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- When you hear the term occupational safety and health,
I'm curious what comes to mind.
Probably OSHA,
compliance,
other unpleasantries in the workplace.
And that's a very, almost narrow and limiting view.
What I'm going to do over the next 10 minutes
is try to convince you that there is a lot of potential,
untapped potential, if we practice safety properly.
Every year, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
publishes reports on where fatalities occur,
the causes of fatalities,
and the same with the nonfatal injury and illnesses.
And we study that here, and businesses look at this.
The problem is I think it unfairly
stereotypes certain industries,
or causes us to sort of blanket
and just focus on certain things.
I started my career as a compliance officer with OSHA,
that's how I cut my teeth in safety.
And so what I'm gonna be sharing with you today
comes from a culmination of over 20 years
of experience, studies, research,
and this one figure here from the report is interesting
'cause it kind of encapsulates a lot of things.
Now when I was a compliance officer,
I was doing enforcement work,
but I was hearing and I was listening to the workers,
listening to management and I noticed things,
that there is more like these social aspects
of an organization, or the relationships,
we'll say relationships.
And that's what seemed to be more indicative
of a safe workplace than all the compliance,
and programs, and rules, and all this stuff.
And, as you'll see here, smaller companies
have much lower accident rates than bigger companies.
They don't have the resources, they probably don't even
have a safety professional working for them.
Why is that?
Well, I noticed that it was people trust each other.
They talk to each other.
They knew how to work around the constraints of work
or had the control or autonomy
to redesign their own work
to mitigate the hazards that are there.
In 2009, I was lucky enough to be asked
to be the lead safety volunteer
for the show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
So, up in northern Wisconsin,
I was called on a Friday afternoon.
They said, "We've been calling around,
"you were recommended."
Of course, I'm a professor,
so I'm sitting around, right?
Just kidding, no, I wasn't.
But I said, "Sure, I'll help out, what do I have to do?"
They said, "Well, on Monday,
"we're gonna be knocking on the family's door,
"and you need to supply two safety professionals
"on-site 24/7 for that week."
Okay, lucky I have a lot of friends.
I tapped into my resources, within 72 hours,
I had a full schedule of safety professionals
who were gonna on-site at all times.
Now, what's interesting about this,
is that we didn't come in and go,
"Okay, here are the OSHA standards, follow them."
What we did is I set up some principles,
those principles being let's help people.
We're not gonna, you know, force people to do this,
we're gonna help people.
If somebody doesn't have head protection,
we're gonna bring it to them.
If somebody needs helps lifting something, we're gonna help lift.
But more importantly is we had to protect
the non-skilled volunteers on-site.
The people who clamored to be on a TV show,
they were our biggest hazard.
And so we started a training program for them,
and then we had them only go on-site
when they are mentored or supervised
by one of the experts,
the people who were construction folk volunteering.
And we were very successful with this.
And the other thing that I did
is I instituted a journal,
so that each group that handed off to the next group
saw what the previous group did,
understood the training, maybe things they found,
and it actually evolved as it went through.
And you have to do that with a construction site
because the construction site evolves.
And so we were very successful,
and we provided this family with a wonderful new home,
which they gratefully accepted.
What I want to share with you now is
seven principles, or I call my philosophy on safety,
and I think it really will give you insight into
how I practice, how I teach, and how I research safety.
A very, I don't know if you'd call it new,
but an innovative look at it.
Safety is an attribute of work,
and what I mean by that is I picture everything as a system.
So there's elements that are interacting with each other,
and it's complex.
And if we oversimplify a complex issue,
we're not gonna solve it, we're gonna be wrong.
No offense to Occam.
Okay, wow, flat. (laughter)
But it all started really with the Industrial Revolution,
Industrial Revolution gave birth to the work organization.
People working together for a specific purpose,
but there's a lot of complexities there.
We had new forms of technology,
and we still have new forms of technology.
We have new chemicals, we have new issues,
and how are we allowing the individuals
who are hired to do specific tasks?
Do we give them the tools, the knowledge,
in order to be successful?
That they can ask for help when they need it,
where they can take time to go get the right tool,
or to control their own work environment
so they can mitigate whatever hazards are there
or avoid the exposure.
And so, if we take safety out of work,
if we take it out of the design of work,
unmoor it from that, we're gonna be unsuccessful.
And it's gonna make the job not as fun.
And it's gonna make our relationships,
it's gonna destroy them.
And we're not gonna communicate,
and then all things go mad, not just safety.
I said bad, not mad, sorry about that.
I believe all workers want to do a good job,
at least initially when they're first hired.
The problem is if we don't give them
the opportunity to get some satisfaction,
to feel appreciated for the work they do,
or if we don't give them an opportunity to succeed,
we're not gonna achieve that.
And I believe safety is linked
to people being able to do a good job.
And so, therefore, if I study work,
I study the job itself, but not just that,
what's their relationship with coworkers?
With the relationship with their supervisor?
How often do they see top management?
All these things are very critical
to their ability to understand their job completely,
to appreciate what they do,
to be proud that they're getting something done,
and they're doing it in a safe manner,
because you can get something done safely or unsafely.
And if safety is removed,
and it's incongruent to the work rule,
what are workers gonna choose?
What are supervisors gonna choose?
They're there to get the work done,
if safety's not part of that, well, so be it.
All people want to be treated fairly,
that's very, very consistent.
I know there are theory out there,
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs,
you've probably heard of that.
B.F. Skinner's ABC Model, fine, good.
I believe Adams' Equity Theory explains more
why people change their attitude and behavior
and do certain things, than anything else.
You've heard of a fair day's pay for a fair day's work,
that's the foundation of it.
Back in the '60s, Adams came up with that.
It's been extended in the '80s by Greenberg
to organizational justice.
If we perceive injustice or unfairness,
that greatly affects us
and our relationships at our workplace.
Which, in turn, affects our communication in the workplace.
Which, in turn, allows things to go bad very quickly
if we don't do something about it.
People do not try to get hurt.
They just, they're trying to get a job done,
and if we don't consider all aspects of the job,
which could lead to exposure,
I know you guys are starting to see the pictures.
(laughter)
It happens.
But they don't intend to get hurt.
Going back to fairness.
We have this inert desire,
it's called the fundamental attribution error,
that when we see someone get hurt, we blame them.
We do that.
But when you're the one who got hurt,
you can usually identify external factors that led to it.
That's what I'm talking about,
the design of work,
external factors that are complex and interacting.
But if we blame someone and they got hurt
because they're trying to do a good job,
and safety is not there and we blame them,
that really affects them.
That affects the entire social fabric of an organization,
and that's something I've studied.
If I had more time, I would definitely share all that with you,
but, believe me, people do not want to get hurt.
We need to make them so they can do their job successfully
and really be excited about what they're doing,
but do it in a safe manner as well.
If we assume that all workers have everything they need
to get their job done successfully, we're wrong.
We need everybody to be successful,
if not, then somebody has to make up for it.
Organizations are only successful
as the success of each individual,
that's how I approach safety.
It sounds different, doesn't it, it is.
I want everybody to be able to get their job done,
because nothing is static.
Things change day in and day out.
We have new workers coming in,
we have new technology coming in.
It's a constant effort to understand
what may be preventing someone from being successful,
or affect some relationship with an organization
because all that affects safety,
it affects productivity, it affects satisfaction.
I'm highly analytical, I measure a lot of things,
and by doing so and by looking at the work system itself,
I can understand safety from multiple factions.
I'm not just gonna justify a change in the work
because OSHA might come in and cite it?
No, that's not a good justification.
I can link it to productivity, I can link it to savings.
You know, if someone gets hurt, that's gonna slow things down.
That's gonna affect mindset of people.
One example, but this is throughout my entire life,
when my kids see a commercial on a new toy,
they're like "Daddy, we want that."
I'm like, "Here, fill out this form here,
"about what you think the quality will be,
"how much you'll play with it,
"and I'll see if I can cost justify it."
You know you can make kids like old toys
by repurposing them as Christmas gifts.
Just saying. (laughter)
Not Santa, but Christmas gifts.
They don't know.
I'm concerned by a heightened
attention to people wanting to adopt
what other companies are doing because they're successful.
I believe it's the journey we go on,
it's the techniques that we replicate every day
with a focus on improving the work,
improving the success of the individual,
which ultimately creates a functional safety program.
But too often people are trying to buy it,
the magic pill, the silver bullet.
I'm saying right here and now we can't buy a safety program.
We can't say, "Oh, there's a safe organization,"
and mimic what they do because we will fail.
We have to go through a journey in order to get there.
So, almost ending on time,
what I want to share with all of you,
we are new to the business school.
We are the envy of a lot of safety degree programs
around the US, there is enormous potential here.
I've got several student groups
out serving companies right now,
building their safety program from the roots up.
We've got interns who, we've been very lucky,
with their number of offers.
We have interns going out
before they're doing their capstone.
This summer I've got a lot of non-safety students
taking my intro safety course.
So, I really want UW Whitewater
to be the beacon of southern Wisconsin
for class projects,
for practical research, for interns,
and I see more and more how safety can actually
be improving or providing management students,
human resource students, by the way,
there's a lot of potential for human resource students
who have a safety background, I'm telling ya.
I get people contact me with job offers all the time,
I just don't know anybody yet.
But the idea is,
we should be the next generation
that is going to really serve the safety field,
because right now we can do a lot better,
and I think here at Whitewater,
we can offer that to our community.
(applause)
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