause you to lose your balance traction grip. You know, sometimes, Danny, these, these incidents cause you only time and money and, and in this particular case, perhaps a little embarrassment as well, because the where the planter was that he tripped in was was next to a three-story building that that was all windows, and the entire first floor of that window of that of that building were his employees and they looked right out onto the planter. So I am sure more than one of the folks that he managed directly Were. We're witnessing his, his foible out there. 

Danny Smith
Host
11:04
Well, I can imagine the embarrassment of that potentially and it reminds me of a story I had someone tell me once that they had a similar fall. It wasn't a planter, but just a fall in the parking lot and I can't remember now if it was just rain or if it was Ice and snow. I don't recall that part. But as he got up he looked up in. Several of the employees inside the building were holding up signs. You know, 6.0, 5.5, you know for grading his fall there. So, uh, yeah, it's one of those. As we all say, the first thing we do when we fall we start to look around to see if anybody saw us right. 

Rob McManis
Guest
11:42
Yep, that's the same with me. I have been there and done that, bought the T-shirt. In fact, one of my I'm a SafeStart trainer and one of my stories for unit three is about a fall I took walking from my car. How many times do you do that over the course of your lifetime? Thousands and thousands, but that, that simple trip from my car to my office, there's one curb, one step that I need to go up and dog-gone-it I missed that step and there I went coffee cup travel mug went rolling and briefcase went down, scraped my hand up a little bit, but I tell you I was up so fast. The first thing I was doing was looking around, make sure uh, make sure I was all alone. Of course, there's a bank of windows there, so I know, no, I was not alone. 

Danny Smith
Host
12:29
If somebody's bound to see you right, sure? So you mentioned as well that second ingredient Incorporating SafetartStartinto some of the existing EH&S and safety programs. What were some of the things that you did there? What were some of those specific programs you mentioned there? Well, we, we. 

Rob McManis
Guest
12:46
I'm going to talk about six specific programs in the in the conference, but I'll give you an example of one here. We we had, several years ago, we we started a near-miss program. It we didn't have SafeStart at the time, and it wasn't successful. We didn't have the culture for that. We revisited it after SafeStart, and we were, and the culture had changed at that point we had some new management and we were really on a much, much better plane to be able to have a near-miss program. That wasn't just in name only, but I'll give you an example of one of the near-misses that we had, and talk to you how we incorporate SafeStart into that. So we've had an employee that had completed a 360 around their line truck, and they had hopped up in the driver's seat as they were waiting for the car, waiting for their helper to get in the truck. He's looking through his paperwork Just to get clear in his mind where their ultimate job site was their. 

13:49
Their first stop, though, was just down the road to get a pole and a trailer. They had to set a pole for that day, but the the other truck on the crew had already left, so the driver was feeling a little bit antsy and rushed to get moving and his rider was not yet in the vehicle. He might have been in the restroom or getting his lunch, but he was. He was frustrated that he wasn't able to depart yet. So he thought what he would do is he would just pull the truck out, do a couple of things it would perhaps move his rider, along a little bit faster if he saw the truck leaving, and also to position the truck in a spot where he could have a quicker departure when his rider arrived. Though, as he put the truck in gear and let his foot off the brake, he heard a yell Fortunately his window is down he stomped on the brake and his helper popped up right in front of his vehicle and had been working on the front bumper, tying an oversized load sign on that front bumper, and he was nearly hit. He nearly ran him over. 

14:56
So when he submitted this as a near miss and as I'll share this at the at the conference as well what our form looks like. But we asked for the person submitting to discuss what preventative actions and recommendations and since we've had SafeStart, everyone at our company is trained with that. We get a lot of these that are put in SafeStart language, which is great, and that's really what we're looking for. He said that his date was rushing, that he was a little bit frustrated as well, since he was waiting for his helper to join him in the truck. The partner was certainly put in the line of fire due to this rushing and had he self-triggered and stayed where it was or even called his helper they all have cell phones and said,  "Hey, where are you? That's that situation certainly could have been printed and, as you all know it, could have been so much worse. 

15:50
So that's one area. I'm gonna have another close call or two that I'll talk about at the conference. But some of the other areas that we've incorporated SafeStart into that I'll talk about in more detail at the at the conference are how we've done it into our safety meetings, our Safe driving program we have a new defensive driving program and we've incorporated SafeStart into that. Our new employees, how we, how we orient our new employees, the new employee orientation, our annual safety days, how we include SafeStart in that. And I'll talk a little bit about rewards programs. We're a little bit limited in the rewards that we can give as a public utility but we what we're looking at a rewards program as well for participation in that. 

Danny Smith
Host
16:33
You know, thinking about this idea of the near miss and, I guess, by extension, kind of the accident investigation A lot of folks deal with that as well and incorporate SafeStart into that. How did you incorporate and just make sure that it was not, shall we say, becoming well, the blame game, if you will, because that certainly is a concern with a lot of folks when we start looking at and either accident investigations or Incident analysis, whatever you want to call them or the even back down to near miss reporting? 

Rob McManis
Guest
17:02
How do? 

Danny Smith
Host
17:03
you avoid the blame game there. 

Rob McManis
Guest
17:05
And that's really the third ingredient, Danny, and I'll talk about that in a lot of detail at  the conference I'll have, I'll be able to bring what our in that accident investigation process looks like, including this, the SafeStart states and the tools that we provide our managers as they're doing the accident investigations. But it really helps to start with everyone speaking the same language and SafeStart is a is an area where that we all understand what rushing means and we all understand complacency because we've had the training. But then, and having training in the human factors and common terms is really where it starts. 

17:52
What we found was by taking blame out of it, we, had a lot more and it's, I guess it's a good thing, we had a lot more self-reported accidents. I think a lot of businesses and companies throughout the country you'll all of a sudden you see a ding in a car, that or vehicle that you didn't have a ding in and no one seems to know how that happened, and or one of your employees limping off at the end of the day or coming in to work the next day, injured, and you suspect that perhaps that could have happened at work, but we've taken that out. Our employees are self-reporting accidents, which helps us Be able to learn from that, and that's a big part of our accident investigation Is to find out what happened, how it happened, and get to the root cause so that we can prevent that from happening again, and supervisors and managers are really prompted on the human factors as they go through the investigation process using the forms that we have, and I'll be happy to share those at the conference. 

Danny Smith
Host
18:54
That sounds great and we're running a little bit short on time here, but before we hit record, Rob was sharing a story that frankly underscores just the value of human factors. You mind telling a real quick story about that? 

Rob McManis
Guest
19:11
Sure, this is one of the more strange accidents that I've encountered in my time as safety manager. So let me set the stage for you here a little bit. The line crew were electric utilities, so we have line crews that are setting a pole in a line. They were loading up to head back to the shop. The pole had been set, they were doing some cleanup but pretty much buttoning up. 

19:36
It was getting near the end of the day, near quitting time, and the last task to do is to nail a pole to a pole number, to the pole itself. This is typically done by the helpers and on this particular job, there were two helpers, because they also help with traffic control and flagging. So we were in an area that had that and we required two flaggers and two helpers to do that. So neither one really jumped up and labeled the pole because they kind of assumed that the other one would do it. So as everyone was literally hopping into their vehicles to leave, we realized that they realized that the pole had not been stenciled. 

20:14
So right off the bat, the helper who jumped out was feeling pretty rushed and all eyes were on him as he was gathering his tools to go put the stencil on. 

20:25
So instead of using the nail holder that we provide for him to hold the nails, he threw a handful of one-inch galvanized nails into his mouth. He grabs the hammer and the pole stencil and he trots off to stencil the pole. He isn't still sure exactly how it happened, but while he was quickly nailing the stencil to the pole, one of the nails that was in his mouth slipped to the back of his throat and he swallowed it. Can you imagine the surprise and dread that he felt, that any of us would feel at that moment that that nail is in the back of your throat and heading on down? He had to swallow a couple of times. He said he got stuck, but fortunately, he had the wearwithall to immediately tell his foreman that, instead of covering it up, instead of trying to power through or be embarrassed about it, he knew that we had a no-blame safety culture and he told his foreman to hear how this all ended because there's several routes that could go. 

21:30
The listeners are going to need to come to the session or just grab me at the conference. But come to the conference and we can talk a little bit. Spoiler alert though he did survive. He's alive and well and kicking, but how it ended exactly? You'll have to come to my session or grab me at the conference. 

Danny Smith
Host
21:54
And the rest of the story is. A famous broadcaster Paul Harvey, would say. And now that I think about that, probably some of our listeners are too young to know who Paul Harvey is. I guess you can Google that if you don't recognize the name. The rest of the story is well not exactly what you're thinking. Perhaps is that what we should say, Rob, as you were describing it. I'm just thinking about the nail going down my throat, and I can. I think my throat is feeling a little raw just from thinking about that and how painful that must have been. So, Rob, first of all, thanks for being here today and taking some time with us. And well, this really gets fired, gets me fired up for February. I'm really excited about it. I'm really excited for your session and all the other great sessions. I was looking through the list just the other day of everyone that we're going to have at the conference speaking and it's just going to be a phenomenal, phenomenal time. So really excited to be there. 

Rob McManis
Guest
22:52
I'm excited too. Danny, thank you very much for the invite to talk beforehand. I've been excited about this and keep checking the website myself. It's great to see the speakers being added and a little bit more detail coming out on the session, so I'm looking forward to spending time talking with all the safety professionals and trainers that happen to come and managers that come to the conference. Really looking forward to it and a beautiful place to be as well in mid-February. 

Danny Smith
Host
23:24
Absolutely, and thanks for everyone for listening today. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to listen and please, as a reminder, share the podcast with other folks. And if you would like to reserve your spot for the conference in February, just to remind you, you can do that a couple of ways. Either you can contact your account executive and they can point you in the right direction, or you can go out to our conference website, which is humanfactorsconference.com.  human factors with an"s"conferencecom. Rob, thanks once again for being with us for SafeTalk with SafeStart. I'm Danny Smith and just remind you to just keep working on those performance-related habits. And well, is it fair to say, Rob, keep the nails out of your mouth? That works for me. 

Rob McManis
Guest
24:15
I haven't done it since then. 

Danny Smith
Host
24:18
Thanks, everybody, have a great day. 

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