MEMIC Safety Experts: Recent Episodes
Peter Koch
Because safety is more than just a policy, practice, or personal protective equipment, the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast hosted by Peter Koch will interview industry leaders every two weeks on the trends, tools, and techniques that are tried, tested, or emerging in the world of workplace safety. What you learn could save your life or the life of a friend or coworker, or at least save everyone from a few unnecessary cuts, burns and bruises. Make your work, and world, a safer place.
What if the most important safety tool on a jobsite isn't equipment or technology—but it's leadership?
In this episode, we explore how leaders influence workplace safety, shape company culture, and help prevent injuries before they happen. From mentoring new hires and addressing risky behaviors to building psychological safety and accountability, we discuss the leadership practices that keep workers safe and engaged.
Whether you're a business owner, supervisor, safety professional, or skilled trades worker, this conversation offers valuable takeaways for improving workplace safety, employee engagement, safety leadership, and risk management.
Because when leadership is a practice rather than process, everyone benefits—and more people make it home safely at the end of the day.
Learn more about Jenn and the Rugged Training Group at their website: https://www.rugged-training.com/
Too often, HR and safety teams operate in silos—only collaborating after incidents occur. But what happens when these functions align? The result is a people-first culture that not only prevents injuries but also boosts employee engagement, strengthens leadership, and improves overall organizational performance.
In Episode 125 of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, host Peter Koch sits down with Michelle Allen, Chief Human Resources Officer at MEMIC, to explore the powerful connection between HR strategy and workplace safety.
Michelle shares real-world insights on how organizations can move beyond compliance and build integrated, human-centered safety programs that protect employees and empower teams to thrive.
Whether you're an HR leader, safety professional, business owner, or manager, this episode delivers practical strategies to help you improve workplace safety, reduce risk, and foster a culture of trust and performance.
🔗 Explore more workplace safety resources and episodes at memic.com/podcast 📩 Have a topic idea? Email podcast@memic.com
Cybersecurity is no longer just an IT concern—it's a core business issue that aligns with workplace safety.
With cyber and phishing attacks becoming more frequent, more sophisticated, and increasingly focused on people, even small gaps in awareness or process can create serious cybersecurity risks. Just as responsibility for Workplace Safety spreads beyond the Safety Committee or Risk Manager, cybersecurity is no longer just the job of the IT team. It is now a shared responsibility across the organization focusing on employee engagement to help mitigate the ever-changing threat.
In this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Jay Carter, Chief Information Security Officer at MEMIC explores how today's cyber threats impact employees, operations, and organizational culture, covering training tools, phishing simulations, message fatigue, and making security feel empowering rather than punitive.
Key Takeaways:
- Why cybersecurity is essential to workplace safety culture
- How cyber incidents affect employees and operations
- Practical ways to reduce risk through awareness and strategy
Listen now to learn how cybersecurity helps keep people—and workplaces—safe.
Combustible dust remains a major—but often overlooked—industrial hazard. In this episode, we break down what combustible dust is, why deadly explosions continue to occur, and what's changing in regulations and industry best practices. We also explore practical steps organizations can take right now to strengthen prevention, improve training, and build a safer workplace.
Perfect for safety leaders, supervisors, risk managers, and anyone responsible for protecting workers and preventing catastrophic incidents.
Practical winter safety strategies for outdoor workers and supervisors, informed by the field experience of Maine's Baxter State Park rangers.
Rob Tice - Baxter State Park District Ranger.
He began his career in Baxter State Park in 2001 and was hired as the Alpine Ranger spending nearly a decade of winters at Chimney Pond, in a remote cabin, 15 miles from his truck. Conducting search and rescue, Avalanche, education and ice climbing. Rob is a law-enforcement supervisor and enjoys spending time in the park to recreate and has been participating in search and rescue for 33 years. Rob has had the opportunity to climb and mountaineer on Mount Rainier, Denali and in the Canadian Rockies.
Matt McGuire - Chief Ranger (Director of Operations).
Matt worked 26 years for Maine Stare Parks as a Ranger and Supervisor before joining Baxter in August of 2024. He oversees law enforcement, campgrounds, trails, and maintenance & transportation divisions, as well as wild land fire, emergency medicine, and Search and Rescue operations. Matt has been climbing in the park for more than 20 years, with the majority of that time being in the winter. He is a licensed EMT and MASAR certified Search Team Member and Technical Rope Rescue Team Member.
In today's competitive landscape, workplace safety isn't just about compliance – it's a critical driver of success, deeply intertwined with an organization's culture and leadership.
This episode unwraps two case studies: the remarkable journey of WD-40, guided by a CEO whose unwavering dedication to employee well-being has not only minimized incidents but also fueled innovation and profitability. Contrast this with the ongoing challenges at Boeing. Once a titan of engineering excellence, the aerospace giant continues to face significant scrutiny and setbacks due to a perceived erosion of its safety culture.
Joined by Randy Klatt, former director of Loss Control at MEMIC, who now sits on the Advisory Board for the Foundation for Aviation Safety - we'll analyze how principles of strong safety leadership, from transparent communication to empowering frontline workers, can either elevate a company to new heights or bring it to its knees. Whether you're a CEO, a safety professional, or simply interested in the dynamics of organizational success, this podcast will illuminate why safety is, without a doubt, the ultimate dividend.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast I am joined by MEMIC safety consultant Rose Wess and former WGME 13 news anchor Kim Block to talk about the critical importance of slip, trip, and fall prevention. Learn how these accidents happen, the devastating impact they can have, and practical strategies to keep yourself safe at work and home.
Reports of violence in the workplace have escalated over the last 10 to 20 years, despite laws and rules that have been put in place to prevent these situations from happening. So, as a business owner, supervisor or manager, what can you do? Are you prepared to manage a situation once it starts? Better yet, do you know the warning signs and have a plan to deescalate the situation before it starts?
Today on the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Command Master Sergeant, United States Army Retired Bart Womack, author of the book, Embedded Enemy, and screenplay for the feature film of the same name, joins me to discuss the issue of workplace violence using his experience, expertise and knowledge from a survivor’s perspective on insider threats.
https://www.bartwomack.com/
Workplace safety isn't just about compliance; it's a reflection of leadership and a commitment to employee well-being. Leadership in the workplace plays a crucial role in fostering a culture of safety using leading indicators to identify problem areas as well as leadership strategies that support safety as the balancing point between productivity and quality.
Today on the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Shawn Galloway, CEO of the global consultant agency, ProActSafety joins me to discuss his insights on how business leaders can create and nurture a safer workplace through targeted leadership and the strategic use of leading indicators.
Links:
- Home - Shawn Galloway, Speaker, Author, Consultant
- ProAct Safety - Experts in Behavioral Safety
- Safety Culture Excellence® on Apple Music
In this episode, we explore the fascinating realm of AI (artificial intelligence) with Lillith Chute, senior software engineer here at MEMIC. We will go from its basic concepts to its potential for revolutionizing industries. Join us as we navigate the exciting and complex world of AI, exploring its potential, its limitations, and its impact on our future.
Every summer, MEMIC interns from across all departments dip their toes into the world of safety culture and Workers' Compensation insurance by working alongside industry professionals, both in the field and around the office. Join me as I chat with Isaac, our Loss Control intern, and Caitlin, or Communications intern.
Having the right hiring practices is critical for building an effective, productive, and safe team that will attract other quality candidates. In this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Mark Walker and Luck Slabaugh of Safer Hire about using pre-hire surveys to identify applicants who best fit your company's needs and culture.
Slip and fall exposures exist everywhere and can easily be overlooked in the workplace until someone is injured.
Today on the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I have Tim McCarty, MSc, Senior Vice President – Safety & Risk Consulting for Clark Insurance, A Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC Company. Tim has expertise in many fields within the realm of safety, but one that he and I have collaborated on is slip and fall prevention and we are going to delve into the problem of slips and falls, why they happen, and talk about ways to prevent them.
Episode Links:
https://www.nsc.org/
https://nfsi.org/
https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/2018-12/fy07_sh-16625-07_slipstripsfalls.ppt
https://www.osha.com/blog/slips-trips-falls-prevention
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2013-100/pdfs/2013-100.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2011-123/pdfs/2011-123.pdf
https://memic.com/workplace-safety/resource-library/slip-trip-fall
Work, no matter what the work can be physically taxing. That work can be at home in the yard or garden, working on the car or the place you live, or caring for kids and family. Or it can be in the workplace – in the office, on the factory floor, on the construction site, in the lab, or on the manufacturing line. No matter where it is, that work can be hard physically and mentally, the trades especially.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I'm joined by Kelly Feldkamp of ProVention Plus, a woman-owned family business that is passionate about helping people move and feel better.
Many studies have been conducted to determine the efficacy of Virtual Reality (VR) as an educational tool. Results indicate that learning in a VR environment leads to higher rates of retention and recall when compared to computer-based learning. These engaging and controlled environments also allow tradespeople to gain experience in a safe, and cost-effective manner while simultaneously developing requisite skills and muscle memory.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I sit down with Glen Hilt of Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, as we discuss how they are training the next generation of shipbuilders using this new, cutting-edge technology.
Noise in the workplace can be dangerous. A loud environment can cause problems ranging from difficulties concentrating and stress to hearing damage and poor decisions. Controlling noise through engineering controls such as dampening, absorption, or isolation and help reduce injuries and increase productivity.
Episode Resources:
- DDS Acoustical - https://ddsacoustical.com/
Maryann Hoff, MEMIC’s Vice President of Loss Control discusses how industry and safety professionals need to better understand the why behind a safe workplace and breaks it down into the Five Whys of Safety Commitment.
According to the CDC, 22 million American workers are exposed to noise levels above 85 decibels at work every year, and 30 million workers are exposed to chemicals that can be ototoxic. Add to that the 48 million Americans currently experiencing hearing loss to one degree or another, and the stats paint a grim picture. Noise Mapping, Sound Level Meters, audiometric testing, PPE, and hearing conservation programs are tools to help identify and control workplace noise exposure.
Maureen Anderson, MEMIC’s Manager of Ergonomics discusses ergonomic risk factors and controls, body mechanics, assessment tools, and how future technology may shape our process for creating ergonomic solutions.
A team from the Maine Department of Labor discusses the overall challenge of young worker safety, what might be driving the injuries, and strategies for business to prevent them.
Episode Resources:
- Fair Labor Standards Act Advisor: Prohibited Occupations for Non-Agricultural Employees
- Child Labor Violations Continue to Rise in Maine
- Child Labor Bulletin 102 - Child Labor Requirements in Agricultural Occupations Under the Fair Labor Standards Act.PDF
- Maine Department of Labor - Workforce Resources for Schools and Students
- Maine Department of Labor - SafetyWorks!
- Follow the Maine Department of Labor on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
New techniques, evolving technologies, and collaboration at the federal level have created tools like the National Incident Command System for organizing collaborative responses across agencies to large scale emergencies from natural disasters to terrorist attacks (domestic and foreign).
OSHA’s new proposed clarification for PPE in the Construction standard reinforces that PPE MUST FIT. Failure to follow this simple statement is one the reasons why workers are injured when they believe they are protected. PPE shouldn’t just be provided, it MUST fit the worker properly to function as it was designed!
Joining me on the podcast to reveal the problems with poor fitting PPE and what can be done about it is Allison Short, Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC.
Episode Resources:
- DOL Proposal for Clarification of the Construction PPE Standard, 1926.95 : https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/national/07192023
- OSHA’s page on Women in Construction: https://www.osha.gov/women-in-construction/ppe
- NIOSH article on PPE Fit in the Construction Sector: https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2023/03/06/ppe-fit-construction/
- ASSP’s 2019 article on Fixing the Fit of PPE: https://www.assp.org/news-and-articles/how-can-we-fix-the-fit-of-personal-protective-equipment
- European Trade Union Institute article: https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/ez_import/Hesamag_12_EN-34-37.pdf
- Business Insider article on Ukrainian uniforms: https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-rushing-women-uniforms-after-sizing-infection-complaints-military-war-2023-7
- Neurosurgeon Dr. Grunch’s tik tok video on radiation protection: https://www.tiktok.com/@ladyspinedoc/video/7246906972279377198
- The Center for Construction Research and Training – great list of vendors, by clothing type, for construction PPE: https://www.cpwr.com/research/research-to-practice-r2p/r2p-library/resources-for-stakeholders-and-researchers/construction-personal-protective-equipment-for-the-female-workforce/
Bees can swarm around trash areas in the summer, but businesses should be able to eliminate or reduce the bee population around dumpsters through good waste and trash management practices, dumpster and trash area maintenance, and staff training.
Heat stress occurs when environmental conditions, physical activity, and your own personal risk factors combine to cause your core temperature to rise in a manner where your body begins to struggle to compensate or regulate.
It’s the season for property maintenance. Workers behind mowers or with a string trimmer in hand are common sights across the nation. Training for staff assigned these jobs is usually weighted toward equipment operation and safety. However, knowing “what” you are “mowing” can be just as important.
Workplace Safety and Injury Prevention can be like trying to build a puzzle without the picture on the box. All the pieces connect together, but in order for it to be a seamless picture, they have to connect in a particular way and order. As a safety professional, you may have all the pieces but not the big picture on the box, or you have the picture but can make the pieces fit together.
Joining Peter on the podcast to help paint a picture of the workplace injury prevention puzzle is Terry Dussault corporate Environmental Health and Safety professional and founder of Yellowknife Consulting Services in Southern California.
On this, our 100th episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I spend an hour with MEMIC's Head-Honcho of Workplace Safety, Mike Bourque, as we reflect on MEMIC's 30 year history, our vision for the future, and the corporate values that will guide us there. Check it out on memic.com/podcast.
Injury management is a key part of the workplace safety equation and getting the injured employee the appropriate level of care quickly and seamlessly is at the heart of the process.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Lara Heal, Senior Director of Managed Care at MEMIC and Jared Payton, Direct of Claim Services at MEMIC join me to discuss MEMIC’s workplace injury tirage tool, First Call, how it works and why your business should enroll.
Continuous process improvement for your safety program can challenging. However, with the right perspective, it can be integrated effectively and create an environment where quality and productivity thrive over the long term.
To help provide that perspective is Sean Fields licensed professional engineer and certified Six Sigma Blackbelt with Oklahoma Manufacturing Alliance.
References mentioned during episode:
- https://quantumlean.wordpress.com/
- https://www.okalliance.com/
- https://www.beehivefund.org/
For some, a workplace inspection can be associated with a visit from OSHA or another certifying agency. Others may find them tedious and disconnected from expectations. However, workplace inspections can be a useful tool to connect what a business expects to the reality of the work being done.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Rod Stanley, Director of Region 1 for Loss Control at MEMIC and I dig into the process and workflow of inspections and how they are an effective part of managing safety, quality, and productivity.
Did you know that the average OSHA Voluntary Protection Program worksite has a lost workday incidence rate at least 50 percent below the average of its industry? Curious about what it’s like to go through the VPP process?
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Bob Thompson, former employee of a chemical manufacturer shares his experience of working on the volunteer team that brought the chemical plant into VPP compliance.
Ever wonder what a Safety person does all day? Could be Training, or Safety by Walking Around, or completing a Deliberate Risk Assessment Worksheet, or even Relationship building.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast Tobi Bledsoe, talks how his experience in the Navy prepared him to be the Safety Office for the US Army’s Pacific 10th Support Group.
Not all workplace violence happens with a weapon. Sometimes it can be verbal or even psychological abuse from a customer or a fellow employee. Regardless of the tool, violence at the workplace is on the rise.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast Corey Jones, Owner of Safetyman Consulting and former shift commander of the SWAT team in Mount Laurel New Jersey joins me to discuss the problem of workplace violence and what you can do to prepare for and prevent it.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported that in 2020 there were nearly a quarter million work related musculoskeletal injuries that resulted in days away from work with the average number of days away being 14 (1) . Statistics also show that warming up properly can also increase performance and reduce the potential for injuries during physical activity. (2)
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast Clayton Cartwright, Physical Therapist and Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC and I stretch the classic definition of a workplace stretching program and explore the benefits of one that is well executed.
- https://www.bls.gov/iif/nonfatal-injuries-and-illnesses-tables.htm#dafw
- https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-10-75
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported that in 2020 there were nearly a quarter million work related musculoskeletal injuries that resulted in days away from work with the average number of days away being 14 (1) . Statistics also show that warming up properly can also increase performance and reduce the potential for injuries during physical activity. (2)
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast Clayton Cartwright, Physical Therapist and Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC and I stretch the classic definition of a workplace stretching program and explore the benefits of one that is well executed.
- https://www.bls.gov/iif/nonfatal-injuries-and-illnesses-tables.htm#dafw
- https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-10-75
90% of all Physical and Occupational Therapists will suffer an occupational injury in their career. One in every six will change jobs or careers as a result of a work-related musculoskeletal injury. There are tools available such as lift, slides, and slings, but they are not always used.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast Susan Diffenderfer, Physical Therapist and Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC and I explore Safe Patient Handling tools, ergonomics, and how a change in a point of view can help prevent Physical and Occupational Therapist injuries.
Links and resources:
· Cause, Prevalence, and Response to Occupational Musculoskeletal Injuries Reported by Physical Therapists and Physical Therapist Assistants | Physical Therapy | Oxford Academic (oup.com) - Holden
· Work-related musculoskeletal disorders among physical therapists - PubMed (nih.gov) – Bork, B.E.
· Work-Related Activities Associated with Injury in Occupational and Physical Therapists - PMC (nih.gov) – Darragh, Amy
· Effect of a safe patient handling program on rehabilitation outcomes - PubMed (nih.gov) – Campo, Marc
· SPH Techniques Video 5: Strategies for rehab nursing and rehab therapists - YouTube – NYSLabor safe patient handling techniques video series www.dol.ny.gov
· Safe Patient Handling and Movement | APTA – American Physical Therapy Association
· policy-e14-20211115.pdf (aota.org) – American Occupational Therapy Association Safe Patient Handling and Mobility Policy
· Safe Patient Handling Toolkit | ARN (rehabnurse.org) – Association of Rehabilitation Nurses
· Work-related musculoskeletal disorders in physical therapists: prevalence, severity, risks, and responses - PubMed (nih.gov) – Cromie, JE
· Healthcare - Safe Patient Handling | Occupational Safety and Health Administration (osha.gov)
· Safe Patient Handling and Mobility (SPHM) | NIOSH | CDC
· ASPHP | Association of Safe Patient Handling Professionals
· Implementation of a Safe Patient Handling Program in a Multihospital Health System From Inception to Sustainability: Successes Over 8 Years and Ongoing Challenges (sagepub.com) – Olinski, Christine
· Safe-patient-handling equipment in therapy practice: implications for rehabilitation - PubMed (nih.gov) – Darragh, Amy
· OSHA3708.pdf – Safe Patient Handling Fact Brochure
· Work-related musculoskeletal disorders in physical therapists: a prospective cohort study with 1-year follow-up - PubMed (nih.gov) – Campo, Marc
Behavioral economics looks at how the decisions we make are influenced by our human cognitive processes. While there are many ways to impact choices, social marketing and nudging are two that can be implemented on the workplace safety front.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast we have part two of my conversation with the Director of the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety, Dr. Julie Sorenson about how a simple nudge can help change the architecture of choice.in workplace safety.
Behavioral economics looks at how the decisions we make are influenced by our human cognitive processes. While there are many ways to impact choices, social marketing and nudging are two that can be implemented on the workplace safety front.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast we have part two of my conversation with the Director of the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety, Dr. Julie Sorenson about how a simple nudge can help change the architecture of choice.in workplace safety.
The year is coming to a close and if you haven’t already, you, or someone at your company should be preparing to update your OSHA log and generate your OSHA 300a summary to post at your establishments.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast I speak with Stephen Badger, CSP and Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC about the OSHA recordkeeping standard, what is required of business, different scenarios for recording injuries, and the changes to the electronic submission portion of the standard.
Non-impact musculoskeletal injuries from overexertion cost billions of dollars each year. New data is showing that better core activation and pelvic stability increases performance and reduces knee, back, and shoulder pain in firefighters. Interventions that helped them can also help industrial athletes across the globe.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast Dr. Trent Nessler and I discuss how movement patterns and data can help prevent injuries.
https://readyrebound.com/
Non-impact musculoskeletal injuries from overexertion cost billions of dollars each year. New data is showing that better core activation and pelvic stability increases performance and reduces knee, back, and shoulder pain in firefighters. Interventions that helped them can also help industrial athletes across the globe.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast Dr. Trent Nessler and I discuss how movement patterns and data can help prevent injuries.
Choosing the right respirator is not simple as the act of taking a breath, but it will make breathing easier if you do it right.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast I get to talk to Chad Wedding PhD, from Bullard about the challenges of respiratory protection and state of the art solutions.
On this episode, I sit down with Gary Bonnet, Head of Customer Engagement at SafetyCulture, and chat about how data can help identify leading indicators that could lead to proactive and effective safety solutions around the workplace.
On this episode, I sit down with Gary Bonnet, Head of Customer Engagement at SafetyCulture, and chat about how data can help identify leading indicators that could lead to proactive and effective safety solutions around the workplace.
Inattentive blindness, complacency, and the OSHA’s Fatality Inspection Data. What could make a Halloween episode more scary?
On today’s Fractional Safety episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast killer causes and how to avoid them are the topic of discussion.
00;00;04;03 - 00;00;28;20
Pete Koch
Hello out there in podcast land. You're listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch. Workplace safety can be scary or it can be when its principles, practices and policies aren't followed or ignored. While any time is a good time to review workplace hazards, Halloween provides an interesting backdrop to examine some of the more frightening ones.
00;00;29;19 - 00;01;00;14
Pete Koch
Did you know that there were around 116 fatal workplace injuries reported to OSHA between January and August of this year 2022? If you are great, hopefully you've taken a look at them. But if you haven't. Let me tell you, the list reads like a bad horror novel. But instead of the killer hiding somewhere with an ax or a chainsaw and the victim makes bad choices, well, the victims are all regular people, and the killers are.
00;01;00;26 - 00;01;34;16
Pete Koch
Well, they're more common than you think. The victims in these reports are all normal, everyday working men and women who came to work and never made it back home to their friends, their parents, children, partners or spouses. And they left a hole in the lives of those who are around them. The killers aren't crazy or extraordinary either. You're not going to see one of them crashing into your life like a marvel villain or smashing his ax through the door, like in The Shining or some supernatural force that you never saw coming.
00;01;34;27 - 00;02;01;23
Pete Koch
They are, or at least most are hiding in plain sight. And if you pay attention, not even very carefully, but with an eye for potential, and not through the lens of experience or repetition, you can see them everywhere. And I guarantee one of you listeners has encountered one or more of these already today. And if you haven't yet, I expect you will.
00;02;02;25 - 00;02;22;24
Pete Koch
So from the list, if you read the list that OSHA has got out there, by far the most common killer cause is, well, of course, falling and usually falls from height or some sort of height, but it can be a fall on the same level. So take, for example, a fatal fall that occurred back in January. Well, not that far away.
00;02;22;25 - 00;02;45;21
Pete Koch
January of 2022, according to the OSHA investigation, a worker was unrolling a power washer hose on a roof when they fell through a skylight 30 feet to the floor and died from blunt force trauma injuries. I bet you you can relate if you've ever had that feeling of one moment, there's solid ground under your feet, in the next you're falling.
00;02;46;07 - 00;03;07;18
Pete Koch
Maybe that feeling has come when you've taken the one inch mile fall. You know that one. I bet you were. You step down in the surface is just a little lower than what you expect. There's that split second feeling like you're falling a rush of adrenaline, a sizable contraction of every muscle while you try to regain your balance.
00;03;07;18 - 00;03;32;14
Pete Koch
Then your foot, finally, after it seems an eternity, finds the lower level. And once you catch your breath, all is good in the world again. Those are bad enough. Well, stretch that first split second into almost two, which is an eternity in an unintended freefall. Increase your speed to almost 30 miles an hour and then break your fall.
00;03;32;15 - 00;03;56;20
Pete Koch
Well, with whatever part of your body hits first, because that's not something that you can plan. Falling toward the earth at 30 miles an hour and then all is definitely not right with the world again. After that happens. And so where do I get that information? Well, if you do the math, you start thinking about how far or how fast am I going to be going if I fall 30 feet to the floor?
00;03;56;20 - 00;04;25;21
Pete Koch
And how long does it take? Well, that 30 foot freefall takes about 2 seconds, just a little less than 2 seconds, and you'll increase velocity from zero to almost 30 miles an hour before you hit the ground. That's like getting hit with a mack truck standing still on the highway. And even if you're lucky enough to survive the landing, because people have when we've had falls that I've had to investigate, where we've had a six foot freefall and the individual did not make it.
00;04;25;27 - 00;04;48;22
Pete Koch
We've also had some where they've fallen lot farther than 30 feet and they have made it. But if you're lucky enough to survive the trauma that you're almost guaranteed to sustain, that trauma was never intended to be absorbed by your body. Things on the inside break. Other things in the inside get moved to places that they shouldn't be.
00;04;49;08 - 00;05;10;17
Pete Koch
The recovery will be long and painful, and the overall results will be less than desired and won't be 100% ever, ever again. Prevention here may not be as clear cut as one would think, and maybe you do. Maybe you look at it and go, Well, of course they should have done something with the skylight or he have been up there in the first place.
00;05;10;26 - 00;05;38;08
Pete Koch
Well, whose responsibility is the skylight? Usually it's the property owner. They have the responsibility for the hazards on the premises. Well, if they didn't take care of it and the worker was working for a contractor, then who's responsible for it? Is it the property owner or should the worker, the contractor, have identified the hazard and provided the appropriate protections?
00;05;38;28 - 00;06;10;05
Pete Koch
Well, we can go back to an OCA standard to give us guidance there. So OSHA states in 19 10.20 982 that the employers must and then again must not. It should but must provide and install all fall protection systems and following object protection. This subpart requires and comply with the other requirements in this subpart before any any employee begins work that necessitates fall or falling object protection.
00;06;10;28 - 00;06;48;06
Pete Koch
So taking that there is a requirement there that an employer should be identifying those things first and protecting those employees from that. So even if they were a contractor, the employer, their employer should have done something with that too, if they're doing it from a construction standpoint, not general industry. OSHA requires that each employee on walking working surfaces shall be protected from falling through holes, including skylights more than six feet above lower levels by personal follow up systems, covers or guardrail systems erected around such holes.
00;06;48;10 - 00;07;14;03
Pete Koch
And that comes from 1926. 501b41. Yeah. That killer skylight should have been identified and covered by the contractor before the work began. Or the building owner should have taken actions before the worker went up on the roof. Well, from a practical standpoint, it should be like the voice in your head when you watch a thriller or horror movie like that.
00;07;14;12 - 00;07;31;07
Pete Koch
Right. So if you're going up there on the roof and you see that skylight, it's kind of like watching the horror movie, right? You sit there watching the movie and you think, well, don't, don't do it. Don't go in. Don't go in there. Don't, don't do it. There's the thing is in there. Don't go. And then they go.
00;07;32;06 - 00;07;56;10
Pete Koch
You see the hazard. You should just run the other way. But we don't because we don't see the hazard for what it is. Take, for instance, this next fatality reported to OSHA in January of 2002. So little later on in in the month, and I'm going to take a little bit of creative license here, not with the incident, but with imagining what might have happened before the incident.
00;07;56;18 - 00;08;17;28
Pete Koch
So it's two days after Christmas and the worker got up in the morning, made coffee or maybe held off until the drive to work. So it's a daily habit. I get up, I make my coffee or I do something showered, got dressed in the clothes that they were going to wear, that they wear every day. So they get it in their work clothes, a long sleeve, work shirt, jeans and maybe boots.
00;08;17;28 - 00;08;37;15
Pete Koch
They grabbed a jacket and headed off to work and they maybe even carpooled with others. Again, all good habits that we can rely on. Those are the things that are comfortable to us, the things that keep us going every day, especially when it gets tough, whether it be whether tough or just life tough. Some of those habits really helped to get us by him.
00;08;38;21 - 00;09;07;25
Pete Koch
Then he arrived at work. He checked in with the supervisors and went out to the factory floor. Again, habits. Right. But their everything went from normal to wrong without anyone ever even noticing. So remember those habits? The OSHA incident description states the employee was feeding a one and a half inch bar, stuck into a strainer on his glove or shirt sleeve, was caught on the rotating bar stock.
00;09;08;04 - 00;09;36;10
Pete Koch
The employee was pulled on to the rotating bar stock, causing him to flip forward while his clothing continued to be wrapped around the rotating bar, crushing the employee and causing fatal injuries. A coworker found the employee entrapped on the bar by his clothing, stopped the machine and called a supervisor. Medical help was contacted and first responders arrived, began treatment but could find no signs of life.
00;09;37;10 - 00;10;00;28
Pete Koch
The local police department and the coroner's office were called after that terrible tragedy when anything like that happens and just kind of put yourself in the position of while one the the the deceased in that moment when they realized that they something's going horribly wrong, that they got caught in this machine and that they don't really know what's going to happen next.
00;10;01;01 - 00;10;21;18
Pete Koch
So that just terror that's going to hit their head and then put yourself in the footsteps of the coworker that found that individual. Like what's going to happen with them? They're never going to see the world in the same way again after that. Well, how do you prevent it? In the right mindset, you might have seen it coming.
00;10;22;00 - 00;10;45;21
Pete Koch
So the loose shirt or an unbuttoned shirt sleeve rotating parts could have been missing guards. If you go back and look at the OSHA incident description in the report, there are some citations in there and they go back to the machine guarding or the OSHA standards on machines and machine guarding, but those in themselves, they're all different hazards in one way or another.
00;10;45;21 - 00;11;20;23
Pete Koch
So the unbuttoned shirt sleeve rotating parts, a loose shirt, missing guards. So they're all hazards in one form or another. And they're going to exist out there. And one of those by themselves really isn't a big deal. But when they all come together, it's like everyone's watching the movie and they know what's about to happen. But just like in those eighties and nineties serial killer movies, when the disposable actor finally recognizes that the killer's in the house with them and had been there all the time by that time, it's too late.
00;11;21;13 - 00;11;51;12
Pete Koch
So if you go back to those OSHA standards on machines and machine guarding, it states one or more methods of machine guarding shall be provided to protect the operator and other employees in the machine area from hazards such as those created by point of operation and in going nip points, rotating parts, flying chips and sparks. And that's from 1910 to 12, a one it's a pretty plain in-your-face standard.
00;11;51;19 - 00;12;10;23
Pete Koch
You know, if you want to distill that into one sentence, if it turns or rotates and you can touch it, then guard it. Well, then how come workers at risk don't make the connection? It would seem pretty simple. OSHA has got a standard. If it turns and rotates and I can touch it, then I guard it because I know that machines don't stop.
00;12;10;28 - 00;12;35;06
Pete Koch
They're certainly not going to stop for my clothing and they're not going to stop for my person. Well, over the last, I don't know, 25 years or so as a safety person investigating injuries for both Mimic and my previous employers. I'm going to chalk it up to what I believe is the most common killer cause, and that is complacency.
00;12;36;09 - 00;12;58;18
Pete Koch
So interestingly enough, a few weeks ago, I was speaking to a master electrician who had retired after spending 40 years in a local mill. He started talking about the last few years before he retired and then why he chose to retired, because he really loved his work. He, and especially towards the end of his career, really enjoyed training the new people that were coming on.
00;12;59;11 - 00;13;29;11
Pete Koch
However, as we got talking, he explained that he started to recognize that the safety practices and some of the other tasks he was teaching the new maintenance staff or apprentices. He was finding that he himself was not following that. So there is a difference. He began to notice between what he was teaching in class and with people on the job and the shortcuts he was taking himself when he was by himself.
00;13;29;15 - 00;13;52;06
Pete Koch
Or unfortunately, he told me of a couple of times too, when he showed those shortcuts to some of the people that he was teaching. He told me that he felt that he could be careful enough and he knew the extent of the risks he was taking on. And at some point he was comfortable with that. But what really happened there was he recognized that there was a challenge.
00;13;52;25 - 00;14;20;20
Pete Koch
He had 40 years of experience and that 40 years gave him a lot of practice and familiarity. But it only takes one moment of inattention when you're exposed to the hazard to end it all. He had this wonderful or maybe scary realization, his light bulb moment that his own complacency with the hazards that he worked around every day was the problem.
00;14;20;27 - 00;14;40;24
Pete Koch
And that was his savior because he didn't get hurt when he was there. He kind of got out while the getting was good, I guess you could say. He saw the clown with the hatchet. If we want to take this back to the horror movie example, he saw the clown with the hatchet at the end of the hall, and he turned and he walked the other way or closed the door.
00;14;41;07 - 00;15;10;27
Pete Koch
There are plenty of other examples from OSHA's 2022 fatality list that are a lot less graphic, but they're just as deadly, and they still take a person away from their world. It takes them away from their family and friends. They're not there anymore. And it's important it's important for us to to understand that the majority of these all of these could have been prevented in one way or another, just like this one from January.
00;15;10;27 - 00;15;37;13
Pete Koch
Again, the OSHA investigation description states an employee and coworker began to repair light fixtures at the worksite that were broken. A short time later, the coworker yelled out to the employee to get their attention, but they got no response. The coworker found the employee, the other employee that they were working with laying in a ceiling crawl space and they tapped on the employee's foot.
00;15;38;02 - 00;16;16;14
Pete Koch
And again, no response. The coworker had nearby bystanders call for an emergency response team and then went to go shut the power off to the lights. The fire department arrived, pulled the employee from the crawlspace, attempts at resuscitation were ineffective and it was deemed the employee was killed by electrocution. So if you're a safety professional listening to this, just stop for a moment and try to count the number of times that you've argued with another electrician about de energizing of a circuit, especially when it's a 15 or 20 amp circuit.
00;16;16;26 - 00;16;39;04
Pete Koch
It's almost always too much trouble to go find turn off and lock the circuit out before working on it or replacing or installing fixtures. I know when I have the opportunity to to teach one of the OSHA outreach classes and we do the electrical section, it's interesting to talk to all the individuals and ask them about their experience.
00;16;39;04 - 00;17;00;23
Pete Koch
And when we get to the electrical part, we ask them, So who here has had a little bite before? And most of the people there will raise their hands, especially if they've worked in the maintenance departments before or in construction before, or probably have done some work on the side or in their own homes before. They've all had a little bit nip of electricity and survived.
00;17;00;29 - 00;17;28;01
Pete Koch
And the next question I'll ask them is, well, how come you didn't die? And everybody will have different answers about that. But honestly, it's really just luck that they weren't more tasty to the electricity than the wire and the rest of the stuff that was around them. They had more resistance than the copper wire, but honestly, it's complacency in this last section that was the killer again.
00;17;28;25 - 00;18;00;23
Pete Koch
And unfortunately, the list just keeps going on and on. If you want to read more about Killer causes, because honestly, these are tragic, but they are good fodder for your safety meetings because lots of times people will never think that it'll happen to them. And these are all descriptions about things that happen to people just like them. So you can read through the descriptions and then talk about what did they think happened, how what could we do to prevent it?
00;18;00;24 - 00;18;33;12
Pete Koch
Could this even happen here? So if you're interested to it, then go to OSHA dot gov. If you haven't been to the website before, it's actually got a lot of good information on it. So go to ocean dot gov and type in fatality inspection data in that search OSHA bar in the upper right. And it's going to come up with all this information you can sort by year, you can sort by state, you can sort by the type or the cause, and you'll find lots of different items that you can use for your own safety meetings.
00;18;33;12 - 00;18;59;08
Pete Koch
It's good, and it helps people step away from complacency because complacency really is the killer. Cause here. And it lurks in the places that we frequent, where we work sometimes, where we play. Most of the time it comes disguised as something. So normal that we don't even see them. Never mind, expect them. They won't seem dangerous until it's too late.
00;18;59;17 - 00;19;24;19
Pete Koch
And sometimes we won't see them unless we look at our world from a different perspective, especially our safety world from a different perspective. And I'm not talking about rose colored glasses, but here we often think of hazards that can kill as obvious or easy to spot, something that we will see coming from a mile away and can avoid it, like seeing the scary clown carrying the machete at the end of the hallway.
00;19;24;27 - 00;19;51;28
Pete Koch
We should be able to identify the threat and run the other way. Or like the retired master electrician closed the door. But we don't all the time. We don't see it all the time. We become complacent. We don't know that the hazard or at least forefront of our brain, that the hazard that's in right in front of us can cause substantial injury or possibly even kill us.
00;19;53;03 - 00;20;15;03
Pete Koch
So how do we fight complacency? Because it's going to happen to us. We all experience it in our lives and personally it's really hard to fight that because it's right there in front of us and we get really used to the things that are around us and experts actually have a name for that. It's called Intentional Blindness. It's the concept of that.
00;20;15;03 - 00;20;48;02
Pete Koch
We become blind to what's right in front of us. And I know that you've experienced that before, where you don't see something that's right in front of you because something else was taking your attention and becoming familiar with a place or an area can compound this inattentive blindness, especially when we couple it with some other demands. And there are tons of different demands at work that can cause us to lose sight of the goal of coming home every day safe and in one piece.
00;20;48;10 - 00;21;05;11
Pete Koch
Because at the end of day, if you don't do that, then what is work for? Like, we work for many different things. We work for a goal. We work for something to do. We work for money. We work for our families. And if we don't come home at the end of the day or our employees don't come home at the end of the day, then what's it really for?
00;21;05;12 - 00;21;35;15
Pete Koch
Because we're not achieving the goal that we want. But consider, think about how narrow a focus or consider how to narrow a focus on productivity can drive some strange choices in the workplace. Like if all we ever focus on is being productive and the money, then we make some weird choices. We don't see the things that are right in front of us, and if we do that enough without getting hurt, right?
00;21;35;15 - 00;22;00;03
Pete Koch
So there's that positive reward. So I'm going to focus on the money all the time and I'm not going to have anybody get injured. And that successful experience of being exposed to a hazard and not becoming injured, which happens a lot more frequently than the other, that feeds the attitude of complacency. And it just it's a self-perpetuating cycle when I don't focus on the things that are important.
00;22;00;03 - 00;22;27;10
Pete Koch
And, yes, productivity is important. We cannot be a successful business without having productivity and quality. But if we don't balance that with safety, then we won't be successful over the long term. But again, going back to it as an individual, it may not be possible to avoid all instances of intentional blindness when it comes to safety, because a lot of the other external factors, it becomes incredibly difficult.
00;22;27;21 - 00;22;51;05
Pete Koch
So it's important to remember that this is going to happen to you. It's interesting how it all works. Your brain is sophisticated enough to help you take in and understand all those visual and auditory cues out of all the background noise that we see and hear every day and what gets passed on your brain, things will provide you or provide you with the most value.
00;22;51;13 - 00;23;26;02
Pete Koch
It's thinking that hears all the information that you need to make this decision. But what happens in that effort, that visual information, both important and not important, can sometimes get overlooked. And we don't have the whole picture. I bet you it's happened to you like you're driving down the road, a road that you have driven a million miles over or you've driven down that road a million times, and all of a sudden you start thinking about your day or what you're going to do when you get home or something happens and you think back.
00;23;26;10 - 00;23;49;16
Pete Koch
And it's been a couple of minutes since you've actually paid attention to what's going on, on the road. You didn't notice the stop sign or you didn't notice the change in speed sign or you didn't notice the person that was right on the side of the road until they until you were already past them. That's that inattentive blindness that happens.
00;23;49;25 - 00;24;22;16
Pete Koch
And the only way to combat this on our own is to really stop and really alua your current situation. When you find yourself focused somewhere else or you're finally you find yourself focused on something other than the the combination of information that you actually need to get your job done, productivity, safety and quality. You won't have all the information you really need to stop and take a look at what you're up against in order to be successful as an individual.
00;24;23;03 - 00;24;50;23
Pete Koch
It's really hard, but you have help out there, and business and business owners play a much bigger role in fighting against complacency as a killer. Then they might think, and interestingly enough, I'll phrase it this way OSHA was actually created for just that reason so that we aren't complacent in the workplace or those outside factors don't drive us to complacency and inattentiveness.
00;24;51;12 - 00;25;24;21
Pete Koch
And the thing that that describes best, the employer's responsibility is OSHA's general duty clause. And I imagine you've heard it before, but I'm just going to read it here so that you know it again. And it states each employer shall furnish to each of his employees employment. So they got to be employed and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.
00;25;25;00 - 00;25;51;04
Pete Koch
And that's from the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, Section five A or what we typically call the general duty clause. And not only is this the catchall, but it's the one standard to rule them all. It all comes back down to providing a place that's free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause injury or serious death.
00;25;51;19 - 00;26;17;09
Pete Koch
And that's the responsibility the employer has. They need to know what the job is, what the potential hazards are, and then put the protections in place and train the employees around those hazards and protections before they get engaged in the job. That's great. Seems simple, right? Well, how do you do that if the work that you're engaged in is dangerous in and of itself?
00;26;17;14 - 00;26;40;12
Pete Koch
Like a lot of the work that we do here in the States or around the world, actually think about the flag or on the side of the road. Their job is inherently dangerous. The the individual that we talked about from the one of the OSHA incidents that we read that I read through, the one that that fell 30 feet through the skylight, that job is inherently dangerous.
00;26;40;12 - 00;27;17;15
Pete Koch
The person who was straightening out the bar stuck. His job is inherently dangerous. How do you fix that? Well, like I described earlier, the rest of the standards provide a place to start. So as a business owner, you know, you've got a duty. But where do I go from there? You can start by learning more about the standards because they give you a lot of great information about what you need to do and how your workplace should look in order to protect your staff or your employees from the hazards and exposures that are there.
00;27;18;06 - 00;27;39;22
Pete Koch
And in my experience, there's really no substitute for initial and ongoing training. So as an employer, that's a place to start. So when I bring a new employee on, how do I teach them about what's going on in the workplace, not just where the bathrooms are, where the paycheck is, and what the job is, but what do they really need to do to keep themselves safe?
00;27;40;00 - 00;28;07;08
Pete Koch
That's step one. If you've got someone who's been there forever and knows everything, they're a huge resource for you. First, normalize their understanding of what's required to be safe, and then once you know that they know what's required, then have them help you teach it. Have them be the ambassador, have them help The Apprentice along. That mentorship will really mean a lot and goes a long way.
00;28;07;20 - 00;28;33;15
Pete Koch
But if you don't normalize their understanding of the safety requirements first, then you're bound to start teaching the wrong things going forward. The other prongs of that safety four are checklists and job hazard analysis. Those are excellent tools that can help not only drive your training, but help provide some checks throughout the day to help your employees fight complacency.
00;28;33;21 - 00;29;01;09
Pete Koch
Those checklists are awesome. Why do you think pilots go through a preflight check? That's a really high valued job that they have and it's the price for failure is enormous. So the checklist helps them fight complacency because they've got to go through each and every one. And there's two people doing those checks as they go through. So checklists are great not just to pencil whip something, but to actually give your staff something to check in on themselves for.
00;29;01;17 - 00;29;23;19
Pete Koch
And then job hazard analysis are awesome as well because they can really give you a roadmap of what safety should look like. So this podcast episode isn't about those the checklists and the job hazard analysis, but there are some great resources out there that can help provide you examples to base your checklists and job hazard analysis is off if you don't already have some.
00;29;24;05 - 00;29;51;25
Pete Koch
I'll put some information about those in the show notes that you can jump in and take a look. But really, at the end of the day, the hazard that plays a part in almost every workplace injury and fatality is complacency. It's really the only killer cause. And if it's not the only killer cause, it contributes to other causes.
00;29;52;08 - 00;30;16;28
Pete Koch
And in a future episode, this is an interesting piece. If you want to jump into a future episode, I'll be talking with Dr. Julie Sorenson about the concept of nudging in behavioral science and how it applies to workplace safety. So you should totally two in because I think nudging is that one tool that you can have in your manager's bag that can help combat complacency as a killer cause.
00;30;17;04 - 00;30;42;16
Pete Koch
So tune in for that one because it's going to give you some different insight into how to help with complacency in the workplace. Well, we've made it to just about the end of this podcast episode. And so to all of you listening out there, thank you. We really appreciate you. Today on the Mimic Safety Experts podcast, Halloween episode Killer causes have been the topic of discussion.
00;30;42;26 - 00;31;06;24
Pete Koch
The Mimic Safety Experts podcast is made possible by Mimic a workers compensation insurance carrier whose mission it is to make worker's comp work better. Check us out at Memo Icon. If you would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email me at podcast that mimic Mediacom and we may feature on a future episode. You never know.
00;31;06;24 - 00;31;40;03
Pete Koch
Your idea may be the perfect topic for someone out there in podcast land. Check out our show notes for this episode at Mediacom Forge Slash Podcast, where you can find Memex entire podcast archive and while you're there, sign up for Mimics Safety Net Blog so you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you would subscribe to our podcast and then take a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on.
00;31;40;14 - 00;33;09;13
Pete Koch
And if you've already done that, thank you, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time. This is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
Inattentive blindness, complacency, and the OSHA’s Fatality Inspection Data. What could make a Halloween episode more scary?
On today’s Fractional Safety episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast killer causes and how to avoid them are the topic of discussion.
00;00;04;03 - 00;00;28;20
Pete Koch
Hello out there in podcast land. You're listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch. Workplace safety can be scary or it can be when its principles, practices and policies aren't followed or ignored. While any time is a good time to review workplace hazards, Halloween provides an interesting backdrop to examine some of the more frightening ones.
00;00;29;19 - 00;01;00;14
Pete Koch
Did you know that there were around 116 fatal workplace injuries reported to OSHA between January and August of this year 2022? If you are great, hopefully you've taken a look at them. But if you haven't. Let me tell you, the list reads like a bad horror novel. But instead of the killer hiding somewhere with an ax or a chainsaw and the victim makes bad choices, well, the victims are all regular people, and the killers are.
00;01;00;26 - 00;01;34;16
Pete Koch
Well, they're more common than you think. The victims in these reports are all normal, everyday working men and women who came to work and never made it back home to their friends, their parents, children, partners or spouses. And they left a hole in the lives of those who are around them. The killers aren't crazy or extraordinary either. You're not going to see one of them crashing into your life like a marvel villain or smashing his ax through the door, like in The Shining or some supernatural force that you never saw coming.
00;01;34;27 - 00;02;01;23
Pete Koch
They are, or at least most are hiding in plain sight. And if you pay attention, not even very carefully, but with an eye for potential, and not through the lens of experience or repetition, you can see them everywhere. And I guarantee one of you listeners has encountered one or more of these already today. And if you haven't yet, I expect you will.
00;02;02;25 - 00;02;22;24
Pete Koch
So from the list, if you read the list that OSHA has got out there, by far the most common killer cause is, well, of course, falling and usually falls from height or some sort of height, but it can be a fall on the same level. So take, for example, a fatal fall that occurred back in January. Well, not that far away.
00;02;22;25 - 00;02;45;21
Pete Koch
January of 2022, according to the OSHA investigation, a worker was unrolling a power washer hose on a roof when they fell through a skylight 30 feet to the floor and died from blunt force trauma injuries. I bet you you can relate if you've ever had that feeling of one moment, there's solid ground under your feet, in the next you're falling.
00;02;46;07 - 00;03;07;18
Pete Koch
Maybe that feeling has come when you've taken the one inch mile fall. You know that one. I bet you were. You step down in the surface is just a little lower than what you expect. There's that split second feeling like you're falling a rush of adrenaline, a sizable contraction of every muscle while you try to regain your balance.
00;03;07;18 - 00;03;32;14
Pete Koch
Then your foot, finally, after it seems an eternity, finds the lower level. And once you catch your breath, all is good in the world again. Those are bad enough. Well, stretch that first split second into almost two, which is an eternity in an unintended freefall. Increase your speed to almost 30 miles an hour and then break your fall.
00;03;32;15 - 00;03;56;20
Pete Koch
Well, with whatever part of your body hits first, because that's not something that you can plan. Falling toward the earth at 30 miles an hour and then all is definitely not right with the world again. After that happens. And so where do I get that information? Well, if you do the math, you start thinking about how far or how fast am I going to be going if I fall 30 feet to the floor?
00;03;56;20 - 00;04;25;21
Pete Koch
And how long does it take? Well, that 30 foot freefall takes about 2 seconds, just a little less than 2 seconds, and you'll increase velocity from zero to almost 30 miles an hour before you hit the ground. That's like getting hit with a mack truck standing still on the highway. And even if you're lucky enough to survive the landing, because people have when we've had falls that I've had to investigate, where we've had a six foot freefall and the individual did not make it.
00;04;25;27 - 00;04;48;22
Pete Koch
We've also had some where they've fallen lot farther than 30 feet and they have made it. But if you're lucky enough to survive the trauma that you're almost guaranteed to sustain, that trauma was never intended to be absorbed by your body. Things on the inside break. Other things in the inside get moved to places that they shouldn't be.
00;04;49;08 - 00;05;10;17
Pete Koch
The recovery will be long and painful, and the overall results will be less than desired and won't be 100% ever, ever again. Prevention here may not be as clear cut as one would think, and maybe you do. Maybe you look at it and go, Well, of course they should have done something with the skylight or he have been up there in the first place.
00;05;10;26 - 00;05;38;08
Pete Koch
Well, whose responsibility is the skylight? Usually it's the property owner. They have the responsibility for the hazards on the premises. Well, if they didn't take care of it and the worker was working for a contractor, then who's responsible for it? Is it the property owner or should the worker, the contractor, have identified the hazard and provided the appropriate protections?
00;05;38;28 - 00;06;10;05
Pete Koch
Well, we can go back to an OCA standard to give us guidance there. So OSHA states in 19 10.20 982 that the employers must and then again must not. It should but must provide and install all fall protection systems and following object protection. This subpart requires and comply with the other requirements in this subpart before any any employee begins work that necessitates fall or falling object protection.
00;06;10;28 - 00;06;48;06
Pete Koch
So taking that there is a requirement there that an employer should be identifying those things first and protecting those employees from that. So even if they were a contractor, the employer, their employer should have done something with that too, if they're doing it from a construction standpoint, not general industry. OSHA requires that each employee on walking working surfaces shall be protected from falling through holes, including skylights more than six feet above lower levels by personal follow up systems, covers or guardrail systems erected around such holes.
00;06;48;10 - 00;07;14;03
Pete Koch
And that comes from 1926. 501b41. Yeah. That killer skylight should have been identified and covered by the contractor before the work began. Or the building owner should have taken actions before the worker went up on the roof. Well, from a practical standpoint, it should be like the voice in your head when you watch a thriller or horror movie like that.
00;07;14;12 - 00;07;31;07
Pete Koch
Right. So if you're going up there on the roof and you see that skylight, it's kind of like watching the horror movie, right? You sit there watching the movie and you think, well, don't, don't do it. Don't go in. Don't go in there. Don't, don't do it. There's the thing is in there. Don't go. And then they go.
00;07;32;06 - 00;07;56;10
Pete Koch
You see the hazard. You should just run the other way. But we don't because we don't see the hazard for what it is. Take, for instance, this next fatality reported to OSHA in January of 2002. So little later on in in the month, and I'm going to take a little bit of creative license here, not with the incident, but with imagining what might have happened before the incident.
00;07;56;18 - 00;08;17;28
Pete Koch
So it's two days after Christmas and the worker got up in the morning, made coffee or maybe held off until the drive to work. So it's a daily habit. I get up, I make my coffee or I do something showered, got dressed in the clothes that they were going to wear, that they wear every day. So they get it in their work clothes, a long sleeve, work shirt, jeans and maybe boots.
00;08;17;28 - 00;08;37;15
Pete Koch
They grabbed a jacket and headed off to work and they maybe even carpooled with others. Again, all good habits that we can rely on. Those are the things that are comfortable to us, the things that keep us going every day, especially when it gets tough, whether it be whether tough or just life tough. Some of those habits really helped to get us by him.
00;08;38;21 - 00;09;07;25
Pete Koch
Then he arrived at work. He checked in with the supervisors and went out to the factory floor. Again, habits. Right. But their everything went from normal to wrong without anyone ever even noticing. So remember those habits? The OSHA incident description states the employee was feeding a one and a half inch bar, stuck into a strainer on his glove or shirt sleeve, was caught on the rotating bar stock.
00;09;08;04 - 00;09;36;10
Pete Koch
The employee was pulled on to the rotating bar stock, causing him to flip forward while his clothing continued to be wrapped around the rotating bar, crushing the employee and causing fatal injuries. A coworker found the employee entrapped on the bar by his clothing, stopped the machine and called a supervisor. Medical help was contacted and first responders arrived, began treatment but could find no signs of life.
00;09;37;10 - 00;10;00;28
Pete Koch
The local police department and the coroner's office were called after that terrible tragedy when anything like that happens and just kind of put yourself in the position of while one the the the deceased in that moment when they realized that they something's going horribly wrong, that they got caught in this machine and that they don't really know what's going to happen next.
00;10;01;01 - 00;10;21;18
Pete Koch
So that just terror that's going to hit their head and then put yourself in the footsteps of the coworker that found that individual. Like what's going to happen with them? They're never going to see the world in the same way again after that. Well, how do you prevent it? In the right mindset, you might have seen it coming.
00;10;22;00 - 00;10;45;21
Pete Koch
So the loose shirt or an unbuttoned shirt sleeve rotating parts could have been missing guards. If you go back and look at the OSHA incident description in the report, there are some citations in there and they go back to the machine guarding or the OSHA standards on machines and machine guarding, but those in themselves, they're all different hazards in one way or another.
00;10;45;21 - 00;11;20;23
Pete Koch
So the unbuttoned shirt sleeve rotating parts, a loose shirt, missing guards. So they're all hazards in one form or another. And they're going to exist out there. And one of those by themselves really isn't a big deal. But when they all come together, it's like everyone's watching the movie and they know what's about to happen. But just like in those eighties and nineties serial killer movies, when the disposable actor finally recognizes that the killer's in the house with them and had been there all the time by that time, it's too late.
00;11;21;13 - 00;11;51;12
Pete Koch
So if you go back to those OSHA standards on machines and machine guarding, it states one or more methods of machine guarding shall be provided to protect the operator and other employees in the machine area from hazards such as those created by point of operation and in going nip points, rotating parts, flying chips and sparks. And that's from 1910 to 12, a one it's a pretty plain in-your-face standard.
00;11;51;19 - 00;12;10;23
Pete Koch
You know, if you want to distill that into one sentence, if it turns or rotates and you can touch it, then guard it. Well, then how come workers at risk don't make the connection? It would seem pretty simple. OSHA has got a standard. If it turns and rotates and I can touch it, then I guard it because I know that machines don't stop.
00;12;10;28 - 00;12;35;06
Pete Koch
They're certainly not going to stop for my clothing and they're not going to stop for my person. Well, over the last, I don't know, 25 years or so as a safety person investigating injuries for both Mimic and my previous employers. I'm going to chalk it up to what I believe is the most common killer cause, and that is complacency.
00;12;36;09 - 00;12;58;18
Pete Koch
So interestingly enough, a few weeks ago, I was speaking to a master electrician who had retired after spending 40 years in a local mill. He started talking about the last few years before he retired and then why he chose to retired, because he really loved his work. He, and especially towards the end of his career, really enjoyed training the new people that were coming on.
00;12;59;11 - 00;13;29;11
Pete Koch
However, as we got talking, he explained that he started to recognize that the safety practices and some of the other tasks he was teaching the new maintenance staff or apprentices. He was finding that he himself was not following that. So there is a difference. He began to notice between what he was teaching in class and with people on the job and the shortcuts he was taking himself when he was by himself.
00;13;29;15 - 00;13;52;06
Pete Koch
Or unfortunately, he told me of a couple of times too, when he showed those shortcuts to some of the people that he was teaching. He told me that he felt that he could be careful enough and he knew the extent of the risks he was taking on. And at some point he was comfortable with that. But what really happened there was he recognized that there was a challenge.
00;13;52;25 - 00;14;20;20
Pete Koch
He had 40 years of experience and that 40 years gave him a lot of practice and familiarity. But it only takes one moment of inattention when you're exposed to the hazard to end it all. He had this wonderful or maybe scary realization, his light bulb moment that his own complacency with the hazards that he worked around every day was the problem.
00;14;20;27 - 00;14;40;24
Pete Koch
And that was his savior because he didn't get hurt when he was there. He kind of got out while the getting was good, I guess you could say. He saw the clown with the hatchet. If we want to take this back to the horror movie example, he saw the clown with the hatchet at the end of the hall, and he turned and he walked the other way or closed the door.
00;14;41;07 - 00;15;10;27
Pete Koch
There are plenty of other examples from OSHA's 2022 fatality list that are a lot less graphic, but they're just as deadly, and they still take a person away from their world. It takes them away from their family and friends. They're not there anymore. And it's important it's important for us to to understand that the majority of these all of these could have been prevented in one way or another, just like this one from January.
00;15;10;27 - 00;15;37;13
Pete Koch
Again, the OSHA investigation description states an employee and coworker began to repair light fixtures at the worksite that were broken. A short time later, the coworker yelled out to the employee to get their attention, but they got no response. The coworker found the employee, the other employee that they were working with laying in a ceiling crawl space and they tapped on the employee's foot.
00;15;38;02 - 00;16;16;14
Pete Koch
And again, no response. The coworker had nearby bystanders call for an emergency response team and then went to go shut the power off to the lights. The fire department arrived, pulled the employee from the crawlspace, attempts at resuscitation were ineffective and it was deemed the employee was killed by electrocution. So if you're a safety professional listening to this, just stop for a moment and try to count the number of times that you've argued with another electrician about de energizing of a circuit, especially when it's a 15 or 20 amp circuit.
00;16;16;26 - 00;16;39;04
Pete Koch
It's almost always too much trouble to go find turn off and lock the circuit out before working on it or replacing or installing fixtures. I know when I have the opportunity to to teach one of the OSHA outreach classes and we do the electrical section, it's interesting to talk to all the individuals and ask them about their experience.
00;16;39;04 - 00;17;00;23
Pete Koch
And when we get to the electrical part, we ask them, So who here has had a little bite before? And most of the people there will raise their hands, especially if they've worked in the maintenance departments before or in construction before, or probably have done some work on the side or in their own homes before. They've all had a little bit nip of electricity and survived.
00;17;00;29 - 00;17;28;01
Pete Koch
And the next question I'll ask them is, well, how come you didn't die? And everybody will have different answers about that. But honestly, it's really just luck that they weren't more tasty to the electricity than the wire and the rest of the stuff that was around them. They had more resistance than the copper wire, but honestly, it's complacency in this last section that was the killer again.
00;17;28;25 - 00;18;00;23
Pete Koch
And unfortunately, the list just keeps going on and on. If you want to read more about Killer causes, because honestly, these are tragic, but they are good fodder for your safety meetings because lots of times people will never think that it'll happen to them. And these are all descriptions about things that happen to people just like them. So you can read through the descriptions and then talk about what did they think happened, how what could we do to prevent it?
00;18;00;24 - 00;18;33;12
Pete Koch
Could this even happen here? So if you're interested to it, then go to OSHA dot gov. If you haven't been to the website before, it's actually got a lot of good information on it. So go to ocean dot gov and type in fatality inspection data in that search OSHA bar in the upper right. And it's going to come up with all this information you can sort by year, you can sort by state, you can sort by the type or the cause, and you'll find lots of different items that you can use for your own safety meetings.
00;18;33;12 - 00;18;59;08
Pete Koch
It's good, and it helps people step away from complacency because complacency really is the killer. Cause here. And it lurks in the places that we frequent, where we work sometimes, where we play. Most of the time it comes disguised as something. So normal that we don't even see them. Never mind, expect them. They won't seem dangerous until it's too late.
00;18;59;17 - 00;19;24;19
Pete Koch
And sometimes we won't see them unless we look at our world from a different perspective, especially our safety world from a different perspective. And I'm not talking about rose colored glasses, but here we often think of hazards that can kill as obvious or easy to spot, something that we will see coming from a mile away and can avoid it, like seeing the scary clown carrying the machete at the end of the hallway.
00;19;24;27 - 00;19;51;28
Pete Koch
We should be able to identify the threat and run the other way. Or like the retired master electrician closed the door. But we don't all the time. We don't see it all the time. We become complacent. We don't know that the hazard or at least forefront of our brain, that the hazard that's in right in front of us can cause substantial injury or possibly even kill us.
00;19;53;03 - 00;20;15;03
Pete Koch
So how do we fight complacency? Because it's going to happen to us. We all experience it in our lives and personally it's really hard to fight that because it's right there in front of us and we get really used to the things that are around us and experts actually have a name for that. It's called Intentional Blindness. It's the concept of that.
00;20;15;03 - 00;20;48;02
Pete Koch
We become blind to what's right in front of us. And I know that you've experienced that before, where you don't see something that's right in front of you because something else was taking your attention and becoming familiar with a place or an area can compound this inattentive blindness, especially when we couple it with some other demands. And there are tons of different demands at work that can cause us to lose sight of the goal of coming home every day safe and in one piece.
00;20;48;10 - 00;21;05;11
Pete Koch
Because at the end of day, if you don't do that, then what is work for? Like, we work for many different things. We work for a goal. We work for something to do. We work for money. We work for our families. And if we don't come home at the end of the day or our employees don't come home at the end of the day, then what's it really for?
00;21;05;12 - 00;21;35;15
Pete Koch
Because we're not achieving the goal that we want. But consider, think about how narrow a focus or consider how to narrow a focus on productivity can drive some strange choices in the workplace. Like if all we ever focus on is being productive and the money, then we make some weird choices. We don't see the things that are right in front of us, and if we do that enough without getting hurt, right?
00;21;35;15 - 00;22;00;03
Pete Koch
So there's that positive reward. So I'm going to focus on the money all the time and I'm not going to have anybody get injured. And that successful experience of being exposed to a hazard and not becoming injured, which happens a lot more frequently than the other, that feeds the attitude of complacency. And it just it's a self-perpetuating cycle when I don't focus on the things that are important.
00;22;00;03 - 00;22;27;10
Pete Koch
And, yes, productivity is important. We cannot be a successful business without having productivity and quality. But if we don't balance that with safety, then we won't be successful over the long term. But again, going back to it as an individual, it may not be possible to avoid all instances of intentional blindness when it comes to safety, because a lot of the other external factors, it becomes incredibly difficult.
00;22;27;21 - 00;22;51;05
Pete Koch
So it's important to remember that this is going to happen to you. It's interesting how it all works. Your brain is sophisticated enough to help you take in and understand all those visual and auditory cues out of all the background noise that we see and hear every day and what gets passed on your brain, things will provide you or provide you with the most value.
00;22;51;13 - 00;23;26;02
Pete Koch
It's thinking that hears all the information that you need to make this decision. But what happens in that effort, that visual information, both important and not important, can sometimes get overlooked. And we don't have the whole picture. I bet you it's happened to you like you're driving down the road, a road that you have driven a million miles over or you've driven down that road a million times, and all of a sudden you start thinking about your day or what you're going to do when you get home or something happens and you think back.
00;23;26;10 - 00;23;49;16
Pete Koch
And it's been a couple of minutes since you've actually paid attention to what's going on, on the road. You didn't notice the stop sign or you didn't notice the change in speed sign or you didn't notice the person that was right on the side of the road until they until you were already past them. That's that inattentive blindness that happens.
00;23;49;25 - 00;24;22;16
Pete Koch
And the only way to combat this on our own is to really stop and really alua your current situation. When you find yourself focused somewhere else or you're finally you find yourself focused on something other than the the combination of information that you actually need to get your job done, productivity, safety and quality. You won't have all the information you really need to stop and take a look at what you're up against in order to be successful as an individual.
00;24;23;03 - 00;24;50;23
Pete Koch
It's really hard, but you have help out there, and business and business owners play a much bigger role in fighting against complacency as a killer. Then they might think, and interestingly enough, I'll phrase it this way OSHA was actually created for just that reason so that we aren't complacent in the workplace or those outside factors don't drive us to complacency and inattentiveness.
00;24;51;12 - 00;25;24;21
Pete Koch
And the thing that that describes best, the employer's responsibility is OSHA's general duty clause. And I imagine you've heard it before, but I'm just going to read it here so that you know it again. And it states each employer shall furnish to each of his employees employment. So they got to be employed and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.
00;25;25;00 - 00;25;51;04
Pete Koch
And that's from the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, Section five A or what we typically call the general duty clause. And not only is this the catchall, but it's the one standard to rule them all. It all comes back down to providing a place that's free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause injury or serious death.
00;25;51;19 - 00;26;17;09
Pete Koch
And that's the responsibility the employer has. They need to know what the job is, what the potential hazards are, and then put the protections in place and train the employees around those hazards and protections before they get engaged in the job. That's great. Seems simple, right? Well, how do you do that if the work that you're engaged in is dangerous in and of itself?
00;26;17;14 - 00;26;40;12
Pete Koch
Like a lot of the work that we do here in the States or around the world, actually think about the flag or on the side of the road. Their job is inherently dangerous. The the individual that we talked about from the one of the OSHA incidents that we read that I read through, the one that that fell 30 feet through the skylight, that job is inherently dangerous.
00;26;40;12 - 00;27;17;15
Pete Koch
The person who was straightening out the bar stuck. His job is inherently dangerous. How do you fix that? Well, like I described earlier, the rest of the standards provide a place to start. So as a business owner, you know, you've got a duty. But where do I go from there? You can start by learning more about the standards because they give you a lot of great information about what you need to do and how your workplace should look in order to protect your staff or your employees from the hazards and exposures that are there.
00;27;18;06 - 00;27;39;22
Pete Koch
And in my experience, there's really no substitute for initial and ongoing training. So as an employer, that's a place to start. So when I bring a new employee on, how do I teach them about what's going on in the workplace, not just where the bathrooms are, where the paycheck is, and what the job is, but what do they really need to do to keep themselves safe?
00;27;40;00 - 00;28;07;08
Pete Koch
That's step one. If you've got someone who's been there forever and knows everything, they're a huge resource for you. First, normalize their understanding of what's required to be safe, and then once you know that they know what's required, then have them help you teach it. Have them be the ambassador, have them help The Apprentice along. That mentorship will really mean a lot and goes a long way.
00;28;07;20 - 00;28;33;15
Pete Koch
But if you don't normalize their understanding of the safety requirements first, then you're bound to start teaching the wrong things going forward. The other prongs of that safety four are checklists and job hazard analysis. Those are excellent tools that can help not only drive your training, but help provide some checks throughout the day to help your employees fight complacency.
00;28;33;21 - 00;29;01;09
Pete Koch
Those checklists are awesome. Why do you think pilots go through a preflight check? That's a really high valued job that they have and it's the price for failure is enormous. So the checklist helps them fight complacency because they've got to go through each and every one. And there's two people doing those checks as they go through. So checklists are great not just to pencil whip something, but to actually give your staff something to check in on themselves for.
00;29;01;17 - 00;29;23;19
Pete Koch
And then job hazard analysis are awesome as well because they can really give you a roadmap of what safety should look like. So this podcast episode isn't about those the checklists and the job hazard analysis, but there are some great resources out there that can help provide you examples to base your checklists and job hazard analysis is off if you don't already have some.
00;29;24;05 - 00;29;51;25
Pete Koch
I'll put some information about those in the show notes that you can jump in and take a look. But really, at the end of the day, the hazard that plays a part in almost every workplace injury and fatality is complacency. It's really the only killer cause. And if it's not the only killer cause, it contributes to other causes.
00;29;52;08 - 00;30;16;28
Pete Koch
And in a future episode, this is an interesting piece. If you want to jump into a future episode, I'll be talking with Dr. Julie Sorenson about the concept of nudging in behavioral science and how it applies to workplace safety. So you should totally two in because I think nudging is that one tool that you can have in your manager's bag that can help combat complacency as a killer cause.
00;30;17;04 - 00;30;42;16
Pete Koch
So tune in for that one because it's going to give you some different insight into how to help with complacency in the workplace. Well, we've made it to just about the end of this podcast episode. And so to all of you listening out there, thank you. We really appreciate you. Today on the Mimic Safety Experts podcast, Halloween episode Killer causes have been the topic of discussion.
00;30;42;26 - 00;31;06;24
Pete Koch
The Mimic Safety Experts podcast is made possible by Mimic a workers compensation insurance carrier whose mission it is to make worker's comp work better. Check us out at Memo Icon. If you would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email me at podcast that mimic Mediacom and we may feature on a future episode. You never know.
00;31;06;24 - 00;31;40;03
Pete Koch
Your idea may be the perfect topic for someone out there in podcast land. Check out our show notes for this episode at Mediacom Forge Slash Podcast, where you can find Memex entire podcast archive and while you're there, sign up for Mimics Safety Net Blog so you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you would subscribe to our podcast and then take a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on.
00;31;40;14 - 00;33;09;13
Pete Koch
And if you've already done that, thank you, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time. This is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
Many companies have state of the art solutions for communications, productivity, and financial process. As safety professionals or as managers and supervisors, it’s time push the boundaries of our safety solutions bag of tricks and consider the feasibility and appropriateness of implementing new technology.
On today’s episode, Part Two of Send in the Drones, I continue the conversation with Dr. Wanda Minnick, Dr. Tracey Cekada, and Dr. John Benhart, from Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Safety Sciences and Geography and Planning Departments about how drones are being used in the workplace to enhance worker safety.
Many companies have state of the art solutions for communications, productivity, and financial process. As safety professionals or as managers and supervisors, it’s time push the boundaries of our safety solutions bag of tricks and consider the feasibility and appropriateness of implementing new technology.
On today’s episode, Part Two of Send in the Drones, I continue the conversation with Dr. Wanda Minnick, Dr. Tracey Cekada, and Dr. John Benhart, from Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Safety Sciences and Geography and Planning Departments about how drones are being used in the workplace to enhance worker safety.
Many companies have state of the art solutions for communications, productivity, and As safety professionals or as managers and supervisors, it’s time push the boundaries of our safety solutions bag of tricks and consider the feasibility and appropriateness of implementing new technology.
On today’s episode I get to talk to Dr. Wanda Minnick, Dr. Tracey Cekada and Dr. John Benhart, from Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Safety Sciences and Geography and Planning Departments about how drones are being used in the workplace to enhance worker safety.
Many companies have state of the art solutions for communications, productivity, and As safety professionals or as managers and supervisors, it’s time push the boundaries of our safety solutions bag of tricks and consider the feasibility and appropriateness of implementing new technology.
On today’s episode I get to talk to Dr. Wanda Minnick, Dr. Tracey Cekada and Dr. John Benhart, from Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Safety Sciences and Geography and Planning Departments about how drones are being used in the workplace to enhance worker safety.
Trees, terrain, weather, equipment, you name it. Any combination of these can conspire to put the logger in harm’s way. There is some new evidence that these traditional hazards might not be the only things killing loggers today and the results of these new studies may surprise you.
On today’s episode I have Erika Scott, PhD, Deputy Director at the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH) and the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety in Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing to discuss a new study on logging hazards in Maine and some of the surprising results.
Trees, terrain, weather, equipment, you name it. Any combination of these can conspire to put the logger in harm’s way. There is some new evidence that these traditional hazards might not be the only things killing loggers today and the results of these new studies may surprise you.
On today’s episode I have Erika Scott, PhD, Deputy Director at the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH) and the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety in Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing to discuss a new study on logging hazards in Maine and some of the surprising results.
Most people consider Labor Day as the official last hurrah before kids return to school full time. However, the history of Labor Day in the US and is tied to workplace safety past, present, and future.
On today’s episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, we take a quick look at the history around Labor Day and how it ties into workplace safety.
Episode links:
https://www.history.com/topics/us-states/new-york-city
Need a refresher on the OSHA standards? Or maybe your company is starting a initiative around workplace safety inspections. Or are the supervisors in your company required by the contractor you are working for to have a an OSHA 10hr Outreach Card? Not all OSHA Outreach classes are local and learning online can be a challenge.
On today’s episode I have Laurie Nolt, Justin Banks, and Randy Morehouse, Safety Management Consultants here at MEMIC to discuss MEMIC’s journey into video conference versions of the OSHA 10hr class, what they do to keep the learners engaged, and tips to get the most out of the one you attend.
Due to the current heatwave sweeping the nation, we have decided to re-air our episode on heat stress and exhaustion with Tom Bernard.
Heat stress is no joke. Exposure to excessive heat and working in hot environments can cause Heat Exhaustion, Heat Cramps, and even Heat Stroke. The stress that heat puts on the body can be deadly if not identified and addressed.
On this episode, Thomas Bernard, PhD, CIH, CSP, and PE talks about heat stress, it’s effect on the body and how to prevent it. Tom is a professor at the University of South Florida, College of Public Health and director of the Sunshine ERC a NIOSH Education and Research Center. He has done extensive work studying the components of heat stress and has helped develop heat stress management programs for a variety of occupations.
Episode Resources:
- Heat Resource Sheet - July 2022
- OSHA Heat National Emphasis Program
- https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/heatstress/default.html#:~:text=Workers%20who%20are%20exposed%20to,heat%20cramps%2C%20or%20heat%20rashes
- https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/heatstress/heatapp.html
- https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/osha3154.pdf
- https://www.coeh.berkeley.edu/20ihw1013
- https://health.usf.edu/publichealth/erc
Whether it is required by your state or a contractor you’re working with, or because want to expand your team’s knowledge of workplace safety and how to identify and control hazards, an OSHA 10hr class just might fit the bill.
On today’s episode I have Stephen Badger, and Richard Berthiaume, both Safety Management Consultants here at MEMIC and Authorized OSHA Outreach Trainers to discuss the ins and outs of an OSHA Outreach class, who should attend one, and tips to get the most out of an in person class or a Video Conference style class.
The 4th of July is time for families, friends, and good food. However, stats predict that many of us will be finishing our holiday celebrations in the bathroom or worse yet, in the ER. That same hot summer weather that makes for a great BBQ also provides the right environment for bacteria multiplication.
On today’s episode Natalie Campaneria, Safety Management Consultant at MEMIC discusses food safety and the hazards that can be lurking on your buffet table this holiday.
Sometimes life gets in the way, and now matter how well you planned, designed, or trained, you will be faced with moments where, at least on the surface, it’s not possible to put into play picture-perfect ergonomics.
On today’s episode I have Clayton Cartwright, PT, and Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC here to discuss challenging ergonomic situations, how to identify what’s missing, and strategies to make the best out of it..
On today’s episode I have Clayton Cartwright, PT, and Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC here to discuss why good movement matters and how using body mechanics, like proper alignment and good balance when moving can help reduce stress, fatigue, and increase health.
Face it, most of us like to sit or relax. However, in our current American society, we end up doing it way too much. From driving to channel surfing, to working in an office, most of us can use more movement in our lives. That movement is one key element to a healthy life and a safe workplace.
On today’s episode I have Clayton Cartwright, PT, and Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC here to discuss why movement is good for us and how using body mechanics, like proper alignment and good balance when moving can help reduce stress, fatigue, and increase health.
Are you a business leader or a supervisor struggling to find the key to your company’s success over the long term? Well, have you checked in with your team? How connected to your purpose are they? According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace Report, 51% of the U.S. workforce is not engaged. These employees can make the difference between success and failure.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Randy Klatt, Director or Region 2 in Loss Control at MEMIC about the how business problems have human centric solutions and the role leaders play in successful companies.
The diesel fuel purchased and used for most on and off-road applications has changed substantially over the years. The removal of sulfur and other substances in the refinement process has made it more ecologically friendly and allow it burns cleaner when combined with modern diesel engines. But these changes have also introduced hazards and exposures that may not be on your radar.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Andy Wood, MEMIC’s Forest Products Programs Manager about the how diesel fuel has changed and the hazards that it presents to workers that fuel and service diesel powered vehicles.
Quality of life and injury prevention are other ways to express health and safety. They are inherently connected by physical fitness and intentional preparation. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Dr. Phillip Finemore, Physical Therapist and owner of WorkFitME about how physical preparation can help prevent injury and increase your quality of life both in and outside of the workplace.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world in many ways over the last two years. From our homes to our workplaces, and everywhere in between, we have all faced challenges that require us to live, work, and think just a little bit differently.
In this two-part episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Jason Beam, Director of EHS and Risk Management of CCB, INC in Westbrook Maine, about how he and his team have worked with employers and employees alike to maintain and encourage safe working habits and guidelines in the face of a global pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world in many ways over the last two years. From our homes to our workplaces, and everywhere in between, we have all faced challenges that require us to live, work, and think just a little bit differently.
In this two-part episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Jason Beam, Director of EHS and Risk Management of CCB, INC in Westbrook Maine, about how he and his team have worked with employers and employees alike to maintain and encourage safe working habits and guidelines in the face of a global pandemic.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello listeners and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch. I expect that we are all if I can use COVID as a verb just a bit COVID-ed out these days. It's been a long road where most of the news has been challenging. So I want to hear more about the successes and where companies have persevered throughout the pandemic. In this episode, I get my wish. Jason Beam, director of Environmental, Health and Safety and Risk Management for CCB, comes to the MEMIC studio to talk about the challenges that CCB faced operating a commercial construction company with the geographically diverse projects throughout the pandemic and the lessons that they will carry forward. We cover topics from emergency management to leadership to basic communication practices. There is enough complexity to the conversation that we broke this out into two episodes. So let me introduce Jason and get going with part one. Jason [00:01:00] Beam, director of EHS and risk management at CCB, has over 25 years of health, safety and emergency services experience. He earned his Master's of Science Degree in Occupational Health and Safety at Columbia Southern University and currently serves as the Enterprise and Risk Management Chairman for the Pine Tree Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Jason is also a principal member of NFPA Technical Committee 704 On the Standard System for the Identification of the Hazards of Materials for Emergency Response, has written multiple articles for the International Society of Fire Service Instructors and has previously served as an advisory board member of the American Society of Safety Professionals Fire Protection Practice Specialty. Jason, welcome to the podcast.
Jason Beam: [00:01:49] Thanks for having me.
Peter Koch: [00:01:49] Awesome. So I want to learn a little bit more about you even having some conversations here off the podcast prior to. But before we jump into CCB, you have a pretty interesting [00:02:00] history and have quite a bit of experience doing environmental health and safety and working with different organizations. So before we get to CCB, why don't you give me a little bit of history about how you got into health and safety and, well, how you ended up at CCB to begin with, I guess.
Jason Beam: [00:02:17] Sure, sure. I think we can shorten that up a little bit. You know, originally it was an I.T. guy. My degrees in I.T. writing code. We had an I.T Shop with about seven people and we were all police officers, firefighters, hazmat, and one of our clients at the time power plant, Biddeford said, Hey, we have a fire brigade. Would you come? Would you take on some additional training? So we took on the additional training and then that grew to filling in for their safety director when he was incapacitated, to becoming his replacement, to moving to their parent company and hitting a bunch of different types of work environments around the country. And [00:03:00] then when we finally get tired, the way the family and I get tired of being in me being in a hotel five or six nights a week, said, all right, it's time for change. First day back home eating lunch. I get a call from the at the time safety director for CCB is what are you doing right now. Well, Having a sandwich, Bob? Yeah, no, I mean right now. No, I'm having a sandwich. Yeah, no I am. It's. Well, when can you be here? I'm like, Well, where's here, Bob? So, you know, we said, Hey, come on in. I need some part time support. And I got somebody out on a medical and I could really use your help. So he eventually opened his own consulting business and vacated that post. And I was asked to stay on there and have been there ever since.
Peter Koch: [00:03:43] Interesting history. I can't tell you how many people that I've talked to that have found success at a particular company with health and safety, that they started in a completely different world.
Jason Beam: [00:03:57] It's more common than it seems. Yeah.
Peter Koch: [00:04:00] So [00:04:00] interestingly enough, like if I look at my journey to get to where I am as a safety consultant for MEMIC, as an insurance company, and I started as a basically as a ski bum. My goal was to run a ski area at some point in time. And I spent a lot of time, you know, working in all the different aspects of the ski industry and had different opportunities to manage risk and safety without actually being charged with managing risk and safety for a particular company. And then moving, getting an opportunity to, hey, why don't you take this on? Hey, why don't you take that on? Hey, here's some information about this. And I remember one day I was sitting in my office and the guy who was in charge of construction and development at the ski area came into my office. I had just gotten the job as risk manager and he said, I've got to have I have this thing that's going to really help you. And I'm like, Oh, great, because I felt completely out of my element. I really wasn't sure what I was getting into at that point in time. So I'll be right back. And he goes [00:05:00] out to his truck and he comes back in. He. Brings in three boxes. Like these are for you. Great. Thanks. Thanks for that. What's in them? Oh, just you'll, these will be good for you. So they were the code of Federal Regulations for OSHA, for construction, general industry, maritime. What was the. I don't know. So lots of books, lots of small print. Like, how is this going to help? But here I am thinking about it and that connection between the human person that I had to deal with all the time from a in the trenches, working with some particular individual all the time to the regulations and that connection between how to manage people and make sure that they are safe so that they can go home at the end of the day. And, you know, I think that's a big part of what you're doing at CCB and what's making CCB safety history fairly successful over the years.
Jason Beam: [00:05:58] Yeah, I would agree with that. We've [00:06:00] put a heavy emphasis on people before production. Yeah, it's about the people. If we're not taking care of the people, then we're not executing work at a high level out in the field.
Peter Koch: [00:06:12] Let's talk about the human side of this and let's bring this into the COVID world. So if we if we think about it, when COVID first came out, right, there were there was a lot of confusion, you know, 2019, 2020, as we're starting to hear all this stuff about COVID and how it's transmitted and what it does and how it affects people and who it affects and how fast it travels. There is a lot of information out there. No one really understood what it was and where it goes. And now we're in 2022. And there's still a lot of confusing information out there. Things have evolved as we've moved forward. So, you know, what are some of the things that you did early on in COVID to help keep your staff safe? [00:07:00] That may have changed as time went on. As we come into the present, like how did you start and then how did you get to where you are now with your COVID regs.
Jason Beam: [00:07:09] Early on was kind of kind of a two pronged approach, right? There's the business continuity piece. You know, if we don't keep the business afloat, we don't have jobs, we're not putting food on our tables. But there's the people side of it, too. There was a tremendous amount of fear and uncertainty. Right. I mean, even among the experts. Right. You know, we had all these different organizations professing to know the ins and outs of this. Yet there were contradictions, there were loopholes, they were gaps. And we had a group of people that were just nervous and they didn't know what direction to face. We really set out quickly to establish this this cadence of constant communication, effective communication. We consolidated it all into a single point. You know, folks were pretty much home at that time, even though in construction we were considered essential workers because of our government work. But we [00:08:00] kept the senior and executive management right there at 65 Bradley Drive and, you know, kind of war room time, so to speak. You know, what do we have to do to meet our contractual obligations, what we have to do to keep our people safe? And how do we you know, probably the biggest challenge bigger than either of those other two things was how do we how do we get them engaged and being part of the solution? How do we show them that we were not just trying to make a buck, they were there to take care of them. And we kind of had to build on kind of our philosophy of people first. We had to change how we did it. And it took a lot of individual campaigning with some folks, took a lot of group discussions, visiting job sites, a lot of one off conversations with folks just to set them at ease. And part of it was, is a safety and health department. We want folks in CCB to be able to feel they can call us on their worst day and get some sort of support. And obviously, if down deep, you know, you need 911, then call 911. But short of that, [00:09:00] we want one of the first ones. You feel comfortable enough to reach out to us for anything. And we took advantage of the good faith we had built doing that and said, look, together, we're going to get through this somehow. You know, we'll keep you up to date. We'll, you know, kind of work with our partners whether it's MEMIC our legal folks whatever to boil this down into what's the right thing. Because above all else, we got to do the right thing here. So a lot of it was communication at first. A lot of it was you know, we had a everybody at home for a little bit. How can we continue to engage folks or work working at home or some that were out of work at home? Because the nature of what was going on to help us kind of build out our solution.
Peter Koch: [00:09:48] Can I can I stop you for a second? Because I think that's a that's an important point to explore a little bit more, because you're not we're not just talking about ten or 15 or 20 or 30 people [00:10:00] in a small construction organization, CCB, relatively large when you think about a commercial organization, not a global thousands and thousands of employees organization, but it's a problem of scale. If I have five employees. You have to do the same thing that I have to do in order to make those employees or help those employees feel safe. Trust me, and make sure that they know that I'm there for them as a business owner. But as the scale gets bigger and you have more employees, you get more job sites. How did you deal with some of those problems of scale? I guess you could say?
Jason Beam: [00:10:38] Certainly. Certainly complicated things. You know, we're about 130, 540 people average annually. And then we have a number of subs. We work with close relationships with vendors, customers, all that. But we're so far distributed. We can have 40 concurrent job sites, maybe four concurrent job sites, you [00:11:00] know, down into Mass., up to Houlton, Maine. It's certainly, certainly muddied the waters and being in a union environment while we have a lot of core people that stay with us, you know, there's quite often, depending on what's coming down the line for jobs, quite often an influx and an influx of people that may or may not know anything about our culture or what's important to us. Different levels of skill. I mean, we've seen people that have never seen so many people that are absolutely new to the trades so that complicated it even further. So during the initial quarantine, it was pretty easy. We, you know, we set up shop right there at 65 Bradley and just started communicating, communicating, communicating while in the meantime, we're hatching out these solutions to keep the jobs going. But once things opened up again, senior executive management president, myself, vice president and the operations manager and we hit the road, we're going to job sites, we're [00:12:00] never able to abate all the uncertainty and fear.
Jason Beam: [00:12:03] I mean, it's just not feasible. But we're able to address a greater degree of it by getting out to the job sites, meeting with the crews, first with the foreman. You know, hey, here's where the company stands on this. And we need to know what you need for assistance. And then what we're going to do next is we as a leadership body are going to meet with the guys, you know, doing the iron work, doing the pipe fitting, doing the carpentry so we can help put them at ease, too, because you're their first line of defense and offense. You're going to come to you looking for support, come to you with questions. We need to arm you with enough information to be able to at least know which direction to point. So. You know, communicating with that level of field leadership and not necessarily making them subject matter experts, but making them comfortable being able to answer questions. Added a great deal to that.
Peter Koch: [00:12:57] Do you mind me asking? Because I find that [00:13:00] this can be a challenging part when your upper echelon meets your middle team and you get given information from the upper echelon as the middle manager, and then you're asked, do you understand that? The answer is typically yes, I do. Whether you always understand it, believe it or not. So how did you make sure that they were on board that they. Because, again, we started talking about the information that's out there. And there is I won't call it misinformation. There's just a lot of different information. And depending on where you get your news from and what you believed, then you may come at it from a completely different side than what your company was coming at it from. So when you're hearing something that might be very different. How did you how did you help that person truly understand what the message and what you wanted [00:14:00] them to know?
Jason Beam: [00:14:04] There was a couple of pieces to that. One is we have the I'll call it the fortune of some very open viewpoints in construction.
Peter Koch: [00:14:12] That's a very good way of putting that.
Jason Beam: [00:14:15] You know, I'm sure you're aware a lot of trades folks are not bashful about expressing their opinions and their concerns. So they were quick to say, you know, I, I think this is crazy. This is insane. You know, I don't understand yet. There are going to be some that just go with it. I'll call it refreshing after the fact, the number of them that that said, you know, no, no, no, man. What gives, you know, explain this. So that was an advantage. Know, we certainly engage with the business agents and stuff at the union halls to leverage that resource as well. We engage with you folks. Help us tell that story, you know, with clerk insurance. Help us tell that story because a, you know, sometimes the [00:15:00] same message from a different voice may be phrased a little differently from a different perspective. Add some clarity. You know, there's one particular conversation that stands out where one of the foreman says, I don't like Chris. We were subject to, you know, staring down the barrel of that federal contractor mandate where vaccination or you punish them or you fire them, get them to comply. And there were folks with real concerns about that. Sure. You know, some were philosophical, some were religious. Some were mistrust of the government some were fear of vaccinations. I mean, they were pretty open about that. And the way we framed it up was, look, as leaders, we're here for the people and we have to be here for the people. And whether we agree with the government mandate or not, we have an obligation to you to keep you gainfully employed if we possibly can. So [00:16:00] we could sit here and be upset and say, you know, saber rattling, we're not going to do it, or we can do everything in our power to enable you to make the choices you need to stay with us.
Jason Beam: [00:16:11] We don't want to get rid of anybody. We'll do what we have to do to stay in business for whatever set of rules, you know, whether it's OSHA, the government contracts thing or whatever. But, you know, we get it. You know, it's uncertain. It's unnerving. And for a lot it's aggravating, you know, and we'll get through that. But. We got to have a consistent face to the men. And that was a challenge too, because we all have different beliefs. Some were. I don't mean to sarcastic, but card carrying members for the cause. Others were 180 degrees different, you know, very opposed to it. But I think what carried us through a lot of it was the that faith we built up amongst our people. [00:17:00] CCB has always been a company that that invests heavily in that relationship. And I think we kind of built up that we had some credibility in the bank and like what you and I were talking earlier.
Peter Koch: [00:17:12] Sure.
Jason Beam: [00:17:12] Yeah. And I think we made some pretty big withdrawals from that that were certainly challenged by the constant changing of the rules of engagement because, well, jeez, you told us this, now it's this, now it's something else, you know, where does this end? Well, we don't know yet either. So I, I think probably, you know, thinking back on, one of the things that had the greatest impact was we were able to take advantage of the good faith, the credibility of the trust we had built previously, kind of in the face of so much change.
Peter Koch: [00:17:47] Yeah. And I do want to come back to that to make sure we talk about that more because I really believe, as we talked at the beginning prior to jumping into the podcast, that that is an essential theme that has to happen. If you are going [00:18:00] to if you're going to manage change in your organization correctly or properly or successfully, if you ever just want to stay stagnant, then you don't really need the trust bank because you can always find someone to fill in the gap that that someone else just left. But if you want to grow, if you want to get better, if you want to if you want to be the best company that you can be, you have to have that. So we'll get back to that. I like that theme. So let's talk a little bit more about the specifics around like when all the protocols came down about you have to mask or you have to quarantine and you have to stay six feet apart. And how did you manage that with a commercial construction site? Like how did you got you had said you could have 40 construction sites, you could have four sites. You could have a site up in Houlton or Fort Kent, Maine, or you could all be all the way down in Massachusetts. So people have to travel. People have to be overnight, different places. How did you manage all of the what were the protocols [00:19:00] that worked? How did you implement some of those protocols and how did you manage compliance? I guess those three questions for you.
Jason Beam: [00:19:08] Yeah, some of the easiest ones were managing the lodging. Fine. It's one person per room. Instead of bunking up together, limiting travel and vehicles together certainly had an impact financially, but we needed to keep people available to do what needed to be done. That was probably the easiest piece. There were definitely some challenges there. It made us focus a bunch on how we lay out our work, how we stage our tradespeople instead of three people working side by side. Well, how do we rearrange kind of the work area to accommodate that? How do we how do we arrange different trades or subcontractors, you know, things that you might look back at, say, lean construction concepts, right. You know, every purposeful [00:20:00] motion, right. Every action has a defined purpose or do we really need it? It made us kind of reach back into that toolbox a little bit more than we had been, which was good, because it also created some refinements in our production process too. Right? Because I do think the same things that that lead to safe behaviors are also the same behaviors that produce top notch production, have the most engaged employees and so on. So I think it's all part of the same thing. So we're able to kind of reach into that toolbox and juggle things up. But some of it too is we eat an amount of our work is outdoors. That helped, especially when the state turned around, when Governor Mills said, well, you know, we're not as worried about outdoor activities. Perfect. However, you got to guys 60 feet off the ground in a man basket together, they're not six feet apart. You know, a it's hard to observe half a dozen different lifts in the air with everything else going on. And are they aren't they messed up, you know. Well, but the state says we don't have [00:21:00] to anymore. Okay. You know, I get that. So we had some challenges there. And of course, you know, if I'm building a steel structure and then I'm putting siding on it and a roof on it, and then I'm working inside at some time. At some point the outdoors becomes the indoors. And that was always a healthy debate too.
Peter Koch: [00:21:19] Yeah, when does when do we cross that line? Like how many walls have to be up for it to be considered indoors?
Jason Beam: [00:21:26] Yeah. And there were some healthy discussions around that and they're still ongoing. You know, I think some of what helped it though, is. A lot of our clients have their own sets of rules, and some are extremely stringent and very much exceed the current CDC recommendations. Others not so much. In other places, we were the stringent one. Of course, there again, you do that. And how come we're holding ourselves to a different standard than everybody else in the job site because it's the right thing to do. And again, I think that that credibility we built up, most, most everybody went, [00:22:00] all right, fine, I get it. We'll make it work.
Peter Koch: [00:22:03] Did you find in those spirited discussions, did you find that those are happening more frequently or happen more frequently because of the challenges around COVID than they did pre-COVID, like when you might have had some conflict around a particular job site or a particular set of instructions that might have been understood one way and then really implemented a different way. Were there more spirited conversations during COVID than might have been in the past?
Jason Beam: [00:22:35] I think they were different. You know, suddenly we have this new set of rules of engagement.
Peter Koch: [00:22:41] Sure.
Jason Beam: [00:22:42] Right. Some have penalties, some don't. But here's the expectation. And you're all going to do it. You know, that became a pretty good set of measurements to gauge things by. So it was I think it was easier to be able to sit there and not wave those around, but say, look, you know, bottom line is we have to do this. And if we don't do [00:23:00] this, it jeopardizes our ability to complete the work because people are people are getting sick. We're not caring for them properly. And if we can't do that well, now we have financial problems because we're not completing our contracts on time. I think it took some of the fire out of the work process discussions, but it certainly stoked the discussions relating to the two mandates.
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Peter Koch: [00:24:26] What I found in all of this is the companies that have found success in those spirited conversations, like in the moment, they can be pretty challenging. But when you reflect back on when you got to live in that tension for a little while between one, one opinion of the individual and then the mandate that the company is trying to put together when you live in that tension for a while, come to a realization and then move forward. That's a that's a pretty powerful opportunity. If you can recognize [00:25:00] the recognize in the moment that you could have success. So stick with that conversation. Make sure you're recognizing what concerns the individuals bringing to you and try to address those concerns as best you can. Where in the past, sometimes the way it was addressed was this is the rule. It doesn't matter what you think. You need to you need to follow the rule.
Jason Beam: [00:25:24] And for us, this wasn't we didn't want it to be one of those times. You know, we had our own philosophical position on some of these mandates and, you know, from the from the get go. So, look, we want people to be safe. We want you to we as a company are going to subscribe to CDC recommendations. People are looking for some sort of direction. Great. We're going to start here. And as we have to change and veer from what the CDC says, we will where it makes sense to. But these are the rules of engagement we're going to follow. And then along come these mandates. Well, our belief about what was right or wrong didn't [00:26:00] change. Yeah. So, you know, we're very open about our rules have changed in order to maintain this customer base with the federal contractor piece. And it's a very big part of our business, and we can't afford not to have that. And we still want you to take care of yourself. We still want you to not come to work when you're sick. We still think the right thing to do is get vaccinated and now boosted. But short of anybody telling us you have to, that's a decision for you to make. And we're not here to pass some sort of health policy on our folks or it's certainly not how dictate they and their families manage their health. So that was a tough spot to be in. But I think our position kind of between those two endpoints helped a bit because yeah, when somebody's sitting there, you know, I'm vaccinated, I'm for me, pretty painless process, but I can certainly understand the fear of that form. And I was mentioning earlier saying, you know, look, I'm not comfortable [00:27:00] with some of these things where the government's telling me that I need some medical treatment. He says, you know, I just I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm just not comfortable with this, you know, help me through this. So I think our kind of position between the two end points really kind of helped aid what you what you're aiming at here.
Peter Koch: [00:27:19] And that's huge for that foreman to come to you with the challenge and look for you to partner for a solution to help him through that is enormous. That doesn't happen all the time and again going back to that invested in that trust bank for quite a while. And then that time, here is the time where you have to go and make a withdrawal to maybe make a change in what is going to happen on the job site that will affect individuals. But that individual to be comfortable enough to come to you and say, I don't know what to think. Right? Here's my challenge. Help me through this. Help me understand this. Where do I go? What do I do? And [00:28:00] ultimately, it's their choice. It's not your choice. It's their choice. But to for you to be there as a company, as part of that senior team, to look and say, all right, yeah, I can help you through that, or I can provide you with some resources. Or we can here's some ways that you can you can go out and look for information on your own and then come back if you have questions, let's talk about it.
Jason Beam: [00:28:22] Yeah, you know what really strained that was when with regard to that federal contract and subcontractor mandate, they said, well, hey, here's how you're going to implement this. The people that will not comply, you need to enter them into your progressive discipline policy and apply as much pressure as it takes to get them to do it. We're sitting there going, that's not our role here. Right. And kind of announcing and rolling out that, okay, this is where we're at here. Certainly strained those relationships. But I but honestly, in all fairness, it was, you know, the field [00:29:00] leadership that turned around and got control of that. They're the ones that get their arms around all the tradespeople and said, hold on, hold on. You know, you do understand who we're dealing with here, right? You know, they care about us. They're interested in our success. And they're the ones that that helped really control that narrative, that, look, it's not CCB saying, if you don't do this, we're going to fire you. It's they're put in a position where they have to make some tough business decisions.
Peter Koch: [00:29:26] Yeah. And if they don't, then the whole point is moot because we're not involved in the federal contract anymore.
Jason Beam: [00:29:34] And that's a big enough portion of the book of business. So that's a pretty crippling thing. Of course then the legs get taken out from under that. Now the piece descends on us and you know where we're at with that. But you know, then how do you manage a, you know, for those that say, great, I don't have to get vaccinated, then how do you manage a testing program across that many sites? So yeah, it's been interesting.
Peter Koch: [00:29:57] So can I ask you that question? How do you manage [00:30:00] a testing program across that many sites? Because I think that's a question that a lot of people have even over one site that's been a bigger that's been a bigger challenge than I think OSHA had initially thought, because it seems pretty easy. Yeah, go ahead. If you're not going to get vaccinated, then weekly tests. But if you if you take a quarter of the people that you have at 130, you're you know, you're looking at a substantial chunk of people that have to get tested every week. How do you how do you do that when you've got job sites over seven, 800 square miles?
Jason Beam: [00:30:35] Yeah, it's the concept was very challenging. You know, ultimately now that the legs have been taken out from under the OSHA executive order sorry, the OSHA ETS, it changed our opportunities a little bit. You know, prior to that, we're looking at all right, we have a group up at several people up in Houlton, Maine. We have people down in Massachusetts. Even though we're 70 plus percent vaccinated, [00:31:00] there's still pockets of people that aren't. You know, there are some work environments where we can take some alternative approaches.
Peter Koch: [00:31:08] Sure.
Jason Beam: [00:31:08] But when you've got, say, you know, a bunch of people from up north that have no interest in being vaccinated, but you have to be protective of their data. You have to deal with the lack of testing opportunities. Oh, by the way, home tests either have to be administered or observed by the company. You know, logistically, how do you do that? And now you have you couple that with, you know, a union construction environment where even though we have some longer term jobs, we have a lot of short term jobs. And it's a matter of moving the chess pieces around for the best advantage for the company. So now you've got to track, well, where was everybody Friday? Where do we intend them to be Monday? And how much of Monday are we going to consume getting testing accomplished for these people? You know, we started asking questions like, all right, if it has to be observed or one solution is observed by a medical professional. How [00:32:00] do we feel about the people that have doctors, nurses, paramedics, whatever in the family? Paramedic has a medical license of sorts. Does that count? So we talked about that a bit. We looked at how we could leverage in a world of everything, zoom. Could we leverage that? But that created new challenges, too. Now you're tying up health and safety people for a good chunk of whatever day you pick. You know, great. I need your ten or 15 minutes. I need your 15 minutes. They're scheduling all these slots now. You know, trying to catch everybody has a major impact on the workflow, certainly complicated from a privacy perspective to go that route. And let's face it, just wasn't feasible to send everybody to all to send a bunch of people out to all these job sites to administer tests.
Peter Koch: [00:32:49] No, definitely not.
Jason Beam: [00:32:50] So. Honestly, we never came up with a great solution. We still have places that we need testing. You know, you got to have a test, negative [00:33:00] test within so many hours of going to the site. Well, those places have been doing it all along. So we're able to.
Peter Koch: [00:33:07] Maintain.
Jason Beam: [00:33:07] To handle those. You know, we have other job sites like over here at Maine Medical Center work in that expansion where, you know, our partnership with Turner, it gives those folks on that job site access to testing. So we're meeting the clients needs. Well, they're helping us accomplish that by really providing us the solution to. So as it is today, you take availability of tests out of it, which is complicated for everybody right now. Yeah, it's not horrible. But under the ETS scenario, I'm not sure would have been able to it would have taken us a couple of iterations to get it right. Yeah.
Peter Koch: [00:33:46] And I think what I'm hearing in all of this is that it couldn't have been done even in its even the testing as it stands right now outside of the ETS. It couldn't have been done without some [00:34:00] commitment and planning. By the company. And it's not just one person, but this has to be a conversations that happen because it affects everybody. Like if you expect if you expect the environmental health and safety person at your company to manage all of the requirements around testing and with no help anyplace else, and they decide that, okay, I'm going to do the observations. Well, that person's no longer available for anybody else to come in and say, Hey, Jim, I need this. Hey, Jason, I need this. Hey, Pete, I need this. Depending on who they are and what's going on, they're not available to have that question anymore, so.
Jason Beam: [00:34:41] Oh, absolutely. That was a big concern because a lot of what our team we have a we're in a tremendously good position. I think, you know, we don't have the biggest of companies, but we have a health and safety department of a risk department, all told of six people, including HR for that, you know, that ratio of tradespeople to [00:35:00] risk managers is phenomenal.
Peter Koch: [00:35:02] It is.
Jason Beam: [00:35:03] And, you know, we enjoyed the conversations where, hey, I'm going to hatch out a fall protection plan. Hey, what's the here's what I'm thinking. But would you come out and make sure that I'm not crazy here, you know, to be involved in in all phases of that project lifecycle from hey, let's talk about how we think we want to bid this through to let's triage this what went right? What went wrong? You know, over the years, CCB has really pulled that whole risk function into all facets of that, that project lifecycle. And to me, that's where we're making the most difference. So, you know, to take up minimally 40% of my time previously, I mean, early on, it was 100% of my time. But to carve that out, to be able to track vaccination status exposures, to contact tracing, you know, and to add the testing component to that. And now you're taking two people offline [00:36:00] and you're having that much less effect in the field. How much riskier is what we're doing at that point? Sure. Not that the folks that are out there doing it are competent. I mean, nine times out of ten, they say, hey, we were thinking of doing it this way. There's maybe a couple of adjustments we might make. By and large, they know. They know they're professionals, they're good at it. But sometimes just that reassurance or being able to troubleshoot something together comes up with a better solution. And to sacrifice that to meet a mandate was kind of scary.
Peter Koch: [00:36:32] Yeah. Yeah, I can I can imagine. And I keep thinking of sort of that domino theory and how things fall apart, right? So if you're not available and you're not there to catch that 1% this one time that you need an adjustment with for the plan that they because they couldn't come to you. And that mistake gets captured and ingrained in the process for the next project. Now it becomes not just 1%, [00:37:00] but it's now 10% and it might be 20% the next time that it happens. And it becomes a bigger and bigger problem. And all of a sudden when you get back into it, they've been doing it this way forever and all of a sudden you have to make a much bigger change instead of a small part that doesn't really change the operation, but you're pointing them in a different direction early on. Like it's much easier to change in the design phase than it is to remodel something to make it great.
Jason Beam: [00:37:25] Absolutely like a compass. The difference between true north and magnetic north. If I'm a few degrees off and I'm ten feet down the trail, that's an easy adjustment. But if I'm 100 miles, that's a pretty big gap.
Peter Koch: [00:37:36] Yeah, I missed the McDonald's completely.
Jason Beam: [00:37:38] Right. But, you know, you add to that the fear and uncertainty that comes with COVID, the conviction of people for and against the government's position. And all of these you know, all these other components of supply chain disruption, both at work and at home.
Peter Koch: [00:37:56] Yeah,
Jason Beam: [00:37:57] You add all those distractions into it [00:38:00] and it magnified outcomes, typically magnified negative outcomes. You know, we have all these new stressors, new distractions that we're trying to figure out. Well, there's only so much margin here. There's only so much bandwidth to observe what's going on around us. And for a good portion of that bandwidth is consumed with new problems and uncertainties. What are we missing? We're missing more than we did before this whole thing started. So, you know, there was definitely a focus on trying to trying to keep that in people's minds, to keep people vigilant for those things. But ultimately, it's a bit of a losing battle because you're fighting human nature.
Peter Koch: [00:38:42] True.
Jason Beam: [00:38:43] I mean, we got through it so far.
Peter Koch: [00:38:46] So far. Right. Knock on wood. Right. Right. So let's I'm not going to switch gears totally, but I want to go back to. So your history. You said you started out as an IT guy. So how did you use how [00:39:00] did you find technology helping you to manage some of the challenges on the job site for COVID, like whether it's contact tracing or any of the check and stuff, because again, disparate locations, disparate groups and, you know, a robust staff of safety people. But if you've got 40 job sites, six people can't make it to those 40 job sites if they're spread out all over New England.
Jason Beam: [00:39:25] A couple of different things. One of the things we instituted early on, we'd had a biweekly safety and ops call, you know, all the field leadership and anybody that wants to honestly jumps in and here's kind of here's the tale of the tape. Here's how we're performing on both fronts. Here's what's coming down the line. Here's what we've been on. Here's what we've been awarded. You know, be more inclusive with our information, right? We immediately out of the gate said, you know, this is going to be weekly and early on it's going to be COVID driven, you know, because people need to know. We need to know where we stand. They need to know what we expect and so on. Certainly, [00:40:00] you know, go to meeting Zoom, Teams, things like that made that piece easier because we're able to reach anybody that that chose to participate on all job sites. Yeah. Because of the Internet. You know, I have a phone and I have signal I can participate in that call on the vaccination tracking piece. Really? I can send if I can put a QR code on a job box and I need your vaccination status, I need to know that you're fully vaccinated because we're staring down the barrel of the executive order, 14042, blah, blah, blah. You know, I can get anybody. That doesn't have a flip phone. To scan that QR code. Are you vaccinated? Yes or no? If you're not, do you intend to be? Yes or no? Because we've got a plan in case this thing comes to fruition. And great. Then share that information with us and we tracks it. And of course, there's the questions about what about information, privacy and everything else. There's rules that govern that. [00:41:00] Right. And if we're following those rules, we're in good shape. And it's not that isn't a complex problem. The hard part was getting people to do it. Even the people that said, no, I'm not getting vaccinated. You know, I'm not doing it. I'll work someplace else if I have to. But I'm not doing it because I still get you to share the information with us. You know, I promise we're not going to sell it. Ultimately, we got the majority of it that helped a great deal. And to be able to provide, you know, executive management, the operations management with kind of a snapshot as to what percentage of our people are currently vaccinated, what aren't, because, you know, in the middle of that, you got a bunch of government job sites, some existing contracts. Those provisions weren't in effect yet. Some new contracts. They were. So you're you know, by the way, there's health care and education and all these other places with their own rules. You know, which pieces can I move where? So making that information available to them was big. And then we were looking at, [00:42:00] you know, if we had to follow through under the ETS with, with the testing piece, I, the only way we could even conceive of being able to accomplish that was to leverage things like Zoom the video piece. Would it have worked? Yeah, I think it would have with a couple of iterations, you know, I think it was more about would have been more about difficulties with the process, not the technology.
Peter Koch: [00:42:23] And I think a lot of people would actually add one more part into that from a difficulty, which would be the trust part. And then going back to that, that's a pretty big withdrawal when you're asking someone to give you their medical status, to give you their this particular status, to tell your employer something. And if you haven't built some trust up before then, even when you give them information about this is we're promising that we're not going to do anything with this. We're complying with this regulation. We need to do this. This is the process. If you hadn't built the trust, they're not going to believe you. [00:43:00] And so they'll be even more challenged with given that or if they do give it, they're going to give it in a very distrustful way. And that starts to break down your productivity and your quality and your safety and the people part of what makes your business run.
Jason Beam: [00:43:17] Oh for sure. You know, we were. You know, I talked earlier about the idea that we want people to feel that they can call us on their worst day.
Peter Koch: [00:43:27] Yeah,
Jason Beam: [00:43:28] Right. Short of 911. Right. But that kind of showed through. I mean, it kind of demonstrated that we're hitting our mark, I guess, in that regard with the trust. You know, folks would start say, listen, I've got a family member, my mom, my dad, my son, my daughter. I have a wife who's got immune issues. You know, what do you recommend? Well, we're not physicians here. We're not going to pretend to be. But we can tell you how we read the guidance and we'll do our best to help you through it to the point where. Christmas [00:44:00] Eve and Christmas Day. You know, a couple of folks had had some exposures. One was family related, and he'd say, I'm really sorry to bother you, but I don't know who else to reach out to. Right. You know, my doctor's office isn't open. Would you mind giving me your thoughts on this? You know, and they went through the scenario and, you know, afterwards I was talking with my family about it. Pretty big compliment there in that regard that that somebody in their own time worried about the health of one of their loved ones reached out to us based on the connection we've made with them throughout this. It was definitely an indicator that we were hitting the mark with some folks. Which certainly led to more probing discussions with people. And even some of the folks that are typically grumpier than others. You know, we're like, Yeah, no, we think you're doing the right thing. I'm not going to sit here and brag about it. So you don't either. But yeah, [00:45:00] we trust you. So again, I think so much of what we're able to accomplish was because of all the work we did and building the culture prior to the pandemic. Honestly.
Peter Koch: [00:45:11] Yeah. And to we talk often with some of our policyholders about that culture survey, taking the survey, taking the temperature of what's going on in the workplace. And obviously for us, it's always a safety culture survey. You're always, I'm always looking at it from the safety perspective. But from your perspective, when you heard that or realized what they were asking you on that Christmas Eve, Christmas Day question, you went back and tried to see if this is really what the perception of the rest of the company is like. How are what's the barometer? I mean, that out of the blue, that's an awesome pat on the back and a humbling compliment to think that someone would think that much of the of the relationship that you built with them to trust you for [00:46:00] an opinion. But how does that, is that pervasive through the rest of the group? And to re-ask that question to not just rest on that laurel and think, yeah, we're doing it, great, move forward. But to actually go back and recheck the pulse, I guess.
Jason Beam: [00:46:14] Yeah. And humbling for sure. I mean, that's absolutely you know, it wasn't a 100% success. Of course not. You know, and I don't think it ever will be.
Peter Koch: [00:46:24] It's human.
Jason Beam: [00:46:25] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I think we're able to capture a larger percentage of people because a you know, we understand that you can't control human nature. Right. I can't I can make assumptions about how you might react to something. But I don't know what's affecting you or your mood today. I don't know what's motivating you in any given day. So we tried to incorporate a little bit of that uncertainty in there to kind of putting a heavy emphasis on that based on our belief that this fear and uncertainty is really [00:47:00] eating away at people. So how do we not take advantage of that? But how do we how do we put that on a pedestal so that we're it's obvious that we're trying to take care of our people?
Peter Koch: [00:47:11] Let's stop right here with part one of my conversation with Jason Beam, director of Environmental, Health, Safety and Risk Management for CCB right here in Westbrook, Maine. In part two, we will continue with Jason around lessons learned managing COVID 19 on a commercial construction site. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you get notice when part two drops. The MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast is written, hosted and produced by me, Peter Koch, with production and coordination assistance from Rod Stanley. If you'd like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/Podcast where you can find additional information and our entire podcast archive. So while you're there, sign up for our Safety [00:48:00] Net blog so that you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes, or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, then thanks, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or a family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
Tire Servicing Safety is often overlooked unless it’s your full-time job. Hazards from lifting and repositioning a heavy tire in an awkward position or being struck by a falling or exploding tire are all common exposures for workers serving tires in the shop or in the field. In the conclusion of this two-part Tire Safety episode with Andy Wood, MEMIC's Forest Products Programs Manager, we dive deeper into preventing tire-related injuries, and how we can keep ourselves safe when handling, changing, or servicing a tire.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch, manager of Digital Technology for Lost Control and safety management consultant with MEMIC. This is part two of our tire safety episode with Andy Wood, Manager of Forest Products Safety Services. Andy brings many years of professional experience dealing with hand and mechanical logging operations and servicing his own equipment when he worked in the industry. In part one of this podcast, we address the regulations how more than just big rig service centers are covered by these regs, and then began to discuss the different injuries that can be caused when servicing tires. In part two we will roll into more injury causes and then different controls. And as only Andy can, he draws from his personal experience to give us great perspective around why these are sometimes hidden or overlooked hazards. So let's pick up where we left [00:01:00] off.
Andy Wood: [00:01:03] So let's move along from our frequent injuries. We talked about some struck by injuries. We've talked about manual material handling. But let's talk about some more severe injuries. And we're growing from the back and shoulder and wrist injury or from the crushing injury that happens from a tire falling on someone. But really, when we get into a tire exploding, we're getting into ballistic type of injuries. So let's talk some more about those and what kinds of injuries come out of a tire exploding and what might cause the tire to fail catastrophically.
Andy Wood: [00:01:37] Yeah, you mentioned the ballistics. I'll just preface this by saying an injury I get quite frequently. If a tire blows up for whatever reason, I'm usually going to get a claim of ringing in the ears or the concussive force has blown out the eardrums. So even if a person doesn't get hit with anything or physically damaged, just the concussive force of the pressure in the immediate area is going to blow out his eardrums [00:02:00] or cause that ringing, which sometimes the ringing will just go away in a few days if things if it wasn't too bad but it could certainly be much worse. The tires when they blow out, those are the serious injuries. We've had people struck by the tires itself, struck by the part of the tire that gets shredded, struck by the tire cage when it goes screaming across the floor and the garage. I mentioned the concussive force, pretty, pretty blunt trauma, pretty, pretty serious injuries. A couple causes, I guess weak spots where they're going to fail. First one is the bead rim failure. So that's a question of when the tire usually during re inflation, because that's when a person is going to be right there. The bead of the tire goes over, either rips or it goes over the edge of the of the edge of the tire. So this is where the rim charts come in. You've got to make sure even if you put a new tire on a new rim, you can miscalculate. And the rim charts would tell you that they're not compatible, but [00:03:00] by looking at them, you can't tell the difference. So you've got to have RIM charts to make sure that you're matching, whether it's a single piece or multi piece wheel, that all the components and the tire are all compatible. The bead will be damaged frequently in operation and it can be damaged when it's dismounted and remounted. So the bead inspection is really important to make sure the beat of the tire is still in good condition when it goes back on the rim. Now the other thing is that the rim where the bead seats can be damaged as well. I don't believe this was as common a problem with the steel rims that folks always used to run, like on a on a truck tire, a tractor trailer type tire on road. They've switched to a lot of aluminum tires. We're starting to do that in the woods as well. And what we're finding is with the severe conditions that we have in the woods, you know, the logging roads aren't level, they're not paved. A lot of times you're rolling your tires, you're going around the corner and the weight is shifting to the inside tire. So the beat of the tire actually chafes on the rim and wears into the aluminum rim. So [00:04:00] the rims are getting deformed so that you can put a brand new tire back on a used rim. And even though it matches based on the charts, the rim charts, the rim has been damaged bad enough that the tire during inflation will blow right over it. And that's one that was probably one of the at one year a couple of years ago, the biggest injury I had was from a bead rim failure. And what happened was they were putting a new tire back on a used rim. They were re inflating it and the tire blew over the rim. No one got hit with anything physically other than the force, the air and the mechanic that was standing right in front of it was blown right across the garage into the next bay. You got wedged underneath the drive train or the rear axle of a truck that was in the next bay. And it was every part of his body I think was damaged. He had both shoulders needed to be operated on knees just from the force of him being blown backwards, hyperextended his knees in the opposite direction. You had dental surgery, he had [00:05:00] cuts and bruises, and it just went on and on. He would go through one surgery. He would recover from a little while. He'd go to light duty for a little while, and then he'd go have another surgery. So in that case, it was just a question of they make these little rim gauge rim flange gauges. When the tire is off, you just hold it up there and see how much wear the rim has, to see if it's safe to reuse.
Andy Wood: [00:05:21] They looked at the tire or they looked at the wheel afterwards and determined, you know, the rim was worn out. It really couldn't be used again. And when they put it together, it seemed okay until they inflated it and it came right off. So the bead rim is one failure point. Another one that we hear often is what's called the zipper failure or the zipper rupture. And that's usually in the sidewall and the upper portion of the sidewall close to the tread. And again, it's usually during re inflation, it's going to result from a tire that has been either overloaded or run soft. And when someone goes to reinflate it, what happens is when the tire [00:06:00] is overloaded or runs. Soft. It flexes the sidewalls beyond the designed parameters, and it causes the steel belts in the sidewall to flex. If you took a wire and bent it in the same spot several times, eventually break right there. Same things happening in the sidewall when they get squatted from too much weight or from being underinflated, one or two strands of that metal cord may break in there. And then when you reinflate it, the casing itself can't hold the pressure. And there's a weak spot where those one or two chords, the casing will start to expand between those and it'll pop the chord on the next side and the cord or the next side and the next chord down. And that's why you hear that pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And people call it a zipper failure because it sounds like you're opening a zipper and it'll just the entire sidewall will just open wide up and it release all that air at one time. So if the tire if you get the air in the face, that's bad, that may blow you across the room. Or if the tire is against the harder surface, it may propel a tire across the garage floor. [00:07:00] There's a guideline, it's called the 80% rule, which really is intended for just this situation. If you check a tire and it is lower than 80% of what its running capacity is, what it's generally designed to be run at. So if you're less than 80% of that, the tire should be removed and treated as a flat repair. In other words, the tire should be dismounted from the rim, should be inspected inside and out, put back in a tire cage and inflated there because there's just no way to know whether damage occurred or not without that close inspection. And we just had one of those on a logging truck. A person was had a loaded truck, got to the mill, noticed the soft tire, went to reinflate it, and the tire blew in the process. So the injury there again was just the concussive force. It was a ringing in his ear and damage to his eardrums.
Peter Koch: [00:07:50] Wow. So it's a good rule, that 80% rule. I hadn't thought of it that way, but if you've got less than 80% of what the capacity is or what it's supposed to be inflated [00:08:00] to, then you've got to treat it like there's been some damage someplace because under normal conditions, the tire shouldn't lose that much tire pressure. So if you're just running from wherever you're landing is bring in logs to the yard or bringing logs to the mill or bringing logs to wherever. It shouldn't lose that much. So identifying it, especially if you've done your inspection prior to work that day and all the tires were properly inflated. You get someplace and it's 80% less or it's less than 80% of its capacity or inflation. Treat it like it's been damaged. Just don't try to reinflate it because you're putting more pressure than the vessel can handle or potentially put more pressure than the vessel can handle.
Andy Wood: [00:08:43] And in theory, the tires have all been in the pre-trip you know, the tires have all been checked that morning. So that's all air you've lost that day. So, yeah, you're right. That's a lot to lose in a few hours or even several hours of service.
Peter Koch: [00:08:55] And that's a good point. You know, in theory and we both talk [00:09:00] about that as it's a given that it should be done. But I don't know if everybody's doing that every time. And I imagine, like the greater the potential for failure, the bigger the truck, the bigger the tire, the heavier the load that you're going to be checking those. But even with even if you're running a work truck, you know, a three quarter ton or a full ton truck and you're using it for plowing or your hauling landscape material from point A to point B if you haven't done your PRE-TRIP inspection and inspected your tires, making sure that they're all properly inflated before you start. When you get someplace and you notice a soft tire, you have no idea. Was it soft before you left? Was it soft from the night before? Was it soft between the point where you loaded it and you got to where you noticed it so you don't really know. So that information of what were what's what is the condition of the vehicle, condition of the tires before you start is a very important [00:10:00] thing to have a piece of information that you need to have in order to make a good decision later on down the road, if you notice something that's not functional for you. Excellent. So let's talk a little bit about, I don't know, maybe some you talked about a cage for re inflation and we talked about servicing some of these tires. You're going to treat it like it's a flat. So you get a tire that you notice is soft and you're going to have to bring it in for servicing. So the person that's servicing it is going to get this tire. It's not completely deflated. It's still got 80% of it's pressure inside of it. There's injuries that happen because you're treating a tire or you're dealing with the tire before you deflate it. So can you talk a little bit about that, maybe some of the injuries that might happen that way? And what are some of the recommendations to deal with a partially inflated tire, something that doesn't pass that 80% rule?
Andy Wood: [00:10:57] Right. The standard is pretty clear on that. And [00:11:00] you will see this repeated. Over and over and over in the TIA training or the in the OSHA standard that any one of those things you notice out about a tire that it's been damaged or run slack or before you're going to service it or do anything to it, you're going to remove the valves, then you're going to deflate by removal of valves. Then taking the valve stem completely out is the only way you're going to ensure that all the air gets out of it. You have a tire that's run soft and people say, well, that's, that's leaking anyways. There's not much pressure in there and they'll go and try and service it and it'll be a lot more pressure than they expected. Actually, I had that happen to a on a forklift at a sawmill. They had a tire that was going flat and several days they would just air it up and use it and air it up and use it. And finally they got the time to take it off. And there's in one bolt circle, there was two sets of nuts. There was there were big nuts and little nuts. So they took I can't remember which one was which, but they took one set of nuts off, say it was the big nuts. They took all the big nuts off [00:12:00] and they couldn't get the wheel off the hub. So what are they going to do next? Well, they'll go to the little nuts. When they took the little nuts off, they just took two or three of them off and the tire exploded. And what had happened was the it was a two piece rim and one set of nuts held the two pieces of the rim together and the other set of the nuts tell the whole assembly on the hub of the forklift. So when they couldn't get the rim off, they went to the other ones and they were actually unbolting the two sections of tire. And even though the tire was flat or considered flat under the weight of the forklift, there was enough pressure in there to still blow the tire and damage the rim, you know, deform the rim and damage the tire. And the person got hit in the leg. It wasn't a terribly big injury, but certainly there's a lot of there is a huge force there when that energy is released all at once. So, yeah, the first thing you're going to do under any of those conditions, remove the valve core and let it deflate itself.
Peter Koch: [00:12:58] Yeah and that you said that's part of the standard when you're [00:13:00] servicing.
Andy Wood: [00:13:00] That is written standard repeatedly.
Peter Koch: [00:13:02] Yeah, right on. And something that if you're not if you don't if you've never read the standard or you're not a professional tire technician, a service technician, you may not have known it might be something that you've been taught before by someone that has mentored you before, but know that that's part of the standard has got to be part of something that that gets done every time a tire is going to be deflated and removed from the rim. So deflate it, remove the valve core for sure. So we've been kind of talking we've mentioned this term a few times around here, tire, cage, you know, some shops will have a tire cage, some shops won't have a tire cage. Some people won't know what a tire cage is. Or some people will tell you that, yeah, they don't service tires, so they don't need a tire cage. But you know, like if we think about our curiosity when we go to the shop and we're not just looking at the injury stats all the time and talking about some of the manual material handling. We're [00:14:00] we're looking around the shop and we're going to ask some questions. And there's been some pretty interesting answers that I know I've had not about tires, but and I know you've had about tires and tire cages when you've gone to talk to some of your service guys. So as we start talking about tire cages, tell me a little bit about some of the different shops that you might have worked with and their and their answers. When you ask them about do they service tires or do they use a tire cage?
Andy Wood: [00:14:25] Most of these blow out incidents occur during the reinflation, for whatever reason, with mismatched or damaged tires or whatever. So there's some specific guidelines that go along with the reinflation process. And I think because of the, you know, you should have a tire gauge that's specified in the OSHA standard. You're going to have three things. You're going to have a tire cage, you can chain the tires. But I have never found anyone to chain of tire. You're supposed to have three chains around the rim and the tire assembly when it's being inflated. I've never seen anyone do that. So basically you're going to have a tire cage, [00:15:00] you're going to have a clip on Chuck with an adequate length of hose, and you're going to have a pressure regulator in line to set the pressure for the tire. So a lot of folks will say, you know, we just we don't bother with tires. And if you think about it, it's probably not the best use of your mechanic's time to be changing tires when tire shops are set up just to do that. But everybody's going to end up in a pinch and they're not going to have a spare and they're going to need someone to break down a tire and remount it and repair it right on the spot. So, yeah, it's interesting. Everyone up front says, you know, no, we don't do that. But in the reality they do quite a bit of it. And certainly we've had injuries to prove that I was in one shop and I asked the guy about the tires, how do you serve as tires? And he said, you know, no tires in my garage. I don't I tell those guys I don't want those things are too dangerous for us to deal with. If they want to do a tire, they have to do it out in the yard somewhere. I'm not going to have those things in my garage. So I said, Oh, well, that's good, I guess. [00:16:00] So we talked. We walked around. Garage. And, you know, he started opening up a little before we finished. He pointed up to the ceiling and it was a metal building and it had the metal girders and it had a metal roof on the inside. And there was a big place where the girder had been deformed and the roof had a big gash in it. And he says, You see that up there? He said a skitter tire went right up. That roof was probably 25 feet off the ground.
Peter Koch: [00:16:24] Wow.
Andy Wood: [00:16:25] And he said someone was inflating a Skitter tire on the ground. They had it laid right flat on the floor, on the cement floor, and they had a zipper rupture on the floor side. Of course, it exhausted right onto the cement, which is a great place for you to get that.
Peter Koch: [00:16:41] Physics again, right?
Andy Wood: [00:16:42] Yeah. Yeah. Physics to the thrust from the solid surface. And that tire went right up to the ceiling. And then he said after that, he said, that's when I made the rule. No more tires in the garage. So certainly and we've had a lot of tires and laying the tires on the floor is one that's got us repeatedly. We [00:17:00] have a colleague that mentioned that had a person just filling up a passenger car tire and the tire zipper failed on the on the down side. So the tire was catapulted into the air and it took him right across the forehead because he was leaning right over the tire and it fractured his skull. And then that one again went through to put a hole in the sheetrock ceiling in that garage. I had another person who was, again, tire was laying on the floor in the garage and they were leaning over with a non clip on truck. So you had to stand there and hold it and it was shot into the air. A zipper failure in the sidewall shot the and broke both of his forearms. So that's one we've seen. We've seen again and again. So the standard would be that first that nobody's in the trajectory. So the trajectory of the tire is if you have if the tire is standing upright and you stand with your back right to it, you put your arms out in front of you and just swing them to a 45 degree on either side. Looking forward, that would be the trajectory. [00:18:00] So as the rim goes out, that's where the tire, if there's any explosion, mostly that's where it's going to go. So there's supposed to be no one in that trajectory. The tire is supposed to be in a cage. That clip on Chuck allows you to once you clip it on, to get out of the trajectory. Otherwise, you have to stand in the trajectory zone to hold the truck on to reinflate it. So you put the clip on, Chuck. You've got a hose long enough for you to step back out of the way and the regulator is on the side. So then you can if the tire is rated for 80, you can put the regulator up to 80. Or if the tire is a truck tire, you need 110. You set the regulator for 110. The shot pressure. This is another problem we've run. You know, bigger garages are running shop pressures of 150 or 200 psi. If you can't regulate that down to the 80 or 100 or 110 at the tire, should have you easy, easily overinflated if you're not right there watching it. So the clip on Chuck gets you out of the way. The regulator lets you set it for whatever the tire is. So [00:19:00] that's kind of the standard guideline for doing that. And they do make smaller tire cages that are portable. And I know the tire people have those in the field if they have to service the tire in the field. But you can go on YouTube and you can Google exploding tires. And it is amazing how much energy. In fact, I found one that if you have an 11, 11 by 20 tire truck tire, 14 ply truck tire at 100 psi, if that were to zipper fail in the sidewall, it can it can lift a £3,000 car 21 feet into the air. Wow. Okay. So that's a that's a that's a truck. That would be a small tractor trailer tire. A 20 inch would be a big pickup tire or a small tractor trailer tire. 3,000 pounds is about the your average. Yep. 21 feet in the air. That's a lot of that's a lot of force. It's a lot of energy.
Peter Koch: [00:19:56] A lot of and people don't think about it like 110 pounds of pressure. That's not [00:20:00] doesn't seem to be a lot of pressure. But when you think about the amount of cubic inches of air that it's in, the tire that's released at 110 pounds all at once, that's a substantial amount of force. It's not just a little pinprick that 110 pounds is coming out of it. It's a substantial amount of force, especially when it is going to be pushed against a solid surface like asphalt or concrete or the hard ground. So yeah, a lot more force than we think. I didn't realize 3,000 pounds, 20, 21 feet in the air. That's crazy.
Andy Wood: [00:20:34] That's a long ways.
Peter Koch: [00:20:36] That's a long ways.
Andy Wood: [00:20:37] That's the family car skyrocketed it right up to the Ridgeline house.
Peter Koch: [00:20:41] No doubt.
Peter Koch: [00:20:42] The standard to avoid those solid surfaces, the standard says that the tire cage cannot be mounted with a solid surface within one foot of it for just that reason, to give that air a chance to dissipate a little when you lay the tire in the ground and it ruptures on the on the bottom side or into the cement, [00:21:00] that's great for surface for thrust.
Peter Koch: [00:21:02] Right. And now there's also some requirements about how you secure that tire cage as well. Correct.
Andy Wood: [00:21:08] There are holes in the bottom of the tire cage in the base. And most people thought that was to be bolted down. So it didn't move across the room because I had a situation where one the tire cage, the tire blew in the cage and of course, blew off center and started the tire cage spinning in a circle. And it went right across the floor of the garage and people thought it should be secured. Actually, if you read the directions on most of the tire cages, they're going to say, do not secure them, because that's one more way that they dissipate that energy by moving. And the other thing is, if you bolt that down, unless you had one inch bolts into cement, it's just going to shear them and become more projectiles. So most of the tire cages, instructions for installation, you know, no solid surfaces around it, nothing on it. Don't hang out or anything. Person's [00:22:00] not supposed to be leaning against it and don't secure it. Put it in an area where it should be allowed because it is going to deform substantially if a tire blows up in it.
Peter Koch: [00:22:09] All right.
Andy Wood: [00:22:09] That's the way it absorbs the energy by deforming.
Peter Koch: [00:22:12] Yeah. So really it's there to absorb the energy. It's not going to keep it in one place, but it's trying to limit the amount of damage that the tire can do in the open space of the shop.
Andy Wood: [00:22:22] And it's going to minimize the projectiles that come off of it. Hopefully, the tire will all stay together.
Peter Koch: [00:22:27] Okay. So let's just think about those preventative pieces again. So, you know, we started at the beginning, we talked about the correct personal protective equipment. So safety glasses hearing protection steel toes, if you need all that. But then if you're going to reinflate tire cage appropriately positioned clip on Chuck with an adequate hose length. So you're not going to be in the way in case it does fail and then the remote pressure regulator so I can fill it and I don't have to stand right there. And again, all of those all of the requirements are [00:23:00] based on injuries and repetitive injuries that have happened in the past. And you just spoke about a few of them that have occurred over just the few years that you've had experience with it. But if you go back in the history of servicing tires, there's hundreds of thousands of injuries that have that have occurred, I'm sure, at the reinflation stage that some of them will probably never even know about if you get back far enough in the history of automotive.
Peter Koch: [00:23:28] Let's take a quick break. Insurance is more than premiums and claims. It's also prevention and consultation to prevent harm from happening in the first place, to help injured workers get help fast MEMIC policyholders, have free and unlimited access to 24 seven injury triage and telehealth specialists. Policyholders can speak directly with a registered nurse within minutes of an incident which helps reduce overall medical costs and helps with faster claims processing. [00:24:00] Importantly, we found that 24 seven injury triage services can reduce claims for some policyholders by more than half. To find out more, go to MEMIC.com and then search, triage or telehealth. Now let's get back to today's episode.
Andy Wood: [00:24:19] Just the stories that I've been told since I was been aware of the tire hazards. I always ask the questions in the stories that I hear, you know, that some did or didn't or didn't generate injuries. That's like, wow, that's going on way more than we would think out there.
Peter Koch: [00:24:32] Yeah, it definitely is. Definitely is. And that's one of the pieces, like we said at the beginning of the podcast, like, you know, hopefully if you've thought that this has never happened in your shop before, we'll go back and have some conversations with people who've been there maybe longer than you have or have been dealing with tires for quite a long time. And I'll bet you there's at least one story in the history of your shop or history of your facility where [00:25:00] something has gone wrong and they've probably made some changes about how they deal with it to address that particular historical event. The problem becomes once that person leaves, or once you get comfortable with the process again, then you get back to just dealing with it like it truly isn't a hazard and that tire is almost that sleeping hazard. We don't think about it as a vessel pressure vessel, but that's really what it is. You put that much air into anything and there's certainly the potential for something to explode. And, you know, rubber and steel are it's not as strong as your as, say, like a steel a steel pressure vessel that you might have on a railcar or something like that. There's certainly the potential higher potential for it to fail. So think about it as a pressure vessel. Think about it as has the having the potential to truly kill you or someone around you. [00:26:00] So let's move from there. We've talked about the frequency of injuries. We've talked about the severity of injuries and what causes those types of injuries. Let's talk about some of the injuries that might happen actually on the road. So you've got some information about wheel failures on road wheel failures or actually some other challenges that we might have trying to manage a tire, whether it's still on the vehicle or the vehicle's actually traveling.
Andy Wood: [00:26:28] Sure. And the injuries and the liability shifts dramatically when the truck goes back on the road. If your mechanics or your operators are working on tires, it's really an injury to them. When the truck goes back on the road, it's an injury to the motoring public. And not only do you have to deal with the injuries to other people, but the liability becomes catastrophic. Managing that when you have one of your trucks fail, some component of one of your trucks fail on the highway. And maybe because it wasn't properly serviced, it can be, and again, just on the very limited [00:27:00] not servicing the bearings or the axle at all, but just you took a tire off and you put another one on. So you might have a failure of the wheel, failure of the tire lug nuts studs or the hub assembly. That's all. Just by changing the tire that you're exposed to that much. And one of the common scenarios is what they call a wheel off event. And that's when one of those failures of any one or multiple of those components allows it a wheel, or it could be a dual wheel to separate from the vehicle. If you're lucky, that wheel goes off the side of the road into the ditch, goes into the tree somewhere. If you're not so lucky, it could go down the highway and hit another vehicle or a pedestrian or anything else, do serious property damage or personal injury or and we had one of those just recently, about two years ago, we had a kind of a worst case scenario. We had a wheel off situation. Dual wheels came off, a log truck [00:28:00] rolled down the side of the road, hit the guardrail, and then went right down the inside of the guardrail. And there was a state trooper had stopped a vehicle, was actually assisting a motor vehicle, and he was standing between the car and the guardrail. And the tire came right down the side of the guardrail and struck him, you know, pretty much a dead hit and killed him. So that's kind of the worst case scenario. What can happen when you have a wheel off scenario. The good thing of that is it has stimulated a lot of awareness and a lot of training and a lot of questions. And in the state of Maine, at least, we've had a lot of training. In fact, I've been to a couple of trainings just recently, trainings just about tires in general and actually trainings about what exactly happened in that situation. And the interesting thing was there was no catastrophic failure when the tire came off that truck. They did an autopsy on the truck, the autopsy on the tire in the hub. And they actually the whole truck as the commercial motor vehicle folks would do. And I guess what I call death [00:29:00] by a thousand cuts, you know, it was just little teeny things that had been overlooked and clearly had been overlooked for a while, things that the mechanic should have picked up on, things that the truck driver should have picked up on doing his pre trips and his post trips. You know, it wasn't like there was some major thing that had just failed. It was like all these little things combined and it just kept getting worse and worse until finally the wheels came off. And like I said, that was about as bad as it can get. So a few things that are going to cause those failures from the trucks on the road. Heat is a problem. So heat is used in the garage. Sometimes if you have lug nuts that are frozen on, they're going to use heat to take those off. Going back to the standard, if you put a torch to a lug nut, the studs and the lug nuts all have to be changed. Sometimes you'll take all the lug nuts off and you can't get the hub that excuse me, you can't get the wheel off the hub because it's seized on there again. Sometimes you'll take the torch and heat up the rim to separate it from the hub. You put the torch on the rim, [00:30:00] it's out of service. That has to be changed. So heat there is going to be a is going to cause not necessarily a failure right then, but failure later on when the truck is in service. If you run a underinflated tire or an overloaded tire, it's going to generate heat in the tire as well.
Andy Wood: [00:30:16] That will cause the tire to fail. And what generally happens is the different components, the bonding of the different components, the different plies in the casings, the sidewalls, where they're all glued together. Something will separate at the bonding point when the tire gets too hot. So heat's a problem that has to be managed anywhere in the system. And the other thing that's a problem is lubrication. Some tires go on. It's right in the standards. It's right in the manufacturer's recommendations. The studs are not lubricated. They have to be put on dry. And other studs like the hub pilot had stubs. The there they have to piece knots, they have to be lubricated and the stud has to have a lubrication as well in order to create enough clamping force to hold [00:31:00] the tire on. So it's. Very specific on how that lubrication works. Some are lubricated and some are lubricated. Same thing when you're servicing the tire. If you're mounting and dismounting tires on rim, you need to lubricate the bead. In this case, they're always lubricated. If you don't use lubrication or you don't use the right lubrication, you're going to damage the bead. And that's not going to be noticeable until you fully inflate the tire and then maybe have it loaded. It's traveling at a high rate of speed which generates heat anyways, or it's heavily loaded, which generates heats. So those are going to be failures that maybe not be noticed until the vehicle is back on the road.
Peter Koch: [00:31:38] Early, early on in my career, having worked in some older garages for different vehicles and some old school mechanics, watching them actually trying to manage frozen on lug nuts for some vehicles. Seen them used torches before and had never I hadn't realized that that was part of the standard that you can't use heat to do that. So if heat's [00:32:00] not to be used to remove the lug nut, then what are some options that you have out there?
Andy Wood: [00:32:06] Well, it's interesting. After the wheel off incident, the fatal wheel off incident in Maine, our local trucking organization did a training and they had a guy from the TIA certified to do tire training and they had the officers who did the accident investigation, not talking about the injury, but just talking about tires in general. How many guys use a torch to heat up the lug nuts? And the room was full of mechanics and truck drivers and they all put up their hand and the guy said, you realize, you know, when you do that, that lug nut and that nut is out of service and everyone no, never heard of that before. So yeah, there's a lot of people that wouldn't have been aware of that. They did talk about several interesting tools that make your job a little bit easier and you don't damage so much equipment. One was the nut buddy, which was kind of an interesting unit. It's got a ratchet on one end and you slide it over the lug nut. It's got a brace that comes out and leans against the next lug nut. So it's stationary and you put a [00:33:00] handle on the end and you just turn it. It works kind of like a planetary gear. Folks know how that works, and it just creates a gear ratio of 58 to 1. So just with a small handle, you can apply incredible amounts of force to back that off there. And you don't you don't ruin any equipment in the process.
Peter Koch: [00:33:16] So I thought you were going to say. I thought you were going to say, are you going to use a longer cheater bar on your ratchet arm?
Andy Wood: [00:33:22] Yeah, I know.
Peter Koch: [00:33:23] I'm glad I'm glad there's a better solution than that.
Andy Wood: [00:33:25] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That was one option that worked really well.
Peter Koch: [00:33:31] Also, we were talking before, too, there are some things that you can do to prevent some of this stuff, or at least identify if there's any particular problems before you put the vehicle back on the road. And I think there's a an acronym for that, which is RIST correct RIST. So what does that stand for and how would you use that?
Andy Wood: [00:33:51] Yeah, a very simple process that came out of the training and is in the manuals as well. RIST, R I S T. The first one is [00:34:00] remove all debris. I inspect all components S snug nuts in a star pattern and t talk to manufacturers recommendations. So one of the biggest problems with going back to I remove all debris that's there's going to be some rust on the hub or on the on the wheel. And if you put that back together with rust in there, it doesn't allow the lug nuts to create enough clamping force to hold the tire in place. So a lot of folks think that the lug nuts, the studs hold the tire in place, but the studs and the lug nuts only create clamping force. And what holds it on there is the clamping force against the hub. So if you if there's any rust or any debris in there, you can't get that clamping force. So cleaning that meeting surface is really important. The inside of the rim and the outside of the hub inspecting all components. I'll mention something in a second. The five and one gauge. It's important, as I mentioned, with inspecting the rim flanges to make sure they are worn, particularly [00:35:00] in the aluminum rims. But all the components need to be inspected. The nuts need to be inspected. The studs, the holes, are they are they starting to wear wobble a little wear open up a little bit. That's all going to be inspected in the process and a tool that they had. There was the five and one inspection tool and that would check the studs for diameter. So if the studs have been worn from just from age or if they've been stretched at all, they're going to change in diameter. This tool, it's just a little tool that fits in the palm of your hand. It's just a piece of metal that's drilled out in different diameters to check the diameter of the studs, to check the diameter of the nuts if they're starting to wobble on both sides, elongation of the holes in the rim and the diameters of the holes in the rim. So for one easy tool, it can check five different components and you know, you're good to go to put that stuff back together. At least that stuff is going to be very quickly within standards and it's stuff that you can't tell by looking at it. It's nothing [00:36:00] you're going to be able to tell. But this little piece of metal has got index marks on it. If you slide it in and it goes to that point, it's out of service. It's pretty, pretty simple to use. And it solves a lot of the a lot of the problems. So remove all debris, inspect the components, snug nuts in a star pattern. That's just a question of, you know, we all heard that I think driver's ed, we learned that in high school. You know, you work your way around the rim in a certain pattern depending on how many lug nuts you have to make sure that the stress on the rim is being distributed evenly and that it's not getting distorted or warped at all. When you tighten one side all the way down and then go to the other side, sometimes it'll get bowed. So you do that evenly. And then the last one is the torque. And of course a lot of your places are going to use a wrench. They're going to use a air impact or impact wrench to put it back on. And the common thinking is that more is better in this case. More is not better. It's going to distort the wheels and it's going to stretch the studs. And if you stretch the studs, the lugs, the nuts after that won't stay tight in [00:37:00] the standard that says you need to use a torque wrench. Once you snug up the star pattern, you're going to go round with a torque wrench and set the nuts, the lug nuts to the torque that's recommended for that application.
Andy Wood: [00:37:10] You can't just wind it up. You can't just put the long cheater bar on there. You know, I made a tool when I first started in the woods. I made a tool that I could just designed for changing the lug nuts on a skitter. And I thought I was pretty smart. I had a custom made and you can put a big long bar on in that and I could snap lug nuts off like nobody. And I thought, Jeez, you think it would just tighten down and stop, but you get enough leverage and you can break those right off. Of course, just before they break off, you've deformed them to the point where they're not going to hold and you might not know that. So the torque wrench and there's different styles of torque wrenches that can be used by the torque wrench is supposed to be used to tension those lug nuts back on there. And interesting. I don't know how many people have ever calibrated their torque wrench. Most people buy them and just use them, but they need to be calibrated, occasionally [00:38:00] recalibrated, I should say, to make sure they're still within the specs.
Peter Koch: [00:38:04] Yeah, those are all good points and I think there's quite a few people, if they've ever changed their own tires that have probably used a cheater bar, probably not have used a torque wrench to do that. So they can, they can probably sympathize with you and, and think about some of those potentials. And, and you think about it, if you're running an aluminum rim and you are driving that that lug nut onto that stud as hard as you can and refund on it, that aluminum is brittle, it's going to break. And even if you're running just a steel rim, it's going to potentially deform. And then once you start loosening that wheel on the hub, you're going to start having problems around the rest of the components that are holding that tire or the wheel onto the car. So it really just starts the cascade of effects that could cause catastrophic problems later on down the road and possibly turn [00:39:00] into a tragic situation that you referred to there where the trooper got killed in Maine here. And I did. I ended up Googling while we were talking just a wheel off fatalities. And there's a number of fatalities that have occurred both in the United States and in Canada, where a wheel has come off from poor maintenance or from a component failure, and it's killed either someone in a car because it's hit the car and the car went off the road or it killed a pedestrian or someone who is on the side of the road.
Peter Koch: [00:39:33] So definitely something I never thought about until we started having this conversation. But it's definitely out there and the things like I've said it numerous times outside of this podcast, the tires are the thing that makes your vehicle perform. It's just like having good shoes on your feet. You can't get good traction if you don't have good tread and you can't have good balance if you don't have good support in in those shoes and the same thing on your [00:40:00] on your car. The treads got to be good. The tires got to be well maintained and the serviceable condition and it has to be affixed properly, correctly and securely to the vehicle in order for it all to work. And then it's got to be the right tire for the right application. Your shoe might do everything that you want it to do, except when you want to try to play a sport with it, you're going to end up having some sort of failure. The same thing is going to happen with a tire that might not be designed for the load that you're trying to carry or the speeds that you're trying to travel. So we're gosh, I can't believe it. We've been here now for quite a while. We're right towards the end of our podcast here. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that I should have asked you, Andy, that you want to talk a little bit more around tire safety?
Andy Wood: [00:40:46] Yeah, I think we've covered a lot. We've covered a lot of ground. Again, we're just trying to peak people's interest to maybe look a little further. I think for me, I had certainly been around heavy equipment, tires, been around trucks, and certainly [00:41:00] I have. I think I have the record in my at least in my family, five flat tires in one week. When I worked in the woods, you know, the gravel roads were just really tough on tires. So I spent a lot of time changing tires on equipment and on my pickups. It wasn't until just recently I went to some of this tire training and it was so simple and it makes so much sense. And yet it's nothing you're going to think of on your own until someone sits you down and says, This is the way this works. And you're thinking, Oh my gosh, I've done that all my life. I never realized that that's actually the way that's the way it works and that's the way it should be repaired. And so with relatively little effort, you can make yourself a much better technician as far as servicing, even if you're just doing occasional. And even when I change the tires on my pickup now I have a little different procedure and a little different process. So I would encourage folks to reach out there and look at some of the training that's available and get yourself or your mechanics or your technicians, or even if it's just operators [00:42:00] changing their own tires, get them to it as well.
Peter Koch: [00:42:02] I think that's a great point. And so if I were to start looking for more information about servicing tires or maybe to try to get some of that training, where could I look? What are where? Some places that our listeners can find more information about surfacing tires or maybe find some of that training that you're talking about.
Andy Wood: [00:42:20] Yeah. So the certainly the OSHA spells out what has to be in some of the training. But as far as getting the training, the TIA the Tire Industry Association, I would say that's the biggest trade group and they have the most training and it looks to me like it's pretty good. They have certified instructors that will go around to different parts of the country. Or you can go to, I think in the Midwest somewhere they are you can go to their facility and take the tire training, you know, and some of it's a combination of classroom training and hands on, you go to the tire shop, you have to do everything that you've talked about. The US Tire Manufacturers Association is another big group. So I would say those two would be places I'd start to get actual training by [00:43:00] myself.
Peter Koch: [00:43:01] Nice. And we'll, we'll put those links and some other links in the show notes for the podcast. So if you're listening out there and you do want to find more information, you can go to either of those two organizations, Google those organizations, or you can check out the show notes in the podcast and you can head out there and see what's available for you. So, Andy, thank you very much for joining us today and for sharing your expertise or really, truly appreciate having this conversation with you.
Andy Wood: [00:43:28] Sure, Pete. Thanks for the opportunity. And like I said in the beginning, when you start looking at these things and you kind of recount all the different situations you've been in, you realize, wow, there's a lot more things. I never really put all the dots together and think there's a lot more exposures than I thought I had out there.
Peter Koch: [00:43:43] Yeah, for sure. I know one of the things that I'm going to just take away personally, like just managing my own personal fleet of vehicles, whether it be lawnmower or tractor or the cars that personally drive. And one of the things that I'm going to do is clip on Chuck and not stand anywhere [00:44:00] next to that tire when I'm inflating it. Because no matter how good I'm going to be at looking at it, I might not notice that something's going to fail. So that's one of the things that I can do personally that might keep me a little bit safer. And I'm certainly going to impart that information to my teenage drivers for sure. Thanks again to everyone for joining us today. This is part two of our two part podcast on Tire Safety with Andy Wood, Manager of our Forest Products Safety Services. Here at MEMIC, check out part one.
Tire Servicing Safety is often overlooked unless it’s your full-time job. Hazards from lifting and repositioning a heavy tire in an awkward position or being struck by a falling or exploding tire are all common exposures for workers serving tires in the shop or in the field. In part-one of this two-part episode, I speak with Andy Wood, MEMIC’s Forest Products Programs Manager about the hazards of servicing tires, how to control them, and what standards apply.
0065 -Tire Servicing Safety - Don’t reinvent the wheel with Andy Wood - Part 1.mp3 Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch, manager of digital technology for loss control and safety management consultant here at MEMIC. It's hard to believe that we've just celebrated our two year anniversary in November. We've covered topics from ergonomics and chainsaws to lockout tag out and fall protection. At first, you might think there's only a limited number of things that you can talk about regarding workplace safety. Well, that's just not the case. The number of situations, equipment and tools in any given workplace that can contribute to an injury is enormous. Add to that human behavior and the number of safety related topics. Well, it's near limitless. I think the hard part is to make the topic interesting and relevant and well, that's what we strive to do here on the podcast. And it's really an offshoot of what drives our lost control team here at MEMIC anyway. We have a team of experts that have worked in the industries that they serve, and I've had the [00:01:00] honor of working with each of them, and I know that they all share a passion for safety and assisting our policyholders with the workplace safety equation. Beyond the traditional look at the losses and focusing only on the reactive data, they like to get involved because it's where the worker meets, the hazard is where the injury occurs. And more often than not, this can help spot exposures before they cause injury or identify situations that can thwart even the best laid exposure control plan. That lost control person's curiosity for why injuries happen can extend beyond the workplace. So, for example, a few weeks back, I was getting the tractor ready for winter plowing and the last thing to service. We're checking and inflating the tires. As I was adding air while I noticed that the front tires were starting to show wear and signs of age, and I'd probably need to replace them soon. So it got me wondering how much air pressure would it take to blow one of these up? And how much force would the exploding tire create? [00:02:00] That got me thinking even more about how the tires got serviced. What happens when I drop it off at the service center? What do they do? What are the exposures? We never really think about it unless you're doing the servicing yourself. And it turns out that there are way more injuries to service technicians while working on tires that you would think to help us look more closely at the hazards of servicing tires is Andy Wood, manager of Forest Product Safety Services here at MEMIC. Before coming to MEMIC in the mid 1990s, Andy worked full time as a logger in the main North Woods and Canada. He's an instructor for the game of logging and currently manages the safety programs for MEMICs forest products policyholders beyond working with our policyholders. Andy brings many years of professional experience dealing with hand and mechanical logging operations and servicing his own equipment. This episode is going to be a two-parter because as Andy and I were preparing for recording and then discussing the various exposures when servicing [00:03:00] tires, we realized that there was way more than we could pack into one episode. So in part one, we will address the regulations how more than just big rig service centers are covered by the regs? And then we'll begin to discuss the different injuries that can be caused when servicing the tires. So let's just dig right in. Andy, welcome back to the podcast.
Andy Wood: [00:03:21] Well, thanks Pete. It's great to be back. Our topic is a little different this time, but I do. Having done a little research to prepare for this, I realize I have a lot of a lot of history with this particular topic, both personally and with my consulting here at MEMIC in the forest products industry.
Peter Koch: [00:03:38] Yeah, and it's really not that far jump from like dealing with forest products, logging and chainsaws to tire safety. And we were talking last week as we were kind of mulling through the parts of the podcast and found that you do have quite a history with tire safety, not just here at MEMIC, but from your own past experience. And I think we'll get into some of [00:04:00] those. We'll get into some of those interesting stories as we go. So before we jump into the whole thing, let's set the stage. Who does this topic apply to? So like, who should be listening to this particular podcast?
Andy Wood: [00:04:14] First and foremost, I guess it's not really designed for folks in the tire industry tires that folks that work in a tire shop because the people I deal with are all occasional people that service tires occasionally. And the standards, we'll talk a little bit about the OSHA, the federal motor carrier guidelines. But you don't have to be actually servicing the tire as far as mounting or dismounting if you just take a tire off a piece of equipment and put another one back on. You've performed a service that falls under these guidelines, the OSHA guidelines, for example, very specific guidelines in there and how that works when you do that. Again, you don't have to be doing brakes or bearings on the or taking the hub off or mounting and dismounting tires. Just changing that tire puts you into these standards.
Peter Koch: [00:04:59] All right. So that that [00:05:00] really broadens the scope. So it's not just the guy in the service shop, but it might be the guy out in the woods who's taken the tire off his skitter or somebody on the side of the road actually managing a flat tire who's working for a company. So it's not just the service guys, it's anybody who is doing anything with a tire can fall under the regulations that we'll talk about here in a bit, right?
Andy Wood: [00:05:25] Sure. And in fact, all the comments I'm going to make today don't come out of the tire industry. They're all for the folks with the small shops mechanics that do multiple things and servicing tires is just one of the things they do occasionally.
Peter Koch: [00:05:39] Well, and I think that's a good lead into this next comment, and we have to add a disclaimer here. So this is a podcast around the hazards for servicing tires and where some of the regulations are, how they affect you. Some of the challenges that you might find surprising or exposures that you might find surprising [00:06:00] when servicing a tire. We're not giving advice on how to service tires. It's not a practice or we're not providing information about what you should be doing to service a tire. No. No. Processes and procedures. And if you have any questions about those things or even some of the legality of it, you go to the federal DOT or your state regulations to find out what you're responsible for and what those procedures should be. And as with anything, if you are dealing with a particular hazard, you're dealing with a particular tire or a particular vehicle as an occasional servicing agent, then you should go back to the manufacturer to find out what the particular requirements are. So this is not about requirements, but this is to help us to identify where the hazards are. What are some of the controls and what regulations would be covering the occasional user?
Andy Wood: [00:06:53] Yeah, it's all really about peaking the interest of the listener. If anything, we talk about you've seen in your shop or, you know, your folks are doing. Hopefully, [00:07:00] it'll incentivize you to go and ask them more questions and get the details as well. I would note that I'm going to mention some of the guidelines that we use here in Maine. Every state can have different guidelines. I mean, the federal DOT and the OSHA standards are similar in that you can follow the federal program or you can have state run programs. So there's going to be little variation. So as far as the legal part, you need to go to your specific jurisdiction and find out what the specifics are.
Peter Koch: [00:07:28] Good. And you bring up a great point. You know, if you're a safety person listening to this or you're an owner, or even if you're working in a shop with a bunch of guys who manage or serviced the tires occasionally for the vehicles that come into your, your shop or your business. This hopefully will pique some of your interests. Like, I saw this happen in the shop and really, you should go back and look more into that because all the stories that we're going to talk about today have happened. And the injuries that we're going to talk about today [00:08:00] have occurred because of these exposures. So there's some real pieces there, even though it may not yet have happened to you in your shop. It will happen sometime in the future if that behavior or practice is allowed to continue. And that's just statistically probable that what we have seen within the safety industry that the more frequently something happens, the more potential there is for that to become a more significant event or a significant injury. So with that, like we let's talk about some of the hazards Andy. So if we look at what the hazards are for working with tires, you break it up into a couple of different segments so that we can look at it a little more thoroughly. So why don't you talk to me a little bit about what the hazards of working with tires?
Andy Wood: [00:08:47] Sure. As, of course, safety consultants and people that look at a lot of data. We're constantly trying to break down things into groups so we can, you know, manage them collectively and be a little more efficient. So one of the first breakdowns we often do [00:09:00] is frequency and severity. So I have I'm going to have several comments on the frequency, what injuries we see the most when handling tires and servicing tires. Then we're going to move on to the severity of the injuries that don't happen nearly as often and but are much more significant and more potential to be fatal. And then the last section, I'm going to comment on some of the on road issues for the DOT and federal motor carrier. And you have the risks there of not so much injuries to the person. This is when the truck is back on the road, the tires back on the vehicle and the truck is back on the road and something goes wrong with the tire. The rim assembly. Not so much a hazard to your employee driving the truck, but could create a serious hazard for someone else on the road. And when that happens, it creates a serious not just the injuries to the people or potential property damage, but the huge liability that you take on by having a truck that may have been out of service put back on the road. So kind of those three categories, I'm going to look a little more in-depth at right [00:10:00] on.
Peter Koch: [00:10:00] So let's just categorize like what type of injuries would end up being included in the frequency side, right? So we have the frequencies driving injuries, we have the severity driving injuries. So if we look at the type of injuries that are happening on the frequency side, what are those?
Andy Wood: [00:10:18] Yeah, the frequency is predominantly what we call comes from manual material handling, and it's pretty much a lot of soft tissue injuries, so that could be for my guys. It's back shoulders and arms, just handling the tires. They weigh a lot. We'll get into that a little more in a bit. You know, how are you going to handle that? How are you going to minimize the stress on your body during that process? So for frequency, it's soft tissue injuries.
Peter Koch: [00:10:42] Right on. And I bet you that some of our listeners, even if you've only ever managed your own tires, can see that happening because, like you said, tires and rim assemblies, even on passenger vehicles can get pretty heavy. So when we start getting to some more of the industrial tires that are out there, the weight goes up substantially [00:11:00] and you do it all the time or just a few times you're in the wrong position that awkward ergonomics could place you in a position for injury. So let's talk about severity too. And even though you can get some pretty severe injuries out of manual material handling or lifting and pushing and pulling, the majority of our severe injuries happen from a particular type of hazard. So let us know a little bit about that type of hazard.
Andy Wood: [00:11:25] Yeah. So for servicing the tires, what I put in a category of severity was the tire explosions, and we'll get into a little bit of detail about how tires come apart. And I use the term explosion for a bunch of different failures of the tire room assembly, and that's a catastrophic release of huge amounts of energy. And the injuries are multiple body parts. Injuries are usually trauma. There's usually going to be flying debris or just a concussive force of the air release is going to catapult people across the room if even if they only get hit by air. So those are usually larger, blunt force trauma, multiple body part type [00:12:00] injuries.
Peter Koch: [00:12:01] All right. Well, like you said, we're going to get we're going to go into detail in each of those bits and pieces and look at what's causing material handling injuries, what's substantially causing the severe injuries, the struck by tire explosion injuries. But let's first look at overall, since we know that there is injuries that are happening out there and there's more than we think there are regulations out there that cover servicing tires. So give us a little bit about what some of those regs are and some of those standard setting organizations. And maybe we can even talk some about some of the training that might be required or not required for people servicing tires.
Andy Wood: [00:12:40] I would start as with most of the things we do. You can look into the OSHA standards. Nineteen ten, one seventy seven. That's a general industry standard that I'm looking at. That applies to most of the people that I work with. The one seventy seven is specific to servicing tires and rims. So there's some specifics in there how that's managed. [00:13:00] There's some training requirements in there that's specified exactly what kind of equipment you need to service those tires when you're re inflating, when you're inflating. So OSHA's a big driver there, the federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, or DOT people just use the term DOT that kind of synonymously with federal motor carrier. They have guidelines as well on how things are going to be serviced. There's a couple parts there on forty nine CFR, there's section three ninety three that's really about it's called parts and accessories necessary for safe operation. And that's really the part that of the whole commercial truck driving standard that focuses on the physical condition of the vehicle. So when you see people on these roadside inspections, they're pulling out that three ninety three the troopers are pulling out their three ninety three standard and looking at the equipment, and then there is three ninety six, which covers inspection of those vehicles. And that's everything from the pre trip inspection [00:14:00] from the driver, the post trip inspection, the regular inspections and then the annual inspections from a certified service center all the way up through. So how that's going to be monitored along the way with the inspection process is covered as well. The Tire Industry Association probably the most, the largest, I would say most active group of industry group that works with the tire manufacturers. They put out a lot of training, and so they don't have the regulatory authority to specifically tell you what to do. But because as far as what you do for training for your own employees, OSHA generally gives you the option to develop in-house training program to meet those needs. But most people that I work with again, they're not tire shops, so they don't want to take the time and effort to develop a whole standard for their guys. So they want to say, just give us a program, we'll send our guys to it. We'll call that good. So the Tire Industry Association is the group that they have all types of tire training, from entry level [00:15:00] tire training to multi piece greater tires off road tires, quite a variety of different depending on what your exposures are, and that can actually be incorporated by reference into an OSHA standard kind of like some information from an owner's manual could be as well. But I think the greatest tire regulatory. Or I should say, standard setting organization. If you don't fall under federal motor carrier guidelines because you're not a commercial motor vehicle operator, maybe you don't fall under the OSHA standards either. Somehow the laws of physics are going to apply to you regardless. So I'm not talking about, you know, at the quantum theory level, but just basic properties of matter and energy and the relationships between them. You know, if you take a tire that's rated for one hundred and ten pounds and it's been worn at all and you put one hundred and twenty pounds in it, things are not going to end well for you. So physics are going to be the overriding factor, you know, regardless of the legal standards that are set out there for you.
Peter Koch: [00:15:57] I think that's a really good point, because if someone jumps into [00:16:00] that OSHA 1910 177, you're going to find that excludes passenger and light truck tires for out of that particular piece. But. Even though if that's what you're touching, right, as part of your quote unquote shop, or even if you're just doing it at home, the laws of physics still apply. I mean, that's not an OSHA thing. So that's a really great thing to bring up all of these things that we're going to be talking about the hazards, the exposures and some of the controls that we're going to see here apply regardless. Just because of the laws of physics, you put more pressure than the vessel can handle the vessels going to deform, and it's probably going to fracture at some point in time. And the more pressure you put in it, the more force is going to be resultant from that explosion. So there's a lot, a lot to it. So I think that's a good point. So regardless, if you're thinking about checking out right now because none of this applies to you. Well stick around for a little bit longer because really, physics [00:17:00] is what's going to drive some of the causes of the injuries. And even on the manual material handling, it's all about physics. How far away, how much you can lift the mechanics of your body and how you grab on to something to pick something up. So stick around. We'll talk a little bit more about these going forward.
Andy Wood: [00:17:17] Why is that often comes up in my industry, of course, coming from the tree felling part or handling heavy machine components as people say, you know, gravity wins.
Peter Koch: [00:17:27] All the time.
Andy Wood: [00:17:27] It's all about physics, and gravity in the end is always going to win. So yeah, that's something we want to keep in mind.
Peter Koch: [00:17:32] Yeah, for sure. Now, something that anybody can do, regardless of what they're addressing or working on or servicing is have some personal protective equipment and we're jumping here first because it's ubiquitous. It should be something that you use regardless of what you're doing and when you're doing it, because there are certain hazards that we are just not able to manage well, whether you're [00:18:00] in the field or in the shop, there's just certain potential problems that PPE will help you. It's not the end all, be all. And as we know, it's really not what we want to rely on, but we should be using it. So if I'm going to service tires or be working in a shop that servicing tires, what PPE is required for me to work on those tires or maybe even work around those tires?
Andy Wood: [00:18:22] Yeah, it's pretty basic stuff, I would say. You know, tires are pretty heavy. You're going to be wearing steel toes, sturdy footwear with all the pressure and some of the power tools. You're going to be using eye protection gloves, of course, from the hand injuries, if you're working in a shop where there are compressors running and impact wrenches, you might add hearing protection to that because that level of noise might put you over the action level for the hearing conservation standard and OSHA's guidelines. And if you're depending again where you're working, if you're working in the field on a construction site, say where there's a lot of other equipment, high vis clothing would be part of the equation. [00:19:00] If you're working roadside, of course there's a D.O.T. standard you're creating work zone high vis clothing would be would be an issue there as well. So, yeah, those should be kind of default settings. You don't you don't always have all the equipment and all the stuff in the field that you want, but this stuff should be a given all the time.
Peter Koch: [00:19:16] Cool. Good. So good to know. So things to think about if you're going to be working on that steel toes, eye protection, gloves, hearing protection and high vis from a situational standpoint. So let's think about this from like, how do I know what I'm going to be getting into? So in order to know what exposures you have, you need to know a little bit about the tire itself, what type it is, maybe how much pressure it is and lots of that is given to us actually on the tire. So in order I think to know what we're exposed to, we need to know a little bit about the information on the tire. So let's talk a little bit about that. There's a ton of information on the stats on the sidewall. [00:20:00] So talk us if you can talk us through what information is on the sidewall, what might be important to someone who's servicing the tire and how that information might influence some of their decisions.
Andy Wood: [00:20:13] Sure. Well, of course, the training that's required is going to give you a lot of that information on what you should be able to what you should expect, but you're absolutely right. The specifics for any given tire are spelled right out on the sidewalk. DOT has a very specific sequence of numbers and letters on the sidewall information that has to be there. I think the last upgrade was two thousand. They specified just what need to be in there and how would it need to be formatted so anyone could get that information off the tire? It's going to be a little different depending on the tires that you have, whether you're looking at pick up tires or medium duty tires or heavy duty tires or off road heavy equipment tires. But some of the things that are going to be on there, the tire class will be listed. So on the low end of the spectrum, as far as tires designations that most people will [00:21:00] be familiar with would be the P that's for a passenger vehicle. LP is going to be your light trucks. They do have an ST that would be special trailer tires. MC is motorcycles, so there's a whole series there. And then the commercial motor vehicles, the bigger. Like the tractor trailers, they have designations for steer, axle tires for drive axle tires, trailer tires. Again, the separate designation. And if you're running the super singles, which a lot of the tractor trailers have, and that's when the dual tires traditionally on trailers or the drive axles of a tractor trailer are being replaced by larger single tires. Again, that's a separate designation, so that's the tire class that's on there. The tire size is spelled out on there. We're going to talk about that a little more, but that's something you need, obviously, to make sure that matches up with the rims or the wheels that you have. And there are some small differences there that little nuances that are very important. When you pressurize the tire, you'll need to know about when you're servicing the [00:22:00] tires on the commercial motor vehicles. We'll talk a little bit about the RIM charts in a minute that's specified in the OSHA standard, and you need the information off the dad off the sidewall, the tire to compare to the rims that you have, whether you have single piece rims or multi piece rims to make sure that they're all compatible and it's easy to mix and match those improperly so the tire size information, maximum inflation pressure is on the side of the tire, and this is one that gets really confusing. Having had some huge issues with tires failing on vans, the 15 passenger vans back quite a few years ago, they were inherently unstable and the tires weren't really large enough for the for the weight they were carrying. I found that it was people really struggle to understand that, and the pressure that's noted on the sidewall is the maximum inflation pressure for that tire when it's carrying the maximum load. So the tire pressure has to match the load. The manufacturer of the tire [00:23:00] has no idea what you're going to do with the tire. You might put it on a steer axle or a drive axle. You might put it on an SUV where all the tires are the same. You could put it in a dual tire application where it's different. You could use it on a trailer. They don't really know that. So on the lighter vehicles, you know, the half one, three quarter ton pickups going up through to the commercials, there will be a placard on the door or on the door jam and that'll in the manufacturer of the vehicle knows what the intended use of that vehicle is, and they've specified the tires that go on that. So if you're working within those design parameters, the manufacturer of the vehicle is going to give you the best indication of tire pressure. That's it's going to be on the placard on the door on the end of the door or on the door jam. And it's usually going to be lower than the maximum inflation pressure that's on the tire. And it has a huge difference in the way the tire is going to perform and how it's going to wear as well. If you take the, for example, I've had a, you know, I've [00:24:00] run into that myself and that we just drive half-ton pickups. So there are light duty vehicles. But because of the gravel roads that we travel on, we upgrade the tires to 10 ply tires. The maximum inflation pressure is 80 pounds on those. When I ran when I had a work truck, I ran the maximum deflation pressure was 80 pounds. I ran 80 pounds on this company truck. It's usually just me riding around in the truck with not a lot of weight in there. If you run 80 pounds, I can tell you what happens. The middle of your tread goes bald real quick, because only the center of the tire is being worn. The inflation pressure is so high and there's no weight to counteract that that it wears the tire un-uniformly. So you lose a lot of tire life out of that. So again, you've got to match the tire pressure to the weight that it's beat the application and the weight that it's being carried. So moving on from inflation pressure, the maximum load and the load index is on there, and that's a code that just relates. They have a number that correlates to the weight of the tire is designed to carry. You just need [00:25:00] to look up the chart for the manufacturer to tell what it's rated for. A speed rating is on the tire. Now here in the U.S., we don't really worry too much about the speed rating most people's vehicles unless you bought a high performance. Car, a Lamborghini or a Porsche or something where it's advertised to be able to go one hundred and fifty miles an hour. They might have put speed rated tires on it. For most applications, our speeds are, you know, sixty five seventy miles an hour. The speed rating is not so much. I understand that in Germany, on the autobahn, where there's an unlimited speed limit, speed limit, speed rated tires are important to have. There is one example, though one situation, and I kind of I ran into this myself as well. On the lower end of the spectrum, there are tires that are not rated that have no speed rating and are rated just for off road use. Not off road equipment. But I was looking for some tires for a trailer that I have on the farm and I got looking around for something, you know, it's very occasional use and I didn't want to spend a lot of money and it was on one of the agricultural [00:26:00] websites and they had these really nice tires and I thought, Well, they look pretty good and they're not that expensive. But when you look close, says not for a highway UCS on them, so they're rated for agricultural equipment, something around, you know, something you use in a gravel pit around the farm, but nothing that's rated for highway speed, so that as long as you don't get those into your into your service fleet, you should be all set with the speed rating. The data tire manufacturer is on there and you. Interesting. You mentioned your tires on your tractor are getting a little old, something that's fairly new and I just came across it researching for this, this discussion. We're having the month and year of the manufacturer of the tire is on there. And what the manufacturers are now recommending is that at five years, the tire be dismounted and be inspected inside and outside.
Peter Koch: [00:26:48] Really.
Andy Wood: [00:26:50] If you have a tire that last 10 years, it needs to be discarded regardless of the condition that it's in. So I have a plow truck at home and has almost no miles on [00:27:00] it per year, and but the tires are going to outdated 10 years, whether it's got good tread or not. So that's something that's relatively new, that's come along.
Peter Koch: [00:27:08] Yeah. And if you think about that too, it kind of makes sense. Like the longer the tire just sits out in the sunlight and sits out in the elements, the hot and cold, just from being outside or even inside, you're going to have air changes in temperature changes. The rubber is not going to last forever. So you figure as it degrades, it's going to have less opportunity or less capacity for the intended pressures and for the intended usage where that's going to happen to it. So it kind of makes sense to me that that that's there and certainly something that I'm going to have to budget for next winter.
Andy Wood: [00:27:41] It's kind of like your hard hat. It's got a manufacture date and the manufacturer gives you a maximum life. And at that point, they say it's no longer safe to work. I did have a situation with this. It was kind of a surprising one. I had a it was one of my company vehicles. It's on a three year lease. I got to the I was at the end of the lease. [00:28:00] It was lagging. The new vehicle was lagging a little bit. It was coming a little late. So I had to get the vehicle inspected one last time. And in three years the tires would not pass inspection, not for lack of tread, but for weather checks in the sidewall. And I've never had a tire failed for weather checks in the three year time frame. But you know, just the conditions that worked under or maybe it was an older tire when I got it, or maybe it wasn't that good of a tire, I don't know. But the conditions were such that even though I had tread left, it was out of service.
Peter Koch: [00:28:31] Interesting. It does seem that there's a combination of things that would cause a lot of that to or a tire to be taken out of service. But and I know we had it's something we talked about just prior to the podcast was it would have been interesting to know when those tires were manufactured. So if the age of the tire had been a large component of the weather checking that it had occurred, like are they truly at the end of that 10 year service life? Or is there something else going on with it? Because is it brand? [00:29:00] Is it? Is it cost? Is there something else or like you said, is it actually just use that's causing some of that check to happen? So interesting? And just I think the point there is to know that there are a lot of things that can go into causing that tire to fail. One of those is going to be age. So just because it's never happened before in the tires, been on the vehicle for quite a while doesn't mean that you can just forget about it as something that you need to check in on all the time.
Andy Wood: [00:29:26] Another thing is the manufacturer's plant code. So, you know, some people are getting sensitive about buying American, which is a good thing, but most people have no idea where their products come from. You can look on the sidewall, you can take two letters off the sidewall and you can you can go on the net or the website from that, and you can figure out what plant that was produced in, whether it was in the United States or Canada or Japan or wherever they came from. So again, there's a lot of information on there. Some tires will have more than that, but there's a lot of information to get you started with, for sure.
Peter Koch: [00:29:59] Good. So a good [00:30:00] place to go right on the tire itself to find out what kind of tire you have, what information you can get off of it and how will that or how can that change how you manage or address or service the tire itself?
Peter Koch: [00:30:14] Let's take a quick break. Did you know that MEMIC offers online instructor led OSHA 10 hour outreach courses for both the general industry and construction standards free to our policyholders? Each online 10 hour outreach class is a two day video conference training that provides instruction on key sections of OSHA's standards, instructing attendees about how to identify hazards and effectively implement appropriate safety procedures in the workplace. This program is a must for supervisors, lead persons and hourly employees. Our instructors have spent decades in the construction and general industry fields and are authorized by the OSHA Training Institute to conduct these safety outreach training [00:31:00] programs. Seats are limited, so check out the schedule and register today at www.MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety Not a MEMIC policyholder yet well reach out to your independent insurance agent and ask about us or go to www.MEMIC.com To learn more. Now let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:31:25] So let's start talking through more of the injuries and all, we broke it out before where you've got manual material handling or overexertion injuries that are causing frequent injuries out there. So let's start with that. Let's talk about the frequency type of injuries, the manual material handling injuries and what's causing them and what are some of the controls that we see out there?
Andy Wood: [00:31:50] An interesting thing that I do again, trying to manage my statistics a little bit to figure out where I want to put my effort at the close of every year. I get a chance, maybe in January [00:32:00] or February, and I'll pull all my injuries from the previous year and I'll break them down into the categories that you know, the exertions and the slips, trips and falls. And if there's enough information in the injury report, I try and figure out what was the cause of that overexertion injury. So overexertion is one of my top three. I think every year since I've been doing this, so I pull out the overexertion injuries. I read the description of the injury and I try to say, Well, what? What was the person doing when that happened? And an interesting thing. Sometimes I can go to one particular product, one component, and it's in that year that one thing generated more soft tissue injuries than anything else. And several years it's been tires handling tires. So handling hydraulic cylinders is another big one that I have. But handling tires in several years, that one item and it has generated the majority of the soft tissue injuries. And it's been everything from pickup tires all the way up to light duty, medium duty [00:33:00] on road truck tires and then off road heavy equipment tires as well. So it can be it can cover the full range.
Peter Koch: [00:33:07] So interestingly, I think everyone has a sort of a grasp of how heavy a tire is like especially a passenger rated tire or even a light truck tire. But there's some pretty vast difference, even in a tire that would be on your normal half ton or three quarter ton pickup truck. There can be some substantial weight differences even there, so let's talk a little bit about how heavy the tires are. And I'm just going to preface this with if we talk to Al Brown, who's our director of ergonomics here at MEMIC, he's going to tell you that the NIOSH lifting equation is going to say that you can only lift like 50 pounds and 50 pounds is if it has handles and you're only can lift it between like mid thigh and mid chest. And you can't twist with it and you can't walk with it. And if you do any of those things, the weight starts [00:34:00] to go down. So we start looking at what a safe weight is to lift. They're talking like thirty five pounds. There are very few tires that are going to weigh thirty five pounds, and if you get into that, you're going to kind of get into a four wheeler tire or a lawn tractor tire. But anything that's going to be on a vehicle is going to weigh way more than that. So really, we need to be paying attention when we're picking up these tires all the time and knowing how heavy something is can clue you in to how much caution you should be taking. So talk to me a little bit about the difference between maybe the weight of a normal light truck tire that you might find on like a Ford F-150 right out of the showroom versus something that you might be putting on your truck to drive off road or to be putting equipment into to go into the forest with.
Andy Wood: [00:34:50] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the thing is the size of the tire, the physical size or the statistical size, you know, by the numbers, if you don't [00:35:00] read a little more into it, that in itself is not going to give you an indication. You mentioned the F-150, that's a good example. Your average F-150, actually, the almost all year half ton pickups today are specced out as passenger vehicles. A lot of them come with the P tires on them, which is a passenger tire intended to carry, you know, for adults and some garbage on the way to the dump, but not a whole lot more than that. That's why we have to upgrade to the LT tires and go to a heavier and heavier ply construction. I went out to the garage, I took the scale from the bathroom and went out and weighed my tires. Eighty four pounds for one tire. That's the tire and rim assembly. I went online, specced out a 16 inch tire with a standard load, which would be the low end of the spectrum. And then I specced it out as a 10 ply tire, which is what we run with a heavy rim. So if you take the lighter version of that, the standard load and you put it on a lightweight aluminum rim, you can have a tire and rim assembly for a 16 inch tire that weighs forty four pounds.
Peter Koch: [00:35:58] Wow.
Andy Wood: [00:35:59] On the other end of the spectrum, [00:36:00] the same tire, same 16 inch tires backed at a ten ply rating and a standard steel rim is one hundred and twenty eight pounds.
Peter Koch: [00:36:08] Holy cow! Three times.
Andy Wood: [00:36:10] From the same size tire from forty four pounds up to a one hundred and twenty eight pounds, depending on how its the components and how you've put it together. Well, that's huge. And that's one of the reasons that the vehicle, the tires that go on the cars. The light trucks, they have three quarter ton pickups don't get a lot of respect, but one hundred and twenty eight pounds can go back to Al Brown's equation. The only thing you can do with a one hundred twenty eight pound tire is roll it across the shop floor. That's about it. You don't want to
Peter Koch: [00:36:37] Get a hernia, right?
Andy Wood: [00:36:38] So, yeah, yeah.
Peter Koch: [00:36:40] Yeah, no doubt. So that's pretty interesting when if you're thinking about it, if that's what you're used to like that maybe there's 40 to 60 pounds, right? So that's my range of that light truck tie or the passenger tire that I'm used to managing. And then all of a sudden you have a different vehicle that comes in or you've ordered these new tires [00:37:00] they got put on at the shop. You've never touched them before. Now you've got them out in the woods or you got them out in the road and one goes flat on and you've got to change it out. You're going from something that you're used to of 40 to 60 pounds and you're going to double or triple that weight. So without knowing that you're going to go into that thinking, I can manage that, where really you probably can't or really you shouldn't, regardless of if you can or you can't.
Andy Wood: [00:37:26] And one of the problems is not just the sheer weight of the tire, you know, going back to Al's handles good posture and all that. That's a best case scenario. But if the depending on the configuration of the truck that it's going on, or if it's a trailer, it's a very awkward posture, sometimes getting a tire back on the studs. So it's not just the weight of it, it's the awkward posture that you're getting going in that's going to cause problems for your back or your shoulders or your arms. The small vehicle or I say small, you know, the pickup tires 16 18. Even the 20 inch tires [00:38:00] don't get a lot of respect, but the bigger tires. The tires on the tractor trailer are still such that a lot of people are still going to try and handle them, which is going to put, you know again at a greater risk the off road tires for the front end loaders and the skitters and all the off road equipment, you know, nobody tries. When we have the discussion, everyone will say, Well, we, you know, we're not going to handle those anyways because you can't begin to. But even if you have a piece of equipment to lift the tire up, we have a lot of injuries when people are trying to wrestle the tires to get the studs, to line up with the holes on the rim. If you've got a disk type rim and you're just. So even if asked for it stood up and it's right in front of the tire, you still have to get the holes line up. We have a lot of injuries then, and in the case that you have chains on the tires, there's a lot of the off road equipment does. Sometimes the tires will come back with the chains on them and sometimes they'll be off. So you've got to manage the chains which are going to put add quite a few hundred pounds. Some of the tires have ballast [00:39:00] in them. You know, they're weighted with liquids inside. That's just going to increase the tire, the weight of the tire that much more.
Peter Koch: [00:39:07] So what are the options out there for lifting or moving or positioning a tire? What are some of the different options that a shop has or an individual has that that can help them manage the size because you can't change the weight or the size of the tire if that's what you need for the vehicle and that's what you need for the job that you're doing. There's got to be something else out there. You just can't hire a stronger person to lift the tire up. There's going to be something else that you have to do. So what are the options?
Andy Wood: [00:39:35] Sure, in a shop, you do have several options that work pretty good. They do make tire dollies just designed, very convenient. You do have to keep your shop floor clean so you can roll them around, take the lug nuts off slide and right up on there, they'll lift the weight up. They'll pull them directly off the studs. That works pretty well. Some handle are designed for single tires. If you're you, run your tractor trailers, [00:40:00] they have those that are designed to take the wheels off at the same time. You know, those are really slick if you're in a garage. The thing about most of these, I find that if you look at a mechanic who's worked with that particular accessory for a while, he's so smooth. You look at that and it's kind of jaw dropping. You say, Well, that is awesome. You try that yourself and you'll be swearing. You'll think this is terrible. I could do it. I could do it easier just by manually lifting it. But you have to work on your technique a little bit. These things actually work really well. And one of the one of the things that has come out of this, truckers are running the aluminum rims now, so they're putting aluminum rims, which is obviously a softer steel on a on a hardened steel stud on the hub. And the force of the tires sliding on and off over the steel stud wears off the whole of the aluminum rim. So some of the tires have been taken out of service over time because every time you take it in, you've got a dusting of aluminum filings on there. When you're just wrestling the tire [00:41:00] on and forcing it up and down and trying to get it to line up. You get a lot more of that. If you use the tire dollar, you can get it to the right level and you can just slide it effortlessly right straight on and then right straight back out if you're taking it off with no damage to the aluminum rims at all. So that was one of kind of the byproducts, the benefits that until you've done that a while, you don't really realize, you know, might come your way. So in the shop, there's certainly the wheel dollies are good just for lifting a tire that's laying flat on the floor just to get it stood upright so you can roll it along if you have to lift, reach down and lift the whole tire up by the tread. That's again, going to be kind of a tough lift. They have tire bars, some of the tire irons that you put the bar right down in the hole where the stud would come through and you just bend it in. It stands the tire right up. So now all you have to do with your getting mechanical advantage there, so you stand the tire up in no effort and you just roll it along. Then all you have to do is worry about getting it in the back of a vehicle. When you get to that point for the bigger tires, there's going to [00:42:00] be a variety of things. What I have in the garages that I work with, most folks will have a forklift. Sometimes there's a small tractor, a four wheel drive tractor. Skid steers are often available. They do have forks for those, but they do have a really slick attachment. That's it's a tire dolly that goes on the front end of a skid steer or on the front end of a small tractor. It goes on the equipment, quick attach. It's got rollers on it. It looks like forks, but they're rollers. So you come up, you pick up the tire. It's adjustable in and out. When you lift the tire up and you hold it, line it up with your piece of heavy equipment. It'll roll right around so you can line up the stud, the holes that are on the rim with the studs on the hub without having to restless just effortlessly and again. When you see that happen and you see those mechanics putting that on smoothly and efficiently, and they don't even sweat or grunt. And once you're thinking, wow, that's the way to go right there. Unfortunately, the lift aids that we have with the lighter trucks, [00:43:00] the tires, you know, 16, 18, 20 inch tires on the pickups, most people don't bother with them. That's why they're they continue to cause injuries because they still do away a lot, but they don't get the respect at the bigger tires do. And then in the field, what I see where I'm changing tires on a back road, on a logging landing or on a construction site, the newer mechanics, trucks, service trucks all have small cranes on them, which can be used to carry a tire. There's other equipment you might have a front end loader, you might have a Limber or a log loader that you can use to lift up a tire that's certainly going to help. The one thing I would caution against is that you have a secure system to hold the tire up. So one of the things that commonly happens is there's always a chain or a lifting sling around. Usually you run the lifting sling right through the open center of the tire and you choke it and you set that up where it needs to go. But you can't work it on the studs because the sling gets in the way or the chain gets in the way. They actually make tire slings [00:44:00] that go around the outside diameter of the tire so that they're not. They don't get in the way of the hub or when you're trying to line the studs. Up and they have straps that go across so that the tires can't fall out of them. So and we have had a few situations where tires have fallen out of the slings that they were being lifted with. So getting either making or buying a tire sling, whether it's chain or synthetic, that's made for a tire and can be used all the way on and doesn't interfere with the bolt pattern is really the investment worth having.
Peter Koch: [00:44:31] You mentioned that the bigger tires weigh a lot more. We didn't really talk about how much those weigh. We talked about the light truck tires going to like one hundred and twenty eight pounds with the complete assembly. But when we get beyond the light truck tires, you get to some of the off road or the equipment, tires or even a ballast tire. What are we talking about for weight? Because the next injury type that we're going to talk about are struck by, and when you think about a tire falling over like, you know, a passenger tire fallen on [00:45:00] on your foot. Yeah, it may hurt a little bit. If it catches you wrong, it might sprain your ankle or you might break a toe if you've got sneakers on which you shouldn't, should have. That's why we're talking about steel toed shoes. But when you get into some of the larger tires well over a hundred pounds, what are we? What are we talking about there for weight?
Andy Wood: [00:45:19] Yeah. Yeah, a hundred pounds is peanuts, you know, when you get the off road tires, I picked a tire that I see frequently on a skitter thirty five point five by thirty two inch tire. The tire is going to weigh 13 hundred and eighteen pounds. The rim is going to be about five hundred and fifty pounds, so you're going to be at eighteen hundred and sixty eight pounds, so a thousand over a thousand eight hundred pounds. That's no ballast and the chains that have been removed. Wow. So when that tire falls over on you, that's as much as a small car. Eighteen hundred pounds. So that's a lot of weight.
Peter Koch: [00:45:53] Yeah, that's substantial. Do you mind telling the story when you were working in the woods because you had a situation [00:46:00] and this kind of comes in in positioning like, you know, making sure that you have the right tools with you and having a good plan. But sometimes even those plans, the best laid plans don't always work well, and I think you've got a pretty good story that sort of outlines the challenge of having a heavy tire and maybe not having it in the right position when you want it.
Andy Wood: [00:46:21] Yeah, this story ticks off every failure you know along the way that every control that was put in and, you know, both mental and physical. For me, I did. I worked in the woods and I had a scitter and I had had a flat tire during the week and had gone out and repaired the tire. They had the tire fixed and on Sunday I was back in the woods to put the spare tire off and put the regular tire back on. The challenge is when you have a tire that big, if you get it upright, you can move it around a little bit. But if it falls to the ground, you can't get it stood back up again, so you have to be very careful getting it out of the back of the truck. First, you have to find a good spot and these are just gravel roads. [00:47:00] You have to find a good spot where the scitter can be on the side of the road and you can have a place to take the one tire off and roll it out of the way and then back up your truck to unload the tire you're putting back on. Slide it out of the back of the truck, get it stood up, and then work it over to the to the hub of the scooter to put it back on. I had taken the tire off and I had moved it out of the way. I back the truck up. I stood the tire up. I was working it up to the head leaning against the studs, but I couldn't quite get the holes to line up the studs in the in the holes and the rim. So with a skitter, you work the blade in the winch alternately. So the tire was leaning against the hub and I go back to move that up a little bit down and in the process of moving that just a fraction of an inch. The tire fell over and landed on the ground. Oh, and I was I was just ugly about that and I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, the tires laying flat on the ground, but how am I going to get that back upright? It took me. I bet, of course, as every self-respecting woodcutter would have. The only tool [00:48:00] is the high lift Jack. I went and got the high lift jack. I couldn't get it under the tire to get started, so I had to use a pry bar and I would put a fulcrum in there and pry it up and throw some rocks underneath it to create a little opening. And I kept working it up and up. And finally, I got the high lift under it and lifted it up a few feet. And then it was out of alignment and I had to block it. There I had I had two five gallon pails of automatic transmission fluid because I was also going to change the automatic transmission fluid. So I'd worked the tire up a little bit. I, I block it, repositioned the jack, go up a little more. I got it up high enough to get the two five gallon pails underneath it, so I thought that was a pretty good way to hold it. I jacked it up a little bit more and I finally, after it was like an hour, I got it stood up straight, got it tipped over back against the hub and again in the process of trying to line up the studs with the holes in the rim, the tire again fell over onto the ground. Only it didn't make it all the way to the ground. It landed on the two five gallon pails and it was like, just stomp it on a paper cup. Those five [00:49:00] gallon pails just blew up and the oil went flying everywhere. And now I've, you know, I'm getting pretty ugly at this point, so I've had a complete failure. I didn't secure the tire, you know, in the opposition like I should have. I've lost a lot of time, mentally I'm getting frustrated. I just lost two five gallon bales, a transmission fluid. I go over to the tire. I reached down, I grabbed the tire. I give you one mighty heave and I stand the tire up. And for just a second, I thought there I've won this time. And then I felt a little a little twinge in my back and I didn't. I didn't think a whole lot about it at the time. But as the repair went on, it kept getting worse and worse. I finished what I was doing. Obviously, I couldn't change the hydraulic the transmission fluid because I lost. You know, that was a frustrating. I hop in the truck to go back to camp. When I got back to camp, it was all I could do to stand up and get out of the pickup. So the in the effort of that awkward posture lifting that tire up, which weighed, you know, it wasn't one of those 18 hundred pound tires, [00:50:00] but it was way more than a person should have lifted. I tweaked my back and I don't know. I've had a lifetime of back issues, and I think that might have been the beginning of it right there. And it's, you know, a person who suffers with back injuries, you know, it's a lifetime condition and you just kind of dread it when it when it cycles around again. So, you know, I like I said, I had all the elements I didn't plan quite as well. Tire needs to be secured when it's in the upright position. I didn't take care of that. I got frustrated. I tried to cut a corner. All those things end up catching up with me and coming back and bite me in a big way.
Peter Koch: [00:50:31] When I hear you tell that story, I've known you for years and you're one of the most patient and forward thinking guys that I know, so you've always got a plan. All the training that we do together, whether it's chainsaw training or whether it's fall protection training, you always are two or three steps ahead in thinking of where things need to be positioned, where people need to be, how things need to work. And as I hear that story, I can just see you getting more and more and more frustrated. [00:51:00] And had I asked you at the beginning, like if I had been there when that was happening, at the beginning when you drove up to replace that tire and the transmission fluid? And I asked you, Would you ever lift this tire, Andy? You'd look right at me. Go, there's no way I'd lift that tire. There's no way I left that tire. I've got everything in place going to do it right. And I think that just the story of stop and think because you may be able to physically do it, but the consequences of you physically doing it could have life changing or life altering or some sort of challenge in your life later on. So, you know, had you not been that frustrated with all those little things going wrong, you may not have ever chosen to do that, but every little thing conspired against you that day, and I could just, you know, I can put your myself in your shoes. And probably a half an hour before that, I would have been lifting the tire and blowing my back.
Andy Wood: [00:52:00] It's [00:52:00] interesting that, you know, we always look at the physical conditions on the job site and what leads to an injury, and certainly employers try and do the same. But, you know, ultimately we come back to the mental conditions. Distraction, fatigue, anger and frustration. Those are contributing factors, I would say, in the vast majority of injuries that we see. So if you can keep your mind clear and focus to know, you can certainly do a lot better, particularly when you don't have ideal conditions for sure.
Peter Koch: [00:52:27] And you know, we talked about one particular situation that occurred to you. But if you go back into the statistics in those the injury stats that you look at every year or even beyond what we see at MEMIC, there are plenty more examples of people being injured because a tire has been unsecured and fallen over or something has happened and the person has been trapped underneath it or something's occurred. So lots of opportunities to be struck by a tire that's not secured, that's being trying to be placed [00:53:00] without the right tools. And you know, they're heavy and you're not always going to be able to catch them. And if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, when that tire comes over, there's going to be some substantial injury.
Andy Wood: [00:53:12] One that we had it was it was a tire bigger than the one I had. We were actually didn't happen. This was an injury that I had in my in my employment with MEMIC that I was had to deal with. They were using a log loader to hold the tire up. I mentioned this should be secured well, the log, the grapple of a log loader is not the way you secure that. And the mechanic can't remember if was the mechanic or the operator was trying to line up the studs and the holes. And in the process, the tire was dropped and it fell over on him and it broke his pelvis. So that's a pretty big injury. When a tire, you know, that again, might not have been the 1800 pound tire, but if it was even the thousand pound tire, that's enough to break a pelvis and that's a long term injury, even if it goes well for you.
Peter Koch: [00:53:54] Yeah, very true. That person's not coming back to work anytime soon, and there's probably [00:54:00] significant challenges to mobility and other issues down the road to. It's not something that you're going to kind of quickly come back from and be 100 hundred percent in just a few weeks. Sure. We're going to stop right there. The conversation about tire safety with Andy Wood will continue in the next episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, and that's where Andy and I will cover other tire related injuries. Different ways tires fail, such as bead or rim failure. And then strategies around preventing injuries when servicing tires, so be sure to subscribe and get notified when the episode drops. So thanks again to everyone for joining us. And Today on Safety Experts podcast, we've been discussing the hazards of servicing tires with Andy Wood, manager of our Forest Product Safety Services here at MEMIC. The MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is written, hosted and produced by me, Peter Koch. If you have any questions about tire safety or I'd like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. Email me at Podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, [00:55:00] check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/Podcast, where you can find more about tire safety and tire safety resources, links to other podcasts with Andy, as well as our entire podcast archive. While you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates, and if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it. If you would subscribe to the podcast and then take a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thank you because it truly helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or a family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support and until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
A company's brand is its identity, and it is one of the most valued parts of your business. When brand is done right, it influences what happens inside a company as well how people on the outside perceive it. The brand becomes something that you are, not just something that you do. It is something that can influence behavior.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Nancy Marshall, CEO of Marshall Communications about branding and how brand can influence safety behavior at your company.
According to the National Safety Council, forklifts were the source of 79 work related fatalities and 8,140 non-fatal injuries involving days away from work in 2019 alone.
Looking back at the data the National Safety Council has, the number of non-fatal forklift related workplace injuries continues to increase every year since 2015. The top 3 causes of these injuries are Fire and explosion, Stuck by, caught between. Most of these are driven by a lack of situational awareness on the part of the operator or other workers.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Chris Burns, the co-founder of Midwest Fleet and Safety, a full service GPS and Safety Solutions company to help us look at a unique solution to the situational awareness problem when operating a forklift.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. According to the National Safety Council, forklifts were the source of seventy nine work related injuries or fatalities, and eight thousand one hundred and forty non-fatal injuries involving days away from work in 2019. So looking back at the data that the National Safety Council has the number of non-fatal forklift related injuries or workplace injuries continues to increase from twenty fifteen. So if you go back to twenty fifteen and you go back a little bit before that, they had been declining. But in twenty fifteen they started to spike and they were jumping up by a few hundred every year. And the top three causes of those injuries are fire and explosion. So most of your fork trucks or forklifts are going to be propane, a lot of propane accidents or injuries, especially if one is going to tip over, struck by injuries and then [00:01:00] caught in between injuries. Most of these are driven by a lack of situational awareness on the part of the operator or other workers that are going to be around the operator. So if I look back at my history and I had the opportunity to operate a forklift or at least a tractor with forks on it way back when in my early work history and I think about how situational awareness played a big part in my being successful or not. It really did. And I can tell you, I didn't have a lot of huge fails, but I had a number of close calls. And one of those, and I'll remember this to this day happened when I was I had just picked up a lift. We were picking up actually lifts of hoses and I was paying attention to the other people who are in the space. And I backed up and I backed up into a pallet that had a replacement water pump for our snowmaking system. Fortunately, I didn't hit it hard enough to knock the pump over and I didn't push the pump. I didn't break the pump, but I did damage the pallet itself and the pallet of hoses [00:02:00] that were on the forks fell off as well, so didn't really have a successful day. But I didn't hurt anybody. I didn't get hurt myself. We didn't have a lot of damage, but certainly there were some issues there and I wasn't paying attention. Or at least I wasn't paying attention to the right thing. I didn't have good situational awareness before I started to move. And I bet you there's a number of people out there who are listening who have either been witnessed to a situation like that or have been in a situation like that. Or maybe you've been in a situation where you've actually had an injury. You might have been struck by someone who was operating a fork truck or unfortunately, you might have been the person who did the striking. Well, to help us look at a unique solution to that situational awareness problem, especially when you're operating forklifts or really any vehicles, is Chris Burns and among other specialties. Chris is the co-founder of Midwest fleet and Safety. There are full service GPS and safety [00:03:00] solutions company. Chris and his partner Rob founded Midwest four years ago to help fill service and communication gaps they identified in industries that they worked with. So with a team of experts that have close to 30 years of experience in the telematics and safety industries, Midwest has grown to deliver products like innovative camera systems that can be used to enhance situational awareness in any industry that uses vehicles to move material. So, Chris? Welcome to the podcast today. I appreciate having you on.
Chris Burns: [00:03:31] Thank you so much for having me. Really looking forward to the conversation today. Glad to be on. And that was a heck of an introduction. Probably better than I would have prepared for you. So I appreciate that very much.
Peter Koch: [00:03:43] Yeah, no worries. I'm excited. You know, we had a conversation a few days ago, you had reached out to me and thinking about different solutions. You were telling me about this camera system that that you have. And I really want to get talking about that and how it's been able to help with safety, quality and productivity since, [00:04:00] you know, that's really what this podcast is all about is to help people understand that there's more ideas out there than they might think about how to provide solutions. But before we jump into the camera systems, I want you to tell me a little bit about Midwest fleet and safety. You're based out of Appleton, Wisconsin, and I want you to just tell me a little bit about your history, how you got there and where you're at today.
Chris Burns: [00:04:25] Yeah. Well, thanks. It's kind of a long story. I don't think it's as interesting as other people might, but I've got a good friend of mine, Rob, who approached me about his business and his industry. And he had been working in this space for about 20 years, and he worked in the space primarily as an installer. So he owns an audio video automotive type business, and he was approached by many of the larger GPS telematics companies to do installation work because most of them, believe it or not, do not have boots on the ground. They [00:05:00] are primarily a manufacturer a seller and then they hire third party contracts to do the installation work, and so as time went on, going into twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, some of these companies, well, we'll leave names out just to be respectful. But what would happen is they would call him and say, Hey, we've got a client in Madison it's two hours away. They are going to have GPS next week. We would like we need two installers technicians to go down to the installation work and have done a one day 12 vehicles. No problem will be there. Eight a.m. So the team would show up. They drive two hours only to find out the client has not received the product from the manufacturer. And so as a business, you have to bill the very large carrier for four hours of your time multiplied by two employees. And so that would happen continuously and sometimes happen twice over the course [00:06:00] of one month. And that would then leave a customer waiting anywhere from four weeks to eight weeks. Because then you have that phone tag game of, well, the client's available next week, Monday and Thursday between eight a.m. and 10 a.m. Well, we're not available, OK, we'll call them back and find out. Tag, you're it. And then customers would then say to robber's installers, Hey, you know, this is this is painful. You know, we're not able to get the training that we want. If we have an issue, we'll call. We'll wait on hold for two hours or four hours. And you can imagine most people, whether it be a business owner or even a receptionist, do not have that kind of time or that luxury in a day. And then they were asking, Hey, can we just work with you directly? And the answer was no, because at the time we were not a GPS company, we were just an installer. And so the question became as well, could we do this? And then we did some research and found out, Well, yeah, we could. We could be a reseller [00:07:00] and we could be the company that sells the technology and the product, but also does the installation. And so moving forward, when companies would say, Yeah, we'd love to entertain the solution, but we've got a three year revolving contract. And then I had to ask, Well, what's the revolving contract? And they said, Well, you know, if we've got 10 vehicles and we add one, all 10 start over. And I thought, Wow, that's pretty tough. So your contract is started over three or four times since you started working with them and they say, yeah, the only way to get out is to buy out of the contract. And that's ten thousand dollars, we'll say. And so we saw an opportunity to not lock customers into a contract. No revolving contracts offer free and unlimited customer service, competitive pricing. And when people call, they can talk to a real person who can solve their issue real time or at least within one or two business days. And so that's how Midwest fleet and safety was [00:08:00] founded. We were just Midwest fleet solutions, but then we got to find that a lot of our customers, particularly in the construction space, we'd sit down and we talk about things like safety. And the question was, Well, we're more interested in the safety. And I said, Well, tell me more. And that that is where we learned about a year and a half ago that the majority of the businesses that we work with, yes, they would love to track their assets. That's important because you want to know where your assets are. You want to know that your people are protected and safe. But ultimately, the number one priority was that businesses large and small wanted to ensure that their people, their most important asset, is safe on the job. And so questions became as, "Well, what can you do to help us with safety? And one client had told us a story both of these clients are in the construction space had said that, you know, look, we had a couple of accidents [00:09:00] where we had some job boxes and some very expensive equipment that was either ran over or ran into that cause several thousand dollars or thousands of dollars in damage. And unfortunately, this stuff happens a lot. How do we prevent that? And so that's where my partner, Rob said, Well, you know, we do a lot of backup cameras, we do a lot of camera systems. Why don't we just put a couple of cameras on your telehandler and, you know, see how that goes? And he's like, I can basically modify or manufacture a system exclusively for you and a two camera system turn into a four camera system. And then next thing you know, safety becomes about seventy five percent of our business, and I'll go on to talk more about it. But I don't want to eat into your next question here. And so we've been doing the safety side of the business for over a year, about a year and a half, and we found ourselves really expanding into things like forklift safety [00:10:00] lights known as blue lights or red lights. Camera systems and a lot of other products in the safety space, and we've just found that as much as, yes, companies want to track their assets. Right now, number one priority is safety and safety of their employees. And from there, you know, once we have set their company up in a position where they feel like they can elevate the safety quality, then they say, Hey, we know you do telematics? Can you help us out with that too? So as a byproduct, we hope that we can earn their business in the telematics side. But it's been a lot of fun because ultimately companies value that. And I'll tell you what, we'll talk about this later. The employees value it, too, and it's been a lot more popular with staff than we imagined and even then our clients would have ever imagined.
Peter Koch: [00:10:52] Yeah, it's a pretty cool story. Like you said, we'll get into that more because there is a really interesting connection between what the [00:11:00] supervisors and how the staff see things and how that information gets back up to management and how that helps to drive some of these decisions. But I really think this is an interesting solution to that problem of situational awareness. You talked about the equipment damage. You talked about the shrinkage and losses from things maybe being dropped off the forks or, you know, you go back to the National Safety Council. Information about injuries that have occurred with forklifts and those struck by injuries are almost guaranteed when someone struck by the forklift is a situational awareness issue with either the person that's operating and or the person that's operating or working around that particular piece of equipment. So I guess let's just talk a little bit in your perspective and it has, as you see it, with the success of those camera systems. And then you had talked a little bit about the lighting systems that you have for [00:12:00] forklifts. Why is situational awareness essential? And then how did those systems really help increase situational awareness for the operator when they when they're picking something up or they're moving material?
Chris Burns: [00:12:13] Yeah, that's a great question, and I'm glad you asked that because when we talk about safety, a lot of times, whether it be in a presentation, sales calls, people look past situational awareness and they focus specifically on the safety and like, how can this increase productivity and efficiencies and stuff? But awareness is really important. People think of situational awareness is, Hey, I know what's going on around me, I know what's going on here. But that's not always the case. And you know, when you ask me about situational awareness, I thought to myself, Well, what does that mean to me? What does it mean to other people? So I googled it. And there's a really quick definition here. And it says situational awareness has been recognized as a critical yet elusive foundation [00:13:00] for success decision making across a broad range of situations, many of which involve the protection of human life property, including law enforcement, aviation, et cetera, et cetera. And then the last sentence is lacking in adequate situational awareness has been identified as one of the primary factors in accidents attributed to human error. So I give you this example, which is I live near a construction site just so happens to be about two blocks down. There's a new development with some apartment complexes going up, and it's been going on for about six months or more. And once they complete one, they got another one already in progress. So there's a lot of telehandlers and construction equipment over there. And I said to my wife the other day, I said, I don't even hear that anymore. I don't hear the backup beeping, I don't hear the trucks, I don't hear the nail guns. I just kind of tuned it out. Now, [00:14:00] put yourself in the situation of any one of those workers on the site and they hear that stuff more than I do. My wife would call it selective hearing, but their situational awareness has probably decreased because they become, let's say, numb to or callous to that sound. Now let's just say, for example, that their situational awareness is heightened. They may see what's happening or be fully aware of what's going on around them. But does that mean the operator of that telehandler is fully aware? So situational awareness is a two way street, in my opinion, the way of an operator or of someone moving or driving, whatever the case may be. So when it comes to situational awareness, you talk about these camera systems. Well, our camera systems in most cases are a four camera, sometimes a two camera system. So if you have, in this case, three hundred and sixty degree visibility [00:15:00] around you. In something that's considered to be one of the most dangerous pieces of equipment in the telehandler, and it's considered that because it has very limited visibility, as you know, well, lots of blind spots similar to a forklift, and you might be doing your best job to look around, to take your time to try to listen, but that doesn't mean people around you are doing the same. And as you know, there are a lot of trucks and equipment and people moving and your head always needs to be on a swivel. And so if you don't have the camera system, an accident can happen because there are those blind spots and you can't account for what someone else might be doing when they see that telehandler coming. And so when you have that camera system, you can have confidence sitting behind the wheel knowing that you know you're not going to have to slam on the brakes. Or if you do, at least you'll be prepared and you [00:16:00] may not have something slide off the front, you know. And so situational awareness is important. It's not something people think of, but the thing that I go back to so often is it is a two way street and you can't always account for the other person, whether that be you, the operator or the people around you. And so I think for so many reasons, having that camera system can provide so much confidence. It can reduce the amount of stress that someone's maybe putting on their neck to twist their body, to look around them. And if you have that, the byproduct is hopefully there's going to be a higher level of efficiency throughout the day in your productivity.
Peter Koch: [00:16:42] That's a great description. When I think about situational awareness around that, I think about it from the perspective of your brain needs to look at What? What's around me, and that's what the camera system helps to provide. And then I've got to figure out, so what? Like, what does it mean to me? So here's all this information. [00:17:00] And if I'm missing a piece of information, my so what's incomplete? And then it's the now what is next, right? So I have to make a decision based on that information based on how important that information is to me and what's happening around there. And it's a really great point around how that camera system can really do a good job at providing a more clear picture or a more detailed picture around the what. And then the so what and the now what, is all about operator training and what the company does to help that operator be a better, be a better operator, be a more qualitative and a more productive operator. But you can't do that unless you have the information and, like you said, tons of blind spots. And if you're focused on the people around you or the other hazards that are around you, you might miss something that's in that blind spot that you're the only way that you're going to see. That is if you get off the teller hand or look around you, you've got someone who can back you up or you have a system that allows you to see 360 degrees [00:18:00] around your machine, which is pretty sweet.
Chris Burns: [00:18:02] It's the same in golf. You know you're a golfer. You admitted that and then you're on the golf course and you're a slicer and you see water on the right and you're focusing on that while you're over the ball. What do you think the byproduct of that shot?
Peter Koch: [00:18:16] Oh, it's going in the water. It's going in the water. Whether I focus on it or not? I'll tell you that, Chris, right now.
Chris Burns: [00:18:21] Yup.
Peter Koch: [00:18:22] That's excellent. So let's talk a little bit more. And you had said this too, around the situational awareness, like the traditional methods of getting someone's attention or understanding that their hazards around you can just come right into the background they're going to, they're going to the person that's hearing them is going to get desensitized to them. So it doesn't become a warning sign anymore, just becomes noise and you don't really pay a lot of attention to it. So talk to me about a little bit about how you set the camera system up. And then maybe can you talk a little bit about some of the training that you might give the operator how easy it is it to use a system like [00:19:00] that as an operator once it gets set up?
Chris Burns: [00:19:03] Yeah. So it typically takes us about an hour to install a four camera system. It's pretty easy given we're not doing it in the dead of winter because as you could imagine, when it's 10 degrees out, we're snapping drill bits and metals a lot more difficult to drill into. Not only that, but you know, guys need to take breaks to keep their fingers warm. But ultimately, it's pretty easy. It's a couple of wires. It's identifying the best installation point, and typically it's a higher point on the vehicle or on the asset that is not likely to be bumped or obstructed with the operator's visibility. So it's not going to get in the way of the regular traditional use of the vehicle or the asset. Not only that, but we want to make sure we also have really good placement of the monitor on the dashboard or near the steering wheel. These are indoor outdoor use, so if you have direct sunlight, [00:20:00] you're going to be able to see them. They're typically anywhere from seven to nine inches, depending on the amount of space that we have. So when you're using the piece of equipment, most people wouldn't even know it has a camera system until they got into the seat, turned the ignition on was like, Oh, there's a monitor here. What's that for? So if you didn't know and this is the beauty of it, you literally turn the vehicle on. The unit will power itself on automatically, and there's very limited to no training required. I say limited, meaning it's nice to know how it works. It's nice to know that, yes, you can make some adjustments to the screen if need be. But ultimately, if you're aware that you have it, it's basically just understanding what does this do for me? What is the purpose of this? Because that is the first question is why do I have this? Why do I need it? But ultimately, once we show someone, Hey, this is the, and it's not so much showing as it is explaining the purpose and why the company invested in it. And [00:21:00] then people say, Oh, OK. And then what's really interesting is that if your company has 10, let's say, telehandlers and two of them, your demoing the camera systems on and you get to try it for a week, you're going to come back and request that. And I've got a funny story about that. When we started working with this first construction equipment and this is how we got into the camera system was, they said, you know, we'd like to try one, you know, we'll just buy it, but we want to see what this is all about. So we installed one and they said, Hey, this is really cool. We had some great feedback on it. Can you come back and install a few more? Yeah, sure. Why not? So a month and a half later, we had four camera systems out on the telehandlers. And what happened was we got a phone call and the guy said, Hey, we need a few more. Yeah, no problem. Happy to do that. And I said, Can you tell me about how it's going? We'd love to get some feedback. And he said, Well, at first the guys were saying, [00:22:00] well, why would we do that? You know, we haven't had any accidents. And it's like, OK, you might not have. The company has seen some accidents and, you know, had some, some misfortunes there, but we don't need that. And so, OK, we'll just give it a try. We'd want to know your feedback. And if you don't like it, we can take it out. Not a big deal. So it got used and there were a couple of contractors who said, Hey, on our next job, can we get those telehandlers with the cameras? And they said, Yeah, sure, why? And he said, you wouldn't believe the productivity we had on the job site and feedback from some of our employees was, I feel so much more confident operating when I have a large heavy load on this, especially when I'm approaching a building. You can imagine the amount of weight some of these carry, and because of that efficiency, we are working faster. We are on schedule and as you can imagine, [00:23:00] being on schedule is like being ahead of schedule in this industry, especially now. And, you know, we want all of them that have the camera systems. We know you only have four and they said, Oh, OK, that's well, that's interesting. Let's get four more. So they got four more. And it repeats same thing. And next thing, you know, they said, Well, you know, we want we want to get 50 of them, then fast forward a year later, they ordered one hundred and fifty camera systems. But that's not even the best part of the story. The best part of the story was, and this happened recently. You know what? Our company has seen such a great improvement of efficiency and a reduction in accidents that we're going to make it mandatory for all of our subcontractors to use your camera systems. So we don't want them going out and doing it somewhere else. We want them to use your company and your technology. And that was a very proud moment for me because, you know, it wasn't that, yeah, we've succeeded and we're making more [00:24:00] money. It was. We are really making an impact with these companies. And I hate to say this, but we're potentially saving lives and we are helping companies save money. And it feels really good going to sleep at night knowing your company is really making an impact with very large companies in your area. And so it's something we're very proud of and it's been fun because the feedback has been nothing but great. And as you can imagine, when you work on construction sites, there are a lot of people who have been with the company for 20 years, 30 years, and they can be a little more resistant to technology. You're laughing. I can see you laughing over there because, you know, it's true. So we've seen some pushback. But if they say, if the company explains it and says, hey, this is why we're doing it, it has nothing to do with you personally. But if we can elevate our safety and our efficiency, here's what we're going to do. And again, I don't want to get ahead of the conversation, but when they're transparent like that, usually [00:25:00] their employees will say, OK, we'll give it a shot.
Peter Koch: [00:25:03] So that I think that story really speaks to the quality of the service and the product that you guys are putting out there and that you're delivering, that says a lot about the company that you're able to not only make an impact with the product just because of the way it impacts the companies that you are providing it to or selling it to. But it says a lot to the service that you're providing. I think those go hand in hand. You can have a phenomenal product, but you might not have the best service or the best install or the best people on the ground. I think that does say a lot about your company overall. Those two things have to go hand in hand. Otherwise, you wouldn't be as successful as you are even just getting off the ground. So hopefully this will this will continue to go. One of the parts there I think it's pretty essential for any product or any investment that a company does is what's the return on investment. Even when we were talking about the internally at our company, we're talking about the podcast [00:26:00] that I'm doing here, about safety, what's the return on investment? If I'm going to be spending a few hours a week, spending time researching and writing and talking to different guests and then recording and then producing and then finally getting the product out there, what's the return on investment? So we had a long conversation about what that would be just about the podcast. So can you talk a little bit more about the return on investment for a camera system if there's a company considering, like, what can I do? What are the what are the talking points around return on investment that you might give a potential customer? Or if you're just having a conversation with somebody on the golf course or in the grocery store about, Hey, talk to me about this camera system, how is it going to benefit my company? What are the what are the key points?
Chris Burns: [00:26:44] Yeah, so, you know, whatever I'm talking to people, I try to stay away from the sales pitch because, you know, I never want to feel like I'm selling somebody, but I tend to go to the stories and I've got one here. I'll share with you in a minute. But when people ask the question specifically [00:27:00] about ROI, I like to kind of give them some high level talking points or even just bullet points of where and how could my company see this benefit or return on investment short term, long term? And there are a couple of things that some are measurable, some are not, and there are some companies that have different ways of measuring their return on investment. And this is something that, like the construction company didn't see happening, but was employee satisfaction. Now, I can't personally put a return on investment on employee satisfaction, but I know that if they have quality assets that they enjoy operating and they're more effective and efficient when using as a byproduct of having the camera system, you know, that says a lot, and I think there is really tremendous value. If you have a large company that has 50 forklifts or one hundred and fifty telehandlers, I think and this is very broad, but you have enhanced safety. [00:28:00] So you have assurance knowing that your people and both your assets are safer are protected. And a lot of times if you have, let's say, a years or more worth of usage of this technology, you might be able to go back to your insurance company and negotiate your premium. So if you can point to the fact that we have fewer incidents, we have greater productivity. Some agencies and your business, you probably know a lot more about this than I do. Are willing to do that. And companies, businesses, I should say, are unaware that in some instances they can negotiate their premium. This is what I've been told. I am not the insurance expert, so don't hold me to that. And there's also, obviously, you know, we talked about shrinkage, loss, loss prevention, and that is where we have the story. A good friend of mine is in the warehousing and logistics industry. He owns several warehouses and a trucking company. And in his [00:29:00] warehouses, each one of them are at least a half dozen forklifts. And I was talking to him over golf one day and lunch. He said, You know, I'm just I've been really stressed out lately. You've had a couple accidents in the warehouse. And I said, What could possibly go wrong? It's not like you have a team of 50 people. You got literally about six to 10 people in each facility. And he said, well, the other day, somebody was just getting really comfortable and careless and they were coming around the corner way too fast with a large load and they went right through a wall. I said what? He said, Yeah, you know, the downside is it's 20 grand to the upside, as it could have been a lot worse. I could have someone who could have been critically injured. But he said, ultimately, here's the deal. It's going to cost me 20 grand to fix it. I've got a forklift that's out for about a week or sooner. And then I've also got a pallet worth of product that I'm going to have to reimburse my client for. So, OK, let's talk, he said, so I [00:30:00] have basically I've lost productivity because I had two to three other employees who had to come over and help this employee out, clean up the mess. And so I had three people out of my six, which is half my staff not working for about two hours. Wow, that does not sound fun. I would imagine, you know, the stress that that would cause on the management team, just knowing that we had an accident. Thankfully, everybody is OK and everything can be fixed, he said. Yeah. The direct cost of the wall alone and the forklift is about twenty five thousand. Ok? He said. For us, it's not a big deal, but that money's got to come from somewhere. And he said, you know, it's at the time this was late September. He's like, that could be coming out of holiday bonuses that could be coming out of the Christmas party, said it. Yeah, we're very highly successful and profitable, but that's I don't have a money tree in the backyard and I said, Yeah, he said, But if you [00:31:00] add it up, we have the direct costs of the forklift and of the wall. He said we also have the indirect costs of the downtime, the loss of products. Unhappy client inefficiency. Forklifts out for a week. He said All in all, I could be, you know, if you count insurance in there too and my insurance goes up, he said, I could be looking at thirty, thirty-five thousand, forty thousand and there are other variables in here too. Like, was the individual injured? Was he hurt? We got worker's comp problems. And so the story goes on and on, and you can imagine this is a small incident as compared to some that are much bigger, unfortunately. And so when I have these stories, it's like, Wow, OK, I thought it was 20. But then you look at your balance sheet at the end of the year and you say, Wow, that really, that really put a ding in our bottom line. And so that's where we talk about ROI. And I don't care how effective, how high your safety standards are. Again, [00:32:00] this goes back to situational awareness with we may have some of the most experienced, highly trained forklift or telehandler operators, but that doesn't mean that the people around them have situational awareness. And if they don't, if they've became, let's say, immune to those beeping noises, the beacons, then we have we could have an incident and nobody wants that. And it can cause a lot of pains in a company. So I think we talk about ROI. That is something that companies say, you know, we're willing to invest in that because I keep going back to the efficiency you have higher and enhanced our employee confidence when they're operating. And we truly feel that we can eliminate the majority of accidents that happen with a camera system. And if an operator sees it two seconds sooner, they can typically stop and they can prevent that. I think a lot of times the beacons, the safety warning lights, the backup beepers, [00:33:00] these things are great for the people around them. But you know, the operator needs to have complete situational awareness. And like I said, it's a two way street. And if we can enhance that for both the people around you and the operator, we're really going to be singing the efficiency song here.
Peter Koch: [00:33:18] Let's take a quick break. Did you know that MEMIC offers online instructor led OSHA 10 hour outreach courses for both the general industry and construction standards free to our policyholders? Each online 10 hour outreach class is a two day video conference training that provides instruction on key sections of OSHA standards, instructing attendees about how to identify hazards and effectively implement appropriate safety procedures in the workplace. This program is a must for supervisors, lead persons and hourly employees. Our instructors have spent decades in the construction and general industry fields and are authorized by [00:34:00] the OSHA Training Institute to conduct these safety outreach training programs. Seats are limited, so check out the schedule and register today at www.MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety Not a MEMIC policyholder yet will reach out to your independent insurance agent and ask about us or go to www.MEMIC.com to learn more. Now, let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:34:30] Yeah, that's great, and you're really speaking my language now when we're talking about indirect and direct costs, and we speak about that often with our companies when we talk about safety specifically because, you know, you get somebody who's injured and you see those direct costs, the medical costs of the injury, or if there's lost time involved, it's X amount. Well, when you start to track the indirect costs and a lot of the indirect costs are the same as what you described with a telehandler incident. You're going to have a loss of property, [00:35:00] you're going to have to repair something. You might have a loss of productivity. Then you get back into the worker's comp side of things with an injury and you're going to have to train somebody else to come in. You got to replace that particular individual and just think about all the time that it takes to train a good telehandler. Someone who's really good and really productive with that tool takes time to produce that if they roll it over and they come out of the seat and they're injured, it's a substantial, indirect cost to train somebody anew. So that return on investment like you're talking about, they're increasing situational awareness. Given the individual more information to make good decisions about the environment that's around them is a key part, and you might not be able to quantify those indirect costs so well. Sometimes you can. Sometimes it's really specific. Sometimes it might be a little more difficult, but you think about all the things that come into managing an incident that [00:36:00] happens with the telehandler, whether it's an injury or whether it's a loss of property or product. Statistically, when they talk about indirect costs, there are anywhere between three and 10 times the amount of the direct costs when you add it all up together, and those are the hidden things that you don't normally see. So right on talking about indirect and direct for return on investment, that was, that's a good key point. I hope people take away from this today.
Chris Burns: [00:36:26] Yeah. You know, you're right, this happened to be a situation that thankfully was not as serious as some. And so it happens to be something that hits home with a lot of small businesses that are your two million, 10 million, 15 million dollar companies could be catastrophic for some. And if we can prevent that, you can save yourself a lot of stress, a lot of time and a lot of money.
Peter Koch: [00:36:49] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So we've talked a lot about the benefits of the camera system, and I'm going to throw this out there because sometimes there's a downside to it. But [00:37:00] do you see any downside to having the camera system in the telehandler? Or have you have you seen any of that yet or have you had any reports of downsides to it?
Chris Burns: [00:37:10] You know, I haven't had any reports of there being downside, but as anything, I could sell it as being one of the greatest pieces of technology for any kind of construction company or warehousing company, whatever it might be. But a couple of things that come up in conversation is, you know, I'm fearful that our employees might be too dependent on it. So it's just like a backup camera in your vehicle. I drive a large SUV and I'm in a neighborhood with a lot of young children like my own, and I have had the tendency of backing up out of my driveway looking only at the camera. But yes, we have that camera. We have an expensive vehicle that is not better than your situation awareness. So if you pair the camera with your ability to turn your head left, turn your head right back [00:38:00] up slowly. So if there are people passing in a blind spot, you can see them. Then you have full awareness, but you can't be one hundred percent reliant on that, meaning you can't watch it the whole time because having your head on a swivel is just as beneficial as having the camera. So there is that downside. Some people see the initial investment in camera systems as having a downside, whereas you know, how long is it going to take for this thing to pay for itself? But once you see the opportunity, like the construction equipment story, I think you'll find that, yeah, we'll see a return on investment, potentially within the first couple of weeks. But beyond that, not really. It requires very little training, very little communication. But as anything, if you want your employees and your company to embrace it, it does require some communication. Sending a note out an email to your staff saying, Look, we've decided to make an investment in safety technology. Here's what we're doing. Here's the company we're working with, and here's [00:39:00] why. And here's how it's going to benefit us. And if they say, Oh, well, that's great. We're all for this. We'll give this an opportunity and you allow your employees to provide feedback on it, they're going to see that it is a great thing for them. If anything, it's only a benefit. So, you know, beyond that, I don't see a whole lot of downside. A lot of times there are big companies who have concern is, you know, we have one hundred assets. How are we going to install this? And I explain, look it's pretty simple. We'll go out at night or on a weekend if we need to get it installed because we don't want your fleet to be either off the road or off the job site. We want to keep your, your company and your assets working as much as possible. We don't want to interfere with that. So we do the installation after hours, if need be. And so, you know, when I throw that into the mix, they say, you know, there's really not a whole lot of downside because for us to install one hundred systems could take us a week and nobody wants assets [00:40:00] unavailable for that amount of time.
Peter Koch: [00:40:02] Yeah, very cool. I connected really well with that. The first downside that you said about someone being reliant on the camera or becoming reliant on the camera system, we're going through the second round of teaching daughters how to drive. Right. So our 18 year old just got just got a car. She learned to drive on our vehicles, obviously, and we had a backup camera in our vehicle, and she became fairly reliant on using that backup camera. When she got her car, you know, she's 18 years old, not making a ton of money. She's not getting a really expensive car, no backup camera. So the first time she got in the car, she's looking at the dashboard backing up and I'm like, Hey, wait a second, there's mirrors that you have to use. You got to turn your head around. You can't. What are you looking at? You're just looking at the dial on the radio. That's not going to help you get good situational awareness. She's like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And to [00:41:00] this day, she's had it for about a month now, and to this day, she's really been, she laments not having that backup camera, but she's learned really well to pay more attention, especially when she's in that, in her vehicle backing up. So it begs the question, maybe, you know, as you think about that being a potential challenge for employers, what might be a solution like, I'm just some thinking about different training possibilities for the operators so that they are using the camera system not as their only piece of information about situational awareness, but an enhancement for situational awareness. So do you have any input about what companies are doing or could do to enhance or to help their operators use it as an enhancement, rather than the only part of situational awareness that they rely on?
Chris Burns: [00:41:51] Yeah, so I think a couple of things there is one, if a company is going to make an investment, I think explaining why they're making the investment is [00:42:00] important and it doesn't come down to. We're doing it because of a specific employee. We're doing it to increase the safety because we care about our staff. We care about the health and safety of our people. More importantly, and then number two, we want to build efficiency. If we can be more efficient, we can get more done. We can be ultimately more profitable. And if we're more profitable, we can then reinvest into improved technology, improved equipment, potentially bonuses. And if you have that communication and say, OK, we're going to invest, but we're also going to train you and this is something we'll be working on in twenty twenty two is some video production that goes through. Here's what the equipment is. Here's where your cameras are understanding where they are and how the system works, how easy it is. Basically, turn the key, turn the vehicle or the asset on it powers on itself. And then how could you utilize this [00:43:00] to better operate? So again, employees need to know that as much as we don't think we need to explain things we do when you're making a big investment. Yeah, I have this. This is great. I can just look at the camera or computer screen. Well, no, you can't. It's there to supplement what you do and provide a value, because if you are a new operator to a forklift or relatively new to a telehandler, you know that there are a lot of blind spots, and these accidents typically happen less with the experienced operators and more with the newer operators. And so if you can say, you know, when you're in a warehouse, watch out for this. When you're on a job site, watch out for X and giving people an opportunity to say, OK, well, what if I'm in a construction site? What if I've got other telehandlers? What if this and its situations, but also teaching what is situational awareness and how can I improve my [00:44:00] situational awareness? So as I mentioned before, we think, Oh great, we're the operator. We know where everything is. We're clear. Well, not necessarily. And so it kind of goes back to your point earlier about you have some daughters going through driver's training. A lot of times we can teach the operator to be as safe and aware as possible, but that doesn't mean a dog won't run out on the road or a kid won't run out on the road. Or, God forbid, an accident happens in front of you. And if you don't have complete awareness or you're not paying complete attention, you could get caught and it may not be one hundred percent your fault. So just teaching the operator how they can best utilize that and what to look out for in the future. Now, some of these things will come in their training when they go through driver training or forklift training, whatever it might be, but continued education as to how to best utilize the technology. And as I mentioned, we're hopeful that we can get into that in 2022 And [00:45:00] beyond.
Peter Koch: [00:45:00] Yeah, that's really cool and a good recommendation that communication getting people to understand how this tool can enhance your own personal situational awareness and that as a new operator or a new driver, you know, your situational awareness is relatively small because you don't have the experience to draw on for that, and this tool can be used to enhance that. But it's not the only, it's not the end all, be all of your situational awareness or the only tool that you should be using to make decisions. So really, really good points in there and good luck with putting that training together. I think that's a great opportunity for employers and companies to take advantage of that, because any time that you get to have the expert come in and teach you a little bit more about how to use the tool more effectively is invaluable. So hopefully that'll work well for you guys.
Chris Burns: [00:45:51] Yeah, thank you.
Peter Koch: [00:45:52] So a couple more questions here before we get to the end of the podcast and as you, you know, as you see [00:46:00] this like this is it's not a brand new technology, but it's certainly something that you are making work in a really good way. What are some other applications? What are some other vehicles that you might see this system be good for? So we've talked about telehandlers and maybe forklifts, but where else do you see this system being installed that could be a benefit to other employers?
Chris Burns: [00:46:23] Yeah, that's a good question. It can start with something as simple as a box truck. You know, we started with backup cameras as a supplement to our GPS, and the big application was box trucks. People say, Hey, you know, I've got a box truck it's 10 years old. Obviously, there's very limited visibility, and in some cases, your mirrors may not be as wide enough as you'd like them to be. And your rearview mirror you may as well not have one because you can't see out the back, right? And having one or two cameras in the back of a box truck can give you great visibility when you're backing up. [00:47:00] And there might be instances where you know you might just have the vehicle in reverse to see if anyone's coming your way. You can turn the cameras on without having the vehicle in reverse, which is nice in this situation. But we've seen cranes. We've seen a wide variety of construction equipment because we talk about the telehandler a lot, because it's considered the most dangerous piece of equipment by many in the industry. You don't see as many forklifts in the construction field, but you will see them in a lot of warehouses and a lot of other places. And so, you know, those are the big ones, but construction box trucks? We've done some semis and semi trailers. We've even done some on the backs of pickup trucks. If you're often hauling trailers or pulling trailers, especially large, boxy trailers, it's nice to have that visibility. So you can see maybe how close you are if there's other people. Typically, when you're driving a truck, you have an employee or a colleague with you. So making sure if that person [00:48:00] is not in the cab with you, you can see where people are and see your surroundings. We've installed cameras on cars just about everything. It's becoming more and more popular as safety continues to grow and companies look at how can I save money? How can I build more efficiencies? How can I be profitable? But the number one talking point is how do I keep my people safe? Because as you can imagine, it's hard to find good people right now. It's hard to hire good people, and the onboarding could take days to weeks to months. And so if you have an employee out, you know that could be that could set you back. And so companies are starting to say, I want to invest in safety and they're excited to invest in safety because they're seeing that. Yeah, there could be a huge return on investment.
Peter Koch: [00:48:54] Nice. When you were talking, this just clicked for me. So most of my experience in industry [00:49:00] has been within the ski industry. I've worked for a number of different ski areas, done all sorts of different work with them. And when you're talking about the big box truck having to see behind, whether you're in reverse or not, I'm thinking of groomers, right? So one of the biggest injuries that we find and you had referenced this before, and I really didn't tag on to it until right now. But with the 360 backup camera, you really prevent a lot of neck and shoulder strain. And if I think about the groomer in my experience with a groomer or actually the groomers and some of the really nice new brand new technology groomers that are out there, you spend a lot of time looking back over your shoulder through that big window trying to see what the tiller is doing and to make sure that that's leaving the path that you want. So any time that you have to be looking behind you, it seems that might be a good application for this particular camera system.
Chris Burns: [00:49:54] You're right, but the physical strain is something that's also very true with forklifts telehandlers, construction equipment, [00:50:00] even box trucks, because you're often doing this. People do rely on mirrors, but they also rely on their physical awareness, their eyes as well. And so we've seen that I don't use that as much as a selling point because it doesn't sound as believable. But as someone who's been in the industry like yourself, who's operated this type of equipment, you'll start to recognize that, yeah, that is a pretty fantastic benefit. And that's where the employee satisfaction comes in. Where I mentioned the construction company, they started requesting it well, it's a lot easier for me to operate. Some of these guys are working, guys and gals, working 10 hour days doing this, you know, twisting their neck in their body that can get old after a couple of days or a couple of weeks. And so, yeah, I think there's great benefit. You mentioned other applications. We recently installed some camera systems on party buses because as you kind of mentioned, not a lot of visibility, a lot of obstructions there, in addition to [00:51:00] the people on the bus.
Peter Koch: [00:51:01] Yeah. And interesting application. I would not have thought about that, but it makes total sense. So we're getting right to the bus at the end of the podcast here. If some of our listeners want to find out more about camera systems in Midwest fleet and safety specifically, where would they go look Chris? Where would they look to find more information?
Chris Burns: [00:51:22] Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that one of the best places to find us is online on our website, which is Midwestfleetandsafety.com. You can also connect with us. We're on Facebook and LinkedIn at Midwest fleet and safety. Otherwise, you can feel free to email me personally. It's Chris@midwestfleetandsafety.Com You can give me a phone call 920-205-9644 and whether you just want to chat about fleet and safety stuff, certainly open book, we'd love to have those conversations. If you have questions, you want to pick our brain and just kind of know, Hey, what's going on? I want to talk [00:52:00] to you more about this or that. We're certainly open to it. We're pretty relaxed casual company. We really just enjoy helping people and educating people. And if it results in business, great. If not, that's OK, too. But we're a young small company. We're trying to grow and forge relationships. So if you're interested in connecting with us, please do so. And I hope everyone enjoyed listening to the episode today.
Peter Koch: [00:52:21] Well, I know I did. I really appreciate this conversation. I always take something away from the conversation that I have with one of the guests. So thanks today and kind of that connection between the camera systems, situational awareness, reduction of injury, reduction of not just the struck by injuries, but one of the injuries that the National Safety Council didn't put in there is that soft tissue injury, which I think more and more our, you know, our workforce, especially here in Maine. I don't know about how it is about by you, but our workforce isn't getting any younger. So that little personal satisfaction, the employee satisfaction of having a tool that allows them to work more [00:53:00] productively, longer and just longer in their lifetime is a good tool and a take away from me. Thanks for that.
Chris Burns: [00:53:08] Yeah, you're welcome. And you know, when it comes down to it, Peter and I don't want this to be a sales pitch, but companies can invest in this technology. If you're talking about telehandler, one forklift for less than a thousand dollars in most cases. So think about the return on investment you could possibly see by spending a thousand dollars.
Peter Koch: [00:53:28] Yeah, it's not. It's almost a no brainer when it comes down to it, but you got to be in the right mindset for it. You got to understand it, and sometimes you have to have a reason for it. So as you know, as our listeners out there are thinking about, so where have our incidents been? Do we have telehandlers? Have we had productivity issues? Have we had or do we see an opportunity where we want to increase productivity? Have we had incidents or accidents? This might be the time for you to think about what technology can you use to try to eliminate some of those or increase your productivity, your quality [00:54:00] and your safety? So again, thank you for that.
Chris Burns: [00:54:04] Thank you for having me. There's one last thing I want to say.
Peter Koch: [00:54:07] Sure.
Chris Burns: [00:54:07] A lot of times what I'm talking to people like yourself or potential clients and say, You know, what advice would you give a company who's considering this? And I hate to say this, but people say, I should say it more. And so I'll say it to you. But if you're thinking about it, invest because you want to, not because you have to. And I say that is that the majority of our clients are doing it because they've previously had a serious accident or incident and they don't want it to happen again. And they say this, I swear to god, every single time, is if we only would have done this sooner. And I don't like hearing that because, you know, I don't want anyone I do business with to have had gone through something terrible like that, whether it be a simple twenty thousand dollar wall that they need to fix or something far more catastrophic. And so [00:55:00] do it because you want to prevent injuries and accidents, not because you have to do it.
Peter Koch: [00:55:06] Yeah, that's really, really good advice. Invest because you want to, not because you have to. I think that's great and maybe a key takeaway for a lot of folks out there thinking about how can I invest in some technology that's going to make me better? And if you want to be better, here's an opportunity that might take you to the next level. So perfect for that. Thanks again, Chris, for coming on the podcast. This time, I appreciate talking with you.
Chris Burns: [00:55:29] Peter you rock. It's been a lot of fun, as always, and hopefully we get to do this again soon.
Peter Koch: [00:55:32] Yeah, I think we will. We'll have to connect again sometime. And I appreciate you being there and good luck with your company and we'll catch up again in the future, I guess.
Chris Burns: [00:55:41] Good. I look forward to podcast episodes right on.
Peter Koch: [00:55:44] Thanks again, Chris, for joining us and to all of our listeners out there today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, we've been speaking about how camera systems can enhance situational awareness with Chris Burns, co-founder of Midwest Fleet and Safety. The MEMIC Safety Experts podcast [00:56:00] is written, hosted and produced by me, Peter Koch. If you have any questions about camera systems or situational awareness, or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. Email me at Podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources, as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog. So you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates, and if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it. If you would subscribe to the podcast and that take a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, well, thank you because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or a family member that you think will get something out of it? And as always, thank you for the continued support and until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast [00:57:00] is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
The word resolution implies a steadfast intent to succeed or change something. While this may be true for the New Year, the word is better used to describe the movement or change between things.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I discuss how a resolution should be a living thing, especially when it comes to safety.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch, manager of digital technology for Lost Control and a safety management consultant here at MEMIC. I'm recording this episode as we transition into two thousand twenty two and wow, what a whirlwind it's been. One of those eddies of that whirlwind has really been this podcast. It's hard to believe that the podcast has just celebrated its two year anniversary in November of 2021. It's not something that we could do without you listening, and because of you, we've resolved to keep it going. And you know, that got me thinking about the word resolution. And at this time of year, more than any other, it's a word that gets tossed around a lot at one that I expect some of us have been less than successful with over the years, myself included. In general, that word has come to represent that a decision has been made around an intention like the New Year's resolution. Of [00:01:00] course, like I firmly resolved to change or I firmly resolved to do or not to do whatever. However, that tends to be a fairly narrow definition. The word resolution has more uses in depth than what we have come to connected with this time of year. So get beyond the New Year's resolution, and the word connotes something opposite of an unwavering decision to do something. Consider, like in music theory and composition, the term resolution means to progress a chord from dissonance to consonants, or from something that sounds unstable or creates tension to a note that is more stable or creates a sense of release. This clip that you're going to hear next is Howard Shore's Score The Hobbit and is a good example of movement from the tension of dissonance and the release of resolution.
Peter Koch: [00:03:11] In [00:03:00] this case, this is a part of the theme from The Trolls from The Hobbit, and that their bad guy status has really made clear, by the use of a semitone dissonance at the end of the musical phrase and I'm sure you heard it, and if you were paying attention to it, you might actually get that emotional sense of movement, of tension, of something that's going to happen and that doesn't resolve. And then finally, it does resolve. Another definition of the word resolution is used when analyzing a complex notion into simpler ones or solving. Again, this has a feeling of movement. I'm going from a bucket of stuff, lots of complex things together, and I'm trying to break it apart into its component parts. So going from one state to another, like when separating a chemical compound [00:04:00] into its constituent parts through process of distillation, chromatography or even extraction, another use for the word resolution is for the subsidence of a pathological state, such as inflammation. So like, it goes away, it's resolved. It's change. It's gone from a painful area to something that's no longer painful. Last, the use of the term resolution is used when making something more distinguishable or to make individual parts clear, such as in optical resolution. And we hear that all the time in photography, especially digital photography, or when you're trying to pick out an LCD projector for your presentations or a television, right, you're looking at the number of pixels per inch or the resolution of the particular device that you're trying to choose.
Peter Koch: [00:04:48] The higher the resolution, the better clarity that there's going to be for the detail that you'll have. These alternate uses of the word resolution describe much more than a decision to [00:05:00] or not to do something, and more often than not, resolution describes the movement of something or a change. I see the word resolution being one that describes the dynamic relationship between one thing and another. It refers to the release of the tension between the state of what something is and what you want it to become. In my opinion, this is how we should see our resolutions. Not a concrete decision, right? I'm going to stick to this and nothing is going to make me waver because I know in the past that has not been a successful place for me to start. Whenever I do that, I tend to fly off the handle sometimes or things will change. Circumstances in my life will change. Circumstances around the resolution will change and all of a sudden, I'm no longer firmly resolved the way I was before. So it's not a concrete decision, but it should be the journey between where you are and what you want to become and the path that you're going to take. That's the resolution. How do I know [00:06:00] where I am and where am I going to go?
Peter Koch: [00:06:02] So with that in mind, and as it is the season for New Year's resolutions, I think it's a good time to reflect on what safety resolutions we can make for the coming year. And the way I see workplace safety is that it's a journey and all of the things that we do to help us move or our company move in one direction or another. That's the resolution. And because safety has everything to do about the human being and how they interact with the workspace, that journey is not always easy, nor is it exponential. However, in order to move forward, we do need to recognize the reality of where we are and where we can go. So consider again the example of music. If you've ever heard dissonant chords or the musical phrase never resolved, you would be in constant tension, but kind of like a frog in the pot. You wouldn't realize that you're in constant tension, but there would be all the effects of that constant tension. You would have, you [00:07:00] know, maybe an increased heart rate or increased anxiety, or you would get really focused on what's going on in front of you instead of seeing what's happening around you because you have nothing to compare it to. You wouldn't realize that you could change your circumstances or even want to change it because, well, some people like living in tension and an overall living in tension sometimes isn't a bad thing, but we want to make sure that we're able to recognize the tension that we're in and maybe that there's a better place for us to go. Because while some tension is good, constant tension fighting against the desire or the need to produce and the looming potential for injury or death is not good. So first, recognize where you are. Do you know what your injury rate is? Well, how does it compare to your injury across the nation? So, for example, it's an interesting story. I was at a workplace discussing with the leadership what I had found to be an inordinate number of injuries for that particular [00:08:00] company. And while we were talking, I was really surprised to receive a true lackluster or a resigned response from the team. And when I had asked them how they felt they were doing, their response was that they felt they were doing the best they could. And of course, most of the injuries were the fault of the workers, not their particular issue. So I left it in. We continued our discussion and it was clear as we went on that they believed that they were a top tier business when it came to what they produce and the quality of the product that they had, and that they had a team of workers that were critical to the mission of the business and the success that they were enjoying. Well, I asked the safety questions again in a different way. I asked if they felt that they were in the top ranking nationwide for their company and how do they think they compared to their peers in safety? The response was that other businesses like theirs had just as many injuries and they were right in line with everyone [00:09:00] else.
Peter Koch: [00:09:01] Well, this was in February, so I asked them what their OSHA injury rate was or their DART rate. So they pulled it from their OSHA 300 log and what they found was a five point three. So their injury rate was about a five point three. So not huge. I've certainly worked with other industries that had a much greater OSHA overall injury rate. However, five point three is still a significant number of people when we pull the BLS data for their NAICS code. That rate was two point five, so two point five nationally for the NAICS code, where theirs was specifically a five point three for their company, more than twice the national rate. So when we dropped that bomb, you would imagine that there might have been a pause and there was. And then right afterwards there was a rash of excuses and all the normal ones. Well, it's the employee's piece. They don't listen, we have to we really have to push productivity in order to maintain our [00:10:00] income levels and our business levels. But as we kept going through those excuses, they gradually realized that they were not in the place that they should have been or really could have been. And it was only then that we started to discuss the inconsistencies in the safety, culture and what was said or written down in policy and the reality of what was happening on the ground level where employees were actually doing the work.
Peter Koch: [00:10:28] The leadership's resolution was to start work at identifying what was causing the disconnect and make changes that would positively affect the safety culture. We didn't discuss what incident rate they should resolve to get to, but we did make a point to evaluate the incident rate every year to see if the results of what they were changing affected the injuries at the company. And sure enough, in three years they had a safety culture survey result that was more positive and that their injury rate or incident rate had dropped to a three. It [00:11:00] still wasn't below the national rate, but what was much better than where they had started, and they really recognized how they got there and that they still had some room to grow. So what kind of safety resolutions should you be making this year? Well, no resolution should be made in a vacuum, and I need a little more creativity. So I pulled our team of safety management consultants here at MEMIC to put a wish list together for what resolutions they want their policyholders to make. The first suggestion that was given to me, I think, hits the beginning of movement, from dissonance to consonants or from chaos to order. It asks that a company should identify what to measure and what success would look like. This first resolution comes from Laurette Wright, who works closely with our policyholders in the health care industry.
Laurette Wright: [00:11:47] Hi Pete it's Laurette, I would like my policyholders to identify two or three KPIs or leading indicators that measure [00:12:00] safety performance for 2022.
Peter Koch: [00:12:04] The next suggestion for a resolution comes from Jason Hebert. Jason works with multiple industries here in Maine and makes a recommendation that, if so implemented, will help normalize the understanding of the importance of safety and help with buy in around the safety procedures and policies that need to be followed for success.
Jason Hebert: [00:12:25] If I was able to choose a resolution for my insurance, it would be to implement a learning process for their safety training programs. Learning must be a process versus an event, starting with identifying business needs or knowledge gaps within the workforce. Next, to find the training objectives to address each of these gaps and provide training to educate and reinforce safety expectations. Equally important, and follow up to the training, managers and supervisors need to circle back to ensure that new knowledge is transferred to the job. In my observations, oftentimes training is provided with no [00:13:00] follow up. Learning needs to be a process, not just an event, to be effective. With that, my resolution for twenty twenty two is for each of my policyholders to review the current training programs, identify opportunity to improve effectiveness and improve to ensure that business needs are met.
Peter Koch: [00:13:18] Deb Willard Webb, who works with all industries on our ergonomics team, is up next. She has a penchant for connecting the vision of leadership with the insight of the front line staff. Again, she provides a resolution that involves gaining clarity, not just an unbending rule or focus on a number.
Deb Willard Web: [00:13:37] I'd love to hear policyholders resolve to include line staff in development of corrective action once they identify root causes for injuries, and to do that with enthusiasm, believing they can identify actions that will make a difference to [00:14:00] recurrence. So I'm not sure how to make that more concise, but that's the gist.
Peter Koch: [00:14:05] Al Brown MEMIC's own director of ergonomics, has a suggestion that can have a significant effect on injuries and on employee work capacity. This involves an understanding of your current situation and what your workplace would look like if implemented. Sometimes a change like this one requires you to break down your process and illuminate areas that small changes can be made too, to best facilitate the whole.
Al Brown: [00:14:31] My resolution for two thousand and twenty two is that all industries that handle material don't put anything on the ground, they don't have too. Keep it between your knees and shoulders and 35 pounds in between.
Peter Koch: [00:14:48] The next suggestion for a resolution comes from Natalie Campaneria and really highlights the role of leadership and safety. Natalie, like most of the safety management consultants here at MEMIC, came [00:15:00] from the industry that she serves, and she has experience with how company leadership can make or break workplace safety. Again, a resolution to move.
Natalie Campaneria: [00:15:10] I have a resolution that I would love to have all of our policyholders make, and that is that the leaders make safety part of their priorities when they're walking around. Be a good example. If you see something on the floor, pick it up, reinforce positive behavior related to safety and just let the staff know that you're thinking about their safety, their health, and that you care about them.
Peter Koch: [00:15:37] Last for this reflection on what we can do to change safety for the positive. I look back at the challenges that 2021 has dropped into every business across the nation, and this recommendation for a resolution comes from Rob Sylvester, and I think it really hits home. So regardless of whether the challenge is COVID or reduced production or supply chain problems [00:16:00] or the aptly named great resignation, Rob suggestion is at the heart of every resolution that brings a company safety program or process into harmony with its other business goals.
Rob Sylvester: [00:16:13] My message to all is lead with compassion and with empathy and always, always be genuine. Take care of your people and they will take care of your clients, your customers, your residents, patients or whomever they work with. You're happy and healthy employees are the key to your company's success and always be present in the moment, especially in your personal life. Here's to a happy and successful 2022.
Peter Koch: [00:16:38] Take care of your team and they will take care of your company. No, no, you can't please everyone all the time. But if your resolutions connect the well-being of your team to the results, then you are on the path to long term success. So what's your safety resolution for twenty twenty two? I know most of us have room to grow or [00:17:00] move from a place of tension to a place of order in our company safety programs. So if you have an idea for our resolution or your company has made a safety resolution for 2022, then send them into me via email at podcast@MEMIC.com. We'll do a future episode looking at what different companies have done and maybe even reach out to you to get some more detail. Well, that about wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast. Thanks a lot for joining us. The MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is written, hosted and produced by me, Peter Koch. I'd like to thank all of those other folks here at MEMIC who have supported this podcast like Rod Stanley, who does a lot of work with coordinating guests, or Kelly Barton on the communications team, which helps with the promotion of the podcast. So if you have any ideas for a safety topic that you would like to hear an expert discuss on the podcast, email me that as well at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out this episode's show notes at [00:18:00]MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find more safety resources, as well as our entire podcast archive. While you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates, and if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it. If you would subscribe to the podcast and then take a minute to review us on Spotify, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thank you because it really, truly helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Peter Koch wishing you a great start to the New Year and reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
Peter Koch: [00:18:55] Before you sign off from the podcast, listen to a little bit about MEMICs loss control services. [00:19:00] Integrating workplace safety into your business is a key part of the long term success for any company. And like most components of success, there is no one size fits all solution. MEMIC is committed to partnering with employers across all industries for workplace safety, and we recognize the key to that partnership is understanding the unique demands of the industries that we insure our safety experts bring experience from the industries that they serve. And this experience provides unique perspective through a critical eye when it comes to understanding the particular exposures and challenges of an industry from construction, retail and manufacturing to hospitality and health care. Our team of experts will work with policyholders to identify opportunities to improve safety. Interested in finding more about MEMIC? Check us out at MEMIC.com or better yet, contact your local independent insurance agent for more information. If you're already a MEMIC insured, [00:20:00] then check out our safety resources at MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety and sign up for access to our video lending library, our LMS platform, or our Safety Director Resource Library. Thanks very much for listening.
Respirators are one of many controls to consider when addressing atmospheric hazards.
Choosing the wrong respirator can have deadly consequences. The results could be immediately fatal or lead to a long-term debilitating disease or condition.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Steve Badger, CSP and Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC shares information about respiratory protection and what goes into choosing the right respirator.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch and today the topic is respiratory protection. The topic of respirators and air quality in the workplace has numerous paths in an atmosphere of misunderstanding can make it challenging for a business to navigate questions like How do I know which respirator to choose? Or isn't a paper mask a respirator to or why do they need a medical evaluation? Are all questions that have I have heard in the field, especially if I ask, why is that worker wearing or maybe not wearing a respirator? Add to this most airborne hazards do not pose an acute hazard, but can negatively affect you when exposed to it over a long period of time. So think about asbestos or say silica. These hazards can cause damage to your respiratory system and over time, and repeated exposures have proven to cause different cancers and other debilitating [00:01:00] conditions. Other airborne hazards like hydrogen sulfide, chlorine or carbon monoxide have an immediate or an acute life threatening effect. So regardless of how quickly a hazard will cause damage, the worker must be protected when the exposure is identified. So to help us clear the air around respiratory protection and returning to the podcast today is Stephen Badger, CSP, OHST and safety management consultant right here at MEMIC, Steve has a ton of experience with different industries and specializes in industrial hygiene and indoor air quality. You can check out his full bio at MEMIC.com. So, Steve, I wanted to welcome you back to the podcast. Thanks for being here, and I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you about respiratory protection today.
Steve Badger: [00:01:48] Thank you, Peter. Glad to be here again.
Peter Koch: [00:01:50] Awesome. So it's great to have you back. It's been a while since you've been on. It's been a number, well, a month or so at least. What interesting things have you been up to lately in the world of industrial hygiene? [00:02:00]
Steve Badger: [00:02:01] Oh yes, very exciting stuff. You know, I've been doing a lot of silica monitoring, silica testing for respiratory protection purposes, doing lots of noise testing as well. People, you know, wanting to protect their hearing, which is also a very important subject. And that really, really has been the gamut. The last month or so, there's been a lot of focus on both of those subjects.
Peter Koch: [00:02:25] That's cool. And I don't think people consider so much. You know, the silica standard has been out for OSHA now for quite a while, and it continues, I think, to surprise people that they have silica in the workplace and doing some of that atmospheric testing. And we'll talk about that specifically as we get into the respiratory protection program elements and how you determine what type of respirator is. But figuring that out is really important. The testing is really important to get people to understand where to target their efforts for that fairly dangerous substance that we have in the workplace.
Steve Badger: [00:02:58] Yes, it is. It absolutely [00:03:00] can cause some long ranging health effects, breathing issues as well as it's been linked to cancer and some other debilitating health effects. So yes, it absolutely is important to not just monitor, but also, you know, make sure that your employees are protected appropriately.
Peter Koch: [00:03:17] Right on. So let's jump right in to talking about respirators. And I think the use or maybe even the misuse of respirators is more common than we think, and you probably would agree with me on that. What are some of the common respiratory protection mistakes that you see when you're driving around?
Steve Badger: [00:03:36] Oh, certainly some of the most frequent ones that I see are the employer is trying to help their employee by giving them a respirator, something that they have found at one of the local stores. They purchased it, they've brought it in, you know, they give it to the person thinking that they're doing a really good thing, that they're helping protect this person. And in all actuality, depending on what the type of respirator is, [00:04:00] if the person's been fit tested properly, they've been medically cleared and so on. Some of these things we're going to talk about today. If these haven't gone on, this person could actually have some medical issues that occur because of wearing that. Or it may give that person a very false sense of security, that they're being protected when it may not be the proper respirator to protect them from that specific hazard.
Peter Koch: [00:04:26] Yeah, really good points. I've seen that, too. I've also seen this just happened a little while ago. They were replacing a segment of bridge around my house, and after they've finished laying down the concrete or pouring the concrete and it cured, they were scoring the concrete. So they had a big demo saw out there and they were scoring the concrete. The guy who was operating the saw was encased or enclosed, almost in a cloud of silica dust, basically, or concrete dust. And the paper mask that he had was on top of his hard hat. So you could see it fairly [00:05:00] easily driving right past them. And. You know, you talk about a mistake like that. I think that's more of a mistake in training and getting that employee to maybe understand what the true hazards of the atmosphere that they're exposed to are. So both sides, you know, the employer, like you said, trying to do the right thing and give the employee the proper protection, but they're not really hitting the mark. And on the other side, you know, giving somebody maybe what would be the proper protection truly for that, but not educating the employee properly on what the hazards are and the true importance and how critical it would be for them to wear it in the workplace or in that exposure?
Steve Badger: [00:05:40] Absolutely. You know, one of the other mistakes I see, you know, when driving around is, is that somebody one person or two people will be in respiratory protection and there's other people around them. And that's kind of the downfall of using respiratory protection as your first line of defense is [00:06:00] that anyone that's not wearing it is not going to be protected. And so that is another one of those areas that people have to be concerned with is that anyone not wearing it or if it fails or, you know, or if somebody leaves it on the top of their hard hat that it's not going to protect them the way that it would be actually removing that contaminant from the workplace.
Peter Koch: [00:06:23] Yeah, that's a really great lead in actually to this next topic and you think about that individual could be a supervisor, could be someone visiting the job or another employee that has just been assigned to the job but hasn't done the training for respiratory protection, standing within the hazard and not having the same PPE. And I think when people do think about respiratory protection, they do think about respirators like that's the only thing that we have to protect ourselves from the airborne hazard, something that you wear that can protect you at the workplace. And even though we're going to talk about the respirators specifically, I think it's best that we start [00:07:00] someplace else. So continue that thought. Explain why personal protective equipment or PPE isn't the place to start and what process or how should we look at controlling and atmospheric hazard differently?
Steve Badger: [00:07:14] The direction that we want to really hit on this is to determine, first of all, do we have an atmospheric hazard that needs to be our first step? And when we look at the respiratory protection standard, the very first line is that the idea? The objective here is to control those. So we need to know what they are before we can even start to control those. So when we go to control these things, one, the very first thing that we need to really be looking at is can we eliminate that hazard from the atmosphere now in the case of something airborne, you know, maybe like silica or something like that, maybe we have to look at, you know, can we keep this stuff from becoming airborne in the first place? [00:08:00] Can we eliminate that hazard? Really, the next step is, you know, typically in these hierarchy of controls that we talk about is, can we substitute it for something different? Well, you know, when it comes to airborne hazards, you know, if we're talking about a chemical, perhaps we can substitute that for something less hazardous and therefore we would not need to do anything further as far as protection goes. Our next step would be engineering controls where, you know, we may have this hazard in the air, but can we engineer it out? Can we, you know, pull the pull the contaminants out of the air think a lot about like welding and welding fumes when people are working with that, you know, we use local exhaust to try to keep that out of their breathing zone in the beginning so that it's not being drawn up through their breathing zone. So they're not getting that contamination in their lungs. So we do the local exhaust, we have general exhaust. [00:09:00] And then if that does not take care of the hazard as we would expect or reduce it to a level that's acceptable, then we look at administrative controls. That's where the training, the programs, the inspections, those types of things come in. And then last but not least, is the final resort, which is the personal protective equipment, the respirator itself
Peter Koch: [00:09:26] And the hierarchy there, starting with elimination. Or if you back it up, like you said at the beginning, you have to know or believe that there's a hazard in the workplace and then determine what that hazard is. And you talked about that briefly. As you're doing silica testing and monitoring in the workplace, you have to test the atmosphere to determine whether or not there's a hazard there to begin with. And I think even more importantly, to determine how much is there, especially when you get into the chemical side of thing, there's the, you know, the permissible exposure limits [00:10:00] and different things. So there are. Are certain limits that we can be exposed to over time that are OK, not great, but they're OK, and those levels will dictate what we do next. So then can we eliminate it? And so give me an example, if we were going to eliminate an airborne hazard from the environment, what would an example be about how to eliminate an airborne hazard
Steve Badger: [00:10:26] By eliminating it? Perhaps that we're going to use a certain type of process? Maybe we're using a very potent cleaner, something that's giving off a vapor that that certainly isn't good for us to be breathing in now. If we take and, maybe eliminate that from the workspace. Maybe, we're taking that in a different direction that is taking it away from people and where people are working. We've eliminated that hazard in the work environment. Maybe we take it outside or, you know, maybe it gets [00:11:00] piped differently or something, something along that line, we isolate it from the person.
Peter Koch: [00:11:05] Sure, that's a great idea. Can you do the process in a different part of the area if you're exposing a lot of people to it? Can we do it outside? Can we do it in a different space? So in that case, you are only exposing a few people or the people that are immediately doing the process. So a great idea. Would doing something like in a wet method like for the control of silica or other dusts, would that be considered in an elimination? Would that be an engineering control?
Steve Badger: [00:11:36] Well, that would really be an engineering control because at this point here, the hazard is still there. It is in the work environment. So we've done our part. We've tried to eliminate it as much as possible. Now we're looking at engineering and wet methods, especially with something like silica, asbestos, lead. Keeping that from becoming airborne becomes the primary objective at that point that [00:12:00] we're keeping it out of that person's breathing zone. So any kind of wet methods, whether it's a continuous flow water system or if something that's attached to the tool itself, you know, depending on the on the you know what you're doing and how you're doing it, they're certainly tools out there that will help us with that. Whether it's vacuuming, you know, keeping that dust from coming in the air that way or by watering, keeping it wet.
Peter Koch: [00:12:25] It's great and a good differentiation there, where elimination removes the hazard from the workplace or from the immediate area where people are would be exposed to it while engineering the hazard still exists. It's still there. You're just trying to knock it down or to bring it to a level that is not hazardous or you're not exposing that particular person to so great, great differentiation there. So I think that's a good process to think about. So you have elimination, then substitution engineering and then the two parts that that come together, [00:13:00] but one before the other administration and then PPE. So if we've gone through the whole hierarchy and thought about it well, I can't eliminate it. I have done all I can to engineer the space in order to reduce the hazard. But the hazard is still there. Now I've determined that I need a respirator. So what is required for a company to have in place before they can put people into respirators once they've determined that a respirator is a functional way of managing the hazard?
Steve Badger: [00:13:33] Now, the very first thing that they have to look at is having an actual respiratory protection program. This program as OSHA's states has to have certain elements within it. And you know, those elements include, you know, procedures for selecting the respirators in the workplace. This is obviously one of the most important parts of this because without knowing what types of respirators you need, you'd be shooting, you know, shooting in the dark as far [00:14:00] as guessing as to what you need to have. This has to include medical evaluations for employees. This step is absolutely critical. Absolutely. So important for the employee themselves because they have to be cleared to wear that respirator before they're even fit tested for it to make sure that they're not going to have any type of adverse conditions that may be exacerbated by that. Maybe something like asthma or some type of breathing issue that they have that could cause them to have a medical event because of wearing this respirator. So, you know, how are we going to clear these people to wear this? A third section is the fit testing procedures. How are we going to make sure that this respirator is going to be needed by this employee? You know, they come in different sizes and different shapes and different brands and that sort of thing. The procedures for proper use of respirators, when do we use it? When do we do not have to use it? When you know, if there's [00:15:00] an emergency, you know what situations are going to require us to be using these respirators? Procedures for cleaning and maintenance and taking care of these things, inspecting them, making sure that if it's a supplied air breathing type of respirator that we have you know the proper type of air, you know, the proper type of location that is coming from, that it's not being contaminated by something outside. Training of employees needs to be addressed in this program. You know, not just the training on, you know, what are the hazards in the workplace, but also training on how to properly don and doff, which is the proper terms for putting on and taking off your respirator. You know, all of those types of things, the proper inspection of them to make sure that all the parts and pieces are there and working the way that they are supposed to be. And then also, you know, procedures for the regularly evaluating the program, making sure that you're using, you know, [00:16:00] your best resources, that if there's new technology out there that you're implementing that. And so all of those things together are required by the employer have to be in writing so that the employees can be trained properly on it and that it can be evaluated and looked at on a regular basis.
Peter Koch: [00:16:18] Great. And I think a key point there that you brought up at the end is that this is a required written program. So if you have an atmospheric hazard that needs to be controlled by personal protective equipment, that a written respiratory protection program must be in place at your company and I have all those components, you have to have to a way to be able to control or do your best to determine whether or not you can control it any other way or reduce the exposure amount than to have medical evaluations. Require those fit testing, training, care, maintenance and then finally, the program evaluation. All of those are critical parts and pieces and part of the OSHA, you said right at the beginning part [00:17:00] of the OSHA standard. Correct?
Steve Badger: [00:17:01] Correct.
Peter Koch: [00:17:02] Awesome. All right. I've got the hazard. I can't do anything else with it. I determined that I need to use some sort of respirator. I've pulled a respiratory protection program off the internet, and I've made it my own awesome. So now I'm all set and I'm going to do what a lot of folks will do. I'm going to Google respirators and what kind of respirator do I need for the hazard? And if you just Google respirators, the bots at Google return sixty one million results, so Google is not going to be your friend when you're trying to figure that part out. So what types of respiratory protection are out there from a respirator standpoint and what sets them apart? So how do I figure out which one that I need for a particular hazard that I have in the workplace?
Steve Badger: [00:17:49] Now, that's a great question, and you're absolutely correct when you Google something and you get 61 million hits. It's certainly a very daunting thing. So when we're looking at respirators, [00:18:00] you know, you really let's break it down into some, you know, some maybe more handle-able. I'm going to make a word up there, but handle-able pieces here. First of all, there are really two types of respirators that we have to be concerned with. There's what's called an air purifying respirator. And then there's also atmosphere supplying respirators. Now, the first being the air purifying respirators is just like what it sounds is that this respirator takes the air that's already in the air and it filters it through some type of medium, whether it's through a half face mask. Like we talk about the N95 respirators that we've talked about over the last couple of years, you know, with COVID and with silica and with other things that they fit over your face and they act as the filter. You're not adding anything to the, you know, you're not adding any oxygen, you're not adding anything to it, you're just really filtering that air that's being drawn in through that filter by your lungs. You know, [00:19:00] when you create that negative pressure within it, you start to inhale, you're creating a negative pressure. It draws the air through and filters out certain particulates depending on what you're trying to filter out. And then you get that air into your lungs, then you exhale. Most of the respirators will have some type of exhalation valve, which opens and allows that air to escape. And as soon as that pressure stops, it closes in. The process starts again. So with that, I'll jump into a little bit into the atmosphere supplying ones. And it's just like, it sounds it. It's actually supplying you air. And it may be from tanks. It may be from the outside air, clean source of air, and that's being pumped into your respirator is being is being actually being forced into your respirators. So in this case, here you're adding beyond what's in the atmosphere itself. So those really are the two types that you really want to [00:20:00] be thinking about, depending on what your concentrations are. And when we talk about the air purifying respirators, those can be broken down into further classifications.
Peter Koch: [00:20:12] Could I stop you for just a second? I want to clarify a point, so I think this is a good point. So you were putting these into manageable categories and you've got the air purifying and then the air supplied. So that's the first step that you're going to or the first choice point that you have to determine what type of respirator. So generally, when would you need to use an air purifying versus an air supplied respirator?
Steve Badger: [00:20:38] Oh, great question. As far as using an air purifying respirator, you would want to use that or can use that in atmospheres that have plenty of oxygen that you have. You do not have an oxygen deficient atmosphere. You can use these filtering air purifying respirators in atmospheres up to a certain level of contamination, [00:21:00] depending on what that contamination is, what type of respiratory that you're wearing. Now, when we switch to the atmosphere supplying, we're talking typically situations that might be immediately dangerous to life and health. If you think about like firefighters wearing SCBA's or, you know, people that have to remain behind in a fire situation where you know, they may have to shut down critical machinery such as a boiler or something like that where we know the atmosphere is going to be hazardous, it could be immediately dangerous to their life. So we need to supply them with proper air to let them finish that process and then escape from that, that situation.
Peter Koch: [00:21:40] It's a really good point, and I think it goes back to truly knowing what the hazard is, which is why the standard starts with understanding the hazard because it's not just the what, but the how much is really important as well, because you can get into a situation where you have a environment that's immediately dangerous to life and health in a confined [00:22:00] space or in an enclosed area, depending on the type of chemical that you're exposed to and the stratification that happens within that, that particular space, I might be fine if I'm working in the upper level, but it may have displaced all of the oxygen in the lower levels. So lots of different potentials down there. So understanding not just the what, but the how much can help you determine whether I need to go the air purifying or I need to move to the air supplied respirator. Great description. Thanks, Steve. So jump back in and talk more about you were going to talk about the different types of air purifying respirators.
Steve Badger: [00:22:41] Sure. Yeah. And the very first thing I wanted to really point out here is that any respirators that we're going to use in the work environment. Really need to be NIOSH approved, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has to have an approval. We've been through, you know, the COVID situation and therefore a time. [00:23:00] There was some emergency use authorizations for some non approved ones. Those have since ended. So we really need to be focusing on making sure that you're using an appropriate respirator that has been NIOSH approved because if it has not been approved, we don't know how good it really is. We don't know if it's really meets the standards. So that's the very first thing I would like to point out. Second of all, there are different levels. There are what they refer to as N respirators, R respirators and P respirators. And essentially what it is that the N respirators, you know, they can be in different levels, but the N really stands for that. There's no oil in the air that you can use that type because there's no oils in the air. The R stands for that. That's oil present, but it may only be for one shift. And then the P means that there could be oil present, you know, at any given time. And you really must follow the manufacturer's [00:24:00] recommendations when it comes to this. Because, you know, certainly when you look at it, the variations between the P and the N, the P respirators are always going to be a little bit more expensive, but that may be exactly what you need to have. So that is that is something that people have to realize is that it's just not the cost, it's the type of respirator and the environment that you're going to be using that. And then within those, you know, you can have P one hundred, P ninety nine and N ninety five. And typically what that means it is telling you within that type of respirator, how much is it really filtering out if it's an N95 respirator, that means it is filtering out ninety five percent of all the particles that would be outside of your mask. And so I always like to clarify that because there's lots of these numbers and letters out there, and it can it can be very confusing.
Peter Koch: [00:24:56] And those in particular are for particulates, correct? So the N95 [00:25:00] or the P 100s that you would have out there, there, that's the percentage of the particulate down to a particular size that the mask is rated to pull out of the atmosphere before it gets into your lungs.
Steve Badger: [00:25:13] That is correct. And the other aspect of this is that when we start talking about, you know, tight fitting respirators, the elastomeric respirators are just like what they sound. They fit tightly against your face may have cartridges, and those cartridges will be different colors depending on how they filter out things or what they're supposed to filter out. I do caution people making sure that you have the right cartridges when you use those, because a P100 filter may look really great and wonderful. It filters out a lot of particulates, but it may not do very good about filtering out organic vapors or things that you know, come from paints or solvents or things like that. So you really have to know your colors. You know, you have to follow your training and making sure you're using the right respirator cartridge.
Peter Koch: [00:25:59] Yeah. So [00:26:00] in that you have that filtering face piece, right, the paper mask looking thing, which would give you an N95 or a P100 rating or an R 99, and then you have the elastomeric or the tight fitting respirators, which will have a cartridge, which will have something or a cartridge, which might have a pre-filter that could be N95 or P100. Or it could have an actual particulate filter, which that's all it's going to do is filter out the respirators, but not so much the organic vapors or other chemicals that that you might need. So going back to understanding the what and the how much which is important for your selection for respirator. So, yeah, all right. We have the filtering face piece, the P 100s, the N95. You started talking a little bit more about the elastomeric respirators. You want to talk a little bit more about those and maybe some of the types and how you might choose the filtering face piece versus, say, a tight fitting respirator like the elastomeric ones.
Steve Badger: [00:27:00] When [00:27:00] it when it comes to the respirators, you know, choosing which type that you're going to use, it really comes down to, you know, is this going to be something that you're going to be using every day? Is this going to be something that you're going to be using intermittently? And, you know, something like an N95 filtering face piece respirator are good for, you know, like a single use where you're going to go in and you're going to be doing some, maybe some work with silica or something like that and you use it. And when you come out and you and you decontaminate and you can just throw that away, you don't have to worry about cleaning it or taking care of it because the filter, the respirator itself is the filter, and you certainly don't want to be taking that home with you. You don't want to be reusing that. Now, the elastomeric, on the other hand, is the type of respirator that you can use multiple times. Yeah, you keep it clean. You keep the, you know, the pieces and the parts to it. You may end up changing those filters more frequently because one of the things with using filters that you have to be [00:28:00] very cautious of is that most of them do not have what we call an end of service life indicator. There's nothing to tell us when it goes bad. So we have to really rely on ourselves and our training to recognize when that end of life has come. And it may be that it has gotten wet, maybe that you've gotten sprayed in the face with some water or something like that while you've got this respirator on. That would be an indication that this filter, which is very, very fine, very thin filter could tear. Once it becomes ripped, once it becomes wet can rip in and lose its functionality. The other thing is that we want to be conscientious. We want to be thinking about, you know, how difficult is it for us to breathe through? As that burden becomes more on the filter. It's going to become harder for us to draw that ear through. We need to be able to recognize that and say, OK, you know what? It's time for us to change those filters. So those are two situations where you really want to be paying attention to that. So when we talk about the different types [00:29:00] of respirators, we got those filtering face pieces. We've got the half face negative pressure respirator, which is the elastomeric version of that filtering face piece. Those are probably the lowest type of respirator that we really want to be considering to wear in the workplace. When properly fit tested, they have an assigned protection factor of 10, meaning that for every 10 particles outside that that one might get through. Ok, so it's a good filter. It definitely does. It does its job, but it's not perfect. It's not 100 percent. It still will allow things to go through. And the caveat here is that these respirators do not have any assigned protection factor until they've been properly fit tested to the person that respirator itself. Just holding it up to your face does not mean anything. It's not going to protect you. We don't know that it's going to protect you the way that that it should be doing. When [00:30:00] we move up to the full face negative pressure respirators, that's the type you see where people will have a, you know, full face that covers your face, it'll have a shield in front of you typically has one or two respirator cartridges, that type of respirator when properly fit tested. Will give you a protection factor of 50. So now we're moving, you know, into a direction where, you know, very few particles are actually getting through into the respirator. So you were talking very, very minute amount of that are getting in there. It's also really good eye protection. If you're working with chemicals or working with particles, things that could get into your eyes, this can certainly help filter those out. And then we, as we move down the line, we get to what they call powered air purifying respirators. Those respirators that have a little motor with them that are forcing the ear in many people have seen these, you know, maybe in a medical [00:31:00] setting, maybe they've seen them in the workplace where, you know, people are evaluating something, it's forcing air in all the time and these can be tight fitting or they can be loose fitting. And depending on the type that you have, the protection factor can vary greatly. We moved down into the supply to air respirators. Those can be anything from working with remote tanks through a manifold or something that's pumping air in from a remote location. Those again can the depending on the type that you're using, the protection factor can vary greatly. It can be as little as 10, or it can be as much as a thousand, depending on the type of system that you have. And then we move into the highest level, which is the self-contained breathing apparatus SCBA and those in the pressure demand mode can be a protection factor of ten thousand. So we, as we move up in line, they become much more protective. Because [00:32:00] they're pushing year in and not allowing that stuff to be coming into your mask into your breathing zone.
Peter Koch: [00:32:07] Let's take a quick break. Integrating workplace safety into your business is a key part of the long term success of any company. And like most components of success, there is no one size fits all solution. MEMIC is committed to partnering with employers across all industries for workplace safety, and we recognize the key to that partnership is understanding the unique demands of the industries that we ensure our safety experts bring experience from the industries that they serve. And this experience provides unique perspective through a critical eye when it comes to understanding the particular exposures and challenges of any industry from construction, retail and manufacturing to hospitality and health care. Our team of experts will work with policyholders to identify opportunities to improve safety. Interested in finding more about MEMIC? [00:33:00] Check us out at MEMIC.com. Or better yet, contact your local independent insurance agent for more information. If you're already insured by MEMIC, then check out our safety resources at MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety and sign up for access to our video lending library, our LMS platform or our Safety Director Resource Library. Now, let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:33:28] Great, so again, going back to knowing the what and how much in the what, how dangerous is that particular piece and how much is are you exposed to that fit factor of for every 10 particles one will get in? That's OK. I guess if it's wood dust, then maybe it's pine and it doesn't have any allergens in it or it's not dangerous to you. But then if you get up to silica or you come into lead fumes or something else, that's [00:34:00] happening all of a sudden one particle in 10 and you're breathing that for a number of hours throughout your shift becomes a little more scary. So you really want to know what and how much are you going to be so that you can not only choose the proper type of respirator, but the proper type of cartridge that you might need for that particular hazard. So great explanation Steve, that helps quite a bit. So you talked a little bit about this, about the medical clearance. And so I've understood, I understand I have a hazard. I've got a written program that I've made my own. Now I know the type of respirator that I need, but I can't just hand the respirator to the guy who's going to be in there. There's a few more steps that need to happen, so before I can give it to the person to even be fit test with, what do they need to do first
Steve Badger: [00:34:48] Before anyone can put on a respirator, even for fit testing process or procedures, we have to make sure that they are medically cleared and that starts with a medical [00:35:00] evaluation, meaning a questionnaire that can be found in Appendix C of the standard. By the way, that standard is 29 CFR 1910.134. If you look at the Appendix C, there is a questionnaire that the employees have to fill out and that that questionnaire has to be evaluated by an evaluator that can make the decision on whether or not, you know, can this person safely wear a respirator or do we need more information? And a lot of times, even though you can find these online, one company in particular that does these online for companies is 3M. You can go and you can do these. They'll evaluate them for you and then tell you whether or not you need to go to that next level. They may look at this and you know, there might be some red flags that come up because of past exposures. Or maybe that they have some type of medical issue with asthma or something that [00:36:00] may require them to be seen by something a little further up the line.
Peter Koch: [00:36:03] So why? Why is it important, though? So I mean, I think I understand somewhat, but maybe elaborate on that. Why? Why even have the medical clearance? I mean, so what's the big deal if I've got some pulmonary issue before? I've got some respiratory issues before, maybe even I've smoked before. I know those are some questions that are on the evaluation. Why is it important to evaluate that even through the questionnaire before you move on to the next step?
Steve Badger: [00:36:29] Certainly the most important part of this really is that the person that when you put that respirator on, the very first thing you're going to notice is there is some more force that's required to be able to draw in the amount of ear that you want. You know, whether it's a, you know, air filtering respirator, air purifying type of respirator, you need to make sure that you're going to be able to breathe properly so that when you go to take that breath that you're not, you know, putting adverse effects on your heart, your lungs, [00:37:00] circulatory system that could cause you to have some type of medical event while wearing that. And that is a serious effect because it does happen. You can read about it frequently where people have put these things on, then they're not used to them. Maybe they're even claustrophobic and that just that action of putting that on can cause that, that to happen. So it's absolutely critical, something that OSHA absolutely is going to ask one of the very first questions. Has this person been medically cleared to wear this respirator? And so the very least that you're going to see is this questionnaire that's going to ask all kinds of questions about your past. You're smoking your, you know, to evaluate, are you a good candidate? What are you going to be using this respirator for those types of things? And then they may recommend that you have a an actual physical exam to make sure that you're physically capable of wearing it and to go along with that, depending [00:38:00] on what the contaminant is, whether it's asbestos or lead or cadmium, there may be requirements within those individual standards that require you to have a physical evaluation as well. So it may not be directly involved with the actual respirator use, but it could have to do with the standard of the contaminant. So it is important to make sure that your employees, if you're an employer, that they're going through this process. And if you're an employee, make sure that you go through this process is extremely important for both of you.
Peter Koch: [00:38:33] Right. I think that's a really important point to make. And if you're listening out there and you're a business owner or if you're a safety person, or even if you're the person that's going to wear one of the respirators, if you're not breathing right, you're certainly not going to last very long in the workplace or in this world. So putting something on that's going to change how you breathe is a big deal. And if you've got underlying medical conditions that could exasperate that, it's important for us [00:39:00] to identify those things and make sure that if you're wearing it, you're not being put in a situation where it could make a condition worse or put you at risk of making a mistake that could get you injured in another way within the workplace. You had mentioned being claustrophobic. You know, if you put on a full face respirator, it cuts down some of your vision. Or even if you're in a positive pressure respirator, a hood based respirator, it really does feel very claustrophobic. And if that's changing your mentation, even if it's not changing how you breathe, it may be changing how you make decisions out there. So it could very well be an issue for you going forward or making critical decisions while you are working. So good point. Medical clearance is a is important part. People don't understand the importance of it, so they just kind of gloss it over and then they move to kind of the next step. So if someone's been medically cleared for it, then I now I can give them a respirator, but they still can't just take it and go [00:40:00] off into the workplace. You talked about fit testing before, so take us through the steps around testing and why it's important and the different types.
Steve Badger: [00:40:07] Sure. Before I leave the medical clearance, one other thing that I want to remind people of is that this is not a one and done thing. People have to be reevaluated at least yearly for these. Now with COVID, there's been some, you know, extension of that. But for most of us outside of health care, we really need to be checked yearly to make sure that we are still capable of wearing that. That's a critical point because, you know, as we get older or maybe we've developed other issues as time has gone along, we need to make sure that we're that we're accounting for those to make sure that we're not going to be adversely affected.
Peter Koch: [00:40:50] Great point. So definitely you have to have that medical evaluation every year.
Steve Badger: [00:40:55] So yeah, moving along to the fit testing here, really, there's two types of fit testing [00:41:00] that we have to be concerned with. One is called a qualitative fit test, and the second is a quantitative test. The qualitative test is really only used for the half face negative pressure respirators. Those you know, N95 respirators as long as they, you know, they're for the proper type are the only ones that we're going to be using these for because it is a qualitative test, as it says it is, it is designed to test a person's ability to detect whether or not there has been a breakthrough on that respirator. So there are certain challenge agents that are used for that one of them happens to be if we're using particulates is irritant smoke. Some people have heard of that. It's or maybe you've seen people fit tested with it. It's just this nasty smoke that they put in front of your face and it causes you to cough, [00:42:00] you know, ninety nine percent of all people that take a breath of that start coughing immediately. It is very, very offensive and people start coughing so they know that they're sensitized to it, so that if they put this negative pressure half face respirator on and we're spraying this around them, we are going to know as well as they are going to know that whether or not there's any breakthrough, whether or not it's fitting properly. Now some of the other types, there's one called Bittrex, which I equate with salt and vinegar potato chips. It's got that taste to it, that acetic acid taste you test. You have to again test people, make sure that they're, that they are sensitive to it. But the problem is, you know, with using something like Bittrex is that the person can be tasting it and tell you they're not. There is no way to positively know that they're telling you the truth. They may want to just get through this fit test. They may want to just get it done and get it over with get onto the next thing that they've got to do. [00:43:00] It's not that it's bad, it's just you just want to be as an employee you want to be honest. If you're tasting it, you're tasting it. You know, there's breakthrough. You do not want to play with this, you know, you don't want to, it's your health, you know, type of thing. And a third one is saccharin. They do use this saccharin type stuff. It's a very sweet tasting stuff. Again, you test this person's sensitivity to it ahead of time. My problem with. That is, once I have that taste in my mouth, I can't get it out. It takes forever to get that taste out of my mouth. So, when I'm being fit tested, I'm not sure if I'm really still tasting it from before or am I getting some breakthrough. So, you know, they both have their pros and cons. They're not certainly not as offensive as the urchin smoke, but I hate to word these cheap, but you can. You can cheat with those things if you're using that respirator for vapors purposes only. There is another test called another substance called isoamyl acetate, which more commonly [00:44:00] known as banana oil, because that's exactly what it smells like can be used as a challenge agent. I typically don't like it only because not only does the person being tested have to wear the respirator, but so does the person doing the test as well, because it has a very strong odor to it and a very strong narcotic effect. If you breathe too much of it and it can, it can really be very detrimental to yourself as the tester or anyone else in the room, anywhere else in the building because it will flow along with the air. So certainly something I'd recommend, but it is certainly out there. So those are the challenge agents. And once you establish that a person is aware that they can taste it, they can smell it off. Whatever it is, then you have to run them through a series of exercises through a series of tests to make sure that that respirator is going to stay properly on their face while they are doing their everyday activities, including [00:45:00] talking. So part of this is called the rainbow passage. It was a it was a paragraph created back in the 1950s for the Air Force to mimic different movements with your face that you might do while you're talking and explaining things to people.
Steve Badger: [00:45:15] And so you have to read through this rainbow passage, you have to do some turning your head from side to side things like that to make sure that that respirator is going to stay where it is supposed to be and not break that seal as you're using it. That, in essence, is that qualitative test, the quantitative test, on the other hand, it's a lot more numerical, just like it sounds. It's actually done by a device most typically called a port account. There are some other ones out there, but port account is the most common one. And typically, you know, in essence, simply what it is that it's monitoring the fibers and the particles outside your mask and also the fibers and particles inside your mask. And it gives you a fit factor. It gives you a number [00:46:00] while doing these tests that you're doing the turning your head from side to side and up and down and back and forth reading the rainbow passage. And it gives you these fit factor numbers and for a quantitative test, you have to have a minimum of a 500 fit factor for it to be considered a successful test. So every respirator beyond that half face respirator needs to be fit tested in that manner with a quantitative test.
Peter Koch: [00:46:28] So you can still do the quantitative test with the half face respirators, but it's required to do with the full face or the air supplied respirators, correct?
Steve Badger: [00:46:39] That is correct. The only one that is not required for is the loose fitting PAPRs, because there's no way to make sure that the that the person is, you know, it's not enclosed, totally enclosed. So that's why those types of respirators cannot, cannot be fit tested that way.
Peter Koch: [00:46:57] Fantastic. And I know from having administrative both [00:47:00] tests myself and having had both tests done or doing both tests myself for being fit for a respirator while I was in the in the workplace. Qualitative, I think you hit the nail on the head. It can be something that gets, I guess you could say, spoofed by the employee. The quantitative actually provides some really good information to you. I don't know. And when we've both done it, I don't know if I'm sure you do this to. The person can see the difference in the particulates inside the mask versus what's outside the mask, and they can see the changes when they're doing those different exercises so they can see what's happening to the seal on that respirator while they're doing different things. And that just that education, I think for that individual is can be priceless because prior to them seeing that, they just think it's a piece of PPE and I'm going to be protected from it just because it's a piece of PPE. But it goes back to how you use it, how you understand its use [00:48:00] and how you understand the hazard, which really does make that piece of PPE either work or not work so interesting,
Steve Badger: [00:48:09] Right in this poor account will really show the importance of being clean shaven as well for the respirators. Because when you think about, you know, a human hair that might be protruding out from underneath the seal of that respirator, a human hair is about one hundred and fifty times thicker. Then an asbestos fiber, for instance. And so wherever that fiber, wherever that hair is sticking out, fibers can get through. And so by seeing those numbers and seeing that, oh wait, I'm not clean shaven, it's been a couple of days since I've shaved. You can see where the air leakage is happening because of that and that they really do need to be clean shaven at all times because the expectation is when you're fit testing, yes, you're clean shaven. But once you get out on the field, maybe you skip a day or two, you know, with three or four. And all of a sudden you've got, you know, these here [00:49:00] that are sticking out wherever those are sticking out, it's letting those contaminants in. So it's really important to understand that.
Peter Koch: [00:49:07] Yeah, very true. Your beard is only a food filter. It's not an air filter, right?
Steve Badger: [00:49:11] Correct.
Peter Koch: [00:49:13] So thinking about frequency, you talked about that a medical evaluation has to happen every year. How often does someone need to be fit tested?
Steve Badger: [00:49:22] Yeah. The fit testing also is on a yearly basis, although there are some standards out there that do require every six months, depending on what you're working with, because they want to be sure that that fit is maintaining and you may be required to be fit tested more frequently. There are some things within the standard that if you gain or lose more than 20 pounds, if you've had some type of dental surgery or facial surgery, something that may affect that fit on your face, you certainly want to get another test.
Peter Koch: [00:49:55] Yeah, that's a good point. And going back to that conversation about the types of respirators [00:50:00] every company has their own way of, of molding the respirator. So the last of the respirator, how it's created, and not every person will fit into a particular brand of respirator based on its kind of like a shoe, you know, every you might fit into a size eight shoe for this company, but you won't fit it into a size eight shoe for that company, or it won't fit the same so different sizes of respirator based on your facial structure. And then sometimes even different brands of respirator, depending on your facial structure, would need to be chosen or tried to see if you will actually pass the fit test. Is that correct? That sound right?
Steve Badger: [00:50:39] That does sounds exactly right because, you know, and I have found this in countless times when doing these fit tests, whether it's qualitative or quantitative, is that I will I will get to there. I will start doing a fit test in. The person obviously has too big of a mask. You know, we're looking at the seal and hairs, you know, not the issue. It's just not [00:51:00] sealing to the person's face. So we have to go down in size or we have to go to a totally different brand. You know, there are three M's this north, there's Scott. There's a whole bunch of different brands out there and that they do all fit a little bit differently. And you know, one of the things going along with that is that the care of these respirators is you go through time. You want to be taking really good care of these. You want to be keeping them clean. You want to keeping them dry. You want to keep them out of the sun and out of the heat as much as possible. Because we, especially with the elastomeric ones they tend to dry out. They'll tend to, you know, like keep anything in the back window of your car in the summertime gets very, very hot and it will start melting and become really unwieldy, and it may not form to your face any longer. So care of these things are absolutely critical, especially if you're only going every six months to a year. Without that fit test, you want to be sure that it's fitting [00:52:00] you properly. So in between times, one of the things that we that we do is every time you put this respirator on, you want to be doing what we call fit checks. We want to do a positive and negative fit check, which a positive fit check would be. Where you cover the exhalation valve, you blow on that, you know, semi forcefully. You don't want to, you know, blow to hard, but you want to fill that mask up in that seal wants to hold. If you if that seal will hold for 15 to 20 seconds, that means that that check is doing OK. Then you want to try the other, you know, depending on if you've got cartridges or, you know, some way to cover the filtering piece of that and then you inhale and it should collapse the respirator and the seal should hold for 15 to 20 seconds, and that will indicate that the negative fit check is working the way that it's supposed to. That's a good rule of thumb to do every single time you put that respirator on.
Peter Koch: [00:52:55] Yeah, and so I think it's part of it required with the standard as well. So you're supposed to field fit [00:53:00] or fit check once you put it on to determine whether or not the seal is still functional because again, you know, lots of stuff could happen. It could be old. It could have lost its some of its elastomer properties, or it could have been damaged. And you don't know. And there's other pieces inside the respirator that could have been damaged that would allow air to come in or not be filtered correctly. There's there is one way valves, little flaps inside the respirators that have to be looked at and maintained and made sure that they're in good shape in order for that respirator to work properly. So if we think about the care and the maintenance, you know, in the field and someone's using the respirator, what are some of the mistakes people make when they finish with the respirator? Like what? What are they doing that's not helping them when they want to go put it back on again?
Steve Badger: [00:53:55] Yeah, there's a there's a few things that that don't help them. First of all, you know, they take it off, [00:54:00] they hang it up, you know, they'll hang it on a nail somewhere. That really is not helping that respirator any. It needs to be cleaned and needs to be taken care of just like any other piece of equipment. And, you know, and when we clean these things, we want to be very careful that we're, you know, we can use a little bit of disinfectant, but we don't want to use too much because it will tend to dry these things out greatly. And again, that elastomeric ability of that thing to be able to move and fit with our face gets greatly affected the more it dries out. And so we want to make sure that we, you know, use no more than a 10 percent bleach solution. But I would make sure that you clean it every single time. Make sure that it's dry, make sure it's sealed in a Ziploc bag, something that keeps the dust and the contaminants off from it in between times because you may not use it every day. But even if you do, you want to make sure that that thing is in clean and a good condition. The next time that you go to put that thing on the other problem [00:55:00] with hanging these things up, the straps that hold the respirator to your head will tend to stretch or they could get damaged and then break. You know, there's lots of bad things that can happen from that. So hanging those things up absolutely not the way to go. You want to treat that. As you know, as it is, it's a device that is protecting your life.
Peter Koch: [00:55:24] Yeah. What about the practice of removing the canisters from the mask and sealing the mask separate from the canister when you put it away? Is that a good rule of thumb or required or? I've heard that spoken about at different companies.
Steve Badger: [00:55:38] Yeah, it really depends on a couple of factors one, you know? And again, this comes down to the company policy that part of the program where we, you know, if you're using this, maybe you're stepping into a place, you're looking at something coming right back out. That's one of those situations where you might reseal those. You might put tape over those [00:56:00] cartridges and reuse them. You know, the best practices, honestly, is that they get removed every time because we don't know, you know, if this can take a certain burden, it can take a certain load. How much have we given that, you know, buy that few minutes that we were in that we just don't know. And so, you know, it's always better to err on the side of caution when you when dealing with respiratory protection. So, you know, taking those off, disposing of them properly, you know, not just leaving them, laying around for someone else to grab or use because they can't find other ones, make sure those get disposed of properly. And as Peter said, you know, perhaps, you know, storing those separately, you know, from your respirator is certainly a best practice.
Peter Koch: [00:56:45] Great. So you know, you take it off, put it away or clean it really well outside inside. Seal it up, protect it from damage. There's a lot to the standard. There's a lot to doing this. So you know, you can't just hand the respirator to an employee and expect them [00:57:00] to have the knowledge to use it correctly. So this goes to the training part. What training is the employer required to provide to the employee for respirator protection or respirator use and respiratory protection?
Steve Badger: [00:57:16] The very first training that is required by the OSHA standard is that they are trained in the hazards and the recognition of the contaminants that are that they are being protected from. You know, what are the you know, what does this smell like, look like, taste like, you know, whatever, so that they can recognize that if they're being exposed to it, that's the very first training that they have to have. Second of all, they have to have the training in the respiratory protection program, which is all of those pieces that we talked about earlier and knowing how to properly put on a respirator. It was one of my favorite things to do when doing respiratory training for a group for the very first time is handing them a respirator and telling them, OK, go ahead and put it on, [00:58:00] and you'll be amazed at how many different ways a respirator can be put on improperly. And so, you know, it's always a good way to start by showing people how many different ways this can go wrong, but there is one right way of doing it. So we want to make sure that they understand that we want to make sure that they know how to inspect it, to look for those pieces and parts, those inhalation valves, those exhalation valves, those all of those little pieces. Those that are inside that are required to be there to make sure that that respirator is functioning the way that it's supposed to be. We want to make sure that they are trained in how to the proper care of it, proper storage, maintenance, if something does need to be fixed or replaced. You know, how are we going to do that? Do we have one person that does that? We have to report it. You know, how does that whole thing work has to be put into that program so people have to be trained on that as well?
Peter Koch: [00:58:53] Awesome. And then I guess finally around the training part, does the standard require that there is a program administrator for respiratory [00:59:00] protection?
Steve Badger: [00:59:01] Yes, there has to be a program administrator listed in the program at the very front of the program. And that program administrator is the ultimate authority when it comes to that program. That's who has the final say in what's in there. That administrator has to go through that program at least annually to make sure that it is up to date, that everything that's within it is still current, that we're still doing the same things. Or if there are things that maybe we're doing differently, that those are addressed in that program.
Peter Koch: [00:59:33] Perfect. There's a lot of moving parts to this piece. And well, I guess before we come right to the end of this, is there anything that our listeners should know that I haven't asked about yet for respiratory protection, Steve?
Steve Badger: [00:59:49] Well, I don't think so, I think the only other issue that I would really want to talk a little bit about is in areas where respiratory protection is not required [01:00:00] and an employee wants to bring in their own respirator and wear that. We really have to be careful as an employer about that. We can't just say, OK, you know what? We're going to close our eyes and then in and let that happen. We really have to make sure that the employer provides the employee with Appendix D of the standard, which requires, you know, which states that you know, it's a voluntary use only you can wear your own respirator, that sort of thing. But you may still have to implement parts of the respiratory protection program to make sure that those people are still going to be properly protected and that they are medically cleared to wear them. Because it is your workplace, you're allowing them to wear them. You have to be sure that they are medically cleared to wear them. The only exclusion to that is if it is a dust mask, one of those like an N ninety five type respirator [01:01:00] that is used just for that purpose, then that does get excluded from having to do the all of the bells and whistles. But if they're wearing any type of elastomeric respirator, they do have to make sure that they are medically cleared and that they are following the company policy on those.
Peter Koch: [01:01:21] So I just want to clarify that. So if someone voluntarily brings in a paper mask, a filtering face piece that maybe it's an N95. So not just the dust masks, the single banded dust mask without a rating on it, that's a whole other category and doesn't fit into the respirator standard at all.
Steve Badger: [01:01:38] Correct
Peter Koch: [01:01:21] So if it's the N95 filtering face piece paper mask, the employer is not required to do medical evaluations with them. Is that correct?
Steve Badger: [01:01:51] That is correct. That is the exception. Anything beyond that, like those elastomeric ones they do have to go through all the bells and whistles to [01:02:00] make sure that because it is their workplace.
Peter Koch: [01:02:03] So if they're wearing voluntarily wearing an elastomeric tight fitting respirator, then they have to be medically evaluated and still fit tested for use. But if it's a filtering face piece, a paper mask, then they just need Appendix D. So that they understand the risks and hazards of wearing a respirator.
Steve Badger: [01:02:25] Correct.
Peter Koch: [01:02:26] Thanks. So we're right at the end of the podcast here. So if someone had more questions about respiratory protection and we're looking for more information and they didn't want to just do the Google thing, where could they go to find out more information about respiratory protection?
Steve Badger: [01:02:42] Well, I would certainly hope that they would approach us. Our lost control consultants are certainly well aware of the standards and you know, I can refer people to standards all day. But you know, if you're not sure of the context, it can be very daunting to take a look at. So I would certainly recommend, [01:03:00] you know, going or coming to us, you know, asking those questions, you know, reaching out, asking an expert. I would also, you know, want to, you know, if you've got a company that has a safety director already. That would be a good resource. And also, if you are using resources, using respiratory protection, already taking a look at, you know, say, for instance, 3M and their website and their different types of respirators that they have available and those sorts of things because they do have a lot of really good information on respirators themselves.
Peter Koch: [01:03:34] Fantastic. So the manufacturers for the respirators, whether it's 3M or North or Scott or a number of them out there certainly have a lot of respirators and OSHA has a good resource page for the respiratory protection standard itself. Is that is that correct?
Steve Badger: [01:03:49] Yep, they do. They absolutely have some, some really good resources. They have some nice handouts that help explain some of that information there. But again, it really is going to come [01:04:00] back to, you know, having somebody that really is an expert to get you to step one of the process, which is finding out, do we have an air contaminant and what can we do about it before we get there?
Peter Koch: [01:04:13] Yeah, that's a really great point, Steve. And I think it's a point or a step that a lot of people miss. They move right to. We've got to have a program, but you might not know what you need the program for yet. So that step of evaluating the hazard, trying to get some air sampling done, possibly to determine the what and the how much can give you a lot of great direction and that's not easy to do, so certainly reach out to us. There's other companies out there that will do air sampling. I know a lot of the states here in Maine Safety Works, which is an educational support arm of OSHA here in Maine. They will provide some help and other states have similar programs that you could reach out to for them too. If you've got some questions about atmospheric hazards and what you might need to do [01:05:00] to reduce the hazard or eliminate the hazard. Fantastic.
Peter Koch: [01:05:05] Thanks, Steve. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your expertise with us. There's we really just kind of scratched the surface. The respiratory protection standard or just respiratory protection in itself has a lot of moving parts and there's a lot of things and it can get pretty complicated. I think that you helped provide a fairly clear path through some of the clouds today, but there's certainly more that we could talk on, I'm sure.
Steve Badger: [01:05:30] Yeah, there certainly is. And you know, and this is one of the reasons why it's always in OSHA's top 10's number of citations that they give out every year because it is very complicated even for people that are trying to do the right thing and follow the follow the rules. It can still be very daunting, and you only have to miss one step to be in violation. So. So absolutely.
Peter Koch: [01:05:50] Yeah, for sure. Well, perfect. That about wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast, and thanks for sharing your expertise with myself and all of our listeners out there, Steve.
Steve Badger: [01:06:00] You're [01:06:00] welcome. Thank you.
Peter Koch: [01:06:01] Awesome. So to all of our listeners out there, thank you very much today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking about respiratory protection with Steve Badger, safety management consultant here at MEMIC. The MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is produced by Rod Stanley and written, hosted and co-produced by myself, Peter Koch. If you have any questions about respiratory protection, send our team of safety experts an email right through our website at MEMIC.com And look for workplace safety and our safety experts. If you'd like to hear more about a particular subject or you have an idea for a safety related topic for the podcast. Email me at Podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources, links to other podcasts with Steve, as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates, and [01:07:00] if you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it. If you would subscribe to the podcast and then take a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thank you because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or a family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support and until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMICs Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
Called by many different names: Man lifts, boom lifts, cherry picker, scissor lift, or bucket truck, mobile elevated work platforms are everywhere. They are replacing the traditional ways people work have worked at height.
On this episode of the Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Joe Gagne, Division Safety Trainer at United Rentals to discuss the changes to the Mobile Elevated Work Platform standards.
Resources:
https://www.forconstructionpros.com/rental/lifting-equipment/article/21104458/accident-data-directs-best-practices-for-mobile-elevating-work-platforms
https://www.ishn.com/articles/111059-new-ansi-standard-covers-mewp-design-training-safe-use#:~:text=The%20new%20ANSI%20A92%20standard%20was%20developed%20to%20improve%20safety,officially%20effective%20in%20December%202019.
https://constructionexec.com/article/understanding-new-ansi-a92-standard-changes
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host. Peter Koch, called by many different names, could be a man lift, boom lift, cherry picker, scissor lift or bucket truck. Mobile elevated work platforms are everywhere. They are replacing the traditional ways people have worked at height places where in the past you may have seen a ladder or a lift or two of scaffolding or even a man in the bucket of a loader, unfortunately. You now see a MEWP or a mobile elevated work platform. As a matter of fact, just yesterday, as I was leaving a safety conference, there was a scissor lift in the median, with two men standing in it and fixing a messaging sign. They had all of their tools with them, and they were able to easily move the length and the height of the sign. Contrast that with the workplace accident I investigated not too long ago, where a maintenance worker was replacing a lighted sign at the front of the business, where he worked [00:01:00] and fell from the stepladder that he was using. Another example I have a policyholder that's planning to use an electric scissor lift to repair and maintain their indoor climbing wall and some other elevated features in their adventure center. The MEWP that they're looking at had to not only extend to the twenty five foot height necessary to reach the upper holds on the wall, but the data from the Market Insights website shows that the high growth potential for area work platforms is due to rising worker safety concerns across the globe. And no wonder there are much more stable platform for someone to work on than, say, a ladder. And these really aren't the old bucket truck or baskets on a forklift or a loader that we have seen in the past in the construction industry over the last 30 years. The introduction of advanced technologies such as tilt and active load sensors that warn the operator or halt the machine operation when safety guidelines are approached or exceeded, as well as an incredible number of equipment. Configurations and options make these an indispensable [00:02:00] tool for accessing any work area that could be at height. The article for Market Insights goes on to state that one factor that continues to stem the use of MEWPs is the lack of skilled operators and the incidents with these machines that are caused by misuse or lack of proper training. To help us explore more about mobile elevated work platforms. Is Joe Gagne, division safety trainer for United Rentals? Joe, welcome to the podcast.
Joe Gagne: [00:02:26] Thank you for having me, Peter. It's a pleasure to be here.
Peter Koch: [00:02:28] It's great. And we were talking about this before your voice. I'm jealous right now because it's it sounds great on the microphone. It's going to sound awesome on the podcast.
Joe Gagne: [00:02:37] Maybe I'm in the wrong line of business.
Peter Koch: [00:02:39] You might. You might be. You give Joe Rogan a run for his money, I guess, right? So you work for United Rentals as a division safety trainer. So tell me about your tell me, tell me a little bit about United Rentals and then tell me about what you do for United Rentals and the scope of the work and how far you travel to do that work.
Joe Gagne: [00:02:58] Thanks. Well, [00:03:00] United Rentals is the largest equipment sales service company in the world. We have over 1400 branch locations throughout North America, and we're starting to expand into Europe and Australia right now. And as a division safety trainer, I work with our customers and our employees to ensure that they can operate our equipment safely. A large component of what I do is training and certifying operators, so we bring our folks in and we ensure that they know what the rules and regulations are with the parts and components of the equipment are and what are the best operating practices. So at the end of the day, what's most important is they go home.
Peter Koch: [00:03:33] Yeah, absolutely. And we're on the same page. We talked to that as a safety consultant, and I talked to our clients about that all the time. Like the most important thing is your employees go home in more tired than they were when they get in today, if they are going to give you an honest day's work, but they have to go home safely to their family, their loved ones and do other things, not just work. It's the really important part.
Joe Gagne: [00:03:54] Absolutely. And that's really where we have to make safety personal. And if we can establish personal [00:04:00] aspect of what they're doing and that's always in the forefront of their mind why they're working, it will keep them safer throughout their workday.
Peter Koch: [00:04:06] Yeah, beautiful. And we were talking just before the podcast, some interesting psychological effects that are out there. So we're talking about the Dunning Kruger effect and that interesting notion that people don't know what they don't know until someone comes in and helps them know. And that's your job.
Joe Gagne: [00:04:22] Exactly. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation out there in the industry. Folks are told information from somebody that might have been working for their organization for a long time, and they were told from somebody prior to that may not have been fully aware of what the standards, regulations, rules and laws were. So that's where I step in as a subject matter expert for my organization.
Peter Koch: [00:04:42] Right on. So let's go down that road because I think it would be interesting to talk about this and let's talk about the myths that you encounter when you get on the job site and you bring a piece of equipment in and or you go to do training with somebody and they are trying to explain to you what they [00:05:00] think the right thing is and. What are some of those myths, so what's the maybe the most popular myth or misunderstanding or misconception that you get when you go to a job site?
Joe Gagne: [00:05:09] So the number one myth is I don't need to be certified or trained on this piece of equipment. And the reality is you've always had to be. It's just important to again know what the requirements of training are because different organizations have different standards for training. So we want to make sure that your organization's training is up to the standard that's been published by ANSI, and that's where we ensure that the training that we provide actually exceeds that.
Peter Koch: [00:05:33] Yeah, that's awesome. And that's actually my top myth, too. When I go and talk to a client or a policyholder about the, well, fall protection, and inevitably it gets to aerial lifts and we talk about their training. The most frequent training that I find is that, oh yeah, I've got trained. So who did your training? Well, the guy that dropped the piece of equipment off did the training. Well, who did he train? Well, he trained the guy that signed the piece of paper that took the lift in [00:06:00] tow. Well, that's not training like you as the operator have to have training. And it's not just here's the machine. Those are the controls go forth and prosper. It's not that it's more complex than that because they're a very complex machine.
Joe Gagne: [00:06:14] Absolutely. And with the new ANSI A ninety two point two for that specifically addresses what constitutes training. It really more clearly defines what training and certification is, and it requires two components. The first is a theory portion of instruction where we go over everything from rules and regulations to parts components to best operating practices fall protection. Once we complete that portion of the instruction, we move on to the practical portion of instruction where each operator is required to get on the machine and demonstrate their ability to operate it competently and safely. When you compile both of those aspects up, then you have a certified operator at the end, provided they can prove that they can complete those skills in the course correctly.
Peter Koch: [00:06:56] Yeah, because the beginning part is a more general training, [00:07:00] right? So we'll have specifics to the piece of equipment that you are providing them, but it covers aerial lifts in general.
Joe Gagne: [00:07:07] Absolutely. We want to establish a foundation of knowledge that pertains to all aerial lifts, and a lot of that involves, again, the rules and regulations, the stability characteristics of the machine. And just make sure we're clear that there are two different types. There is actual certification training, which the operators require, and then there is specific training for the machine that you're operating and that's called familiarization training. So not only do you need to be certified to operate the machines classification, generally, you need to be familiar with the specific machine that is being operated.
Peter Koch: [00:07:38] Good. And I think we're going to get into that a little bit more when we talk about familiarization and what goes into that particular part. But let's get back to the certification piece and you had, you talked about one of those pieces of stability characteristics. What are some other things that might go into that certification, part of the training for an operator?
Joe Gagne: [00:07:58] Well, we always want to make sure that the [00:08:00] operator selects the right machine to begin with for their assigned task. Not all the machines are the same. They have different capabilities and characteristics, so it's important to understand the scope of your work first. So you select the most appropriate machine for that task. We often find folks end up on machines that are not best suited for the task they're assigned, and that's really where the domino effect starts.
Peter Koch: [00:08:22] Yeah, that's a really good point. It comes up with another myth. I think that we could talk about. When you choose a machine that's not quite suited for the job, you find people either modifying or using the machine in ways that it really wasn't intended. And that's one of those myths. I think that people think that they can make changes to the machine so that it better fits the job. And that's not quite true, is it?
Joe Gagne: [00:08:45] You are correct. A lot of folks will try to modify the machine so it suits their need, but you are not permitted to modify the machine in any way, shape or form that isn't approved, designed or engineered by the manufacturer of the machine.
Peter Koch: [00:08:57] And good luck with that.
Joe Gagne: [00:08:58] Exactly. So that's [00:09:00] where really we want to part with our customers and make sure that they are selecting the most appropriate machine for their task, and we can make recommendations on certain accessories that may aid them and completing their job in a safer manner.
Peter Koch: [00:09:10] Yeah, that's perfect. And we were talking earlier too about there is a myriad of accessories that are available. So it's not just the stock machine that you see in the catalog and you have to know like how big it is, how tall it reaches, how stable it's going to be. Will it be able to articulate in the way that you need it? But there's a number of other things that you can get with the rental that will allow you to modify it to be more particular to the task that you need to do. So what are some of the most common accessories that people need?
Joe Gagne: [00:09:40] Probably the most popular accessory that we outfit our machines for customers is what we call a glazing kit, and that is simply a shelf unit that is bolted on to the front of the work platform, and it allows the operator to place any type of plated material, whether it be insulated glass, sheetrock or plywood on there, secure it in place and lift it up to a height where it can be mounted or [00:10:00] installed. And again, it's important you're using the manufacturer provided accessory because all of those accessories have capacity limits and you want to obviously make sure you adhere to those limits to make sure you don't tip the machine over.
Peter Koch: [00:10:12] Right. So taking a couple of bolts in a drill and adding some framing onto the machine is not the way you want to go.
Joe Gagne: [00:10:21] Absolutely not. Some of the things I've seen people construct over the years on these machines would frighten some folks. Oftentimes, we find more modifications occur in the wintertime when the operatives are trying to protect themselves from mother nature and the elements. But really, when you start modifying the machine, you're adding additional weight to it. You may be compromising the guardrail system by drilling holes into it, and you may be creating a kite or parachute or sail in the air to catch the wind and potentially tip the machine over.
Peter Koch: [00:10:48] Sure. And you bring up a really great point where any modification done to the machine is not done out of bad intention. It's done out of necessity. There's the individual doing the job is looking at the job and thinking, [00:11:00] Hey, I would be safer. I would be more comfortable if I could have this or do that. And so they're going to try to make it the way they want it. But what I'm hearing from you is a better way to look at that is not once the machines on the ground at the job site to make those changes, but is to do it early on when you're having the conversation with the sales guy from the rental company to figure out what exactly do you need? And there's a particular term for that, I think within the standard correct.
Joe Gagne: [00:11:30] There it is. It's called safe use planning.
Peter Koch: [00:11:31] Right, I couldn't remember that. So I'm glad you did.
Joe Gagne: [00:11:33] And one of the new regulations that was just published or standards from ANSI specifically addresses safe use planning and that falls under ANSI. A ninety two point two two. And really, what you want to do is get a complete scope of what the task is and identify hazards and come up with a risk assessment for those hazards and make sure you select the right machine and do some forethought into what tasks are going to be performed, how they're going to be performed and [00:12:00] what accessories we may be able to put on the machine for you when you do rent one so that you can work safer and within the manufacturer's guidelines.
Peter Koch: [00:12:07] Yeah. And I think that's another myth that you've run into is that when people get a particular piece of equipment, they figure that they can use it anywhere on the job site. And I think that it's a misunderstanding because the operator might not have been the person that received the training about the capacity of the machine and how it's supposed to be used. So you find scissor lifts that are designed to be used on flat, hard terrain, outside on rough terrain, and then we wonder why it feels unstable or falls over.
Joe Gagne: [00:12:39] Right and one of the nice things is they've actually are now requiring what we call supervisor training, where it eliminates the practice component of the training curriculum. But anybody that supervises or selects or picks out a machine for use on a project needs to be trained, so they need to know what type of equipment is available. They have to do the risk assessment to ensure the work environment [00:13:00] is going to be safe for their folks. So it's really important that those people that are selecting calling in the rentals are aware of all the various different types of machines that are available, so they select the most appropriate one.
Peter Koch: [00:13:11] So does the standard. Does the standard require supervisor training now?
Joe Gagne: [00:13:17] It does.
Peter Koch: [00:13:18] So has that been a change from the previous standard and the update for the new standard?
Joe Gagne: [00:13:24] It has been. So that's something we've trying to communicate to our customers that anybody involved with the process of selection, use of the MEWP needs to be trained to the regulation. So oftentimes we find the folks that are responsible for calling in and picking out a machine for rental or reserving one for rental may not know anything, if at all, about the machine and what their capabilities and characteristics are. So it's important to convey that information to them, and they have a full understanding of the scope of work that is to be performed so they can select the most appropriate machine for that task.
Peter Koch: [00:13:59] Does [00:14:00] the standard provide tools? Because I think in a lot of places, the person that may be doing the ordering of the machine is not the guy that really has the best idea of what the worksite is going to look like. He might be the parts guy he might be just he might be there to order and reconciliation for the for the company. So are there tools whereby the supervisor can put all the required information together in a form and then get that to the guy who's doing the ordering so he can order the right machine?
Joe Gagne: [00:14:33] Absolutely. And that's really where our outside sales representatives for our organization step in and they can provide that type of subject matter expertise and make suggestions based on the findings after the risk assessment that has been conducted for the job site.
Peter Koch: [00:14:46] Cool and go back to. So does the, does the standard have a sample risk assessment in there or is it something that the company would need to come up with on their own?
Joe Gagne: [00:14:56] It does provide a guidance and outline for what things should be looked for and what [00:15:00] type of hazards should be added? And mitigated.
Peter Koch: [00:15:03] That's cool. And I think that's it's a good suggestion, and we'll refer to that later on in the podcast, too, but managers, supervisors, companies who are going to be utilizing these MEWPS need to get access to the standard. They need to know what's in the standard so that they can figure out what they need to do. And if they don't get access to the standard, then the next best thing, or maybe even the better thing is to contact someone like yourself or their rental company so that they know what's required of them.
Joe Gagne: [00:15:33] Absolutely. Sometimes we find standards and regulations can be a little confusing to some if they're not used to reading that type of jargon. So I always recommend to reach out to a subject matter expert so we can clarify any information or questions they may have and make us suggestions. And we can also essentially let those folks know what is expected, what they can do to identify and mitigate certain hazards and circumstances on their job site and come up with a comprehensive plan for them so they can work [00:16:00] as safe as they possibly can.
Peter Koch: [00:16:01] Perfect. What other new changes are in the standard? So we talked about the supervisor training, we talked about the familiarization training. We talked about the certification. There's been some changes in those. What other changes are in the standard that our listeners need to know about.
Joe Gagne: [00:16:17] So probably one of the more impactful one falls under ANSI A ninety two point two two, which is the safe use standard, and that requires that there be a MEWP rescue plan documented by an organization. And on that rescue plan, you have to have two processes or procedures outlined. The first being what process or procedure will be followed immediately following a fall arrest from a work platform. The other process of procedure that needs to be clearly defined and outlined is what will be done in the event you have somebody stranded in an elevated position on a platform. The time to figure out what you're going to do in those scenarios are not when they're happening. You want to have a plan in place and minimize the amount of time that the person [00:17:00] is either suspended because of suspension trauma or the person being stranded in the elevated position.
Peter Koch: [00:17:07] Yeah, right on. And there are many organizations out there that don't have those two pieces in place, and they will rely on the user's manual that comes with the piece of machinery to guide them into what the procedures are. And that's not the time you don't want to be rifling through the book when the guy's either dangling off the side of the MEWP or is stuck in the basket, or worse yet, is stuck in the basket and has just been stung by a bee. And he's allergic and you've got to get him down. What do we do? That's not the plan,
Joe Gagne: [00:17:39] And the standard clearly states that all folks involved with the operation of the MEWP, whether it's the supervisor, the operator or the designated ground person, have to be familiar with that rescue plan. Again, you want to rescue them in a timely fashion, so the time to figure out what you're going to do is not when those circumstances are happening.
Peter Koch: [00:17:59] Right? We'll get [00:18:00] back to rescue in a second because it's one of something that's near and dear to my heart. And I find that in Maine and all across New England, we insure people that are geographically isolated in their work. So you can't always rely on your local fire department to show up to help you, and you might be working by yourself, which is not where we want to go so near and dear to my heart. We'll talk a little bit about rescue in a second, but I want to get back to a term that you just used that designated ground person. So the guys that I saw in the scissor lift working on the sign the other day, there is nobody else around. It was just those guys. The only other guy that was around was the traffic flagger who was directing traffic. And he's not the designated ground guy.
Joe Gagne: [00:18:42] He probably was not.
Peter Koch: [00:18:44] So tell me a little bit about the designated ground guy responsibilities and what they need to be trained to do.
Joe Gagne: [00:18:49] Now you're required to have a designated ground person within visual proximity of the machine at all time during its use and operation. And that's to ensure if something does happen, that that person can come over and render [00:19:00] aid so that ground person is required to be certified as well as familiar with the machine that's being operated. So in the event there is something wrong, they can come right over, provide aid as necessary,
Peter Koch: [00:19:11] Right on really important part. And I don't I think it's probably something that a lot of companies aren't thinking about, like if they do seek or reach out to someone for training, they're going to put the worker who is going to be in the basket through the training, but they're not going to put the laborer who is going to be the designated ground guy typically through the training, because for whatever reason, typically it's a cost thing. We've talked about that, that productivity safety rub, there's always friction between
Joe Gagne: [00:19:40] Always competing interests.
Peter Koch: [00:19:40] You got it. Totally. So aside from saying, hey, it's part of the requirement and yeah, the designated ground person will be able to rescue them. How do you encourage the business owners or the supervisors to get those designated ground guys into the training?
Joe Gagne: [00:19:56] Well, first we start by educating them, letting them know what the standards [00:20:00] are and what is expected of them. And again, trying to convey the importance of safety and how impactful it is to their organization, not only from a cost perspective, but from a personnel perspective as well. All it takes is one injury and that could throw the whole project off schedule. One of your key employees are sidelined. So prevention is key. Coming up with that safe work plan and eliminating the likelihood or potential of an accident occurring. So by doing a comprehensive, safe risk assessment. Likely you'll mitigate or eliminate any possibility of anything going wrong.
Peter Koch: [00:20:36] Perfect, now and that designated ground person, not the same type of requirement that you would have for, say, permit required confined space like that guy, the attendant his only job is to watch the hole and be in communication so that can that designate a ground person, have other duties like to be the laborer to move supplies and material up to the guys that are in the basket? [00:21:00]
Joe Gagne: [00:21:00] Absolutely. They don't necessarily need to be staring at the operator like in a trench situation. They could be doing other tasks, but it's important they stay within visual proximity of the machine while it's in use and operation, and they can act as the designated ground person for multiple machines on a job site as long as they're staying within visual proximity. There may be an event where the operator somehow becomes medically disabled and is unable to communicate his need. So it's important that that designated ground person always have his eyes on the platform to make sure the operator is safe and doing what he needs to do up there.
Peter Koch: [00:21:31] Right on. And if there are multiple platforms in that scenario, the designated ground person would need to have familiarization training in each of those machines Correct?
Joe Gagne: [00:21:43] Correct. And the nice thing about the regulation here in the United States, comparatively to say Canada is operators are allowed to familiarize themselves with the machine by using the manuals, whereas that's not the case in Canada. So every machine. One of the most integral parts [00:22:00] of that machine is the manufacturer's operating manual. It's a required item and it's going to be located in the black weather resistant storage compartment inside the work platform. I like to call it, your mom. I call it your mom. Because if you take the first letter of each one of the words manufacturer's operating manual, put those three first letters together. It spells mom. So I always tell folks when you're a little kid and say, Dad was at work and you had a question, who would you go ask? You would always go ask your mom and your mom was always riding with you on a machine. So if you have any questions about what an icon means, what a switch does, or what a process or procedure requires of you, you just ask your mom.
Peter Koch: [00:22:37] That's perfect. I love it. Can I steal that? Because I might very well use that the next time I go to a policyholder
Joe Gagne: [00:22:41] Absolutely and I have to give credit to my colleague, Suzette, who is the division safety trainer in our southern New England area. I actually stole that from her.
Peter Koch: [00:22:51] Perfect. All right. Well, kudos to Suzette, because that's a pretty awesome acronym to use, and it's a great way to remember and to also you think about it, I go to a lot of job sites [00:23:00] where they're not renting the piece of equipment. They've owned it for years and mom's not present anymore.
Joe Gagne: [00:23:06] That's generally where I find the most deficiencies on equipment is customer owned equipment. And again, it really comes down to lack of knowledge. They don't know what the inspection requirements are. They don't know what is required equipment on the machine. And they generally sometimes fall into disrepair because as long as it's working and getting the platform up to the height, they need to perform their job or task at, then everything's groovy for them. But the reality is, there are some very specific requirements for inspection and maintenance on these machines, and it's important to keep those inspections up to date because things do come out of calibration. Things do wear down. Things do get stressed. So by implementing a proper inspection program and following the intervals of inspection that the standards require, it really cuts down on the amount of maintenance, wear and tear on the machine. And it lessens the amount of downtime you may have on that machine on your job site. All it takes is [00:24:00] one machine to go down, and again, it can throw totally throw off the entire schedule of your project. So by having a robust inspection and maintenance program on your machine, that will eliminate a lot of those problems before they even occur.
Peter Koch: [00:24:13] That's great. So what happens if you don't have the manual in there, which is going to give you the operation parameters, it's going to give you capacities, it's going to give you the inspection parameters around that. How do you go about getting another one? I know if one and this would never happen if I got one from United or really any of the other companies that reputable companies that are renting equipment out there, it's not going to come without a manual. But if I own a piece of equipment and I don't have it anymore, who do I reach out to how do I get one?
Joe Gagne: [00:24:42] Well, you're more than happy to reach out to any United Rentals local branch office and just request one will be happy to provide you with one at no cost. That's part of us partnering with our customers and other people that are users of these machines to ensure they can work on them safely. Another resources you can actually go right to each one of the machines manufacturer's website, and usually they're going [00:25:00] to have a document library on the website for training manuals, maintenance manuals and generally you can download the specific manual for your machine if you don't have one.
Peter Koch: [00:25:09] Yeah, perfect. And I think that's a good point. So reach out to the rental company, but also go back to the manufacturer and see if you can find it there. And it's a critical piece of equipment to have on board with the piece of machinery. So as a business owner or a superintendent of a larger company, you need to make sure that those are present because it gives the user the operator. An integral tool, and I know you provide a really robust training when you come on board, but in reality, what do you expect that operator to remember from the training that you give them? Like how what's the percentage that you expect them to take away and then be able to remember if you came back in a month, what would they what would they have retained?
Joe Gagne: [00:25:51] The adult learner? So I do recertification all the time as well and people that I've worked with three, four or [00:26:00] five years ago. And I find that oftentimes if they're not using that information on a daily basis or very often they often compartmentalize that information and they don't access it very often, so it doesn't come right up to their memory. So I always encourage our folks to always read the operations chapter, which is generally the second chapter and the manual, and go over all the various nuances and unique things for that specific machine. I like to joke around with my trainees, and I tell them next time they're headed to the porta potty, grab the manual and it gives them some light reading to do while they're busy,
Peter Koch: [00:26:32] Right, there you go. Perfect. That's a great piece because it's right and I do the same thing. I'm sure you would do the same thing with a task that you maybe had training on before or, you know, could be anything from chainsaw operation to hiring a rescue for myself. Like when I get into the rescue season, when I'm doing high angle rescue with my ski areas for the maintenance groups, I've got to spend some time going back through and re remembering operations, [00:27:00] sequences, procedures, how everything functions and works so that I know what I'm doing when I get into the when I get onto the job site. So same thing is going to happen. If it's your construction season and you've been laid off for the winter or you've been transferred to plowing for a while and you're coming back in, it's spring and you're starting to gear up for construction. I mean, your job is to be in that lift. Great suggestion. Find some. Find some quality time with your manual.
Joe Gagne: [00:27:27] Quality, quiet time with your manual, wherever that may be.
Peter Koch: [00:27:30] Yes, find some quality time with your mom, right?
Joe Gagne: [00:27:32] Exactly. Spend some time with your mom.
Peter Koch: [00:27:35] Perfect. We should have done this on Mother's Day would have been perfect. So let's get back to the standard a little bit more and talk about some of the other changes that the standard has driven. Maybe. Is there anything that the standard has required about the machine itself?
Joe Gagne: [00:27:53] Sure. So that is specifically addressed in ANSI A ninety two point two zero, which evolves around the design requirements of [00:28:00] the machines and the safety features that have to be incorporated into the machines by the manufacturers. Probably the most impactful one we've seen come out of this latest batch of standards is the act of load sensing requirement in platforms where there is sensors mounted on the substructure that the platform was mounted to, and it is constantly and consistently monitoring and evaluating the amount of weight in the platform. And at any point that those sensors detect that it is over its designated weight, it's going to lock out or prevent future or further movement towards greater danger. It will still allow relief functions to be performed, though, because there may be an instance where something heavy falls on the platform. The operator has no way to get it out, but he still needs to be able to get himself safely down to the ground. So it's still allows those relief functions to put the machine back into its most stable configuration.
Peter Koch: [00:28:44] So with those with the active load sensors that are on there, they're there to tell you when you are approaching or have exceeded or it won't let you exceed, but you're approaching the limits of that piece of equipment. You don't want to ever get to that scenario, right? [00:29:00] So this comes back to the safe work planning that you have to do ahead of time and making sure that the piece of equipment is going to have the capacity that you need. And when I talk about capacity, it's not just weight. I mean, they'll sense other things as well. So besides the amount of load that's in the basket, what are some of the other things that those sensors are going to take a look at and then provide some feedback to the operator?
Joe Gagne: [00:29:25] So a lot of the newer machines have a safety system called the EMS, and that stands for the envelope management system. And depending on the machine, it will allow the platform to be positioned at a certain point within the elevation arc and depending on how much weight or capacity is in that platform, is going to determine how much that platform is allowed to go into the area where it's safe to use prior to these new regulations. It would be up to the user to select the mode or operational envelope the machine could be in based on their assessment of the weight and capacity. Now [00:30:00] the sensors essentially determine it for you. The machines are getting smarter every day to keep you safer every day, and that's a really nice thing to see because we do find most accidents that occur on these machines are generally caused by operator error, and the operator doesn't understand the theories behind stability on the machines. So that's something we really like to focus on in training is to ensure they understand those theories of physics to ensure they don't put them in a situation where it could result in devastating outcomes.
Peter Koch: [00:30:32] Yeah, for sure, I don't I don't believe people see, especially, say, an articulated boom lift in the same way that you would see a crane. So when you think about a crane and how much it can lift is going to be based on how big the stick is and how far the stick is away from its center. So it's the same thing with a man lift when you get a boom lift and you're extending farther out from the center. There's a lot that goes into understanding that, so it's good to know that there are some [00:31:00] computers and mechanics in there to help us figure it out. But you never want to rely solely on the computer to make sure you're safe, so you've got to understand what load you're going to have. So when it goes into figuring out what capacity of lift you need, what are some what some of the information that you might need to give the rental person so that they can help you choose a lift that would be configured appropriately?
Joe Gagne: [00:31:25] So the first thing we always ask if a customer calls and makes a reservation for a piece of equipment is how high exactly do you need to work? We need to make sure we provide a machine that will get them to that height. We also take into account the horizontal reach capability of the machine. Just because a machine will reach a certain height at maximum platform extension does not mean it's going to have that same extension horizontally. So it's important to understand where you're going to set the machine in relation to the work task to ensure you have the appropriate amount of horizontal reach for the angle that the boom is going to be at.
Peter Koch: [00:31:57] Let's take a quick break at MEMIC, [00:32:00] while we strive to help our policyholders prevent workplace injuries, we also understand that they're going to happen. No workplace is immune and when the injury does happen, a solid injury management program must be in place, including reporting and a return to work program. Statistics show that returning an injured worker to work in a temporary modified duty capacity instead of keeping them out of work until there are 100 percent, will reduce both the length and the cost of the claim, as well as increased the likelihood of a positive outcome for the worker and the employer. Did you know that MEMIC has created a seven step process for developing a return to work plan, as well as a matrix to rate your current plan against what our team has found to be the gold standard in return to work? Check out our claim, reporting and return to work resources atMEMIC.com/employers. Now, let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:33:01] Right [00:33:00] on, so just because it's a 30 foot boom lift doesn't mean that you're always going to get 30 feet out of it.
Joe Gagne: [00:33:07] Correct if you're at a lower boom angle, you're likely only to get 70 to 80 percent of the maximum vertical reach in horizontal reach.
Peter Koch: [00:33:15] Yeah. And then the terrain itself will have limiting factors for the piece of equipment as well, right?
Joe Gagne: [00:33:21] Absolutely. You've got to make sure the area that you're going to base the chassis of the machine on is firm level and will in fact support the weight of that machine. So you have to take that into account. Often job sites are rough disturb type of terrain, and they may have slopes or grades on them. So it's important to do that preplanning ahead of time. So you make sure you have an asset on site that will actually allow you to complete the tasks that are assigned.
Peter Koch: [00:33:43] Yeah, because an all-terrain man lift might be a little misnomer. It's not truly all terrain. There are some limitations.
Joe Gagne: [00:33:50] There are certainly limitations. They do have four wheel drive, but I tell people they're not swamp buggies, so you want to make sure that you're going to able to get the machine where you need it. And just because [00:34:00] that machine has four wheel drive capability, it generally only pertains to the machine being in its stowed configuration or transport configuration. Once you actually get the boom up in the air and start scoping out to perform work, you generally don't want to drive and reposition the machine, especially over rougher, disturbed terrain that could cause a lot of what we call a cantilever effect where any type of motion or movement is amplified through the platform all the way up through the boom structure into the platform. And the higher up you are, the further out you are away from the machine, the more cantilever effect you're going to experience.
Peter Koch: [00:34:32] It's amazing. How physics can gravity always work?
Joe Gagne: [00:34:35] It is, and that's actually one of my favorite aspects of the training that I provide is the theories in the physics behind the stability characteristics. I try to make it as interactive as possible. I get the guys up in the classroom and I have them hold a box or a heavier object close to their chest, and then I'll have them hold that box further out at a 45 degree angle and lock their elbows. And they can see for themselves that the three characteristics [00:35:00] that negatively affect stability height reach and motion they can see with their own eyes and their own body that those three factors do negatively affect stability, so it helps to put things in a context for folks that they can understand. And that's really, in my opinion, what makes a trainer a good trainer?
Peter Koch: [00:35:16] Yeah, absolutely. That's a really great point. The more that you can get hands on, the more that they're going to take back with them and they'll remember that activity well, more than they remember the PowerPoint slide that you might have spent 30 minutes on trying to make it look really nice.
Joe Gagne: [00:35:30] Absolutely. I try not to use any PowerPoints or audio visual aids in my training. I think we've all probably sat through training before where we had to concentrate really hard not to fall asleep because the subject matter actually wasn't very exciting or the instructor themselves wasn't very engaging. So I really try to make my training's fun interactive and get the guys laughing. And the way I look at it is if they're having fun and they're learning at the same time, that's a recipe for success.
Peter Koch: [00:35:57] Yeah, absolutely. We're right on the same page with it. Can I ask you a personal [00:36:00] question about how you got into training? So what got you interested in doing training?
Joe Gagne: [00:36:05] Well, actually, it all started off. I come from a construction family. My dad owns a construction company in Windham. And I was very fortunate in the regard that he allowed me to operate a lot of his really big, heavy equipment at a very young age. I owe it really all to my father. He was always the type of dad that showed me how to do things rather than did things for me, and I really found that that was instrumental in leading me to do what I do now. I've always been very technically orientated. I like to pay attention to details, so I like to master tasks. So combining that type of guidance from my father throughout my life and the exposure I was fortunate enough to have around his construction equipment, I'm able to do what I do now.
Peter Koch: [00:36:51] Now that's fantastic. It's great to have a mentor in your life like that, whether it's your dad or it could be a teacher, or maybe even a supervisor or someplace [00:37:00] that was able to give you opportunity to learn like that. And then you can see it's paid off in spades for you.
Joe Gagne: [00:37:08] It has my parents love to tell the story about whenever there was a snowstorm growing up. I grew up here in the Lakes region, Sebago Lakes Region, and I would always look forward to snow events because I would actually go and ride with my dad and go plowing with them. And I would just always be fascinated by the mechanics of the equipment that was being used and operated, and I would just study things and commit to memory what he was doing, why he was doing it, and how different factors and things affected what he was doing. So I've always really enjoyed understanding at a deep level how things operate.
Peter Koch: [00:37:41] Yeah. And then having the opportunity to be able to transfer that information to someone else. I mean that background that you describe is truly a background of someone who can take that information and then find an outlet with somebody else for it, whether it's learning on your own. And then it really seems like you have a love not only [00:38:00] to learn something new, but to transfer or transmit that information to somebody else.
Joe Gagne: [00:38:05] It's one thing to become a subject matter expert on something. It's another thing to become a subject matter expert and then be able to convey and communicate that information to other people. So it's understandable, digestible and committed to memory.
Peter Koch: [00:38:18] Yeah, interesting. You know, you talk about what makes the most impact on someone. We're going to get into the fall protection conversation. So you think about how to convince someone that, well, you need rescue right away. Yeah. Yeah, fine. Fine. Bring it up to a bunch of construction guys or a bunch of maintenance guys are like, Yeah, fine, fine. We'll take care of it. It'll not be a problem. Well, the sequence of events that I try to do when we're doing a fall protection rescue training is when you go through the limits and capacities and design and function of the fall protection equipment. And then you have them inspect it and then you have them put it on. Get it, fit appropriately, body check [00:39:00] them and then suspend them. So hook it up to the dorsal d ring. Lift them about six or eight inches off the ground and say, How's it feel now? And so if your rescue was 30 minutes away, how do you think you'll feel in 30 minutes? Guaranteed. The answer is going to be it needs to happen now. Rescue has to happen now. And so all of a sudden, the urgency of kind of like holding the box at 45 degrees with your arms locked really connects them to the physics of what the machine's feeling. The same type of deal. That's what they're going to remember. And that's what makes it real for him.
Joe Gagne: [00:39:35] Absolutely. You have to connect either a physical or an emotional response to the information you're trying to convey to the people. So one of the things I like to do when I started training session is I like to start off by doing introductions of all the course participants. I asked them their name and I asked them how much experience they have on each piece of equipment. I also asked them what they like to do outside of work. And that's my way of sneakily asking them why they work safely. [00:40:00] I think we all know if you ask somebody, why do you work safely? They might kind of grin at you and give you a snarky answer. But if you ask them what they like to do outside of work, nine times out of 10, I find people mention their family or loved ones spending time with their children, grandchildren or significant other, or maybe even a pet. And I'm looking for that motivation that they might need if I get down the road with them further in the training session where they might need a little more guidance, or I might need them to channel why they want to do this task correctly. And that's my way of knowing why people work safely.
Peter Koch: [00:40:35] Yeah, it's great because it really does help you connect, and some of the stuffs can get kind of dry. And if they're not used to using the procedures that you're presenting to them, like, why do I have to go through all of the checks every single day? I just use the piece of equipment yesterday. Why do I have to go through the basket checks in the ground floor? And why do I have to do all that? Why can't I just check it off? Because I knew it worked before? Well if [00:41:00] you need to go home to deal with your family or your friend or whatever, make it real, and I think that's a good way to help. If you need buy in, it's a really good way to get that.
Joe Gagne: [00:41:10] Absolutely you need to establish that personal connection with your course participants. And there are a few times where I've had to say, You know what? I know you may not be being very successful right now, but I really need you to take a few moments to compose yourself and focus on the task at hand. And then I may bring up if I remember from the introductions that morning that he planned on going hunting or fishing with this child this weekend. And I'd say, you know what? It really be horrible if you got hurt or injured and weren't able to take your son or daughter hunting or fishing this weekend, wouldn't it? And then you really see those connections, the light bulb moment go off in their head and they realize why they're truly there that day. And it's to learn to make sure that they walk away from our training with the skills and knowledge to operate these machines safely because it can significantly impact their livelihood.
Peter Koch: [00:41:59] Yeah, it's not just [00:42:00] the box to check. It really, truly isn't a box to check. Let's talk about the rescue part. So you described that there's requirements for two scenarios or two types of rescue plans that need to be in place. And one is if the machine itself is no longer operable and then the other is if someone actually falls outside of the machine and what has to happen? So what are some of the requirements around each of those? If I had to put a plan together this week for a piece of equipment specific to my company, what things would need to be in it for each of those plans?
Joe Gagne: [00:42:32] So there's generally three solutions. The first solution is self rescue. If the person is stranded in the work platform, they would rely on the auxiliary lowering system to bring the platform down to the ground. If the auxiliary system wasn't working, you would rely on your ground person. Now, if self rescue is not viable, you would next bring in a machine of equal or greater size in the platform stranded at, or if the person is suspended, you would do either a platform to platform transfer [00:43:00] or you would literally place the platform underneath the person that is suspended and literally scoop them out of the air. The third option is technical rescue, and that would be provided by EMS. You would have to call your local fire department. Describe the scenario or circumstance you find yourselves in. I always tell folks, let them know specifically how high the platform is because not all ladder trucks the same size. So you want to make sure that the public safety sends the appropriate asset that is going to be able to solve the problem that you find yourself in.
Peter Koch: [00:43:29] For sure. And not all local EMS companies have a ladder truck. You get out in some of the more rural areas and that call for heavy rescue because that's what they're really going to be looking for is going to might come from a neighboring town, which extends the amount of time that the person is going to be suspended and there are significant consequences for someone's health. The longer that they're suspended in that in the harness. So you had mentioned suspension trauma. One of my colleagues was [00:44:00]doing a fall protection training actually at one of his one of his policyholders, and he went around the group and started asking them about their experience with fall protection. And one of the typical questions he always asks is so has anybody taken a fall? And you know, after a while, you see somebody in the background who's kind of nodding his head and said, Can you want to tell us about that? And the description that the guy gave this time was it wasn't a far fall, but he was connected to his dorsal d ring fell and actually took about a six foot freefall until the shock absorber connected with him. And he actually pulled back his T-shirt and he had bruises around his traps and through his collar bones because of the force of just that six foot fall. So it's not just suspension trauma. There's other injuries that you can sustain by coming out of the basket or falling off any platform truly.
Joe Gagne: [00:44:54] Absolutely. And that's really where it's important to understand the different types of lanyards that are available for fall protection. [00:45:00] There are two different types of lanyards. There's fall arrest that stops a fall that's in progress of what you just described. You're going to fall the length of the lanyard before it begins to catch you. The other and more preferable and safer lanyard style is what we call a self retractable lanyard, which falls under fall restraint that prevents a fall from occurring. So if you slip, trip or lose traction on the platform as soon as your body accelerates, there's a centrifugal break that locks the lanyard in place, and that's going to prevent you from actually falling. So I highly recommend the use of fall restraint, self retractable saddle lanyards over fall arrest lanyards all day, everyday.
Peter Koch: [00:45:35] No great, and let's talk a little bit about that piece as well. So if I'm going to connect my fall restraint in my MEWP, where am I going to connect that to?
Joe Gagne: [00:45:49] You always want to connect to one of the manufacturer provided designated anchor points. You can't just connect your lanyard to any old guardrail or connection point on the machine. Every single designated anchor point is designed and engineered [00:46:00] to support the. All of a falling person and actually more than a falling person, if you do not connect to the right point, it's not going to do its job the way it's designed to do.
Peter Koch: [00:46:09] So are those points designed to where are they located? Are they typically located, you know, waist or chest high? Or are they located on the floor?
Joe Gagne: [00:46:18] On most boom lifts, they are generally located at the mid rail and intersection of the vertical stanchion on scissor lifts, depending on the brand and model. Sometimes they may be lower down near the intersections of the toe board and the vertical stanchion. It all depends on the machine.
Peter Koch: [00:46:32] Perfect. And in that from a standard standpoint, there's a requirement to have fall prevention or fall protection in a boom lift. How about in a scissor lift? Is there a requirement by the standard to have fall protection harness and lanyard within the scissors lift?
Joe Gagne: [00:46:50] There is no standard that requires that in the operation of a scissor lift, although I do highly encourage everybody to always wear fall protection in a scissor lift, specifically [00:47:00] using a safe, retractable style lanyard. Oftentimes, we find that machines tip because the operator goes over the railing, and if he's wearing a fall arrest lanyard, the lateral side force applied to the top of the railing from the lanyard going over the top of it can be enough to pull the machine down on top of somebody. So I highly encourage the use of fall protection using a self retractable style lanyard on a scissor lift at all times,
Peter Koch: [00:47:23] Because that's going to help you stay inside the basket, which is the goal because your true fall protection in either is your primary fall protection is going to be your guardrails to begin with
Joe Gagne: [00:47:33] Correct. There's two types of fall protection. There's fall protection that's built into the machine itself, which is the guard rail system, and there's self worn fall protection. So it's important to understand the differences between both of those and make sure you use both to your advantage.
Peter Koch: [00:47:46] Yeah, capabilities and limitations, for sure. And that's one of the questions that comes up often. And actually, that was witnessed by myself while looking at a couple of guys in that scissors lift. So you could see they had fall protection. [00:48:00] They were wearing a harness, they were wearing a lanyard. But you can see where the lanyard was connected to and they actually had it tied back to itself around the upright corner stanchion of the guardrail. So not at the floor, but it was in the middle. So if they had fallen, the connection point would have slid up into the basically a foot below the top rail and then it would have gone over. So he would have been fairly. That would have been a pretty sizable fall for that scissor lift to have to withstand,
Joe Gagne: [00:48:29] Yeah, the safest place always to be on that machine is within the confines of the guardrail system. It's your primary means of fall protection.
Peter Koch: [00:48:36] Yeah, 10-4. And so that's one of the things to familiarize yourself with when you get in where your connection points, because I almost guarantee it. I didn't look, I couldn't see it from there, but I would imagine that there were some manufacturers designed and installed fall protection points within that machine.
Joe Gagne: [00:48:51] There always is, and they're generally going to be located with a decal letting them know that it is an improved attachment point. You're required to have all decals [00:49:00] that are provided by the manufacturer when the machine is manufactured to be present on the machine. And oftentimes we find as machines, age decals, some bleach or they get peeled off or they fade. So it's always important to ensure that all safety decals on the machine are visible and legible.
Peter Koch: [00:49:16] Yeah, it goes back to your conversation about inspections and having a robust maintenance program, because if I can inspect it all the time and I'm recognizing that, hey, some of these stickers or these decals need to be replaced, not quite illegible yet, but they're getting close. You can get them ordered, you can have them in a month. And then when it comes time for annual maintenance or monthly maintenance, they can be replaced.
Joe Gagne: [00:49:41] Absolutely. If you do own your own equipment, you can call any United Rentals branch throughout North America. Let them know what make and model machine you have, and we can order up the decals required for that machine.
Peter Koch: [00:49:53] Cool. Very cool. So we're getting towards the end of the podcast here, so I got a couple of questions for you. But [00:50:00] before I jump to those questions. Anything else that we need to talk about that we haven't discussed so far that you want our listeners to know about the standards or about the MEWPs themselves. That would be a key point that they could take away.
Joe Gagne: [00:50:14] Well, the biggest thing is that now with the new standard, they've broken these machines down into different types based on their classifications and capabilities. So it's important that they're trained specifically on the type in group that the machine falls within. It's not generalized across the entire board, so you want to make sure that your training is going to comply with the standard and regulation and that you're being trained on the type and group of machine that you'll actually be operating great.
Peter Koch: [00:50:42] And that goes back to the safe use planning of, you know, making sure that you have all the information and you're going to go back to your rental person, your rental company, give them that information, answer the questions forthright so that they can not only get you into the right piece of equipment, but then provide you the [00:51:00] training that. Necessary for you to become certified and familiar with the equipment.
Joe Gagne: [00:51:04] Absolutely. Most folks use self-propelled boom lifts that you can operate and control from the platform. The other type of machine that's pretty popular in the marketplace is the towable type of boom, and those fall under a different group and type. So therefore you need specific training for that type and group. Just because you've been trained on a self-propelled boom lift does not mean that you're certified to operate a towable boom.
Peter Koch: [00:51:28] So you had a towable boom and you see those often, especially in the small contractors and painters love those, especially so the towable boom lift. You've got a self-propelled boom lift. What's another class or type of boom if that's out there?
Joe Gagne: [00:51:42] The other class is the scissor lift, which falls under Class 3A, and that allows the platform to elevate directly over the circumference of the chassis. So it's again important that you have training that is specific to the type of machine you're using.
Peter Koch: [00:51:56] Perfect. Awesome. And again, there's a lot to this. I'm [00:52:00] sure that if you have an industrious group of people at your company and they're really familiar with the standards, they can go through the user's manual, they can create a training program, but it might just be a better use of time, effort and money to reach out to someone like yourself or your company to have them come out and do training for you so that you're taking care of that and then you can come back and do recertification or re familiarization training with them.
Joe Gagne: [00:52:32] Absolutely. A Lot of times customers will want to designate somebody within their organization as their trainer and send them to our train the trainer program. It's important to make sure that the person that you do designate for that role, somebody that has a lot of experience on the machine and they are a subject matter expert. I caution organizations from just sending. A certain guy that they might feel might be the best person. And that's because if they're not training or providing that information on a daily basis and staying up to date [00:53:00] on what the current standards are with the best operating practices are and what the new rules and regulations may be, they may not be providing the highest level of training that's available in the marketplace. So that's where it's really important to reach out to somebody that is a subject matter expert on these matters so that they can provide you with the highest level of training that's available.
Peter Koch: [00:53:19] Yeah, and it's not just being a subject matter expert about the piece of equipment, and you talked about it before in your interest of training and how you got to be the trainer that you are. Normally, when you get in a company, you get the position of training someone. You're really good at your job, which doesn't mean you're really good at training people. And it really needs to be the relationship of subject matter experts and good trainer needs to be, well, merged in that particular person so that you can assure that the people are coming out of that self training, or that the self-driven training from your company is as functional and as good as it can be. Because at the end of the day, like [00:54:00] you said earlier on, the vast majority of incidents that occur with the MEWPs come from operator error and lots of times it comes because the person's not as familiar as they should be with the piece of machinery or they've missed the piece of the training. So I can't state it enough that having a good trainer and that trainer understanding everything about the piece of equipment being that subject matter expert, it's a key thing. Truly key thing.
Joe Gagne: [00:54:33] Absolutely, and I consider myself a constant learner. I am always trying to learn more about these machines. I rely on our technicians a lot for information because they are working on them day in and day out. So oftentimes I'll find a few minutes and go into one of the service technicians in our organization's bay and just kind of pick their brain a little bit and ask them different things. And the wealth of information that they have is incredible. So I consider myself a constant learner. I'm always trying to [00:55:00] gain new information or to come up with different ways to be able to communicate that information to my group of trainees so that they can digest it, understand it and apply it to their circumstance or scenario.
Peter Koch: [00:55:11] That's pretty cool. So that kind of transitions to my one of my final questions. So this is a I think it's an interesting question. I had asked me once before when I was working for the ski industry in a particular area. So if cost and technology were not an issue and you have the opportunity to design something yourself, what would it be like? What kind of man lift would you design? No, like talking to the technicians and seeing how they're used all over the place. Like what would be the thing that you would design?
Joe Gagne: [00:55:44] Oh, wow, that's a great question. I think a lot of the things that I would incorporate into these machines generally would not be feasible because of the use in nature.
Peter Koch: [00:55:52] Ok,
Joe Gagne: [00:55:52] That the machines are used for. I would love if there was a laser sight on a platform so [00:56:00] that the operator could appropriately line themselves up and establish trajectory on the boom before they scope out to the work surface. Another thing that I've kind of just thrown around my head, but I know it's not feasible as an airbag system. So if the machine begins to tip, airbags would deploy around the work platform to protect the operator. But again, those are likely unfeasible given the nature and use of this type of equipment in construction environments. But there's some things that I've thought about and I'm like, How can I make these machines safer? So maybe one day I'll come up with a great idea, patent it and become a millionaire.
Peter Koch: [00:56:35] Yeah, you never know. I mean, those are two great ideas right away. Just like I didn't. I wasn't even thinking about the basket. I was thinking about airbags just around the base of the machine that that blows up and keeps the machine from tipping over there. So I hadn't even thought of the laser sight, but what a great idea to be able to line up where you're going to go. That's a phenomenal idea.
Joe Gagne: [00:56:54] We oftentimes folks get themselves in the most trouble when they move or reposition the platform while they're scoped out to their work surface. [00:57:00] Any type of movement, the higher up and the further out you are, it creates a large amount of sway, swing and bounce. So I try to impress upon my course participants that it's imperative that you line yourself up correctly and make any changes to your trajectory sooner than later. You don't want to be making big movements while you're scoped away from the machine, because that's where that cantilever effect comes in and can really cause some problems. The last thing you want is to smash through a window you might have just mounted or replaced for your customer.
Peter Koch: [00:57:28] I was just talking to a client of mine that had a contractor that just did that. They were about seven stories up and they were the contractor had come in. They were painting the side of the building and they put the corner of the man left of the boom lift through a window. So yeah, on movement, right? So it wasn't because it was stationary. The guy was trying to reposition and moved made a larger move. And it came smashing back through the window.
Joe Gagne: [00:57:53] Exactly, and that's really one of the things I like to focus on during the practical portion of the training that I provide [00:58:00] is the correct positioning procedures. Oftentimes we find people just assume they can scope out and then boom themselves up. And next thing you know, they're swinging around and swaying six or eight feet as soon as they let go of that controller. So there's methods in this processes that I like to teach and share with my folks. So that doesn't happen.
Peter Koch: [00:58:19] Yeah. And so it brings up a great point. You know, it's not just the certification training, but it truly is the familiarization training and even more than that, being a competent operator in their understanding, the limitations and the capacities of that machine because they all go into your plan, how I'm going to get from point A to point B, where am I going to move? How is it going to function? Can I get there? What do I need to do? So great points.
Joe Gagne: [00:58:42] Absolutely. That's really where the whole safe work planning is so integral. You want to evaluate whatever your task is and you want to think through the contingencies that could occur. You're always going to be better off solving or coming up with a solution to your issue. If you've already [00:59:00] thought through the various scenarios that could present itself, given your circumstance.
Peter Koch: [00:59:03] It's always easier to do it and design than retrofit, right? So I
Joe Gagne: [00:59:06] Always have a Plan B, C and sometimes even a Plan D for everything I do.
Peter Koch: [00:59:10] A man of like mind with me, for sure. Hey, so one last question for you till we get to the end of the podcast here. So what's one thing that you know now about training people that you wish you knew when you started out?
Joe Gagne: [00:59:23] So one thing that I wish I knew when I first started was. You can only give somebody so much information in a training session and expect them to commit it to memory. So I've really refined and sharpen my pencil on the information and the training that I communicate to my folks to hit on the high points. The things that are most impactful to them. If you provide somebody with too much information in a short amount of time, they don't have the ability to compartmentalize that information and then pull it back up when needed. So I really focused on certain key things in my curriculum that I hope my folks will remember and [01:00:00] key things that are going to make the most impact on them working safely and getting home at the end of the workday.
Peter Koch: [01:00:06] That's an awesome point, and I think it's a really great point for any trainer out there to remember, especially if you're just starting out because you are the subject matter expert. You've got all this knowledge floating in your head, you've got all these great resources and you get an hour or two hours or three hours and you came to this information over years and years of having hands on and learning and understanding, like you said, being a constant learner. And now you're trying to impart that years and years of information in just a short period of time. And you know, the mind will only absorb what the buck can withstand. That's the idea. And the brain will only absorb so much information. So being able to compartmentalize it and sharpen the pencil, like you said, is a great it's a great suggestion and thought for new trainers.
Joe Gagne: [01:00:53] One of the other strategies that I've implemented in my curriculum is I try to establish habits, one specifically involving the worksite [01:01:00] hazard assessment, where any time you step on to a new worksite or a new environment that you'll be working in. You always want to be looking for certain types of hazards. So throughout my training, I have them do that exercise several times because I'm trying to get them to develop and form a habit. So something that they're going to do subconsciously without having to think about it. So every time they step on that job site, they're looking for those five specific types of hazards.
Peter Koch: [01:01:26] Cool. That's great. Establishing and especially establishing habits, especially when you have a skill that you're trying to impart and when you start thinking about operating a man lift, there's a skill involved. So there has to be a habit in understanding your work environment needs to be something that you just do out of habit. Great suggestion again for that. So we're getting to the end of the podcast here. And the final question truly, the final question this time is so where can our listeners find more about MEWPs and then more about [01:02:00] United Rentals?
Joe Gagne: [01:02:01] Well, folks can find more about United Rentals by going right to our website www.UnitedRentals.com, and if they're looking for a specific training resources, there is a menu on there where you can select training. But if you want to go directly to our training website, it's UnitedRentals.com/training. And if they're looking to schedule or book any type of training for their folks, all they would need to do is call their local United Rentals branch, request that and they will put you in touch with folks like myself.
Peter Koch: [01:02:29] Perfect. That's awesome. And if I'm looking for just information beyond that and I'm not quite ready yet to call the rental company, where do I find more information about mobile elevated work platforms?
Joe Gagne: [01:02:41] Another great resource online is IPAF.org. IPAF is an organization that stands for international powered access federation, and there are a group of stakeholders in the industry. There's folks from my organization that sit on their board of directors, as well as representatives from the manufacturers of these equipment. [01:03:00] And they're really the trade group that is really trying to push safety and establish best practices and come up with training curriculums that in the end. Turn regular folks into great equipment operators.
Peter Koch: [01:03:16] That's awesome, great resource. I was just checking that out the other day to prepare for the podcast, and there are a ton of great resources on that website. So I think between that website and then reaching out to you guys, there's not a whole lot else that you would need to become that good equipment operator for a mobile elevator work platform,
Joe Gagne: [01:03:35] Just have to seek out the information
Peter Koch: [01:03:37] Right on. So thanks again for joining us today. I really appreciate you being here and sharing your expertise with us, Joe.
Joe Gagne: [01:03:42] Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.
Peter Koch: [01:03:44] Right on and to all of our listeners out there. Thanks for joining us. We have been speaking about mobile elevated work platforms with Joe Gagne, division safety trainer for United Rentals. If you have any questions about mobile elevated work platforms or would like to hear more about a particular [01:04:00] topic on our podcast. Email me at Podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources around maps and our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates, and if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thank you because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or a family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support and until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
Staying safe around the holidays is important and the hazards around the Thanksgiving holiday can pose different challenges. Distracted driving, food poisoning, and burns are the three most frequent causes of injuries during the Thanksgiving holiday period. Find out more about these and what one company did with it’s Thanksgiving leftovers on this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast.
Resources and Links:
NSC.org – Injury Facts - https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/
Tedx – Heather Stagl - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79LI2fkNZ2k
Tedx – Peter Anderton - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDsMlmfLjd4
MEMIC Safety Net Blog –
YouTube – Belgin Texting While Driving test - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2FHKVzGhgA
YouTube – Distracted Driving Shocker - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbjSWDwJILs
MEMIC Safety Director Login – www.memic.com/workplacesafety
NY Daily News – Turkey Fryer Fire - https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-turkey-deep-frying-deep-massachusetts-woman-injured-homes-destroyed-20201127-53nf6t3ymvffzjdx3qv4hhabla-story.html
Alton Brown Turkey Derrick - https://altonbrown.com/how-to-build-a-turkey-derrick/
Turkey Fryer Stats - https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Fire/Articles/TurkeyFryerFiresStats.pdf
SlowMo Guys – Oil Fire - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbgdRR4yj8Y
USDA – Turkey: Alternate Routes - https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/poultry-preparation/turkey-alternate-routes-to-the-table/CT_Index
CDC Food borne illness - https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html
Food Safety – Cooking Temps - https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/safe-minimum-cooking-temperature
260 Tons of Turkey - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/how-leftover-turkey-launched-the-tv-dinner
Leftover Safety - https://www.foodnetwork.com/holidays-and-parties/articles/food-safety-storing-thanksgiving-leftovers
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch, and thanks for listening today. We have another installment of our fractional safety series where we don't jump in so deep into a topic, but just give you the highlights. And in this episode, we talk about safety around the Thanksgiving holiday. Why Thanksgiving? Well, there are some unique circumstances that can make the hazards and exposure around this holiday a little bit different than what you might see with others. But before we dig in, did you know that on November 11th, two thousand twenty one, the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast just celebrated our two year anniversary? Hopefully, you've enjoyed listening as much as the team here has enjoyed putting the episodes together for you, and to help us understand more of what safety content you like. Be sure to drop me a note at podcast@MEMIC.com To let me know if you like the shorter episodes like this one or one where we go into a deeper dive with a guest.
Peter Koch: [00:01:00] So [00:01:00] jumping right into it? Here's a holiday dilemma for you what happens when you cook way more than you have people for? Well, more specifically, what do you do with five hundred and twenty thousand pounds of leftover turkey? Yep. Five hundred and twenty thousand pounds of leftover turkey. You heard me right? And if the first thing that popped into your head was freeze it, then you're on the right track. Way more practical than I am, because the first thing that popped into my head was, where would you even put it? The answer to that question about leftover turkeys will come a little bit later, but for now, let's think hard about holiday safety and leaving aside, but not forgetting the history of Thanksgiving and the treatment of Native Americans that will forever be part of the American story. This November holiday can be used to find gratitude and appreciation for family, friends, neighbors and dignity of those in our extended communities. The days before, during and after Thanksgiving are usually filled [00:02:00] with preparation, decoration and celebration, and each carries their own share of exposures that sometimes cause injury and sometimes can turn tragic. According to numerous internet sources and my own personal experience, the top three injury causes around the November holiday are traffic accidents, fires and either food poisoning or some sort of alcohol related event. Think about food poisoning and that two hundred and sixty tons of leftover turkey now that could be a recipe for disaster if it got out. So before we go there, let's talk about traffic first. Did you know that the National Safety Council has a holiday traffic fatality estimate report they put out for each year? So if you go to injuryfacts.NSC.org and search holiday traffic, you'll find it. And for the Thanksgiving holiday period for two thousand twenty one, the National Safety Council estimates that four hundred and eighty five people will die in the United States from traffic [00:03:00] accidents. That's second only to the Independence Day holiday period, with an estimate of four hundred and eighty two traffic fatalities. So why is Thanksgiving travel different? There are many possibilities, such as road rage, impairment, fatigue and even weather. But regardless of the reasons, one fact is the sheer number of travelers around Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving holiday period sees the highest usage of the interstate system than any other holiday period, and we've had a reprieve this last year with the COVID travel restrictions. But this holiday, the National Safety Council is expecting another increase. So if you're traveling or have employees traveling around the holiday period, try these driving safety tips.
Peter Koch: [00:03:43] First plan ahead. Be sure your vehicle is in good condition and allow for extra time around your travel. Nothing drives road rage and aggressive decisions like the combination of traffic jams and a tight time schedule. If you're an employer of drivers, then considering allowing [00:04:00] extra time this time of year to get the job done, and there's a lot of psychology around leadership and behavior change and leading teams around production expectations is a lot more nuanced than you think. So check out this TED talk about how to deal with resistance to change with Heather Stegall. Or there's another talk about how great leadership only has two rules by Peter Anderton. We'll leave the links in the show notes, and I think these are pretty good things for you to watch and maybe get some ideas about how to lead some change around the holiday season. So now that you have enough time to get where you want to go, be sure that you can stay alert so alertness can take many different forms and first is to just stay awake. People fall asleep at the wheel all the time and caused fatal traffic accidents. Or sometimes they're lucky and they wake up just before something happens and they're able to manage it. But really, be sure that you're well-rested before even starting the trip. If you start from fatigue, that will only exacerbate the problems that we face when traveling [00:05:00] and along the drive. You should find time to stop and get out to get the circulation going. The old adage that the brain can only take with the butt can withstand goes for driving too, getting up and getting moving. Gets the blood flowing and will help with alertness, as well as making you feel better at the end of the journey. Interested in some quick exercises and stretches that can help for the long haul? We'll check out the stretching posts at the MEMIC Safety Net blog. The links will be in the show notes, but you can search at any time you want by going to MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety Find the safety net blog and just search for stretches.
Peter Koch: [00:05:37] Now that you are awake, stay on task and avoid distractions. Your brain can't manage the phone or even an in-depth conversation combined with the demands of a changing driving environment. You may think you can, but what you're really doing at any given point when driving and doing something else is using old information to respond to the current situation. Think about it before you [00:06:00] look up from your phone or return your attention to the road. Your brain has been using information from the last time that you were fully engaged and has been making assumptions about speed, trajectory based on experience and that information. So when you look back and the roadway, suddenly changes surprise a curve, a pothole pedestrian, another vehicle, an animal. Whatever it is, your brain has to readjust to the current environment and make a snap decision. Do I turn? Do I slow down? Do I speed up? Do I swerve? Maybe I do it all together, and that readjustment takes time. And if you add speed and other people's decisions into the mix, then it's a recipe for disaster. What can you do besides being rested? Put the cell phone on Do Not Disturb and keep it out of sight because no call or text or post is really worth it. If you need it for navigation, put in a place that's not going to be in the way and that you can reference it only when you need to get [00:07:00] to where you're going. If you want to see an interesting video on texting while driving, I'll leave a link to one in the show notes. It's where Belgian learner drivers react to being told that they had to pass a mobile phone usage proficiency test in order to get their driver's license. It's pretty funny, so the instructor sits in the car with them and actually tells them that they have to text while driving and they're on a closed track so that there's no other things that are going to get in the way, but they're still having to text and drive at the same time. Their reactions are pretty hilarious, and it's funny to see what the instructor has to do just to keep them on the road. So these are just a couple of tips of having a good journey. And if you're interested in more, you can go over to the CDC and search for holiday road safety. Or if you're a MEMIC policyholder, you can go to the MEMIC Safety Director at www.MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety for more good information.
Peter Koch: [00:07:59] Now that you've arrived [00:08:00] safely, what's the next most frequent cause of injury over the Thanksgiving holiday? Well, burns from hot pans, liquids and utensils or from fires. Lets take the burns from hot pans or utensils first. This is a pretty easy one, so just assume, assume I know it's crazy, but just assume that everything in the kitchen is hot. Sure, you might have asbestos hands, but not everybody does. So you should keep some good oven mitts or pot holders handy in the kitchen and then use them. You'll be surprised how a little leading by example will set the stage for others to follow. So the next are hot liquids and lots of things that we cook have liquid in or on them. And from the water we boil to the fat's used to cook or are the result of cooking spilled hot liquids can cause significant burns. I had the opportunity to review the unfortunate opportunity to review an injury report from a commercial kitchen [00:09:00] where a line cook was moving a pot of boiling water from the stove to the sink to drain. And he bumped into someone behind him just as he started moving and the water sloshed out of the pot onto his foot and into his shoe. He had second and third degree burns on the top of his foot and couldn't wear a shoe for weeks. It was a pretty miserable injury for him, and I remember having a conversation with him after reviewing the written report, and he's like, You know, I really didn't think that this was going to happen. I've been in the kitchen for years. I'm really good at this. I knew what I was doing. He just at that point in time, lost situational awareness, didn't know who was behind him, didn't check his back. The person that was walking past him didn't see what was going on and the circumstances combined with what he was wearing to cause some pretty substantial burns and injuries to him. So here are some extra tips when dealing with hot liquids in the kitchen. Well, commercial or otherwise, whether you're working over the Thanksgiving holiday, [00:10:00] preparing meals for the rest of us who might be going out, or you're preparing a meal for family and friends at home. So the first? Don't overfill the pot or container when it's filled right to the top or close to it, there's much less room for error. So a pot that's filled right up to the top and you bump it or slosh it, it's going to come out, it's going to overflow. And chances are it could drop onto your hand or your foot or someone else. So second, use covers when moving containers with hot liquid or really anything in them. A container with a top on it can help keep the liquid where it belongs. If it needs to cool, then uncover it after moving. Next, consider using a cart to move pots with hot liquids in them, especially if you are in a commercial setting and are moving containers from one station to another. Using a cart will help keep the hot liquid at a distance if a spill happens and you out of the danger zone. Last but really, there's other things that you can consider to but last in this list is always [00:11:00] wear close toed, slip resistant shoes in the kitchen. Slippers, socks, sandals, pumps or other shoes with open toes or holes in the toes have no business in the kitchen. Many times liquids get spilled because someone slips, or if someone has slipped, it could be because someone has spilled something so slip resistant. Footwear for the kitchen is a key prevention tool.
Peter Koch: [00:11:24] Now let's talk about burns from fires, not consider this. You've decided to fry a turkey for Thanksgiving, so you make room in the carport, garage or deck because you want it to be outside. Break out the turkey fryer, add your oil, crank up the burner and then head to get the turkey that's been thawing in the fridge overnight. You size the turkey when you bought it, so it will fit into the pot and you made sure to place the fryer just outside the carport or garage so that you can still stay out of the elements while you're cooking good to go right? What could go wrong? Well, it turns out [00:12:00] a lot could go wrong. Did you know that the U.S. fire departments respond to more than one thousand deep fryer related fires every year? This includes the fires caused by improper use of a turkey fryer, too. In 2020, the New York Daily Times reported on a Thanksgiving Day fire that left three homes destroyed and a woman seriously injured. It was expected that the fire was caused by a turkey fryer. You can read the whole article from the link in the show notes, but it was a pretty devastating fire where actually the propane tank exploded as well, so they're not exactly sure what happened. But there's multiple ways for that particular situation to happen. If you do find yourself eyeing that turkey fryer to move the turkey cooking tradition outside. Be sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions and use these safety practices. So first, do a perimeter check. Keep the area around above and below the fryer free from any flammable or combustible [00:13:00] material like trees, ceilings, decks, people, decorations, whatever. Keep the space kid and pet free as well. Second, level it up. Place the fryer on a low stable surface that allows you to lift the turkey out of the fryer easily. If you want to check out a pretty cool in a very interesting take on getting the bird in and out of the fryer, check out Alton Brown's Turkey Derrick, and I'm going to leave a link to that video in the show notes as well. Next, measure up, so use the correct amount of oil to prevent any spill over, and it's really important that you do this. You have to measure the correct amount necessary by first placing the turkey in the pot with water, and that's going to give you an idea of how much volume the turkey is going to displace, so that that's the amount of oil that you can keep in there just enough to cover the turkey and not too much. So it's going to overflow when you put the turkey in it. This is going to help you avoid overflowing the hot oil onto the burner when you load the turkey into the fryer. Next, [00:14:00] warm it up and pat it down. And that's all about the turkey. So thaw and dry the turkey before frying as a partially frozen turkey can cause the water that's in the turkey when it meets the hot oil to vaporize instantly, changing to steam and expanding more than 1000 times its original volume. When this happens, the oil will bubble over and contact the flame underneath. This can, and when it does happen, it happens explosively. If you want to see what happens when water hits hot oil, check out the slow mo guys video about an oil fire at two thousand five hundred frames a second. The link is in the show notes, and don't try this at home for sure. Next, turn the flame off first, turn the burner off before adding or removing the turkey from the fryer. This will help avoid an explosion or an uncontrolled flame if you miss any water or frozen bits when inserting the bird. Or if you misjudge the amount of [00:15:00] oil next. Make yourself comfortable. Make yourself a comfortable space to hang out while the turkey is cooking because you want to stay close enough so that you can tend the fryer and make sure the oil doesn't get too hot. Most turkey fryers don't have any kind of temperature regulation, so the oil can be heated to its ignition point and beyond. And that in itself is a recipe for disaster. So last, and this is just for prevention, but last, make sure that you have a fire extinguisher charged and ready. Make sure it's an ABC or k rated fire extinguisher. You never want to use water on a grease or oil fire. It's just going to spread the fuel. If you're looking for more safety tips around different ways to cook your bird. Check out an article the USDA put out recently called Turkey alternate routes to the table.
Peter Koch: [00:15:50] After burns, the next most frequent cause of injury is around food prep and food safety. Poisoning from poorly prepared food or languishing leftovers is [00:16:00] really a thing. Even today, the CDC estimates that 48 million people get sick. One hundred and 28000 are hospitalized and 3000 people die every year from food borne illness. Some of these incidents occur from bacteria that contaminates the food at the processing facility. Some come from cross-contamination when preparing the food, and still, others happen when people eat improperly stored food. Regardless of how the food was contaminated, we must rely on good preparation and storage techniques to ensure the safety of the food that we consume. Consider the phrase keep cold food cold and hot food hot when you are preparing or putting away food this holiday season as hot food cools and cold food warms. Bacteria can start to grow at some level of temperature and time. Food can go bad and, if consumed, can cause food poisoning. If the dish or the ingredients are designed to be served hot or cold, then keep [00:17:00] them that way. Plan on serving smaller portions and leave the balance in the warmer or in the fridge ready to refill the serving dish. Check out FoodSafety.gov for more information about minimum cooking temperatures. We're going to put some links in the show notes for that one as well.
Peter Koch: [00:17:16] So let's end with leftovers and the answer to the question of what do you do with two hundred and sixty tons or five hundred and twenty thousand pounds of leftover turkey? So the story goes in 1953, the CA Swanson and Co. slightly overestimated the demand for Thanksgiving turkeys that year and found themselves with 260 tons of leftover turkey, and they had to store it in the railcars. So in the 1930s, refrigeration was still just beginning to become a common thing in the households. And by 1950, there were still limitations, especially around transportation of refrigerated foods or frozen foods. At that time, [00:18:00] when Swanson made that overestimation, the refrigeration units on the railcars only worked when the train was moving. So the company recognized that unless the train kept the moving, the turkeys with thaw and then spoil. So to preserve the frozen birds cold food cold, remember the railcars they were stored on were sent back and forth between the company's headquarters in Nebraska and the East Coast until the company could figure out what to do with them. Legend has it that eventually these turkeys were turned into Swanson's first frozen dinners. Pretty interesting story. So if you're looking for more about that and how they came to determine what to do with all these turkeys and how they made a frozen dinner and how frozen dinners really took off, you can check out the story at National Geographic.com And we'll leave a link for that one, too. In the show notes So good thing modern refrigeration doesn't rely on locomotion anymore.
Peter Koch: [00:18:55] So to keep your dinner ready for yummy leftovers, follow these tips. First. [00:19:00] Don't let them languish. Cool your leftovers as quickly as possible. Don't let them sit out on the table waiting for everyone to wake up after the game before you start to put them away. Always use clean containers for your leftovers instead of wrapping the existing serving dishes. Number three. Think shallow pack leftovers in shallow containers, and this is going to help with the cooling process so that it'll pass more quickly from the warm stage to the cold stage and prevent bacteria from growing quickly. Number four. Consider short term storage only in the refrigerator. You want to keep your leftovers in the fridge for only up to four days any longer. Can allow bacteria to begin to grow. We've all found that container of what used to be food long lost in the back of the fridge. Food doesn't need to be green and fuzzy or slimy in orange to be dangerous. It just takes a little bit of bacteria that we consume to put us into a state of food poisoning. [00:20:00] So number five and last for this particular list is keep frozen, so when we think about preservation, the colder, the better and frozen can keep something preserved for a long time. So you want to freeze any leftovers that you want to keep longer than four days. And if you package these in smaller portions for freezing, it makes the thawing and rewarming easier later on. And you don't have to take out a huge container of turkey or potatoes or sweet potatoes or vegetables and thaw the whole thing for just a small meal, for lunch, or maybe for dinner at a different time. If you're looking for more leftover food safety tips, check out the article from the Food Network that we're going to leave in. The show notes there as well.
Peter Koch: [00:20:47] So there's a lot more that we can talk about but this is going to wrap up our fractional safety episode of the Safety Experts podcast. So today, remember that we've been talking about the three most frequent causes of injuries around Thanksgiving, and they were [00:21:00] traffic accidents or driving burns and then food poisoning. If you'd like to hear more about a past topic or have an idea for an episode, then email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources and links to the articles that I referenced, as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for the Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it. If you would subscribe to the podcast and then take a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes or whatever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, well, thanks because it really, truly helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or a family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support and until next time, this is Peter [00:22:00] Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
According to the National Safety Council, following highway crashes, falls to a lower level is the third leading fatal workplace event and the fifth leading event resulting in cases with days away from work.
In many cases fall protection is relatively simple. Put up some sort of engineering control that prevents the workers from access the unprotected edge – like guardrails. Other times, the work being done requires a personal fall arrest system with the anchor located at or near floor level. Not all systems can do this and making the wrong choice can be fatal.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with David Kozlowsky, President and Owner of Safe Approach in Poland, Maine about the leading edge in fall protection and what goes into picking the right system.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. According to the National Safety Council, following highway crashes, falls to a lower level is the third leading fatal workplace event and the fifth leading event, resulting in cases with days away from work. So, yeah, you guessed it. We're talking about falls and fall protection today. Getting back to the stats in 2019, out of the eight hundred and eighty eight thousand nonfatal injuries and illnesses involving days away from work, 711 workers died and 48,000 were injured in 2019. And if you dig a little bit deeper to put some perspective on the seriousness of those injuries caused by a fall to a lower level, the median days away from work were 22, compared to only eight days for other exposures. So that makes it a little bit different. You can almost be assured [00:01:00] if someone falls from a height to a lower level and gets hurt, they're going to have a more substantial injury than someone who might just fall on the same level or maybe a slip trip without a fall. So and in many cases, fall protection. When you think about falling from a height or falling to a lower level fall protection can be relatively simple. You put up some sort of engineering control that prevents the workers from accessing the unprotected edge like guardrails. But other times the work is done or near the unprotected edge and the anchor location, or the design of the anchor doesn't allow for a restraint system or the location itself doesn't allow for those guardrails, and it becomes a little bit more challenging. So a good example of that may be installing metal decking for flooring in a multistory building. Or even if you're a residential carpenter building a deck that's more than six feet off the ground. There's plenty of complications when you're doing leading edge work, like when the unprotected edge has a sharp or narrow radius or your anchor is [00:02:00] below your D ring. And those can combine to render traditional fall protection solutions like a personal fall arrest system with a shock absorbing lanyard ineffective and to confuse matters even more if you look out to the experts. Well, when you're choosing that fall resolution and you jump out to the OSHA standard, or maybe if you go up to the ANSI standards, they use the term leading edge in different ways.
Peter Koch: [00:02:25] So on today's podcast, to help us explore the leading edge as it applies to fall protection and clear up some confusion about best practices, we have David Kozlowsky, president and owner of Safe Approach right here in Portland, Maine, and led by David Safe Approach their team designs and builds fall protection systems from harnesses, anchors and lifelines to safety netting and custom fall protection worksite solutions. And over the years, they've developed some really creative fall prevention solutions for a variety of different industries. And so I'm actually here [00:03:00] in David's office today. We're doing the podcast Offsite. We got tired of doing the WebEx and Zoom things, so we're in person doing it together. We just took a tour of the shop floor and saw where the magic happens, so it's pretty cool. So David, you're getting to be a regular here on the podcast. So welcome back.
David Kozlowsky: [00:03:16] Thank you, Peter. I appreciate it. These are fun. I like doing them, so it's good to good to come back. Thanks for having me.
Peter Koch: [00:03:22] It's awesome. So before we jump into the topic, I want to kind of pick your brain some more. So is there anything new on the horizon for safe approach or in the fall protection industry?
David Kozlowsky: [00:03:32] There are a few things that we're working on as a as a company. There's a few products that are not necessarily ready for the market yet, but there are some items that I have been working on long term. I've been working on a self rescue device, got some neat ideas on that. It'll be kind of revolutionary if it does come out. So I don't want to give away too many secrets, but it's a way for we've [00:04:00] been approached several times in the past years, especially with actually the new aerial work platform standard, which I understand you're going to be talking to somebody about with self rescue. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to develop a reasonably seamless way where someone can have something attached to them that's moderately unobtrusive that would allow them to work as normal. And then if they were to fall off of something and rescue was not easily or readily available, actually be able to rescue themselves by lowering themselves to the ground.
Peter Koch: [00:04:37] That's a great idea and a very challenging problem to manage within the workplace. And it's one of the conversations that I have with all my policyholders and clients from around. That's the part of the plan that they're missing is the rescue part.
David Kozlowsky: [00:04:52] And it's the item itself is when I first started looking at it, it really seemed like such a simple concept to me. [00:05:00] There's lots of defenders on the market, especially for climbing, I mean, this is a regular occurrence. These people use these types of things, but when you started, as you do with everything in fall protection, when you start trying to figure out how to make it at least reasonably universal for everybody to purchase and sell and not custom for each individual. And when you start looking at the foolproof factor, we try to make something that is easy to use as possible. And there's fewer ways for the user to make a mistake, especially in this application. When you're talking about probably being scared hanging, who knows how far above and you're nervous and you're shaking. And you know, the more things that you have to think about or do the likelihood of making a mistake or failing at it just goes up exponentially. So when I started factoring in different things, like different weights of people and having to arrest the fall in different ways of being able to go from a fall arrest [00:06:00] to actually disconnecting the fall arrest onto something else and again having it foolproof and having as fewer functions as possible. I bit off a lot. It's a it's a challenging task, but we're there. We're working on it and I don't want to promise of when it'll be out, but it's definitely on the horizon, something we're working on. We're working on some ladder stuff. The ladder standard changed in 2018. So there's, you know, even though that was a few years ago, they gave people till twenty thirty six to kind of modify and update their ladders that have cages. And so we've started to notice a slight uptick in people, you know, trying to take that serious and trying to be proactive. So we're working on a few things to try to get ahead of the curve on that, too. So when people really do start working on all those ladders there's got to be a million of them out there and people will start having to retrofit those.
Peter Koch: [00:06:56] They will. And that'll probably happen in twenty thirty five,
David Kozlowsky: [00:06:59] 2035, exactly [00:07:00] if they if they start that early, they have until November of 2036.
Peter Koch: [00:07:05] So yeah,
David Kozlowsky: [00:07:07] I expect around August, September, I'll start getting calls.
Peter Koch: [00:07:13] You know, it's a really great point changing of the ladder standard and the modification of fixed ladders to have either a personal fall arrest system or a ladder safety device incorporated into it. It's a pretty that's a pretty big nut to crack when you consider all of the ladders that are out there and just in Maine where we are, there's a ton. It's not just your it's not just a lot of your older manufacturing facilities or the mills. You can start looking at recreation, and there's a lot of every tower on a ski lift has a fixed ladder.
David Kozlowsky: [00:07:45] Has a fixed ladder yeah.
Peter Koch: [00:07:46] And at some point the ones that are 24 feet or higher are going to have to be modified.
David Kozlowsky: [00:07:52] And we have a cable system already, so we do have our own. I've been slow with the rigid rail portion of it, and there are times when a rigid [00:08:00] rail for various reasons I won't get into today is kind of the only option available, but there are certain features that I want it to be able to do, and I also need to make sure I don't obviously violate anybody's patents. So I've been working on trying to come up with my own idea for how I'd like that to work.
Peter Koch: [00:08:19] So yeah, that's cool. And like you alluded to, you know, there's only so many ways to skin that particular cat. So yeah, and there are new ways out there. I mean, you know, folks like yourself and other engineers that are really thinking about this, there's different ways to do it. But you know, collectively, the solutions that have been out there, whether it's a T track rigid or it's a cable system, they've been out there for quite a while there might be some new ways to make that work a little bit better.
David Kozlowsky: [00:08:47] Yeah, I've used a lot of them. I've seen a lot of them and I have a couple of ideas on how I think they should be able to operate, and that's what we're working towards.
Peter Koch: [00:08:57] Good deal. Yeah. All right. Let's round back [00:09:00] to the topic for today, which is leading edge fall protection. And so in our last podcast that it kind of came up as a discussion or a brief discussion outside of the recording. And you know, I think leading edge work happens more frequently than people know, and I'm not sure that they understand all the risks involved with it. So I think we'll take time to discuss that. So let's start with the definition of leading edge. What is leading edge work? And then let's talk a little bit more about maybe the differences between how OSHA sees it and how ANSI sees it.
David Kozlowsky: [00:09:33] So this is interesting. When we were talking about the topics, you know, you presented it this morning that you were going to ask me about the definition. I go ah man like, I don't really know what the definition is. I should be ready for this question. So I'm going to quit and I'm going to research it. And you know what? The weird thing is I went all through ANSI, and I can't find where ANSI actually gives a definition of leading edge. They talk about everything else. The SRL standard [00:10:00] three fifty nine point fourteen that's out there. They have they don't have any definitions, they refer you back to Z three fifty nine point zero, which is the base standard, and you go through all those definitions in there and they really don't ever give you one. And so you're kind of left to kind of infer on your own what the definition of a leading edge is. So I am going to give you my own definition. This is my opinion. And here it goes. So based on the way they have the testing done and the way the differences in the testing for the two different types of SRLs, actually there's three or four, but the two basically the ones that are made to attach above the D ring and then ones that are made to attach below the D ring. My definition of a leading edge is a two fold test, one you're attaching below your D ring and two the material of the lanyard leg itself of the self retracting lifeline [00:11:00] to any degree bends around another object. So there are many cases where just tying off at your feet does not necessarily introduce a leading edge. So my personal definition is you're tying off at or below the D ring and the leg of the SRL or lanyard is going to bend around another object, whether it just be a little bit or 90 degrees or whatever it ends up being, it's bending around another object.
Peter Koch: [00:11:31] I think that's a good definition because it takes into consideration more than just working at an unprotected edge. Like I'm laying down metal decking or I'm doing work on a rooftop someplace, and I'm right next to that particular edge. Or I have to work with part of my body over the edge because you could set that up where depending on the location of your anchor, where even though I [00:12:00] am working on that leading edge, I might not need something that's specific to leading edge.
David Kozlowsky: [00:12:05] So I'm going to add one further test, which I know I said two, but I'm going to make it three now. So in order to be true and again, this is my opinion. But in order to make it true, leading edge what you just mentioned, so the radius of test required and we can get into this in a little bit, but there's a very specific piece of material in a very specific radius in the ANSI test that you need to test a leading edge retractable. And it's what we call in the industry the sharp edge test. So to me, a leading edge should also include a sharp edge. There's many instances where you might meet two of the tests you might be tying off at or below the D ring. It might be bending around something, but that object presents zero risk of actually sawing or cutting the material, which is where the leading edge sharp edge test comes from. So it would need to meet those three tests. [00:13:00]
Peter Koch: [00:13:01] So if I think about this in the real world and we're going to take this into industry, right? And I'm the supervisor or the safety manager and I'm doing my job hazard analysis or my risk assessment for that particular day. And I'm trying to choose what type of fall protection I'm going to have. I need to look at where the work is being done, how close to that edge I'm going to be, where my anchor is going to be and not just distance from the edge, but actually location based on the position of the individuals d-ring. That's a really good point that you brought up. What's the material or what is the edge actually look like?
David Kozlowsky: [00:13:39] So the test that I came up with, which was any time it's bending around something or over something, this z three fifty nine point one three, which is the lanyard and shock absorbing lanyard standard for ANSI, has already in it. Testing and information for foot level tie off what they call 12 foot free fall [00:14:00] lanyards. And so the idea behind that is four foot level tie off. Well, someone might say, how is it that you can have foot level, but not a leading edge? Well, if you're connecting steel and you have an I-beam and you're connected to it, it's possible that it might be leading edge depending on how big the I-beam is and where the D ring is. But it's common practice when you're tying off with a lanyard to include a D ring extender, so to speak. So what you would want to do is add a D ring extender to the D ring so that no portion of the hardware or webbing on your lanyard would be bent over the IV when you fall, so it would be at the edge. So that would be an example of a 12 foot freefall or a foot level tie off. That's not necessarily a leading edge. And then other tests, you know, the sharp edge there's you know, we worked with a contractor a number of years ago that was working on windmills and you know, the [00:15:00] tops of those are round. They're like. The cells on an airplane engine, so there's really no risk of cutting any of the material. So we kind of got into a discussion with the general contractor about is this really a leading edge? Can you really need that type of equipment or is foot level sufficient, you know, to satisfy the need
Peter Koch: [00:15:20] Yeah, so let's qualify that for a little bit, too. So our listeners understand the difference. There are certifications for leading edge fall protection equipment that would meet the tests or at the very least, you know, work for foot level connection and then be robust enough to not be damaged or and continue to work when it's bent over a particular radius and material.
David Kozlowsky: [00:15:46] Right. So the lanyard standard 359.13 only has the 12 foot free fall. The test is virtually the same. It's the same two hundred and eighty two pound weight. It really just depends on how [00:16:00] far you allow the weight to fall and then measure the forces. So there's definitely not a sharp edge component to the foot level tie off for regular lanyards. Z359.14 is really the first one to differentiate and introduce a different test for that. So for the performance testing, for dynamic testing, the weights, two hundred and eighty two pounds the same, it's 300 for strength testing, but for performance testing is two hundred and eighty two pounds. And so now what they've done is they've classified self retracting lifelines into what's called Class A and B, which are for overhead tie off. That's anything above your D ring. And then they've created a test for SRL-LE, which is their designation for leading edge the same weight, but you are introducing a five foot free fall now instead of just hanging it from an overhead [00:17:00] point. So you need to introduce a five foot free fall. The distance back from the edge needs to MEMIC the length of the unit you're testing because they want you to test it to a certain percentage of its overall use. And then you drop it over the edge 20 inches away, and then you do a second test at a five foot offset to introduce a sawing effect. So it's the first standard to really kind of give you an actual specific test specifically for that, which is partly the way I came up with my test or my definition of what leading edge is. You know, the idea that it's going to bend over something and be a sharp edge and be a five foot free fall?
Peter Koch: [00:17:42] Yeah, right. So if I understand that correctly, going back to the classifications of SRLs, you've got A, B and now you have LE
David Kozlowsky: [00:17:53] LE and you have R2, which is four rescue devices that have built in winches. But that's a completely [00:18:00] different thing for what we're talking about. But yes, A B and LE and A and B are overhead, and those basically determine the total fall distance allowed and the average arrest force that's allowed OSHA in ANSI don't ever allow any more than 800 pounds max arrest force, but the average arrest for us class A is twenty four inches total arrest and thirteen hundred and fifty pounds average, and then Class B would be up to fifty four inches and only 900 pounds average arrest force. And then you go to LE and LE has to have the same thirteen hundred and fifty and fifty four inch max. And then it also now again, but it also has to pass the sharp edge test.
Peter Koch: [00:18:43] Yeah, stay intact once it connects with the edge.
David Kozlowsky: [00:18:46] I forget what the number is, but it does also have to maintain, regular ones is a thousand pounds. I think static after the fall, but I think it's a little less. I can't remember the exact number. It might be like six hundred and fifty pounds or something, but it does [00:19:00] have to pass also a static test after it's arrested the fall.
Peter Koch: [00:19:05] It's got to sit there and be able to stand six hundred pounds.
David Kozlowsky: [00:19:09] Yeah. You want to be able to have somebody hanging on it for a while and, you know, not risk that it's going to tear the rest of the way through?
Peter Koch: [00:19:16] Yeah. Which is a it's a pretty good test. I would want to have that test there if I'm wearing it for sure.
David Kozlowsky: [00:19:20] Yeah, sure. Me too, for sure.
Peter Koch: [00:19:21] We've talked about it in the testing, but let's talk about that leading edge and like specifically, what are the additional hazards that are there? You talked about what it needs to withstand, but when I'm looking at the when I'm looking at the edge and I'm trying to determine what type of SRL or what type of lanyard you're going to use, what are the hazards, what are the dangers there for leading edge?
David Kozlowsky: [00:19:45] Well, there's multiple dangers in some of these MEMIC foot level tie off and then some of them are new ones that are introduced with leading edge. But when you're doing fall calculations, I mean, the first thing you need to take into consideration is the [00:20:00] additional five foot free fall most. People don't realize that if you're tied back from the leading edge, even if you're tied off at your d-ring height, so even if you're technically tied off at or above your d-ring, but let's say it's four feet back from the edge of a roof, you don't realize it, but the retractable is probably not going to start arresting the fall until your d-ring is passed past the leading edge. So you're going to fall off the side when you're d-ring passes. That's when the rate of extension is going to increase enough to actually arrest the fall. So that's why they tested it five feet. So you need to take into consideration that you need to add that five feet of fall clearance to virtually every chart that you have. So Leading Edge introduces that extra fall clearance. And in some cases, like I said, even if you're tied off at or above your d-ring, if it's a leading edge, you need to add that five feet you can't count it as [00:21:00] an overhead tie off.
Peter Koch: [00:21:01] Right, that makes sense. If you're going to have a fixed anchor and you're going to be traveling horizontally on whatever surface you're going to be. How far are you traveling? So if I fall off the edge with a 25 foot, you know, I've got a 30 foot SRL or and I'm traveling 10 or 15 foot horizontally beyond the center of that anchor point. How far am I actually going to fall before it catches me.
David Kozlowsky: [00:21:27] Even if you're even if you're dead perpendicular to the anchor, even if you take out the pendulum effect, if you're dead perpendicular to the anchor, if you imagine in your mind, you know the edge and your, you know, your line comes in even horizontally. The increase horizontal to the angle is so little that the rate of extension is probably not going to catch up and actually start locking until your D ring actually passes and it goes over the side, then [00:22:00] it becomes a line pull. So now the rate is the same of your falling and the extension, and that's when it's going to lock. It's not going to lock before. So that's why it's important even when you're at or above. Even if you're dead perpendicular, you need to add that five feet. So then the other thing, of course, you touched on was the pendulum. I mean, there's always the possibility of the swing fall. So you need to calculate that into your fall clearance chart, the extra payout because you're falling further. So you're going to get more energy absorber extension than if you're just falling overhead. And then the and this is the most important thing is the biggest hazard is the actual edge itself. So, you know, the sharp edge component that I told you, that's that kind of third test of leading edges. The test is a zero point zero five radius. They have a very specific radius because [00:23:00] they say that's what structural steel is.
Peter Koch: [00:23:01] So put that put that into context that someone can wrap their head around if they don't know what point zero five is.
David Kozlowsky: [00:23:08] Is five one thousandths of an inch. I mean, it's
Peter Koch: [00:23:12] So that's like, like pencil lead.
David Kozlowsky: [00:23:14] Yeah, right? Yeah. It's like, really, really. It's basically a sharp edge. I mean, so you know, not just the straight fall, but especially if you're not perfectly perpendicular, there's going to be a sawing effect. And that's the most dangerous part of leading edge. And why they do. The sharp edge test is if your five or 10 feet off of perpendicular and you fall, you know, from other studies of fall protection that you're going to run along the edge until you're lanyard, you're just perpendicular to your tie off point. And however far that is, is how far it's going to saw that webbing or the cable. And I've seen tests where even cable can get cut if the edge is sharp enough. Especially if it's, you know, steel. So [00:24:00] that's really the most dangerous thing is, you know, that sawing effect that you might have. So you want to take that into consideration in each application and in the material that you're using, whether you're using a cable lanyard, a web lanyard, you know, as a shock absorber or not.
Peter Koch: [00:24:15] Sure. And it makes sense. You know, you think about the maximum amount of force that OSHA allows or ANSI allows is 1800 pounds. You can't put 1800 pounds of force between your hands pulling a piece of rope. But if you pull a piece of rope tight between your hands and touch a sharp knife to it, it's going to part.
David Kozlowsky: [00:24:35] It's going to part.
Peter Koch: [00:24:36] So put 1800 pounds on that and then roll that over a sharp edge. There's going to be some damage if it's not designed for it.
David Kozlowsky: [00:24:43] Right. Exactly. So that's why I introduce that, because not every edge is sharp enough to do that. I mean, certainly steel is if you're doing roofing, you know, you might have metal decking or metal roofing. I mean, certainly that can be a knife edge sometimes. [00:25:00] So certainly that would be a sharp edge. Concrete can be a sharp edge, especially if it's a Web lanyard, maybe not so much for cable, but certainly possible, you know, if it's a soft edge. If you're talking, you know, like we talked about the wind towers or, you know, if you're doing wood construction and you get two by dimensional lumber, I don't know if I would say that there would be a risk of cutting, you know, especially a cable lanyard. So maybe just foot level would be sufficient for that. Again, this is my opinion. Somebody else might disagree with me, but that's my opinion. That's the way I look at it.
Peter Koch: [00:25:34] And it makes sense. It's logical to think that, but I think the key point to take away as you're listening to this is you've got to do your own. I won't say research, but you have to evaluate the fall hazard that you have. So it's not just the distance between the anchor and the ground anymore. There's more information that you need to gain about the situation before you can make a choice on material and [00:26:00] the type of fall protection system that you're going to have.
David Kozlowsky: [00:26:02] So, you know, that's part of the job of the safety manager of whoever is for whatever construction company or whatever company that you work for. And I think especially nowadays, it seems like safety managers probably spend all their time dealing with COVID and stuff and less time with fall protection. But, you know, I liken it to a lot of us here have taken the rigging and signal test for cranes because we do contracting work and we need to be qualified by and CEO to rig or signal a crane. So we've all taken the classes in, you know, the studies that you do for the rigging part of it, it's pretty in depth. There's a lot of calculations. If you're not going to preplan it, it's difficult if you're going to just show up on site and say, All right, what do I need? And you can start to calculate sling angles and how much does this way and how long are the straps and, you know, stuff like that. So it gets pretty complex. And, you know, I don't think a lot [00:27:00] of safety people sometimes realize that that's your job, really. If you're not, you know, you might not be rigging a pallet, but your job is the safety manager is to analyze the risk. And you know, the guys that are on the field don't have the time to stop and spend two hours figuring out what they need. Your job is to kind of, you know, survey the area and kind of look ahead of time and see and make all those calculations. You're the one who wants to do all the fall clearance. You want to analyze the risk. You want to look at the edge, see if it's sharp. It's really your job to go in and perform all those fall clearance calculations and everything that you need to do, tell the people on site this is what you need to do to operate it safely. And so that's an important task.
Peter Koch: [00:27:48] It's a really important task. And I think especially in some smaller companies that might not have a dedicated risk manager or a safety coordinator on site with them all the time. You [00:28:00] might be foreman or a supervisor that has those safety responsibilities. So your company is going to purchase fall protection equipment and you're going to have it at the shop, you're going to have it in the truck, whatever that is. And then you're going to get to the area and you're going to try to apply whatever you have to, whatever that scenario is. And since, well, especially since talking to you, but in my experience, having done a lot of fall protection training and work at height, not every fall protection solution is functional for the scenario that you're going to come and come encounter with. So just like you said, if you do it ahead of time, you can send the team with the right tool. If you don't send them what the right tool they're going to use, whatever tool that you have.
David Kozlowsky: [00:28:51] So a job hazard analysis, we all hate them. I've filled out a million of them. It's a lot of work sometimes, especially for a small contractor like [00:29:00] us. We also don't have a dedicated safety person, that's all they do all day long. So it's extra work for me or for the foreman. But you know, it's something that you complain about, but it's definitely needed. It's definitely that you catch a lot of things that you might not have considered if you take the time to do it ahead of time. And this is one of those things the fall clearance, the edge, the proper equipment and what you need definitely take the time to analyze each situation ahead of time.
Peter Koch: [00:29:31] Yeah, it's a great idea, and you can fairly easily I won't call it easy, but you can set yourself up for success by having the questions asked when you're setting up the job, when you are bidding the job. So as you start to bid the job and you know you're going to be working at height, you're building a roof, you're building deck and you're doing whatever that is. Consider the plans. Where are you going to be? Where is your anchor point going to be? What's the material that [00:30:00] you have the potential to fall off of? Yeah. If I can't put a guardrail in, then I need to start looking at these different scenarios. So, you know, if you get to that part in the flow chart where it says, yes, I'm leading edge, it changes the fall protection equipment that you have to bring with you.
David Kozlowsky: [00:30:16] And that happens all the time, Peter. That's not a that's not as rare of a scenario as you would think is, you know, XYZ contractor is calling saying, Oh man, I need all this stuff for this. Like, I didn't put this in the job. I didn't know I needed it. And you know, the safety officer for the general contractor is going around saying, No, you can't do this until you have the right equipment. And so that it does happen a lot.
Peter Koch: [00:30:40] Yeah, yeah. Totally changes that. You know, we've talked about the relationship between safety, quality and productivity. And even there, like if I can plan for safety ahead of time, it totally changes my productivity because the scenario that you just described where the GC safety guy is saying, I'm sorry, Pete's [00:31:00] contractor, you can't do this unless you have this in place. And now he's got another bill that he's got to come up with, and it's time for you to. I mean, it might even be a custom solution, and that's not something that you can say, Oh yeah, I'll have it shipped to you tomorrow. That's not going to function.
David Kozlowsky: [00:31:15] No, and it's certainly going to take a chunk out of, you know, whatever they budgeted for, you know, materials and expenses for the job.
Peter Koch: [00:31:22] Profits get a little bit tight that way.
David Kozlowsky: [00:31:25] Yeah, if you're going to be working at height, I think if you're a contractor that does any kind of work at height, I mean, you should be spending the time to analyze the job ahead of time before you do something like that to make sure you either have what you need or you factor in some budget money to, you know, to obtain what you need.
Peter Koch: [00:31:46] Yeah to see it. You know, you might not know it happens. You might be planning for a job that was described to you X and you get on the job. And all of a sudden it's Z and you have to be agile in your adaptation to whatever's there. [00:32:00] But having worked with hundreds of different teams on the ground where you know their supervisor or manager or the safety guy is not there and we're talking to them about fall protection, and so what about this particular hazard or why are you using this solution in this scenario? And the answer is more times than not is it's all we have, right? Like, I've got a harness and I've got a six foot lanyard, and they might even they might not even have a large enough hook on the end of it to tie in to whatever anchor they're supposed to. So they're tying back to the lanyard and they're changing the dynamics of that particular fall protection solution.
David Kozlowsky: [00:32:40] Yeah. And that's one of the things that I can say about the culture of fall protection that is definitely changed in the last, you know, 10 or 15 years is that if you're going to do work for any larger contractor, you're going to have your ducks in a row or you're not going to be able to work on site. So I could see that happening in [00:33:00] smaller jobs where, you know, you might be the general contractor and you're just there doing a little job for a customer. But if you're on any, any larger site, that's not going to happen. And it's, you know, in some ways, it's actually it's actually a help. I mean, if you don't have a safety person on site and as much as you might want to not like the, you know, intrusion or the extra cost, you basically just got, you know, free help from, you know, probably a pretty good safety person, you know, telling you what you need.
Peter Koch: [00:33:32] They're great. They are truly a great resource.
David Kozlowsky: [00:33:34] A good one is a great resource. A good one is, yeah, definitely qualifier.
Peter Koch: [00:33:39] Good one is a good resource, right? Absolutely. And you know, so let's take this out of the construction environment for a moment, because they're not the only industry that has fall protection requirements, even though the threshold is different. We talked about this in previous podcasts. Six foot four construction as the general threshold and then four foot four general industry. Yeah, you [00:34:00] get to some maintenance guys that are not doing construction, they're doing maintenance work and they might not be able to have guardrails in a particular situation, but they might actually have a leading edge scenario where a fall could put them at risk of damaging or severing that lifeline.
David Kozlowsky: [00:34:18] I have run into this quite a few times, and the unfortunate thing with general industry with the four foot rule is that a lot of people want to quickly go to the fall protection because it's less expensive than guardrails. The problem is, it is virtually impossible to arrest a fall on a four foot height at a leading edge. As I told you, it's five feet to the d-ring to begin with, so you're 100 percent going to hit the floor before the retractable even starts locking up and arresting the fall. It's just impossible. So in those situations, it's a scenario that just kind of can't exist. You'd sometimes just have to tell people, Listen, you [00:35:00] need to be further up the hierarchy. You need to prevent the fall rather than try to arrest it in this particular situation. And even that's somewhat true, even for overhead. I mean, even if you have the perfect scenario of an overhead retractable perfectly over where you're working, you have all the right equipment and it's only four feet to the next level. Arresting a person before you contact the floor is going to be extremely difficult. So you definitely see less leading edge issues in industry. But it's not unheard of because we've run into many applications where you have like an open sided mezzanine. You're loading material to a, you know, a second floor mezzanine and someone has to remove the guardrail in order to get material up there. We run into that all the time. That's a classic situation for a potential leading edge and especially a sharp edge.
Peter Koch: [00:35:52] Yeah, truly, truly about that. That's a great scenario. I think about maintenance guys in the hotel industry that are, you know, [00:36:00] going to different areas and having to do some repairs that are going to be exposed to those fall hazards. There's plenty of different scenarios that your traditional, you know, fall protection in a bucket. It's not going to be what you want to send your guy with, right? And so that preplanning is huge. So if you are going to calculate the fall distance and you've explained this somewhat. But if we're going to look at this from a leading edge perspective with a SRL and I needed it to deal with the fall clearance, let's see. I've got maybe it's 10 feet from the work platform to the ground and I've got my anchor set right at D-ring height. So let's call it five feet off the deck. So thinking that through. How would I calculate whether or not I am using the right tool for that scenario?
David Kozlowsky: [00:36:54] Well, the general accepted industry standard is you want to maintain [00:37:00] try to maintain a two foot safety factor, if you can. So you need to try to arrest that fall basically, if it's 10 feet within eight feet and that starts getting really challenging because depending on where you are, you might need to start doing some trigonometry to figure out the length of the hypotenuse and how much if you fall, if you're 10 feet off center, once you hit the edge, how much webbing is over the edge and what's the difference in the hypotenuse between the offset center and the perpendicular center? So even when it locks up how much additional webbing, how much travel from the retractable? Is it going to be twenty four inches? Is it going to be fifty four inches? You know, you need to take and those are things that you can, you know, you can use the manufacturer's information to help you calculate. I can't do it off the top of my head. If you ask me to do one, I can't. It's too complicated. Yeah, on my laptop, I created a calculator. [00:38:00] If you give me a minute to get it out, I could probably do one for you. But there's too many. There's too many trigonometric calculations to actually figuring out. And I've also custom tailored my fall calculator to take into consideration actual fall distances from our SRLs, rather than just the published maximums. So like a class, a retractable can extend up to fifty four inches, but they very rarely do all the way. Fifty four would be a worst case scenario a full five foot free fall, a full three hundred pound, three hundred and ten pound worker. All of these things. And if you're only one hundred and eighty pounds and you don't fall quite the full five feet, then you know the number would be less the payout. Right. So besides all the trigonometric functions, I have an actual calculator that calculates the estimated actual payout, so it's way too much to just do right off the [00:39:00] top of my head.
Peter Koch: [00:39:01] No I think it's a great answer because normally people, I got that this, this and that and boom, it's all set. Yeah, that's not always the answer.
David Kozlowsky: [00:39:08] Well, if you want to take if you want to be safe and you want to take the standard things you can like, if you're standing on the edge of something and you're tied off overhead, then you know you can take the from foot level. You can take the, you know, the total arrest distance plus the total payout, plus the flex in the, you know, the D ring and the harness and all that. You can add all those up and just come up with a general number. The problem is if you don't have 18 to 20 feet of fall clearance and it's getting a little tighter, then you need to start getting a little bit more in depth in your calculations to make sure you, you know you cover it.
Peter Koch: [00:39:44] No, I think that's a great point, too, because most people will take those standards and say, this is going to work normally. I don't know. I don't see very many times where the worker, the guy who's actually got to use the fall protection [00:40:00] stuff that he's given by the company. He works at those particular standards like so great when we set it up. You might have had 15 feet of fall clearance, but now because of stuff that's parked below the edge, now we don't have 15 feet of fall clearance. We've got eight feet of fall clearance or 10 feet of fall clearance. And all of a sudden it changes whether or not that piece of equipment is going to work. And great, I've got one anchor point, but I've got, you know, 15, 16, 18 feet to either side of the anchor for the guy to do his job. And that changes. What he can do.
David Kozlowsky: [00:40:36] And this goes back to what I said at the beginning about when you're calculating those, it's important to add five feet to pretty much anything you calculate with leading edge. If you're tied off behind you because you're going to fall that five feet to the D ring before the system even starts doing what it's supposed to be doing. So that's why I went back to, you know, if it's four foot if it's, you know, general industry [00:41:00] and you have to add five feet to every fall to begin with,
Peter Koch: [00:41:02] That math doesn't work,
David Kozlowsky: [00:41:03] Doesn't add up, does it?
Peter Koch: [00:41:04] You don't even need your laptop for that.
David Kozlowsky: [00:41:06] No I don't. That's right.
Peter Koch: [00:41:09] So let's talk a little bit more about the kind of the setup because we discussed this and this was sort of a revelation to me. I hadn't thought of it this way, but just because your anchor might actually be at your D ring height or above doesn't mean it's not leading edge because there's a relationship between where the edge is and the distance back from the edge for the anchor. Because you're going to, you might have a sharp enough radius across that sharp edge, depending on how far back it is. Talk a little bit about that and how that might factor in this might be a surprise to people.
David Kozlowsky: [00:41:46] So basically, what you're looking at is depending on the well, going back to what I said originally about how if it's in my opinion, if it's bending over something and it's a sharp edge and you're tied back from the edge, so it's bending [00:42:00] over something, then you're basically technically a leading edge. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be the maximum freefall. Certainly, the maximum calculated freefall would be, say, a roof anchor at your feet. Back from the edge, you're going to fall the full five feet. If you're tied off, you know, above your head back from the edge, you might not fall the full five feet you might actually get. And this is the relationship to everything centrifugal bass. So an SRL locks up based on pulls and springs. It's all engineered so that a certain number of feet per minute that the cable comes out. It's going to lock those things. So if it's not traveling fast enough, then it's not going to lock. This kind of even goes back to our last discussion. We were talking about low sloped roofs, and I said there's some discussion about I kind of put myself out there by saying you could use a retractable on a low sloped roof, but some people say you can't because what happens is if you're sliding down the roof, you're technically [00:43:00] in a free fall technically, but you're sliding slow, right? You're not really free falling, so to speak, so you could slide all the way down the roof and your retractable might never lock up. So the same concept applies to this. If you're tied off, say above your D ring behind you a little bit and the ultimate angle that's going to come over that edge. If it's not very much, it's going to pay out quicker. So it's going to lock up quicker than, if you're, say, tied off at your feet. But again, that's a calculation for the for the laptop. I would say if you're at a leading edge to be safe, if you just use the five feet to begin with, then you're going to be safe. I mean, that would be something you might want to save for a very specific application where you're really trying to get some work done and you know, it's a tight fall clearance.
Peter Koch: [00:43:53] Sure and even like the choice between getting something that might be leading edge certified as opposed to something that's more general [00:44:00] certified for a SRL, just because I'm tied off at my d-ring or above and back, you know, the further back you are as I for the anchor point, if I've got, you know, 10 or 15 feet of distance between my anchor and the leading edge, that's going to be a fairly sharp radius. As you think about. I've got five feet of height, 15 feet below. There's your hypotenuse calculation that you come in from there all the way to the leading edge. It's going to be a fairly sharp radius as you come across. Rather than if you had your anchor almost directly above that leading edge where you're not going to have much there.
David Kozlowsky: [00:44:36] You're not going to have that. In fact, you can even get further into this if you want to. Some people that like to have brainy discussions about this stuff would even say that retractable can only, the springs will only retract the cable at a certain number of feet per second to depending on the retractable. So some people would also say that if you're tied off like on a roof anchor and your way far below the D ring, [00:45:00] that. There's a possibility that you would even have more than five feet because if you accidentally it's different if you roll off the edge or if you step off the edge. So if you literally just take a step off the edge and you're instantly free falling, there's a possibility that you could fall faster than the retractable can pull the cable back in. So you're going to actually have loose cable at the edge. So you're not only going to go the five feet, but you might go an extra foot. You know the loose cable?
Peter Koch: [00:45:29] Yeah. So that really goes into that industry standard of that two foot safety factors critical in that consideration,
David Kozlowsky: [00:45:38] And that's why you do it. Yeah, definitely. Because they're I mean, it's definitely a science and it's reasonably exact science. But and there's just so many variables. It's hard. I mean, even the friction of the edge can change it. How you know how easy it is for it to slip over the side. Obviously, the weight of the person can change it. The type of fall can change it. If you're backing up and [00:46:00] literally step off the edge of a roof or something, that's going to be a totally different dynamic than if you're kneeling down and, you know, working, or if you slip and fall down and kind of roll off the side. Or, you know, if you bump into somebody and you both fall off the side, I mean, that can affect things. So that's yeah, that's why the safety factor, there's just too many variables,
Peter Koch: [00:46:22] Tons of variables. I always tell people when we get to do those fall calculations and just the basic math, not the laptop math.
David Kozlowsky: [00:46:30] Can't go wrong with that.
Peter Koch: [00:46:31] Yeah, just to kind of look at that and look at the standards and you get to that end where you put the safety factor in and they all look at me and go, Why would I want to do that? It's like because your math isn't as good as you think it is. And your eye is not as good as you're estimating, you think or in estimating as you think it is, so have the safety factor in the event that you make a mistake. But here, when we consider that you might not have made a mistake at all in the calculation, the mistake happens in the relation or not the relationship, but the design of [00:47:00] the equipment and the use of the equipment.
David Kozlowsky: [00:47:02] Well, even just the equipment itself. I mean, you know, a retractable and we have pretty exacting standards of, you know, the torque on the brake nut when we reassemble one or when we repair one. But you know, there's a range that you're allowed to be in. So if you're on the tighter end or the looser end of that range, I mean, that could make a few inches. It doesn't sound like much, but a few inches could turn into more than that, depending on how far the fall was and stuff. So, you know, there's all these little things that you just can't take into consideration. So the safety factor is there to cover that.
Peter Koch: [00:47:37] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so that's a good point. You manufacture SRLs and you manufacture lanyards and things like that. So what besides or in order to get the LE certification, what's the material difference is like what? I know it can't break, but what kind of material goes into making SRL? That's LE certified.
David Kozlowsky: [00:47:59] Well the cable ones [00:48:00] are really no different as far as the actual guts of the unit. Based on the older overhead style, it's the same size cable, basically same drum, same springs, same pulls because a lot of the tests are still the same. The static tests and a lot of those retraction tests and everything are all the same, whether it's overhead or it's LE. So the difference mainly being there's going to be a slight adjustment on the brake tension. So there's going to be a little bit of an adjustment. So an overhead one and an LE one is going to have a slight adjustment in that the nut that actually adjust the brake tension and then you're going to also have on any newer retractable as you're going to have a shock pack on that. So the newer the 2014 standard removed, the old standard used to say that if you could pass the leading edge test without an external shock pack, then you could do it that way. [00:49:00] The new standard basically took that exemption out, so it basically says a leading edge retractable must have a shock pack unless it's designed to be worn on the body, so the movable braking portion of it is on you instead of at the connection point. So most larger, retractable is anything bigger than, you know, like a little six foot job is going to. They're going to have an additional shock pack because the braking mechanism is still in the unit. So there's that difference. And then, like I said, the shock, that's basically the main two differences.
Peter Koch: [00:49:33] Ok, and then can you have fabric? That would that would get certified?
David Kozlowsky: [00:49:38] If you can get it to pass the test, you can. Our weight our six foot unit is the mini six foot mini is. We tried to get that to pass leading edge. It's got dynamo webbing, which is very strong and very abrasion resistant, couldn't quite get it. It's really hard that sawing test [00:50:00] is the hardest one, so we passed foot level tie off with that no problem. We actually passed the straight line leading edge, sharp edge test with it. No problem. But as soon as you introduce the five foot offset and have that sawing motion, it does. It cuts the webbing and it doesn't it won't hold up. So getting a fabric one to withstand the leading edge test in a bigger unit, you probably could do it because the webbing is much thicker and much stronger. But those little six foot jobs, they're only like three quarter inch wide webbing and it's real thin. So you're trying to put it in a compact housing. So there's just not room for a beefy enough material. But so most, most everything leading edge is cable. Yeah, I mean, if you could get it to pass, you could. There's no reason why you couldn't.
Peter Koch: [00:50:52] Yeah, that makes sense. Again, you're balancing that safety, quality productivity like I can. I can make it if I can get a big enough, beefy [00:51:00] enough, sturdy enough piece of webbing. But then I'm not going to want to wear that on my back all the time. Or, you know, have it attached someplace else too.
David Kozlowsky: [00:51:09] Then users are saying, Well, everybody else is only this big and you know, yours weighs this much and it's, you know, then like you said, productivity, right?
Peter Koch: [00:51:18] It just goes back to the plan, right? In order to have the right fall protection equipment, that's not going to break the budget, that's going to be applicable. You have to have a plan, you have to know what the exposures are. And I, you know, we talk about that almost every time we have a conversation about fall prevention and fall protection, but it's the crucial part of any process of thinking about fall protection. You got to know what you're protecting from.
David Kozlowsky: [00:51:47] It's a crucial part of any process. I mean, how productive. Let's take fall protection out of it. Let's say you're working on a piece of machinery. How productive is it to repair that piece of machinery if you just [00:52:00] show up and then it's 14 trips back to the toolbox and four trips to the parts store to, you know, get parts and, you know, a 10 minute job might take you all day. I mean, it's no different than safety. It's just you need to start applying that same principle where any job, whether it's safety or maintenance or anything, is far more productive and efficient if you figure out what you need ahead of time and hopefully have it on hand.
Peter Koch: [00:52:26] Yeah, we I think we get spoiled sometimes in our sort of instant gratification society when we think, Oh yeah, I can just get that it's not a big deal, but like talk to the guys that maintain the wind turbines and you're 600 feet in the air and you drop a wrench or you don't bring the right size socket with you. It's a half a day project sometimes to get all the way back down and get all the way back up.
David Kozlowsky: [00:52:50] If you're at the, you know you're on the roof of a, you know, an older building, maybe it doesn't have an elevator and you're going up there to service HVAC equipment and you and [00:53:00] I forgot the belt, you know, and it's 12 stories back down to the van twelve stories back up. I mean, might take you 45 minutes because you forgot that belt. You know, it's those kind of things can be applied to safety, too. If you try to plan ahead and you have the equipment hopefully on hand that you need, then you're going to be way more productive, just like any other task.
Peter Koch: [00:53:20] Yeah. And I think a good point, too, like if you don't have that dedicated safety person for your company, which fine, then use the people that are on the right on the front line and start getting information from them about how it works, how it applies. Does this tool that we have actually function for you, some of it, they're not going to know, like a lot of the qualifications and certifications and the risk assessment part they might not understand, but
David Kozlowsky: [00:53:48] That's where people can help. We can help them, though that's the kind of thing that, you know, if you're going into an industrial or commercial application like you're talking about, I mean, you might your safety [00:54:00] person might be an industrial hygienist or something. Or maybe they're really good at some things, but all of a sudden they've thrown at them a fall situation and they're not sure. I mean, that's where we come in. I mean, if they don't know, they have us to call and we're the experts.
Peter Koch: [00:54:16] Yeah, that's a great point. Google can get you quite far, but really getting to the expert person is going to take you a lot farther, a lot faster. And people always think, Oh, it's going to just cost so much money. I have to incorporate this expert person to come in and do that in the long run. You were talking about that before. You might be able to give information that will allow someone to get a smaller, more efficient unit for their team rather than having to go with a big gummy one. Because you're you only have information that's going to be the max standard for evaluation.
David Kozlowsky: [00:54:55] We're always cognizant of that and we always go in and try to lead [00:55:00] off with. Whatever we feel would be the most economically feasible for the customer, and we never go in and try to oversell them something. I mean, sometimes that's the only thing you can use and that's just the way it is. But there's many times where we have been in and we've come out and the customer said, Wow, I thought that was going to, you know, cost me a lot more. Thanks for walking us through this.
Peter Koch: [00:55:21] Cool. That's really cool. And you know, I'll, you know, I'll look at that as well and think, Geez, like there's been times where just with my own expertise, I don't have all the information that I can. I can correctly or efficiently advise a policyholder. So even myself, as an expert within the safety industry, you have to look to somebody who has a lot more experience within fall protection because I don't have the fall calculator that you've developed through years of experience and then testing your own equipment to get certifications through ANSI to make sure that it meets [00:56:00] the standard that's functional.
David Kozlowsky: [00:56:02] Yeah. And even with that, I've said before, I mean, way back to the first one, you ask me, you know, what's one thing you wish you could tell younger you? It's like, it's OK to not know everything. I still don't. I'll say it again. I mean, when you when you gave me the list of topics, I had to go on and look up definitions because I'm like, Oh man, I never thought of that. It's just one of those things where if you know where to find things, or if you know people that can help you, that you can, you know, along in the process, then that's everything really. You don't have to know everything I don't
Peter Koch: [00:56:32] No, and you can't. There's so much information out there and it's a blessing and a trap, right? Because there's so much information out there. It also means that there's a lot of misinformation out there. And as I was doing some research and investigation for this particular episode, you can Google leading edge fall protection and there's a zillion Google hits that come up for that. So which one do you choose?
David Kozlowsky: [00:56:57] Well, there's no substitute [00:57:00] for actually on site, like, that's why I said, if you're on site, you can google it all you want. You can see all the lanyards there are and all the SRLs, and you can see all that equipment. But you know somebody on a Google search probably not going to be able to look at your particular situation and say, I would recommend that you use this. And that's where you just you just can't substitute like somebody in person, you know, actually helping you and looking at it.
Peter Koch: [00:57:27] Yeah, that's a great that's a great example. I just made me think, if you know, if I am a contractor or I've got a new job that I'm trying to bid out and I need new fall protection equipment for it, you know, many times you're just going to go to the website. And all right, so this is what I've purchased before. I purchased this, before I purchased that before. And you might talk to the sales guy, maybe at the website and you're going to give them a little bit of information. He's going to tell you what he thinks. What we've talked about here is [00:58:00] you need more specifics.
David Kozlowsky: [00:58:01] Yeah, a lot more specifics. We've I've not gotten a lot of sales because I wouldn't sell somebody something that I knew wasn't going to work. And then, you know, I don't want to drop names, but they'll go on their favorite, you know, catalog du jour with all of the industrial and safety gear in it. And they'll just buy what they want and then they'll call it good. And we won't do that. I mean, I'm not going to sell somebody something if it's not going to work. And leading edge is the perfect time to talk about that because leading edge is can be potentially far more dangerous than any other type of fall protection, both in terms of fall clearance and in terms of what happens during the fall. And when you have that false sense of security, you think you're safe because you're tied off and then God forbid, it breaks, you know, when you're hopefully you're safe and you're not.
Peter Koch: [00:58:55] Yeah, there's some pretty dramatic videos out there around [00:59:00] leading edge equipment testing and the difference between something rated for leading edge, whether it's cable or fabric in just watching the instantaneous parting of that lanyard as it comes over the edge. And, you know, as the guy who is maybe wearing that equipment to think, alright, so this is going to protect me and that's, you know, as a manager, if you hand someone some PPE in the back of their head, they're thinking, OK, this is going to keep me safe. Well, if it's not the right thing and they do have a leading edge fall and it's not appropriate for leading edge, the thing in their mind of I'm going to be hanging here, parts when the cable parts
David Kozlowsky: [00:59:42] Back early on in my days at safe approach back around the late nineties. We had a situation where a customer had a couple of our stations and a cable and a lanyard, and they were tied off doing what they were supposed to be doing work in a leading [01:00:00] edge, doing decking. And so the worker stepped off the edge and fell in the stanchions, and the cable and the lanyard did everything they were supposed to do. He got caught and everything worked. He was hanging sixty feet off the ground. And because there was the way he fell and because there was a slight slope because they were on the top level, one of the sheets of roofing continued to slide off the roof, went off the roof, sliced right through his lanyard, and he fell. And this is after the fall. So here's a guy who is here and he thinks he's saved because the product did its job and then a sheet comes off and slices through the lanyard, and that was before they really had leading edge or anything like that. And honestly, that was an accident that would have been hard to prevent. I mean, that wasn't a leading edge situation. It wasn't a, you know, a situation where [01:01:00] he was using the wrong equipment. It was just that one in a million chance. And so, you know, things happen less than one in a million chance. Things happen and you want to make sure you have the right gear. And leading edge is it's no joke. I mean, it can happen to you.
Peter Koch: [01:01:16] Yeah, it very much can. And then going back to that, the conversation about job hazard analysis like a comprehensive job hazard analysis would take into consideration where is your material? How is it being secured? What's the pitch? What's the potential? And then all that information can be if you bring it to someone who's not just picking something out of a catalog can start to look and say, Well, hey, you know, if you're not going to secure this, if there's areas where you can't do this, you might want to have something else in the event that all these factors come together. In a worst case scenario.
David Kozlowsky: [01:01:55] Yeah, exactly. It happens.
Peter Koch: [01:01:56] Yeah, right on. Is there anything else that you want to tell us about for [01:02:00] Leading Edge that we haven't talked about is anything that I didn't ask you
David Kozlowsky: [01:02:03] Off the top of my head. I can't think of anything. I think we covered it pretty well.
Peter Koch: [01:02:07] We did pretty well. I think today.
David Kozlowsky: [01:02:08] Don't want people to get bored either.
Peter Koch: [01:02:10] No, no, no. And I guess one last plug that I have about reaching out to experts that there is a there's a definite benefit to recognizing that you don't always have all the information and then reaching out to an expert to engage them about a particular product or scenario or situation. And I can't stress that enough that Google is great, but it doesn't always give you all the information. And in all of the research that I did around leading edge the conversation around the five foot part, the additional five feet never was in any of it. And so that's I mean, just that piece changes your fall calculation, changes a lot of what equipment you might choose for [01:03:00] the particular scenario.
David Kozlowsky: [01:03:01] Yeah, and that's where an expert can help.
Peter Koch: [01:03:04] Yeah, absolutely. Reach out, right?
David Kozlowsky: [01:03:06] Try to be careful not to plug myself too much here.
Peter Koch: [01:03:09] You've I think you've done a great job and safe approach is definitely a place where people can reach out to their local right here in Maine. But there is also other experts that are out there that have a lot of expertise in this. You know, they might not be manufacturers, right? They might be salespeople, but there are other people that have a ton of experience. Just make sure that you reach out to the expert with questions.
David Kozlowsky: [01:03:31] And I mean, that's something that we can help with, too. I mean, if you have questions that we don't, I mean, I have a pretty good knowledge base of people that I know if you need training or you need a specific type of information that I don't have, I mean, I do know people that do this for a living that do training and consulting and whatever. So just reaching out to me doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to try to sell you something somebody else can help you. I might be able to help you, you know, find that person that can [01:04:00] do what you need.
Peter Koch: [01:04:01] Point you in the right direction. Yeah, and last point, that's another really good point that we can't overlook is the training part of this. So whatever fall protection that you have, your people need to have training around the systems and the exposures and the design and limitations and inspection and maintenance before they're exposed to the hazard, right? And so it's a critical part that they have all that because just because they have it doesn't mean that they know how to use it.
David Kozlowsky: [01:04:28] Most of the accidents that happen with fall protection are just because it's being used incorrectly or they're using the wrong equipment.
Peter Koch: [01:04:39] Yeah it's always interesting to me doing training with folks that maybe have not been exposed to fall protection equipment before and putting a harness on how do you know, how does it get sized appropriately? How tight is tight? How comfortable is comfortable? What side does the D ring go on? And then w [01:05:00]hat end of the lanyard do you connect to the anchor and what end of the land do you connect to the harness? And some are pretty obvious. You know, you get a dual leg lanyard. It's relatively easy to figure out what you connect. However, it's not always that easy,
David Kozlowsky: [01:05:16] Depending on the type of the lanyard. It's not even always that easy. And then you have the factor of people just, you know, they want to get the job done too. So they'll take shortcuts or do things that they shouldn't because they just want to get it done and move on. But you know, and it's to your benefit to do that training. I mean, if something happens and somebody has an accident, I mean, it's your employee. So you're going to you're going to want to be able to show that you train that person on how to use the equipment. If not, then you know, you might be opening yourself up to additional liability, certainly.
Peter Koch: [01:05:50] And then I was at a job site. This is fairly recently actually, and we're looking across to a property that wasn't [01:06:00] owned by the policyholder and was not being built by a policyholder and on the roof. They were actually replacing the roof and they were removing sheathing and watched the guy who was moving his self retracting lifeline from anchor to anchor. And the way he was doing it was fairly interesting. You know, he took his big self retracting lifeline, which was connected to his harness. Oh yeah. And then just on clipping walking across the ridge of the roof and clipping into the next set into the next piece. So way too many things going wrong there to even start.
David Kozlowsky: [01:06:38] That certainly wouldn't be considered 100 percent tie off application.
Peter Koch: [01:06:43] Right? That would be the first thing.
David Kozlowsky: [01:06:45] Yeah, yeah, there's better ways to do that. A little bit of help from an outside person could help you figure that out.
Peter Koch: [01:06:53] Absolutely. Hey, so just an interesting question that popped into my head. So what happens if I take a [01:07:00] self retracting lifeline and install it the opposite way around? So instead of attaching the hook to me and the CRL to the anchor, what happens if I switch it around?
David Kozlowsky: [01:07:09] Absolutely nothing. They work both ways. Yeah. In fact, in a lot of ways, it's probably safer to have it attached to you, especially in a leading edge where one of the reasons for the additional shock pack is the braking mechanism being on the other side of the sharp edge. But the bottom line is going to be the manufacturer. I mean, we allow it. It's there's no reason why you can't. It's not unsafe other than just being heavy and potentially clunking you in the head if you do fall. But if the manufacturer, you need to follow the manufacturer's recommendations. So if they don't want you to do it, then whatever your piece of equipment is, you shouldn't do it. And that's I like, try to stress that each time we talk is manufacturer, follow their recommendations because they're really the one that OSHA's going to fall back to. [01:08:00]
Peter Koch: [01:08:01] Perfect. So that about wraps up today's podcast there. Thanks a lot again for coming on, and thanks for inviting me down to the shop here to do the podcast in person.
David Kozlowsky: [01:08:10] Yeah, no problem. It's been fun.
Peter Koch: [01:08:12] It has been fun. So where can our listeners find out more about safe approach?
David Kozlowsky: [01:08:16] Yeah. You can go to our website www.safeapproach.com, or you can call (800) 471-1157 or you can email sales@SafeApproach.com, or you can email me directly. DavidK@SafeApproach.com.
Peter Koch: [01:08:33] Perfect. Thanks. I really, really appreciate you.
David Kozlowsky: [01:08:36] Thank you
Peter Koch: [01:08:36] Right on. And to all of our listeners out there, thanks for spending some time with us today. We've been speaking about leading edge fall protection with David Kozlowsky, president and owner of Safe Approach, right here in Portland, Maine. If you have any questions about fall protection or I'd like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. Email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, [01:09:00] where you can find additional resources, links to other podcasts with David and I, as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for the Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates, and if you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it. If you would subscribe to the podcast and then take a minute to review us on Spotify, iTunes or whatever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thanks because it really, truly helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
According to the US Small business Administration, 99 percent of firms in the US are small business and according to JP Morgan Chase, the vast majority, nearly 88%, have fewer than 20 employees.
At MEMIC, we partner with small business who understand that the health and safety of their employees leads to a more productive and profitable workplace.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Elise Brown, partner and Executive Vice President at Evergreen Home Performance and Brian Schortz, General Manager at Evergreen Home Performance about developing and leading a safety culture at a small business.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. Small businesses make up the lion's share of the employers across the country, and most large businesses started out as a small business venture where just a few people with a passion for something took their product or service to the people. And while not everyone or every small business will be the next Apple, Exxon or Tesla. Just about everyone, especially if you are or have been a small business owner, can relate to the struggle of building or owning a small company at MEMIC. We see that at the heart of every company that has enjoyed long term success, that there's a correlation between productivity, quality and safety. Of course, we're a safety company, so we would see that. But statistics do show that long term success does come from a balance between those three things. And there's analogies out there about the business [00:01:00] being like a three legged stool where safety, quality and productivity support the success of a company. And without all three of those, the stool is going to fall. Really, what has to happen is there needs to be a balance because you can't have a short leg on the stool and have it function for you, otherwise you will be precariously perched on one of the other legs and that's not going to be functional for anyone's long term success. So safety, we see it as the foundation upon which a business can build production and quality and without people, which is the crux of safety and the right people in place, most businesses will fail and we've all seen this and especially now. And if you're listening to this in 2021 are probably even in 2022. Finding employees is a very challenging part for any business large or small, and it becomes even more challenging when you find an employee, spend the time to train them to make them part of your team, and then they either leave [00:02:00] because they found a better offer someplace else or they get injured and they can no longer work for you. Because when people get hurt or leave because of conditions, your businesses may be unable to fulfill the productivity demands or quality demands. So having a robust workplace safety program and a culture allows an owner or a manager or a supervisor to be flexible around increased productivity and quality demand changes while still keeping a skilled workforce in place. A strong safety culture and program provides those parameters and tools to protect employees while still maintaining a focus on productivity and quality. Now, creating and maintaining that culture and program is a true leadership challenge, and I believe that small businesses can find really elegant and creative solutions to balance productivity and quality on a culture steeped in safety that large businesses can't always or sometimes struggle to find. So today, [00:03:00] to help us look at safety leadership in a small business are Elise Brown and Brian Schortz from Evergreen Home Performance. Elise is a partner and executive vice president, and Brian is the general manager. So, Elise and Brian, welcome to the podcast today.
Brian Schortz: [00:03:16] Hi, Peter.
Elise Brown: [00:03:17] Good morning, Peter. Thanks so much for having us.
Peter Koch: [00:03:20] I'm excited to talk to you guys. You know, we have you and I don't have a long history, but you guys have a fairly long history with MEMIC. We were just talking about this before we started the podcast that you've been with MEMIC for somewhere around 15 years. A colleague of mine, Randy Klatt, is your lost control consultant, and he has spoken very highly of you guys, both as a company overall and as really leaders on the safety aspect. So we wanted to talk to you today, some about who you are. What Evergreen Home Performance is and how do you manage safety in such a, and really, it's a fairly challenging industry that you work in from a safety standpoint. [00:04:00] How do you manage safety and how do you keep it going? So let's find out a little bit about you guys first, Elise, let's start with you first. Why don't you tell me a little bit about you and your history with Evergreen? How does that sound?
Elise Brown: [00:04:14] Sure. I come from a background, a varied background. I guess I would say I've been a Jill of all trades. I've worked in construction. I've worked as a boat builder and the basis of my career before coming to Evergreen was in emergency response services. So I've been a professional and a volunteer firefighter and officer in our local volunteer fire department, and I've been an EMT and emergency medical technician as well as an ambulance driver. And currently I'm the emergency management director for the town of Liberty. And so all those prior and current experiences really have me steeped in the whole concept and value of safety. And [00:05:00] so when I joined Evergreen, that was an obvious place for me to put some attention.
Peter Koch: [00:05:04] Yeah, sure. All of those really have substantial focus around safety, especially the emergency management part, but construction as well. And then boat building. I didn't realize that you had a boat building background to talk about that offline sometime and see where that goes. That's pretty cool. Brian, how about you? What's your background and how did you come to Evergreen?
Brian Schortz: [00:05:27] Thanks, Peter. I have been, you know, with an evergreen for 11 years now and transition to evergreen from a corporate food service world. You know, basically, it was a large international companies that had lots of systems in place. And you know, you didn't have to think about safety. Safety was kind of presented as part of the operating plan. So there was there was not a lot of creativity. There was a plan. If you could follow the [00:06:00] plan, it was put together, you know, for success. So it was more of an implementation rather than kind of. Trying to figure it out for our business. And again, I've been with Evergreen for 11 years. I'm most recently, we've done a little bit of reorganization in the last year or so have taken the safety responsibility for Evergreen as my, one of my primary duties. This was Elise's passion and you know, up until and this is more of a soft handoff, and perhaps it will be handed back to Elise in the future. But nonetheless, we work at it collaboratively.
Peter Koch: [00:06:41] Awesome.
Elise Brown: [00:06:43] Hey, Peter, just to jump in a little bit here, I kind of started rambling about my safety background, but I didn't talk necessarily about what I'm doing in my role currently with Evergreen is that should I say a couple of sentences about that or
Peter Koch: [00:06:56] No, we'll get to that because I was going to bring it back after Brian. So great [00:07:00] lead in, actually. So the background actually in foodservice and I have a background in food service, not that large international corporate, but definitely corporate food service through college and then worked in small restaurants. And then that's actually how I paid for part of my college tuition is working in the cafeteria. So it definitely was a kind of a cookie cutter safety plan. And if you could follow the plan, you could be safe. But it really all depended upon if you wanted to follow the plan. So very, very interesting and neat background. So both of you have some background within safety, corporate emergency management, but let's find out a little bit more about evergreen itself. So Elise, why don't you talk a little bit about what you do for Evergreen? And I think more of an umbrella to like what is evergreen do? What is evergreen home performance about and what's the product that you have out there?
Elise Brown: [00:07:54] Sure. Evergreen Home Performance is a contracting company, and we have two locations in Portland [00:08:00] and Rockland. Each location has about 12 people, and within those groups we have a group of salespeople, two or three salespeople and the rest are in production, working in Maine homes, doing retrofit work to make them more energy efficient and comfortable. So the bulk of the work is in cramped spaces like attics and basements. And so, you know, as we think about safety, it's a fairly creative and customized approach in interpreting a lot of the rules. My role in the business has changed over time, but I tend to think about systems and I like in a small business. It's a very creative endeavor to try to make a system first, create it and then keep adjusting and adapting it to suit the businesses need. So currently I'm working on IT System improvements also work on sales processes in terms of how we flow our contracts through [00:09:00] a process and advising Brian on our safety system.
Peter Koch: [00:09:05] Awesome. Lots of balls in the air for that, and I think there's kind of going back to the introduction there is an interwoven theme of safety that can be related to each of those systems, whether it's in a sales system. And we'll talk about this, how you know, how our salespeople can actually help or hinder some of the safety processes that we have in place. Our IT systems can certainly support or break down some of those safety systems that we have in our HR systems can certainly be a boon or a challenge to our safety systems. So interesting that you've got all those pieces in there. And really, from a systematic standpoint, it's not what I thought when I saw you as the executive vice president or heard that to think about that would be your focus in developing all those systems. So that's pretty cool. And again, [00:10:00] more of that conceptual piece as a small business leader in keeping safety at the forefront. Awesome. Brian. So as a general manager there? So what are your responsibilities and how do you interact with those systems that that Elise is getting in place for you or fine tuning for you?
Brian Schortz: [00:10:22] Well, one of the duties one of my duties is I'm the human resource manager, so we're often talking about safety in use. So you know, our a lot of our work requires wearing respirators and true respirators, not, you know, paper masks. We're talking about respirators with P1, hundreds on them for a lot of the day. So that's a conversation that we're having. You know, all the interview is, you know, talking about the importance of the safety, the culture is that something that would even work for people? Some people do not want to be [00:11:00] saddled with a respirator or the primary thing you see and Elise is doing it is every person who we interview walks in the door with a beard and if you are going to wear a respirator. Unfortunately, that beard is not they're not friends, and the beard has to the beard has to go. So we talked about like, you know, maybe a very tight Elise calls them, you know, a fire fireman's moustache or so. Know things like all this over here has to go. So the seal works and your respirator is actually doing what it's intended to do. So we're talking about it at the very beginning, kind of making sure that we've got candidates and understand that it's super important that we're dealing in really hard work, tough conditions. Places that require respirators, so if it requires a respirator, that means there's something there that you don't want to be ingesting. You know, taking in your body, so you know, it does take [00:12:00] a certain kind of person and a commitment from the employee's standpoint to work, you know, to come to work for a company like that. I work in, the other part of my duty is I'm working directly with, we call our teams that are doing the work, production our production teams. So I manage the group in our Rockland office directly and, you know, have some scheduling input in our southern Maine. But so really just connecting with the people that are doing the work on a daily basis as well,
Peter Koch: [00:12:32] Great making sure that they have what they need. And I like that tie in right back from the interview, starting with a safety discussion. Whether you use the word safety right from the beginning or start talking about some of those different exposures that your employees will be exposed to. So the hazards that your employees will be exposed to right at the beginning in the interview, so they understand not only that you take it seriously, but you're aware of it, and there are some expectations around their [00:13:00] interaction and performance around those exposures. Awesome.
Brian Schortz: [00:13:03] I think we found early on that we needed to let people know that safety was an important part of working at Evergreen two ways. One is that we take it seriously so that we're often interviewing folks that have worked in small businesses. They're not coming out of a corporate kind of world or a perhaps like DIW, where there are a lot of rules coming from a lot of mom and pop places that are used to operating, you know, sometimes fast and loose. And so, you know, trying to just get people to understand that this is not, that that's not the culture that we're, you know, is this the right fit? Because we do. We're not perfect. But these are some of the, you know, these are this is the culture
Peter Koch: [00:13:47] Great set in that expectation right up front. I think that's a good it's a good thought process to have to recognize that not everybody is going to come in with the same habits and understanding of not just [00:14:00] the expectations for performance, but that you do know what the hazards are, and there are some rules around how you interact with them. And not every business recognizes that. And as a small business, I think that's key for anyone listening that it's a great takeaway to know that you have an opportunity when you hire somebody on to reset their expectations. Hopefully for the positive, sometimes for the negative of what they should be doing when they're working here. You have that option as a business owner, as the hirer, or as the supervisor, as the manager. So kudos for, you know, weaving that in and throughout the hiring process and then the interaction as you go forward with those staff to Elise, did you have anything to add to that part because you know, you've been a part of this for a long time as well and putting the systems in place, you need to be able to support just what Brian's been talking about. So how does some of those systems interact and what else do you have to add [00:15:00] to that?
Elise Brown: [00:15:01] Yeah. My head is just abuzz with all kinds of ideas. So here's one thing that became apparent to us right out of the get go is, you know, as a contractor, we needed a CRM, a contact resource management tool all the way to a database to track our customers in a way to develop our pricing and get proposals out to customers. And we looked at out of the box solutions we could just purchase. And one of the things we came up against is we could not tailor what we sold to our satisfaction, both from a quality perspective, but from a safety perspective, because for us, no two spaces are the same. And if we were to just sell Widget X for the same standard price in every situation, we would be creating pressures on our teams to execute at that level, even if the space didn't allow for them to do that safely. So we need we built our own pricing tool so that our advisors, our sales [00:16:00] team, when they go in and build a project, they can incorporate safety considerations into the pricing structure so that the cost of almost everything we sell has some safety consideration, the ability to build that into the price. And so from a systems perspective, we had to build that ourselves so that we had the capacity to do it. And from a training perspective, we had to train our sales team and it's an ongoing process and all the things they need to be looking at and thinking about as a designer project and price it out. And so it's this constant evolution of really keeping them in touch with what our production teams are seeing and experiencing so they can properly price a job for them to do it safely. So that's just one example of how the entire business has to think about safety from a systems perspective.
Peter Koch: [00:16:55] Yeah, and that could really make or break someone's experience as an employee in the field. [00:17:00] And I love the way you said it before, like, no, no space, no two spaces are the same. And I can just think about that from my experience with my own home, which, you know, is circa 1832. So that can give you an idea of what it looks like on the inside. And then so say my brother in law's house, which was built in the 90s. So a vastly different environment for you to work in. And if it's cookie cutter, you could really set somebody up to end up with the wrong tools to do the job. It's still essentially increasing the performance of the home from an environmental standpoint, from a heating and cooling standpoint. But the tools will be different if you have to go into an older home versus a newer home versus a home that's been remodeled before something else has changed. So interesting the way that works. And Brian, how do you see that enhance performance in the field? So Elise talked about [00:18:00] how the systems are working? And do you see that truly are really functioning for the people who are out there doing the job, doing the work when they get out into the field?
Brian Schortz: [00:18:10] I guess what we see is people may not kind of understand what went into the pricing, necessarily the pricing and the thought process, but they may understand that there's less pressure. So I think that we have a metric that, you know, an informal metric of kind of production per day know each group of three when they're working in a house should be able to produce a certain amount of revenue per day. And what I think where I think this connects is that people understand that if the space is very tight or there's just, you know, kind of some very challenging elements to it that that's been factored in to the pricing [00:19:00] so that they have a little more revenue to work with. So they're not under the same kind of constraints to feel like they've just got to really cut corners. So from a customer standpoint, cut corners or even the safety corners that if it would call for normally we would do something. But they're feeling under, you know, under a pressure to get the project done in three days. They may skip that integral step of kind of making sure that they've done the right, the right process to make sure nobody gets hurt. And so I think that's where some of that and some of that is just really communicating what our goals are for the project, kind of some of the some of the challenges per project that we're seeing and getting feedback. You know, I think part of this also is hearing from the folks in the field that, that space was too tight. You know, honestly, it was too it was. If they're going to be like that, we shouldn't. We probably shouldn't do a project like that [00:20:00] because it really was way too physically exhausting, you know, taking it back to Elise and our sales team and just trying to figure out what the minimum space that we're going to work in. And, you know, kind of taking that feedback for real as we do want to keep people safe and employed at Evergreen. They have other needs to go places. If we put them in torture spots every day, the job becomes a lot less enticing.
Elise Brown: [00:20:27] Well, so one example is we often work up in attics, and it used to be that we didn't necessarily have a line item to price for the necessity of placing or building out walk boards up in the attic. So before we specked that out and made sure it was part of the work scope, sometimes our production teams would come to an attic and go up and find that they had nothing to stand on. And so if they had come ill prepared and didn't have those materials and we hadn't priced in [00:21:00] enough time for them to build in a safe working platform, you can imagine the pressure they would feel to just do the dance along the floor choice and hope for the best, rather than have it built in and expected that they would take the time to build that walkway and have the materials with which to do it.
Peter Koch: [00:21:19] That's a great example, because that takes a long knowing that because that's my attic. There are no walk boards up in the attic, and there's enough blown in insulation up there that you can't see any of the joists. So you're always wondering where you are. So, yeah, building that out takes some time. You got to have materials. And while you were both speaking, it made me think that this is part of that evolutionary process of, you know, how the systems can support the people in the field and how the people in the field can support the system. So there's this ongoing spiraling process of information flow back and forth to [00:22:00] overall balance those three pieces safety, quality and productivity. Because you know, you talked about it, Brian, you need to be able to make enough money to be successful to have the business continue. So that's a given that has to happen, and that's based around a lot about the quality of the work that you do. So not only the quality of the end product, but the quality of the work that's done while the people are there. And I know I've talked to folks that have had a particular construction crew or carpentry crew or remodeling crew come in. And even though the end product was functional, the process to get to that end product was not very functional. It was very conflicted a lot with the homeowner and the process of living and functioning and what was said. And lots of stuff goes on to reduce or increase the perception of quality that the customer might be getting. And it seems like [00:23:00] those systems that you have in place can help support all of that.
Elise Brown: [00:23:03] Well, you know, when you look at a job hazard analysis for construction, one of the primary sources of injury is slips, trips and falls. So the easiest way to address that is through simple housekeeping. And so even just in the project set up, you know, taking the time to have a good greeting with the customer, find out which access points work best for them. You know, setting up your hoses and your cords and your workstations in a way that works well for them makes it super efficient for the crew and safe. You know, then you've kind of solved every problem, all in one fell swoop. And so it just makes sense to take the time to do that right at the outset. It makes the day go better for everybody.
Peter Koch: [00:23:47] It sure does. It sure does. And it sounds like you set that expectation that that is the expectation of your crews when they get on the job, that they know that they're expected to do that. You don't just leave it to chance that [00:24:00] they're going to bring the habit from another company or their own personal life, that that's how they'll interact with your customers.
Brian Schortz: [00:24:06] And they do. They understand that it is part of part of what we're doing here, and we're not selling something that is that is glamorous, that is shiny. And it's not, you know, it's not some trophy counter. It is. Once we're done in the attic, they might pop their head up for five minutes and then they're hopeful they never have to look up there again. So where we have the opportunity to kind of make a strong impression on a customer is, you know, with the people that we bring into their home and the experience. And so that's, it is super important, you know that that aspect of working in someone's home where contracting experiences haven't always been positive. You know, we're kind of we're, you know, we start off, you know, working against people's experiences often. And so we have to be better than, you know, than what they're expecting.
Peter Koch: [00:25:00] Now [00:25:00] that's great. So how do you like, how would you quantify, maybe quantify as not the right word, but how do you how do you make sure that you get the buy in from your staff that this is like this is not just the because you can set the expectation, and I think a lot of people listening will have had this experience where you set an expectation and then you go out and look at the performance that's happening in the field or on the shop floor, wherever you are. And the expectations aren't met because the buy in is not there. So how do you make sure that your staff stayed bought into this process?
Brian Schortz: [00:25:43] That's the biggest challenge is I think most people buy like verbally and mentally buy in, you know, to the idea because no one wants to fall down the steps. No one wants to fall through a ceiling. And, you know, kind of crack their ribs. People get rushed. People [00:26:00] kind of forget they get, you know, started to develop bad habits. So, you know, our job is to just to continue to be vigilant, to continue to reinforce, you know, kind of the standards most people want to play along. You know, they just develop bad habits over time. And it's just kind of bringing out, you know, kind of refreshing those and making sure they understand how important it is. And it's important to the company success. And most people here understand the correlation between the company's success, their happiness. You know, it's kind of all tied together that they play an important role at Evergreen. And if the people that are doing the work aren't able to do the work, it impacts the company negatively. So if they're out because they've fallen down the stairs, that's a beyond the torture that you know, puts us through and feeling bad about their injury and physically hurts them. [00:27:00] It also hurts the business, and I think everyone understands how it all kind of plays together for evergreen's success.
Elise Brown: [00:27:08] One of the things I noticed when I was in the fire service was that it was really at the level of the lieutenants that would make or break a safety culture because they were the ones that would sort of embody whatever the values were that the management was trying to impart at the ground level. And one of the things that I've noticed Brian Schortz do really well in managing his production teams is he really cultivates good relationships with his site supervisors, the project managers, and develops a real culture of safety with them so that they feel free to communicate with him. Concerns of any kind. You know, when a job is especially difficult, when they notice something that feels unsafe to them. So I think a lot of it is really in sort of the HR culture that a [00:28:00] business develops so that the middle the mid-level management feels free to express what they see going on and developing, you know, a work atmosphere that feels friendly and supported, I think creates a receptivity when the management team says, Hey, we really got to work on our safety. You know, people are slipping up a little bit or I noticed you weren't wearing those safety glasses. Let's talk about it. And often there are other issues or concerns that we haven't thought about. And so if you don't have that culture of safety where people can really express what's bugging them or what they really need, then you can do all the preaching you want. But maybe there's not going to be on the buying because they don't feel respected or heard about something else.
Peter Koch: [00:28:52] Yeah, it's a really, really great point on both sides for Brian and Elise, you guys. I'm glad you said it because [00:29:00] that's something that I talk often with my policyholders, with the clients that I work with, that, you know, accountability is not just going out and trying to figure out what's somebody doing wrong, but it's the back and forth between your employees, the supervisors, the line staff and make sure making sure that you have all the information to make good decisions and letting them know that they're heard. So I've got a question for you on that particular one. Do you have any examples around like how your employees, maybe they're your middle managers or your line supervisors, or maybe your staff have come up with different ways to be safer in the field and that have been implemented company wide so that they know that they're heard because I think that's an important part because we can talk at all the time. But unless they're really seeing it, they're not going to buy in. So I know you've got some examples out there. So [00:30:00] what might be one that you can relate to our listeners?
Elise Brown: [00:30:04] Well, I think we can take the example of hot attics, and we'll each have something to say about it. So I can talk about hot attics from a system perspective. So as we've mentioned, we're a retrofit company. We work often in attics to air, seal and insulate them to help an occupant save energy and be more comfortable. Well, that often means that we're up in the attic doing that work and six months out of the year, those temperatures can be quite elevated. Brian, will talk to you about some of the improvisation that our field technicians figured out to do to cool those spaces. But we also got feedback from our line staff and from our site supervisors that some of the conditions were just unbearable was unsafe. You know, when we did temperature monitoring, we were hitting the heat index. It was unsafe to be in. And so we made a decision [00:31:00] from a management perspective to not schedule some of those projects in the summer and to defer them to cooler months of the year. And that had all kinds of implications for our marketing, for our project scheduling. So we had to implement those from a systems perspective, and I'll let Brian talk about some of the improvisation for how we can continue to work in some attics that we found were acceptable.
Brian Schortz: [00:31:26] So working and, you know, when we were less prepared to not work in attics in the warmer months as this was starting to become the concern as an issue, you know, some of our some of our production managers developed systems to help cool the spaces. So ultimately and using, you know, some unique thoughts, they created a way to water roofs to ultimately bring the temperature down, you know, in those, you know, in those spaces and it could be [00:32:00] 10 15 degrees that they would see the difference of, you know, getting these long kind of contraptions that held a hose and a sprinkler up to a roof to safely get it up there and have it attached to the roof and making enough of a difference to make it palatable and safe to work in those environments. You know, during certain points of the day. So, you know, that's just one innovation that the folks have a lot of different fans and air conditioning units. And again, because every space is so different that we work in, it's trying to figure out which tool we have that we'll kind of make little work in that particular environment. So it does require a little bit of, you know, innovation. Each project say, what are the containers? Are there? Are there actual window schematics that windows in them? That's a very convenient, you know, if you've got an attic that has a window and [00:33:00] some power, you know, a small, a small AC unit in there, it might make the difference. No windows, no anything. You know, you're bringing fans tube fans up from the basement because the cold air from the basement, you know, is much different than the summer or the air outside your house in the summer. So, you know, those are a couple of different things that you know that we've kind of put in place to make work happen safely.
Peter Koch: [00:33:23] So I guess two questions for follow up on that, and I guess this will tie into the systems as well. But Brian, when your team came up with the watering the roof, which I think is a very innovative plan, it's not something that you would normally think of and it makes scientific sense, but it's not something that your regular attic insulation installer is going to think of right off the top of their head. So how did that go from idea to one of the potential solutions for attic cooling when you're [00:34:00] in those situations?
Brian Schortz: [00:34:02] Good question, Peter, and I'm not sure that I can kind of go back to the genesis of this, but we are a building.
Elise Brown: [00:34:10] I remember.
Brian Schortz: [00:34:11] I'll speak to one aspect and all that Elise up in, you know, part of our business is we adhere to building science concepts. So we're not just a traditional insulation company, you know, we use building science as the backbone of the work that we're doing. And so people that are in the company are exposed to building science concepts so that the concept of, you know, of a roof cooling with water is something that, you know, that perhaps came out of, you know, some of those discussions. Some of the building science discussions and not your normal water cooler talk.
Elise Brown: [00:34:52] But I remember one of our I guess I think he was still a technician at the time. Brian Pringle got this concept and he asked, Hey, [00:35:00] do you mind if I make a prototype and try it out? So we said, sure, and he went and bought all the items from Home Depot or the hardware store, and we paid for the materials and he rigged one up and tried it and liked it and took a little video and showed it around and people got interested. So I think we gave him the time and the budget to build a couple more. And then the shop up in Rockland did the same. So it was just a little seed money and a good idea. And the encouragement to do it,
Peter Koch: [00:35:30] That part, that encouragement part and giving employees and you had spoken about both of you spoke about this earlier is the having both your managers and your technicians, your line staff, the ability to be heard and then not just being heard in a meeting and then everybody nodding and then going away. And you do the same thing the next day, but actually taking a potential concept that people see value and bringing it to fruition and then installing [00:36:00] it as part of one of the solutions. That's very powerful for an employee to be heard. And it's not just the moneymaking solution, but it's a safety solution. It's a really interesting way of managing a very dangerous exposure for your staff. And it's innovative. That's a fantastic a great story, a really great story. And I think it speaks to some businesses, whether you're a large business, a medium sized business or a small business, we sometimes get roped into all of the solutions have to come from me. And when you have a group of employees that you're training and you're caring for and you're working with a lot of solutions or at least ideas for potential solutions can come from them. And that's a it's a great story. Water on the roof. It's a great story.
Brian Schortz: [00:36:53] And I just like to add to at the other end of the business level, from a management owner perspective, [00:37:00] we had to be willing to stop selling certain things. You know, if it was just too hot and too dangerous, we had to be willing to walk away. And so it was it was in conjunction with that concern of hot attics that we started considering adding other services to our business offerings so that we could generate revenue in ways that were safer. And so we started installing windows and doors as another offering that had different safety hazards, of course, but not the same hot attic exposure.
Peter Koch: [00:37:34] But again, another really innovative way of seeing an exposure and knowing that no matter what happens, you're still going to have some times where you, you really shouldn't be in the attic. You shouldn't expose employees to that for a multitude of reasons. One is safety. And then Brian said, the other one that, you know, if you continue to expose people to that kind of environment, they might find another place to go. So looking at safety [00:38:00] as the impetus of saying, Hey, here's the boundary that we have to work within. And if we come up against that boundary and it's not going to be functional for us to go beyond that, but it's going to restrict our productivity or our quality, we have to find something else. So again, another great way of looking at safety as being an innovator to move you to different product lines, different ways to make the business grow and stepped you up into a place where, you know, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, you didn't expect to be there. So just another market, another place for you. So let's think about just safety and other ways that as a small business, you are able to move that safety needle because again, you're balancing safety quality. Productivity, you have incorporated safety really into the business, it's not just an add on or something that gets checked [00:39:00] off as a box, but it's something that you live and breathe. You still need to draw on different resources in order to help move that safety needle. So what are some different resources that you draw on a regular basis to help your employees stay safe?
Brian Schortz: [00:39:15] Most recently, six months ago, we found that there was another a company that was very similar to Evergreen at one point in their history, a home performance company doing similar work out of New York state. They had received a lot of a lot of funding to really put high level systems together. And so they developed a really incredible library of video safety best practices that were applicable to our industry. So we ended up purchasing kind of their system that group's plan and been very, you know, it's been very beneficial in that in [00:40:00] the past and we had a ladder safety or an electrical safety. It was, you know, could be very some of the videos that went along with it were instructing me, you know, but not they weren't our industry. These videos actually speak to the hazards that folks in this actual industry in similar housing stock are going to encounter on a day to day basis. So we found it really having that resource has been a great tool. You know, it's been much more it's just been much more effective. If you're spending, you know, an hour and you're in a safety training, it's much more targeted and real world, you know, real experiences that these folks are going to encounter on the job. So that's one example.
Peter Koch: [00:40:48] That's a great example. Always looking for different resources, which is which is excellent to not just think that you have all the answers yourself, but look outside and see what other organizations can help you with that.
Elise Brown: [00:41:00] Well, [00:41:00] when I first started working on building a company safety program, so it was really hard to know where to start because you can look up all the different OSHA regulations and just tear your hair out and trying to interpret how they apply to your business. And that can be maddening. I called upon safety works quite a lot. That's the training and education arm of the Maine Department of Labor. Those consultants were really friendly, helpful. I had them come out and do a number of site visits so they'd come right to the site and we'd just poke around and get all kinds of ideas. But then we also had some really specific questions like we didn't understand what the requirements were for our folks who were applying spray foam product in a space, and we didn't understand what was going to be required in terms of their respiratory protection. So they were able to come in and do some air monitoring for us at no cost. [00:42:00] And that was really helpful because then we took those results and we could develop a safety program tailored to our needs. And after using safety works, you know, then really started developing a close working relationship with Randy Klatt. He's our guy at MEMIC our safety management consultant and using him as a resource, you know, we'd come up against something and not be sure. So we'd ask for his guidance or if we had an accident, you know, just try to reach out to him and have him help us think through how we might do it differently to prevent that happening again.
Peter Koch: [00:42:40] That's excellent. And I think safety works is an underutilized resource here in Maine. And I know so there's people across the country listening to this podcast. Just about every state has a safety works within their state, so it's the educational arm of their Department of Labor that will be able to go and do different [00:43:00] things for them, whether it's an exposure, specific training or, like you said, the air quality monitoring or the air monitoring that they're doing and that when we think about respirators and Brian, you talked about that at the very beginning as one of the things you discuss at hire about. Are you willing and able to wear a respirator or shave to wear a respirator, to be able to go back to the data and say this is why we're wearing a respirator, not just because we think you should wear a respirator, but here's the product. Here's the space. Here's the concentration. Here's the type of respirator. Here's the cartridge. Here's the change out schedule. Here's all this stuff that you need goes a long way to make that employee feel comfortable and confident in the methods and the resources that the employer is putting forth. So that's fantastic to tap into a resource like that. And then the resource of your insurance carrier like MEMIC is [00:44:00] relatively unique. But we are not the only insurance carrier that has lost control or safety management consultants out there. So you know, if you're insured with MEMIC, give us a call if you've got a question from a safety standpoint and. If you're not insured with MEMIC, you know, call your carrier and see if you do have some safety resources that you could tap into. You might be surprised of the amount of experience that your carrier can bring to the table for you.
Brian Schortz: [00:44:29] To your point earlier about making people feel comfortable and part of our orientation is very it can be a little scary. You know, we're talking about lead. We're talking, you know, exposures to lead, we're talking about potential exposures to asbestos. And, you know, do we find that every day? No, we find it very rarely. But the point being that, you know, when you're telling someone that they may encounter asbestos [00:45:00] and you know, these are, you know, folks are not kind of hardened tradespeople that, you know, have seen this and heard about asbestos their whole lives. These are some, you know, folks that are new to the trade, perhaps. And you know, it's a scary, you say asbestos and that's scary to someone. So if you can let them know that you know they'll be wearing a respirator, that's appropriate so that if there is a discovery and unexpected discovery that day that they've been protected, you know, they've got the right respirator for the conditions and we're not going to once we find it, you know, that's kind of a job stopper for us. We back out. But the fact that you've had that rescue, you'll be wearing the appropriate respiratory protection really goes a long way and not scaring people away from the job.
Peter Koch: [00:45:48] I think that's another underrated tool that small businesses don't take advantage of. And then you said it's orientation, and I've been through many different types [00:46:00] of orientations, been part of presenting an orientations, receiving orientations from the whole, the whole gambit from those that are really just kind of checking the box to make sure that people are quote unquote oriented to the job and others like yourselves that are actually taking the time to let people know what the exposures are, what the hazards are, what the expectations are and then what is going to happen if they do encounter something. So what are these? What are those expectations? And that's a powerful part of the orientation process that we miss. So let me just ask you this question on orientation overall. So when you're orienting a new person, how much time does that new person, how much time do you spend with that new person in orientation from the time that they're hired, to the time that you consider them to be oriented enough to be competent on the job?
Elise Brown: [00:46:54] One of the things that I found so interesting is a couple of years ago, we [00:47:00] asked Randy, our safety management consultant, if he could go through our particular data on accidents and injuries and give a report over the years of what had happened for our business. And the amazing thing it was like an inverted bell curve. And so we had the highest number of injuries with new people and then it would go way down. And so our hires who had been with us say from one year to six year years had relatively few injuries. And then the folks who'd been with us a long time started to get more injuries. That was really illuminating for me. And so from an orientation perspective, it became apparent that really the first three months are not about productivity at all. It's really about getting oriented to the safety culture, the safety program and the safety mechanics and habits. And so right at the get go, you know, we're talking about safety as the [00:48:00] primary focus. And for a business like ours where you're in strange spaces, where you're not just standing on a flat floor all day, but you're in attics or crawling in a basement, really just focusing on a presence of mind, you know, really being oriented in time and space is a really critical function in being able to be safe in those environments. So we just kind of start hammering that and we started doing that in a new and a different way. And it was thanks to that graph that really got me fired up to make that such an important part of our beginning with any new employee.
Peter Koch: [00:48:37] Yeah, that injury data can be very enlightening and it's something that I think we miss like we don't know many businesses tend to treat the injuries kind of separate from other data that their business takes in to use to evaluate what those steps they need to take to be successful. And I would I would imagine that if [00:49:00] a business decided to pull their injury history for the last, however many years that they would find if they looked at it in the same light that you looked at it from how long someone had been employed with you, that they would find a similar bell curve. We do find statistically overall when we look at MEMIC data aggregated that we do find there's a predominance of new employees being injured, and so that goes depending on the seasonality of your business. That new employee could be, you know, six months in or three years in as a new employee. And then it'll peter off. You know, you won't have so many injuries as people understand the exposures and the controls that are out there. And then you'll see it to start to increase on the other end as people get very comfortable with those exposures. And they forget, I love the way you put it, Elise the presence of mind. When you're in a space, how do you get people to have presence of mind? Can I can [00:50:00] I throw that odd question out at you? Like that's do you have a way to really help people keep their presence of mind when they are in a space where there are different exposures?
Elise Brown: [00:50:12] I think it comes back to the work culture. I think it comes back to, you know, creating a work environment that doesn't feel so rushed where people feel cared for, where it's a friendly environment. You know, it's amazing how much those kinds of factors help remove distractions or pressures that take your focus away. And, you know, if people are relatively happy and like the people they're with, they're, you know, they're not going to just be angry and thrashing around or just trying to hurry through the day. So I don't have any magic answer. I really don't know. But like we hear from our folks that they appreciate the friendliness and how accepted [00:51:00] they are just on a very human level. I don't know if that answers your question, but I think it would help.
Peter Koch: [00:51:07] Yeah, no, I definitely do. And I think it adds to the comments that you were both making before about the importance of your middle management group because I think that's the group that sets the stage for that presence of mind within the job site, at the job site. So Brian, when you go on to the job site and you, you know, you're working with that management team, you're bringing that presence of mind to them, they're bringing that presence of mind to the staff that are working there. So it's a key thing. I'm not sure that you can teach it, but I think you have to be the example and have people emulate that.
Brian Schortz: [00:51:51] We're not creating best practices in the office. We're hearing from the people that are doing the work. And you know, they're often [00:52:00] the people that are innovating for our business. They're innovating, you know, best practices, some of the safety, you know, some of the safety practices that ultimately they want to go home at the end of the day, you know, with what they started with and no more, no less as well, you know, in terms of their bodies. So I mean, you know, we're hearing about things that aren't safe. You know, they'd like to see different, and we also there's an example of this past safety training in our sales team. So we, you know, we'll break up our groups and we'll have different departments and the sales team. We did a ladder safety training and honestly, they use ladders the least of our groups. And so in a little ways, you know, it was an hour's worth of ladder training videos that, you know, they may have felt wasn't, you know, the best use of their time. But I want it to be phrased it in a way that was that they need to understand the company. You know what we do [00:53:00] as a company and what the safety goals of the company is so that if they're out on a job site, they see the ladder is being used inappropriately. They've got the opportunity to be an intervenor. Tap someone on the shoulder and kind of gently say, Let's maybe we should reconfigure this. Not that's not the way that wants to be used. And I actually got feedback from one of the salespeople. He was at a job site this past week. And you know, part of that message was it's your job to say something. It's not like we're teaching you this. It's your responsibility to say something when you see something. And you know, we teach on saying it respectfully and not, you know, we're not the Hammer Company, you know, we really try to say things in an appropriate way. But one of the salespeople came back and said, Well, I was at a job site today and they had us all out and they didn't have to stand for it. So they had it on these rickety, rickety set up. And he said, I went over and said, Rick, I [00:54:00] was told to tell you, this is like, that's not the right way to do this, you know, in our training. And you know, let's can I get you a stand like, what do you need here? Do you need do you need the stand? Where's the stand? You know, I can get. And they hadn't. When they bought the saw, the stand was back ordered, and I think they never they just never end up getting around to it. But it was, you know, it was purposely given to me as, you know, look what I did. I helped, you know, I was listening to you. You know, it really was wasn't about a ladder. It was about something else. And they took it seriously. So it was great.
Peter Koch: [00:54:37] I think that's a great example.
Elise Brown: [00:54:39] Here's another example of presence of mind, you know, sort of indirectly, Peter, and that is, is that, you know, because Brian and I guess evergreens tried to cultivate, you know, a good relationship with the site supervisors. And we have pretty tight teams that work together frequently. They know one another. And so a site supervisor might call [00:55:00] Brian and say, you know, Joey seems a little off today. He seems distracted or tired or I know he's had a hard time at home, so I'm not putting him on the tough job today. You know, I'm going to have him do something else, and that really is good hazard management because you know, why put a worker, you know, is kind of stressed in a position where something's more likely to go wrong. So those are, you know, some examples of how a workplace culture can really avert something going really wrong just because you know the people and you're not going to just make them do it because they're supposed to
Peter Koch: [00:55:34] Right that that trust in the culture that you know the has got your back. My fellow colleague employees got my back, my supervisors got my back. So it's all about it's all about success. And it's not like realization. I bet you if you if you did like a company culture survey that try to ferret out what people's attitudes were around, what you're all working for and you're all working [00:56:00] together for the success of each other and ultimately then the company. So I think as I'm hearing that there's a lot of openness within the culture and at the foundation of that, you know, is safety. It's hard to talk about productivity only productivity and get that openness. But there is that compassionate part of safety where there's a moral part of safety. It's not just checking the box for compliant, but that's a moral component of we all have a responsibility of going back home at the end of the day to our family, our friends and our loved ones. That's awesome. So I got a couple more questions and we're getting right towards the end of it. This is one that I don't know that we've talked about in the past, but you brought up the injury trend. So I wanted to ask you because like you said before, you're not perfect. No companies perfect injuries do happen. And even if a company is going to end, it happens more often [00:57:00] than not with small businesses. So I don't have any injuries. Well, I guarantee you that your employee has gone home, injured and just never told you it's going to happen, whether it's a splinter or it's a strain or a sprain or something more significant. And they just never told you and came back to work the next day. No harm, no foul or. They left work and never came back because they got injured, so when there is an injury at your company. After all, the reporting happens and you care for the employee because I know that's part of your process and you get them the treatment that they need. What do you do around the analysis and trying to prevent that from happening again? What do you do with the information about that injury?
Brian Schortz: [00:57:47] Well, you know, unfortunately, we had an injury a month ago and it was not insubstantial. It was, you know, was a fairly painful injury and some lost time. Not significant lost [00:58:00] time, but more pain and more pain and suffering than the last time. But. And you know, this is a struggle, you know, to try to get to, you know, very good at reporting it and staying on top of, you know, requirements and then getting back and figuring out, you know, we do a hazard analysis, you know, we kind of go and do that, do that, dig in. And it's often there's nothing all that, you know, this is not that complicated. We use the wrong tool for the wrong, the wrong job. And we realized it, you know, during the during the job that we just kind of put our head down and kept plowing through it and didn't happen to be a site supervisor, you know, on site that day. And, you know, maybe it might have been different, you know, had there been someone, you know, someone at that level on site. But when you don't take the time you realize you've you don't have the right tool on site that day, the cost of not going back to the shop was significantly less [00:59:00] than the cost of the physical pain. And you know that this person went through by getting hit in the face with a drill that got seized up on a wall. So it's just really getting back to folks and letting them know now that no one had bad intentions there. You know, the intention was they had no, they didn't think anything bad would come of it, but ultimately they also knew that it wasn't the primary tool for the job. So just letting them know that's not the right answer and that we're all here to support. If they're 30 minutes away, they call the office, someone can bring them the right tool if they can't get back there. It's just making sure that they know there are options or not firewalled into just walking straight ahead. Straight ahead all the time.
Elise Brown: [00:59:50] One thing I'd like to add to that is as a system oriented person, I always think about, Well, how can we make this different so that it's less [01:00:00] likely to happen? And you know, when you think of human nature, it's so hard to stop, you know, people just want to keep going. So I when an accident like that happens, you know, I really want to understand and help communicate to the crew, you know, the steps they can take to help prevent it. But then I want to take it back, you know, a few steps back in the process and think, how can we make it even less likely that it would even be an option to occur? So, you know, for me, it's like, do we need more of those tools available? Do we need a different packing system? So it's always on the truck? You know, what are those kinds of steps that happen five, six, seven, 10 steps prior to even, you know, being standing at the wall using the drill in the first place? So it does take a willingness to look at a lot of different layers. And that's really hard to do when you're a small business and you're just trying to stay afloat. And sometimes we succeed [01:01:00] and really, you know, digging to the bottom of it and sometimes the best we do is put some ointment and a Band-Aid on and hope. I hope we get the time to really look deeply. A little later on. And that's a hard thing to be honest about. I think sometimes
Peter Koch: [01:01:19] You're both right on the money, and I love that you really described a progression that many businesses go through. Some stay at the we've reported it. We've taken care of the employee and it's done. Some take the next step, take that data and bring it back to the employee to recognize that the tool wasn't used correctly. And then there's the next step of looking at it, as there was a decision that was made to not use the tool correctly and then the decision to not go back and get the right tool. And then finally, that that next step or that downstream step of how do you integrate the solution of using [01:02:00] the right tool or having the right tool available or eliminating the decision back to the systems process? And that's a really great progression. And you hit the nail on the head super hard to do and super hard to do. Whether you are a small business, small business owner, a medium business or you're an enormous business, there's just. Different challenges that come up because an enormous business in order to change a system could take an act of Congress where the benefit that you have of a smaller group, you can actually tweak the system in order to make a more reasonable or a reasonable change in a small amount of time. So there is benefits on both sides. One might have more resources and as a small business, you're a lot more agile to make to make better decisions as or change decisions to go forward. So great. Great example, and I appreciate you just taking the time to explain that process to us and be a little vulnerable there. You know, I asked you a [01:03:00] pretty challenging question around, you know, what are your injuries? And it's never easy to admit that, yeah, they happen to us too. But they do. They do happen. All right. So I got one more question and this will go to both of you guys. So what's the one thing that you know now about workplace safety that you wish you would have known when you started out?
Brian Schortz: [01:03:23] I was thinking about this earlier today. Not directly, but I was thinking about what makes someone who's in the safety role of an organization potentially successful and assuming a lot of other things being there, is, you know, finding someone who has the passion for safety. You know, I found that when Elise joined Evergreen, she came in, you know, with a zeal, you know, and a concern and a focus, you know, about safety that you know that frankly, I cared about people and I, you know, we had that caring culture, [01:04:00] you know, really wasn't it didn't focus on the safety side of it the same way. And Elise, such a passion and kind of a drive for it that that allows, you know, the business to really to strive in that level. So putting someone, you know, trying to match up a skill set with that, you know, with someone that's in charge of safety that truly has a passion that cares about it. And you know, I think is part of making a program that will be vibrant.
Peter Koch: [01:04:31] Yeah, passion is a huge part. And you know, I wish I had recognized that when I was first starting out, that safety is not just all about the data. There's a lot of personal drive and commitment that's going to make it successful. So great. Thank you for that insight, Brian. Elise, what about you? What's the one thing that you wish you had known when you started out about workplace safety?
Elise Brown: [01:04:55] Well, I gave my answer away already when I talked about the nice curve [01:05:00] that Randy gave us with our data. But here is another thing, and that is that I wish I had understood better how much mental health is such a critical part of safety. And COVID has just made it altogether clear that workplace safety is every bit as centered around mental health as it is around physical health and safety. I think that would have been beneficial for us had we realized and incorporated that sooner.
Peter Koch: [01:05:31] Yeah. So can I follow up on that a little bit? I think we've talked about a number of threads throughout this podcast around that will address mental health. But so what are some of the learnings that COVID has brought up that you've implemented to help employees with that mental health that would pay dividends in safety later on?
Elise Brown: [01:05:50] I don't think we have the answers yet. I think this is all pretty new territory. But you know, I think as a small, sort of family oriented [01:06:00] company, we've always understood that, you know, people's personal lives matter and that you kind of bring a certain amount of your mental equilibrium or lack thereof to work on a daily basis. But the stresses of COVID, you know, really brought out that some people have a lot of instability at home and that that can have an effect on the team esprit de corps. It can have an effect on how patient people are and how willing they are to proceed cautiously. You know, it can make people maybe drive more erratically. Who knows? You know, there are all kinds of ways in which mental health stress can make it harder for a company's safety culture to be successful. And so, you know, just kind of trying to create a place where we're much more aware of that and we're kind of got our radar, you know, kind of out to sense how people [01:07:00] are doing from a mental standpoint so that we can maybe talk to the supervisors or help them. I mean, they're not immune, either, you know, it's a big thing and we don't know yet. We're really at the very beginning of learning about this.
Brian Schortz: [01:07:15] And that's a whole other podcast.
Peter Koch: [01:07:16] Good. All right. We'll talk about that maybe in a few months when we get some learning, but I think the awareness that's a really insightful again, another really insightful part that mental health has a lot to do with the success of your safety program. And when I think about safety is being the foundation of what you build, your productivity and quality on mental health and the ability of the person to really understand the impact of their choices on their safety. And then especially when you're working in a tight space with a couple other team members, somebody else's safety. That's huge. And so recognizing that if my mental health isn't where it needs to be, if [01:08:00] I'm not focused on what my job steps are, I could easily put somebody else at substantial risk for injury, especially working in a tight space and with some of the hazards that you guys have to manage on the job.
Elise Brown: [01:08:13] Here's a quick example. Brian Schortz, you said this to me just the other day, he said. I realize that I have to come to any kind of meeting, you know, with a certain amount of confidence and convey that to people because it really impacts people. And when you think about COVID, you know, when we were trying to figure out our protocols for how we work in homes, you know, we wanted to be really upfront and convey the exposures and the risks and be very clear about what the hazards were. But at the same time, we had to convey confidence that we could manage this. We were all in it together. You know, there was a way to be safe and still be productive, you know, so that we didn't create more stress in their lives. But, you know, give them a path [01:09:00] where they could feel successful, feel safe and feel confident that they could earn a living and not bring some illness home to their family. So it's tricky.
Peter Koch: [01:09:10] Yeah, it is tricky. And I don't think just from our conversations today and just previous to this, I don't think you could have been successful in that conversation had you not laid the groundwork for the open communication, for the support, for the understanding of the employees about that. Yeah, the company's got my back. So I trust them because that's really essentially what you're talking about, that confidence. You can come up with confidence. You can be falsely confident in front of a group of people and they will smell you out like a 10 day old rat and that won't go well and won't go well at all. So you not only have to be confident, but you have to be genuinely confident. And that comes from all the prep work that you've done for all these years of building the company and building [01:10:00] the safety culture through a lot of trial and error. I mean, you've said it from the beginning that, you know, you're not perfect and this is it's a process of becoming not just a statement of being right. Well, we are right here at the end of our podcast. Believe it or not, it's been a little over an hour. It's gone by pretty fast, but a fantastic conversation with you guys. Thank you very much for sharing your expertise with us or myself and all of our listeners out there. So thanks for that.
Elise Brown: [01:10:28] Thank you, Peter, for the opportunity. It's always humbling to talk about safety because it's always a work in progress and it's so easy to focus on the failures. But the conversation has helped get me excited about some next steps for Evergreen. So thanks a lot. Awesome.
Peter Koch: [01:10:45] Appreciate that. So where can our where can our listeners find out more about Evergreen Home Performance? If they are interested in more about that or about who your company is and what they do? Where can they find out more about you?
Brian Schortz: [01:10:57] Well, you know, we have a YouTube [01:11:00] channel that's Evergreen Home Performance, and there's a YouTube channel which talks about the exciting career opportunities that evergreen straight from the, you know, straight from the employees mouths. It's not something that we helped put the put it together, but this is all their own dialogue and, you know. Some good ideas about what it would be like to work in evergreen. And you know, our website, Elise for, you know, for us all to look at Evergreen as a business is where should folks go
Elise Brown: [01:11:31] And visit us at WWW.Evergreenyourhome.com Or visit us on our Facebook page. Evergreen Home Performance
Peter Koch: [01:11:39] Perfect. And we'll put those links into the show notes so people can grab those and they just have to write them down when they're listening, because that's not good if you're listening while you're driving. So we'll put them in the show notes for you guys. So thank you again for joining us and then to all of our listeners out there. Thank you so much for sticking with us today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking about [01:12:00] safety leadership in a small business with Elise Brown and Brian Schortz from Evergreen Home Performance. If you have any questions about safety leadership, or would you like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast? Email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/ 56podcast, where you can find a. Additional resources, links to other podcasts, as well as our entire podcast archive, and while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. If you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it. If you took a minute or two to subscribe and review us on Spotify, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. If you've already done that, thank you. Thank you very much because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support and until next time. This is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts [01:13:00] podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
According to BLS data, workplace fatalities from falls to a lower level were up from 615 on 2018 to 711 in 2019.
Fall hazard exposures exist in almost every industry and finding the right fall protection solution for you’ your situation is not always easy. There are many factors that should go into choosing the best fall prevention method, especially when it comes to fall protection on roofs.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with David Kozlowsky, President and Owner of Safe Approach in Poland, Maine about fall protection requirements for roofs.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. There are fall hazards in almost every industry or business, and personally, whether it's scaffolding, ladders, anchors, fall protection, arrest systems, rope access rescue or fall protection training and education, that all makes up a significant part of what I do with the businesses that I serve. And today we're going to talk about falls and specifically falls from a height and even more specifically, fall exposures while you're on a roof. So before we get into that recently, I got the chance to talk to one of my friends, who's another safety professional in a different area of the country. And we got to talking about fall protection and the excuses or reasons that workers and business owners have given us for why they don't or won't use fall protection on their job sites. So here are some of the ones that we've had in common, and I bet you you'll find some of [00:01:00] these are actually pretty familiar to you. If you're a safety professional and if you're a business owner, maybe you've used one of them yourself. I know before I got to be a safety professional, I've used a number of these to make an excuse of why I'm not or won't use fall protection. So the first one that came up, which was, I think, one of the more common ones, it's way too time consuming to set it all up. I can get the job done and half the time. If I can just get on the roof and do my roofing work, that's the first one, too time consuming. It gets in the way you talk to workers all the time that they're on the roof you have the rope gets in the way, the guardrails get in the way it just gets in the way. Another one is it makes me feel less safe. So the ropes are a tripping hazard. And honestly, I think maybe the pneumatic hoses are probably more of a tripping hazard than the lifelines, but it's all perception. So it makes me feel less safe. It limits what I can do. It's uncomfortable, and I totally get that. If you're in a harness all day long [00:02:00] on a roof, you've got enough discomfort up there from the environment and the pitch that you're on and everything else. So the harness can add a little discomfort to it. But again, it's an excuse, so it causes more of a hazard. Getting back to that makes me feel less safe. It doesn't add value to the job, so we quantify that one is it just costs too much. I can't bid successfully for a job against the guy down the road. He's not using fall protection. If I bid the job with fall protection, it's going to cost me way too much. I won't get the job. Another excuse that my friend and I have heard often is when I did buy it, my employees didn't use it, so I stopped buying it and asking them to use it. So they just kind of gave up instead of powering through and making it an initiative and part of the culture. But again, there's the excuse I'm only going to be up there for a minute. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that particular excuse, and more often I've [00:03:00] heard that excuse during an investigation or an analysis of why the fall occurred. So I'm going to a client and we're talking to them about why this person got significantly injured, falling off the roof, the ladder, the whatever it was. And the answer is, well, they were only going to be up there for a minute. I didn't think I needed to set up all of the fall protection. Another one, which is interesting because it's all about perception. Again, I've never used it before and I'm really comfortable working at height or being up on the roof. So my comfort level is driving the non need, I guess, for fall protection. Another interesting one is what we are using fall protection and I'm talking to the business owner and he's pointing up to the roof where his roofers are on roofing planks instead of actually a fall protection system. So that's not fall protection. We'll get into that as we talk through this in the podcast. And this last one probably was my most favorite. And it's more than just a statement. It's a couple [00:04:00] of statements. So bear with me here. So when I was asking this individual about fall protection on the job site, the answer was, Well, we have a safety monitor and that's all we need. Because for roofing, there is an accommodation there to use a safety monitor under very specific conditions. But his answer was we have a safety monitor. That's all we need. And he was saying this while he's pointing to one of the workers who was on the ground shoveling shingles from the ground of the dump trailer. But he was in an orange vest so that designated him as the safety monitor. But his buddies or the other workers were up actually stripping the roof on a 10 12 pitch. So the safety monitor was doing something else while the guys were up stripping the roof. And while I looked at him, the follow up to that was from the guy was, well, he's only there for a few minutes because he needs to stay ahead for the cleanup. And while the other guys are at the peak, he doesn't need to pay attention as much. He'll pay more attention when they get closer to [00:05:00] the edge. Like, OK, fine. Excellent. So all of those are different excuses, you'll hear them all over the place, but none of them really help you because there's a lot of stats out there that really drive the need for fall protection, and you can talk to anyone who has taken a fall off a roof or off a ladder, and I'll bet you that they wish that they had done something a little bit different, so they didn't have an event that changed their life. So if we look just at the stats, according to BLS data, fatal falls from roofs accounted for seven hundred and sixty two of the three thousand seven hundred and twenty two fatal falls between 2011 and two thousand sixteen. And that's just fatal falls. That's not all of the other types of fatal injuries that happened in the workplace. Those are just fatal falls back to 2016. And if we look specifically at roofing and some more current data in 2019 roofers accounted [00:06:00] for 111 of the five thousand three hundred thirty three fatal injuries. And that's just in one year, and it's up 15 percent from 2018. And the BLS data also shows that roofers have a fatal injury rate of fifty four fatal injuries per one hundred thousand workers. All right, so fifty four per one hundred thousand doesn't seem like a lot. Well, I guess to me as a safety consultant or just as a human, fifty four people dying on the job is a big number, regardless of how many workers you're comparing it to. But let's add some different perspective to that. So the average fatality rate across all industries, regardless of what the industries are, is three point five per one hundred thousand workers. So that makes the rate for roofing 15 times higher than the average. And it's only preceded by fishing, logging and pilots or flight engineers with a higher [00:07:00] fatality rate. And while those industries logging fishing in flight engineers have a myriad of different exposures that could cause fatalities and a significantly more limited set of choices for controlling the exposures, roofing fatalities come almost exclusively from falls and fall protection or prevention, or excuse me, roofing fatalities come almost exclusively from falls and then fall protection and prevention technology has really exploded over the last 10 or 15 years, and there's been a huge increase in what's available to the person working on a roof. So to help us explore fall protection and how it applies to roofing and tearing down some of those stats and maybe giving you some better ideas about what to do when you're on a roof, is David Kozlowski, president and owner of Safe Approach right here in Poland, Maine. So, led by David Safe Approach's team designs and builds fall protection equipment from harnesses, [00:08:00] anchors and lifelines to safety netting and custom fall protection worksite solutions. Over the years, they've developed some really creative fall prevention solutions for a variety of different industries. So David, you were on the podcast back in March of two thousand twenty one talking to us about the basics of fall protection. Welcome back today, and I'm glad to have you to talk about some more specifics.
David Kozlowsky: [00:08:24] Peter, thanks. And thanks for having me back. It was a lot of fun last time and hopefully people got something out of it. And hopefully I can give you some good information that people can take back to their places of employment and help them implement safer work practices.
Peter Koch: [00:08:43] Oh, I'm sure they will. There's a lot of great information on the other podcast. We talked about the hierarchy of controls and different types of fall protection and fall prevention that were out there and when to apply it. And I know we were talking before the podcast about how prevalent roofing [00:09:00] exposures or working on a roof. It doesn't have to be roof work, but working on a roof is. And just the other day I was driving down my road and two property owners were actually standing on the peak of the roof, installing a chimney lining. So there was not a stitch of fall protection. Well, let me tell you, the only fall protection was in my car driving past them. It wasn't anywhere on the roof, and you made the comment to me that you spend the majority well, quite a bit of your time having conversations with different clients about fall protection for roofs because it can get a little bit confusing, I guess.
David Kozlowsky: [00:09:39] Well, all the reasons that you gave earlier are still very prevalent. I mean, I spend a lot of time in my truck driving around, and I can't tell you how many residential roofing projects that I drive by where I still see them not wearing fall protection. Even though the exemption was removed many years ago, [00:10:00] they still aren't wearing it or. I'll see them wearing their harnesses, but knowing what to look for, I can clearly see that they aren't connected to anything, so I think they often put them on. So at a quick glance, somebody driving by might think, Oh, there they are, they're wearing their fall protection, but it's not actually connected to anything. And I see it, you know, so often they still a lot of them, for all the reasons that you gave, are very resistant to it. And I don't think it's really going to change until we can help change the attitudes in the hearts and minds of the people that are actually there to be protected. If they don't want to protect themselves, it's really hard to overcome that mountain.
Peter Koch: [00:10:42] Yeah, it really is. And if you've never fallen off a roof or had an injury like that, it can be difficult to understand why you need it. Because some of those some of the comments that were made to resist fall protection are the reasons [00:11:00] why I'm not using it are actually valid. I mean, they can be uncomfortable. They can, if you're used to not having vertical lifelines and something else on the roof and you're just used to having a naked roof that you're on maintaining or re-shingling or putting new roof material on it. It does get in the way. It's a change. It changes your workflow and work process.
David Kozlowsky: [00:11:26] Well, all of those all of those excuses are basically variations of the one single most common excuse, which is not just used in roofing, I've seen it with confined space training with all kinds of other types of injuries that can happen not just fall protection. They're all variations of the same basic excuse, which is I've been doing this job for insert number here a number of years and I've never had a fall, so [00:12:00] I don't feel that I need it. And I've heard that excuse in rooftop safety and confined space safety and all kinds of industrial safety applications where people just don't think they need it. I've been doing this job for 30 years and I've never even had a close call. Why do I need to do this different thing now to protect myself? And it all goes back to what you just said. If you've never fallen off a roof or if you've never got your hand caught in the machine or, you know, you've never tripped and fell into a hole or never been run over by a truck. You don't think that you need those protections. I mean, again, it's the attitude of the user is trying to overcome the attitude that you don't need it. And once you overcome that mountain, I think people will get a lot more receptive to it.
Peter Koch: [00:12:51] Yeah, I'll relate a quick story. I have a good friend of mine that I worked with in a previous industry, and he and [00:13:00] I share a love of climbing. So he's got a great climbing background. And after we had a downsize at the company that I was working at, he actually went to go work for a local roofing contractor, and he actually brought that skill sets and understanding of not just fall prevention and fall protection, but actually if he's going to be setting up aide climbing or setting up protection on a rock face someplace. He wants to be able to work with both of his hands. So he sets up positioning. And so he brought a lot of that information to the company. And interestingly enough, when I got to work for MEMIC, he was one of or at that company was one of the first companies that I was assigned to from a construction standpoint, and I met him again on the job and I was looking at what he was doing and he had taken a lot of that thought process of, look, I get it. You know, from a fall standpoint, this is really not a whole lot different than if I'm climbing [00:14:00] somewhere in the wilderness. I can use that same technology to make my job actually a little bit easier to be able to feel comfortable. I mean, if you're installing metal roofing panels someplace, it's hot, it's reflective, it's slippery. Why can't you set up a system that will allow you to actually work more effectively right in there so it can be done? It totally can be done,
David Kozlowsky: [00:14:24] And you just hit the nail right on the head. Most of the reasons why people don't want to use it is effectiveness of the fall protection. It's, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't do any good to set up a system that's technically quote unquote compliant that it doesn't work well. And I literally just this week went to look at a client who was looking to. They just had 11 ladder climb systems installed on some silos. So they had silos with these ladders and somebody [00:15:00] came in and said, you. Need to put climb systems on these, they installed it and the employees were complaining, so when I got there, the argument was is these aren't compliant? Well, I went and looked at them and they were. Everything was as it should be. But the ladders were too narrow and they had installed them, you know, in the center of the climb. And there was it was when I climbed the ladder, I found that it was extremely difficult to get between the ladder climb system and to step through and get on to the top of the tank. Very difficult. And when I came down, I said, I have to agree with the employees. This system is compliant. But it really isn't set up to be very effective. And so they were hoping that I could come in and figure out a way to modify and change or provide something new that would be a little bit more seamlessly integrated [00:16:00] into what they had and make it not just compliant but actually usable so that the workers felt safe and felt better using it. And you know, that's one of the other big things, especially with roofing is you were talking about in the beginning is not just the culture or the attitude, but you know, there is a certain amount of it that is cumbersome. It does get in the way, it's not easy and we haven't invented the perfect integrated seamless system yet. So, you know, we kind of have to work around that a little bit, but you can try to do things to make it as effective as you can and as seamless as you can with what's available out there.
Peter Koch: [00:16:41] Cool. So we'll definitely get into that because I think that's a great discussion about what would be effective. And it's going to depend on the environment, the work that you're doing, the skill set of the people that you're going to have always it's going to have some price component to it. So because you know, you can always you can look to get the Cadillac or [00:17:00] you can look to get the jalopy one of the two regardless of what you have. If it is compliant, it definitely needs to fit within the work that you're doing to keep it effective because there's always that balance. We talked about this last time between safety, productivity and the quality of the work that you're doing. And if those aren't in balance, then something's not going to work well. And I think in the case of the silos, right, they focused on the safety component, but they missed the productivity and the quality component like you can't,
David Kozlowsky: [00:17:31] Right?
Peter Koch: [00:17:32] It wasn't functional for the work that they were doing.
David Kozlowsky: [00:17:36] Right. And that becomes that's going to become plainly evident when we start talking about low slope roofs, because that's one area where there really is a vast difference between, you know, effectiveness and costs in some cases and the seamless integration on the on the flat roofs.
Peter Koch: [00:17:53] Yeah, very true. All right. Awesome. So let's jump in and talk a little bit about the requirement so that OSHA has a duty [00:18:00] for fall protection and it's both it's a little different in construction and general industry. So could you talk a little bit about what OSHA requires for fall protection in the construction industry and in general industry?
David Kozlowsky: [00:18:15] Sure. Well, there's obviously a million different areas we could touch on, but sitting in fall protection and kind of talking about roofs and kind of narrowing it down a little bit. You know, the major differences are construction. The construction standard has a different kind of set of rules for construction operations or the act of roofing, whereas the general industry standard does not, the general industry standard has a set of rules that apply to all. I get this question a lot. If you know John Smith works for XYZ Company and he's up there patching a roof, isn't he in, you know, roofing operations? So his standards [00:19:00] are different, and that is not true because he's not a roofer in the act of roofing. He's still under general industry. I get that question a lot. So the biggest difference is that in for most of your clients that are not construction related clients, they should be following 19 ten and not nineteen twenty six. They should be following the general industry standard. There's a slight difference in the height standard general industry as a four foot rule, construction has a six foot rule for most applications and some slightly different ones for connecting steel and some other things. But across the board, mostly it's roughly six feet. So those are the main differences. And then other than that, they both point towards the same standards. If you look at the requirements for safety nets or guardrails or personal fall arrest systems and the loading requirements and all of that, they all point to basically the [00:20:00] same thing. So the quality. Of product that you can use to solve either one is the same, so there's no difference there. And so I think what we're going to do is probably focus maybe a little bit more on the general industry. I guess today it's kind of confusing, but 1910.28 has a lot of information in it. And the construction standard, other than removing the exemption for residential roofers, hasn't that portion subpart M hasn't really changed significantly in the last number of years, so I feel like the listeners are probably pretty well up to speed on that. So maybe we'll focus a little bit more on the general industry.
Peter Koch: [00:20:48] Yeah, I think I think we will. There's a that's a big topic, but before we delve into that, I think it is important to restate that it's been a number of years already since the [00:21:00] fall protection exemption for residential roofing has gone by the wayside. So that is no longer. If you are doing residential roofing, you are required to have fall protection when you are six feet above the ground or a surface above the surface that you're working on.
David Kozlowsky: [00:21:18] Correct.
Peter Koch: [00:21:19] So you got to have it. And there's multiple different ways to do that. And there's some different requirements if you're on a low pitched roof versus a steep pitched roof. And maybe we can spend a moment defining those two things because it gives a different threshold for the level of protection that's necessary.
David Kozlowsky: [00:21:37] I was going to say most of your residential roofing would fall under a steep pitched roof. I know there are some houses built with a low, low, low slope, but most of them would fall under the steep. But OSHA defines the line of demarcation at four 12, four over 12, so four inches of rise and 12 inches of run. If [00:22:00] the roof is four 12 or less, then that's considered a low slope roof. It's walkable, and so the standards and rules are a little bit different. Once you get above four 12, that's a steep slope roof. A lot of the options for steep slope roof go away. A lot of options that you have for low slope go away, it becomes very limited. So on a steep pitched roof, you have basically, for practical reasons, pretty much personal fall arrest systems. You do still have guardrails which are extremely difficult to set up, especially on a residential roof. I've never seen anybody really do it effectively. Safety netting is still an option, but it's not really practical. So for a steep pitched roof, you're mostly limited to a personal fall arrest system, which would include some type of anchor, a connecting device that includes some sort of energy absorbing device [00:23:00] in it. And then your harness the big three.
Peter Koch: [00:23:03] Yeah. And I think for those specifically for like the difference between your guardrail system, which is what you'd normally want to see from an engineering control standpoint for fall protection, you can set up on a steep pitched roof a good system that will prevent you from getting off the roof in the first place or falling off the roof in the first place. So if you slip and fall on the roof and you don't fall off the roof, you're eliminating the need for rescue. You have probably much less significant injuries that will occur if you're on a steep pitched roof, and all you ever do is put guardrails on the bottom and someone takes the big whipper from the peak of the roof. You're probably going through the guardrail because the requirements for guardrails are like we talked about the last time 200 pounds in any direction. If you're a 200 pound guy and you're sliding down the roof, you're hitting that guardrail with a lot more than 200 pounds of force. So you're going to the ground.
David Kozlowsky: [00:23:58] Yeah, so the [00:24:00] options are a little bit more limited as far as tying off on a steep pitched roof. There really is very little reason or excuse in today's day and age why you can't other than making excuses about it being too hard or too difficult or too cumbersome. Other than that, there's plenty of product available. I don't care what kind of roof that you're working on. There's probably something out there that's compatible may require a little extra effort or work, but it's definitely there's definitely plenty of product out there that's available for that.
Peter Koch: [00:24:37] Sure. And I think what you're talking about is really the anchorage, right? So that's the bigger challenge for most folks of where and how and what do I use to set up my anchor to connect my lifeline into or my lanyard into? And that becomes somewhat of a challenge. But like you said, there is a myriad of different types [00:25:00] of anchors that can be used. Out there, some which will penetrate the roof and some will not penetrate the roof, even there's plenty of different options out there for you.
David Kozlowsky: [00:25:10] People just need to research what's available for options for residential roofing. There are different ways to set up a system which can make it easier and simpler. One of the biggest problems is rope management. So when you talked about setting up a system so that someone wouldn't fall off the roof, that requires good rope management. And so ninety nine percent of the complaints that you listed for a residential roofers basically center around the rope management so you have your ropes and your grab and you're constantly if you're doing it properly, your rope is almost always in one hand, and whatever you're doing is always in the other because you're always adjusting, especially if you're nailing shingles. Those guys are going back and forth on the roof so much it's almost [00:26:00] impossible to employ effective rope management. If you're not switching Anchorage points or if you don't have different people working in different sections of the roof because rope management can become, you know, dangerous if you're not paying attention to it. So in an effort to have freedom of movement and not get held up, most of these guys will just pay themselves out a bunch of slack behind the rope, grab and the anchor. And so what could potentially happen if someone fell off the roof as you could hit the ground before the rope gets taut, depending on how high the roof is and how much rope you have paid out so you can move around, it's basically you're putting it on for looks, but it has actually no functional value whatsoever. And so to manage that, it is a little bit more difficult a retractable [00:27:00] is a better solution. But there's a lot of people that would disagree with me on that. There's been many case studies done about retractables on pitched roofs and how quickly they lock up and the potential for someone to slide off the roof and actually not engage the retractable because they're not moving fast enough. So it doesn't think they're falling. So that would be ineffective in preventing them from necessarily falling off the side. But it would turn into, you know, a free fall once you went off the side. So there's many different people that have many different arguments on that, and I don't know that there's really necessarily a right answer other than the manufacturer. So you should always go back to the manufacturer if the manufacturer allows the retractable on a pitched roof, you can use it. If the manufacturer says no, then you, then you definitely shouldn't. But rope management is definitely the biggest complaint and the biggest area I see [00:28:00] with problems with roofing. So if we could find a way to make that easier or find ways for companies to plan the jobs to make it a little bit easier for the workers, then that would remove quite a few objections.
Peter Koch: [00:28:16] Yeah, I'm sure that's a big objection that you have and you have a large roof where you have multiple people up there, even if it's just a couple of guys up there and they're crossing paths. It can be challenging just managing your own rope. And then, like you said, making sure that I don't have slack, that my rope grab is always at my anchor or higher. That provides the greatest level of protection for me because as you said, if I pay out enough slack to be able to move anywhere on the rope or anywhere on the roof that I need to without having to manage my rope grab. And I do take a fall. You may hit the ground or if it's high enough, you may not hit the ground, but you pull your anchor out because it's not [00:29:00] designed for the forces that the extended freefall will cause.
David Kozlowsky: [00:29:06] And that's the biggest fear to me and to probably a lot of other people, too, is because, you know, if the product is not being used properly in a lot of cases doesn't really matter. Once the lawsuits start flying around, it very much becomes more about percentages and bean counting and how who, which companies we can get to pay out, how much money, rather than whether or not the person was actually at fault or not. And so that's a big fear to me and to a lot of other people with the roof anchors is, you know, they're only designed to hold a certain amount of load and used properly. They are fine. But as you said, if you're if you don't have or if you have too much rope paid out and you overload the anchor, I mean, it could, you know, it could come off the roof and then we're stuck proving [00:30:00] that. Wasn't the anchor that failed, that it was the usage and that can be that can be difficult sometimes.
Peter Koch: [00:30:06] Very difficult, very, very, very difficult.
David Kozlowsky: [00:30:09] And it behooves employers to pay attention to that too, because, you know, most of these contractors, you know, they leave it up to the employees to, you know, use the fall protection and they don't really pay attention. But I have news for all of them. They're going to get drug into it just as much as anybody else. If an employee falls off a roof and gets injured severely, even to the point of maybe disabled or worse, everybody's getting sued, including them, and they're going to start looking at their safety policies. They're going to start looking at their safety plan. If they have anything written up, they're going to look at the job. Was anybody paying attention to what they were doing and out of sight? Out of mind is not a not a good thing.
Peter Koch: [00:30:56] No, not a good thing at all. And those are some basic requirements that OSHA has [00:31:00] from a compliance standpoint. They require training. They require you to have a plan before you go up on the roof. You're required to have the appropriate equipment for the hazards and exposures that your people have and that they're not exposed before they have training and access to the proper equipment. So those are all parts of the general fall protection requirements that OSHA has, whether it's construction or general industry. I wanted to back up just a second and ask you a question, and this is kind of in setup for a steep pitched roof. And these are this is not going to be a hard and fast piece. But in your experience, as you are looking at a roof or talking to an employee or an employer about setup, how do you assess a steep pitched roof as to where might be the best places to put your anchorages? Are there any recommendations that you would feel comfortable talking about?
David Kozlowsky: [00:31:59] Yeah, so [00:32:00] a lot of it centers around the conditions of the job. So you're going to want to look at the size of the roof and you're going to want to look at, even more importantly, the fall clearance distance between the roof and the ground. There is a lot of fall protection out there that were you to be working and actually fall off the edge, may or may not arrest a fall, especially in residential. I mean, if you're looking at a, let's say, a six 12 pitch on a ranch, you know, a low built ranch on the eve of the roof may only be, you know, 10 feet or even less from grade. And so, you know, if somebody's standing near the leading edge and falls off, I mean, it becomes highly critical that the system was set up and is being used specifically if you even have any hope of arresting that fall before someone falls off. So [00:33:00] a rule of thumb that I try to go by is 15 degrees off perpendicular. So you want to look at your roof and you want to take a measurement on the length of it, and then you want to draw up a perpendicular line from the peak down to the to the eave. And then you want to draw two more lines in a V-shape from the peak at 15 degrees on either side. So you're drawing like a 30 degree window. And so what you want to do is you want to set up enough. If you're going to use a peak anchor and not a line of some sort, you want to set up enough peak anchors so you have the entire edge or eve of the roof covered in those 15 degree windows off perpendicular. That's a good rule of thumb. Number one So it's not really easy to say put one every so many feet or this or that, because depending on the length of the run and the length of the ridge, I mean, those can [00:34:00] all affect, you know, how often you may put one every 12 feet or 10 feet or even six, depending on what's going on. So to say X number of feet doesn't work. The 30 degree window is a much more effective system. And so what that does is that sets up enough anchors so that you can work an area. Your line will not be too far off center, so it gives you a good working area. It helps limit and prevent pendulum falls, so it prevents you from being tied off too far away from the anchor so that if you fall, you don't swing towards perpendicular because that's what's going to happen and then risk impacting something below you or even the ground. And it gives you enough points to have multiple workers up there so that each, you know, we recommend each one takes a zone. I know a lot of these guys like to lay shingles and literally run back and forth the entire length of the roof with the nail gun. [00:35:00] But. With this kind of thing that's really just not that practical. You're going to tangle up your ropes, tangle up your air hoses and tangle up everything, so you have enough anchors that there can be enough guys working their own zones to get that accomplished. So that's kind of a rule of thumb that we use that really helps setting up and then again, management paying attention to the amount of rope between you and the anchorage point.
Peter Koch: [00:35:27] That's great. That's really good advice that 15 degrees off and then have overlapping zones so that you cover the entire roof edge. Good. I think that helps. So let's move from our steep pitch roofs because we'll have another we'll focus on that. Maybe another podcast. But what we really wanted to talk more about is that low pitch, that low sloped roof or a flat roof. And granted, there's a lot of roofs out there, not so much in the new England area from a [00:36:00] residential standpoint, but certainly commercially. There's a ton of flat roofs out there and there are some rules around building or constructing a flat roof that would be covered under the construction standard and some different operations. But once that's done, once it's built, the majority of the time, you're going to have employees or contractors up maintaining either the roof or the HVAC units or the skylights or something else that's up there. So let's talk some more about the low slope or a flat roof and how or what are the what are the standards and how does fall protection enter into managing the exposures around a low pitched roof in general industry?
David Kozlowsky: [00:36:48] Sure. So the first thing is people need the first thing just by way of introduction is that people need to start thinking about their roof as another floor of their building really [00:37:00]. Most people don't. They think about the roof as being out of sight, out of mind. But OSHA considers it another floor of your building. If employees are going up there and doing work, which means all of the same standards that apply to general industry for work inside also apply on the roof. The four foot rule, the unprotected leading edge open floor openings, which would be skylights or roof hatches. I mean, all of those things, it's a walking working surface. And so kind of what they did with 1910.28 I felt like was they included low sloped roof into the walking working surface, integrated much, much more deeply to hopefully help people understand that, you know, unguarded floor openings and edges and whatnot on a roof are the same standard as they are inside your building. So what they did was [00:38:00] they took some of the construction standard and applied it. But then they included a lot of things that are not included in the construction standard. So what I can do if you want is just do a brief overview of what the what the standard basically says. So for low slope roof, for activities on the roof, even if you're patching a roof because you're not actually a roofer in the act of roofing or construction, you're just making a repair, which is maintenance. So even if you're repairing a roof or patching a hole or working on HVAC equipment, that's all wrapped into maintenance of the roof. So OSHA set up three zones now. So the old interpretations of there's no safe distance from the edge and all those vague things are pretty much gone away. They still don't feel there's any safe distance from the edge. However, they have at least now [00:39:00] set up some lines of demarcation and some options from what for what you may or may not do within those areas. So the two lines are six feet and 15 feet is the two distances that you need to remember. So your whole roof area should be protected, and the most dangerous area is area within six feet of the edge. They've highlighted that is obviously the most dangerous. You're the closest to the edge, a trip or a slip, you know, could easily lead to going over the edge. So any work or any activity at all, even if it's just walking and not working any activity at all within six feet of the edge of the roof must have a guardrail, fall arrest, fall restraint, personal fall arrest, a safety net, something. There's a list of things that they put in that you're allowed to do. They mostly center around guardrails, personal fall arrest and safety nets, and then fall restraint also kind of gets lumped into personal [00:40:00] fall arrest. So, but if you're within six feet of the edge, you either need to be tied off one hundred percent of the time to a horizontal lifeline or roof anchors or something, or have a guardrail or a safety net if you're within six feet of the edge. So the next area is what if I'm not quite six feet from the edge, what if I'm just a little bit more than six feet? What do I have to do? So the next line of demarcation is 15 feet. So if you're in a in a zone on the roof, that's between six feet and 15 feet, you have the same options that you had before. You can put a guardrail or you can have a horizontal lifeline or roof anchors or safety netting or some other form of fall protection, but they've also opened up an area of a designated area. So from six feet to 15 feet, if you are up there temporarily and [00:41:00] infrequently, they will allow a designated area. So what is temporary and infrequent? Well, they define it in the preamble. They don't really say it in the standard, but in the 500 page preamble to the standard that they came out with, they kind of they kind of defined temporary as two hours and they define infrequent as monthly. So if you're performing monthly maintenance, you are not up there infrequently. And if you're up there for more than two hours, you're not up there temporarily. So if you have an HVAC unit up there and you only go up twice a year to replace a filter, but it takes you more than two hours to replace the filter. That's not temporary and infrequent because it doesn't meet both standards, and it's important to remember that your roof area is considered one area, not just spot that you're working on. So this is the thing that I deal with all the [00:42:00] time. It's like, Oh, well, I'll just put a guardrail right here where this unit is, and I'll cover the standard. Meanwhile, there's 14 units on the roof, and they might only spend 30 minutes at each unit, but they're up on their roof for an entire day, working, replacing all these filters. So your whole roof area becomes the standard that you need to meet, and there's a few different ways we can. We can approach that. But just by way of general knowledge, if you're up there temporarily and infrequently, which means you're less than once a month and you spend less than two hours, both of those are met, then you can do what's called a designated area, which means you can set up a warning line system as long as you stay behind it. And it's very important to note that a designated area is very specific. It is a physical barrier between you and the edge of the roof. It is not a line painted on the [00:43:00] roof. It's not a sign posted on the thing saying don't go past this line. It is a physical barrier with actual standards. A warning line should be between thirty nine and forty five inches tall and must have a two hundred pound brake strength minimum and has to be visible from 25 feet away, and the posts need to withstand 16 pounds of force at the top. So all of those standards point to no, you cannot paint a line on the roof and call that your warning line. It's a physical barrier, and there's a bunch of reasons in the preamble they give why a warning line's a physical barrier, but you can do that around areas if it's temporary and infrequent. So then we've established now, OK, let's say the roof hatch comes up in the middle of the roof and all of my equipment is centered towards the center of the roof. Do I really need to do anything now because I'm more than 15 feet from the edge? [00:44:00]So at 15 feet, if all of your equipment is set up more than 15 feet and you're up there regularly, you know, like I said, monthly maintenance or weekly maintenance if you're up there regularly. Yes, you are still required to have something. You must still have a designated area to corral people into where they're going to be working. So we erect a lot of warning line at 15 feet back from the edge, where rooftops don't have units that are closer than 15 feet and they're much further towards the center. So we set up a designated area at the center of the roof, 15 feet back. We put the warning lines. You can go up there as much as you want and do as much as you want for as long as you want, if you have that designated area. If you're a small company and it's more than 15 feet from the edge, you have one unit [00:45:00] on the roof, you go up there once a year and you change a belt in the filter and it takes you a half an hour to do that. That is definitely considered temporary and infrequent. OSHA does allow you to not do anything under that rare situation. It's temporary and infrequent. You do not need to install any type of designated area or fall protection. However, controls would definitely need to be in place. So just because someone tells you, no you don't need to install any fall protection doesn't get you off the hook. And I've done quite a few things on this telling people, you know, they say, What do I need to do? And each situation is different. But at a minimum, if you have a roof that's temporary and infrequent and you're allowing employees to go up there without fall protection, we would recommend that minimum a roof sign off sheet for people that go up there to sign off, that they've had rooftop training. [00:46:00] We recommend that you have a map of the roof with a walk path delineated. And during the training, you tell employees this is where you may and may not go and this is where you stay and have them sign off on that. The roof itself should have a delineated walk path. There should be pavers or the glued down path or something. There should definitely be a delineated walk path from the entry point to the thing, and the sign off sheet should make sure people commit to staying on the walk path and not deviating from it. So those are at a minimum, a few things that people should do to cover themselves, because one of the big reasons why OSHA said there's no safe distance from the edge is because employees wander. They do it all the time. I've done it and he's sitting on a roof and you're walking around and you get bored or whatever. So you, you know, you walk [00:47:00] over to the edge and you look down to the parking lot, you see what's going on, and lots of people do that. They wander. So you want to make people sign off saying that they're not, you know, they're not going to deviate from that walk path. So that's at a minimum. Those are the kind of things you should do. So yes, there is a rare instance where you don't need to have fall protection at more than 15 feet from the edge, but it has to be temporary and infrequent. So those are the those are the three zones, the two lines of demarcation, six feet and 15 feet. And when you can and can't use a designated area or a physical, you know, fall protection or prevention system, and that's all in 1910.28, I think it's B 13 because the paragraph and it's all in there and you can review that. But those are those are basically the zones now.
Peter Koch: [00:47:58] Let's take a quick break at MEMIC, [00:48:00] while we strive to help our policyholders prevent workplace injuries, we also understand that they do happen. No workplace is immune. And when they do happen, a solid injury management plan must be in place, including reporting and a return to work program. Statistics show that returning an injured worker to work in a temporary modified duty capacity instead of keeping them out of work until one hundred percent, will reduce both the length and cost of the claim, as well as increased the likelihood of a positive outcome for the worker and the employer. Did you know that MEMIC has created a seven step process for developing a return to work plan, as well as a matrix to rate your current plan against what our team has found to be the gold standard in return to work programs? Check out our claim, reporting and return to work resources at MEMIC.com/employers. Now let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:49:03] That [00:49:00] makes sense, and I think there's a lot of information there. But it does make it a little more clear, so temporary and infrequent, you know, it is kind of unfortunate that they buried that in the preamble with those definitions are because I know that that information is or that question has come up quite often. What does that mean? But that was a great answer. So, you know, less than less than a month in less than two hours. And then the other point you made it shouldn't be lost on our listeners is that the roof is an, take the roof as an entirety. You could have one unit or you can have 50 units up there. And again, it doesn't matter if you're going to spend 30 minutes at one unit or 30 minutes on the roof, right? If you're going to spend 30 minutes at each of the 50, it's still going to be beyond that temporary requirement. So then you're moved into. I need to do something. I need to do something different. I can't.
David Kozlowsky: [00:49:58] We've done a couple of roofs [00:50:00] where people have that situation where they have like I can think of one roof in particular that had a half a dozen units on the roof and they were all within 15 feet, not quite to the six feet mark, but within 15 feet. And so at each one, individually, they could maybe make an argument that it was temporary and infrequent. But the roof area itself, when they're up there, they're walking around and they're going from unit to unit and they're not paying attention to where they are. And so what we were able to do is we went up and we kind of corralled each unit with a guardrail and then we just set warning lines back 15 feet from the edge and then just had little pathways connecting the central part of the building to each one. So the employees were corralled within an area that was designated that you don't go out of this area. And then as they approached closer to the edge where they had the actual unit, there was a physical hard guardrail to meet to [00:51:00] meet the standard so you can do hybrid type systems. We do hybrids all the time that are combination of physical guardrail barrier and then designated area to keep people corralled and within the area that you want them to be.
Peter Koch: [00:51:17] Yeah, great idea hadn't even really thought about it that way. I tend to be more black and white when it comes to some of those solutions, and that hybrid solution might be very effective. If you've got, well, if you don't have the ability to put guardrails up on the entire perimeter of the roof, which would be the most simplistic solution. But there is a lot of equipment to make that happen.
David Kozlowsky: [00:51:40] This goes back to what you were saying when you just said that this goes back to kind of our discussion back at the beginning about, you know, seamlessly integrating and the cost. So the most effective solution, the simplest and most effective and best solution is for, you know, if you're up on the roof, you just put a guardrail around the perimeter [00:52:00] of the roof. Problem solved. You can have as many people as you want up there wherever they want. No limit. You can do whatever you want. You can shovel the roof, you know as much as you want and you're completely within the standard. But it's also really expensive. I mean, a lot of guardrail. Sometimes the weight is an issue. If we can't do penetrations, they want to do counter weighted guardrail. You know, with all the weight up there, sometimes that's an issue in the cost. So you know, there's definitely there's definitely the simplest and easiest solution isn't always the most cost effective.
Peter Koch: [00:52:33] Yeah. So that's a great point. And it gets to the fact that you, you know, as a business owner or building owner, if you have a flat roof that you, you have to have people on, it may be worth your while to jump out there and contract with someone to do an assessment to figure out what are your options because you might want to say, Yeah, I can do that, we can put up guardrails all the way around the roof. [00:53:00] I hadn't even really thought about the if I can't penetrate the roof, from my stanchion, for my guardrail now, I have to have a weight that's going to allow for that 200 pounds of outward and downward force. And that's pretty substantial when you start thinking about how many stanchions you need on some of these large commercial roofs. So yeah, it's a really good point. Reach out get some help.
David Kozlowsky: [00:53:21] Yeah, get some help. And each in each situation, you know, is unique. A lot of them are unique. So we have the ability to have a combination, like I said of guardrails and maybe warning lines or other solutions that might help somebody accomplish what they are trying to do without breaking the bank, so to speak.
Peter Koch: [00:53:46] Yeah, great. Hey, so I've got a question for you and it's around access. So I got I don't have internal access to my roof. I have to have external access to my roof for whatever reason, right? Didn't get didn't get [00:54:00] planned correctly. Didn't wasn't in the budget to put internal access in, so I'm climbing up on a fixed ladder or maybe even a portable ladder. And how do I manage that type of thing within flat roofs? So what is what are the requirements around access zones?
David Kozlowsky: [00:54:16] So what we usually do with a fixed ladder, first thing to do is look at the look at the height of the ladder. So if it's under twenty four feet, you don't need to do anything specifically with the ladder itself. But if it's over twenty four feet, then the ladder itself needs to have fall protection as of November of twenty eighteen. The standard for ladders was changed to basically say anything produced after that state after that date should not have a ladder well or cage on it and should have active fall protection. And then basically it was left that after November of twenty [00:55:00] thirty six, that I think the original standards said that all ladders had to have the cages removed. But I think they changed that to say that they only had to be removed if they interfered with the function of the fall arrest system. So if it's over twenty four feet and you have a cage, if it was built before twenty eighteen, you're currently OK. You have until twenty thirty six to upgrade that in retrofit it. But if it was built after that date, it should not have a cage on it and it should have an active fall protection system. So what we do, what we try to do with the ladders is once you once you've established that the ladder itself is safe and it meets the standards and it has fall arrest if it needs. Usually what we do is depending on again, the layout of the roof. If it's a small roof and there's it's densely compacted and there's a bunch of things up there. Normally what we just do is try to ring the roof in guardrail, [00:56:00] tie the guardrail into the ladder and put a swing gate at the top of the ladder. So you always want to have that swing gate just because that that becomes an entry point or an unguarded opening at the side. So if it's a larger roof and there's not a lot of stuff right in the area. What we usually try to do is we try to put like a little corral or a little runway. So we try to get back 15 feet from the edge of the roof, or sometimes 10 feet, depending again, on the usage and how often you're up there. But we try to get back at least 10 or 15 feet with a hard guardrail, little runway or corral with a swing gate at the end of it. And then we tie that into either additional guard rail or a warning line, a designated area from there. So we try to corral people to approach the ladder down a guardrail area. So as they approach through six feet from the edge, they're protected in between the guardrails [00:57:00] with a swing gate at the end, and then they can open the gate and get onto the ladder from there.
Peter Koch: [00:57:06] Yeah, so full protection all the way through from the time you step into that six foot danger zone until you either get back onto the ladder to climb down or you get into the area that's beyond 15 feet or the workspace that you're within that warning line area.
David Kozlowsky: [00:57:24] Yes. Yeah. So we usually tie hard guardrails back from some thing, either warning line or guardrail, or sometimes there is nothing. What we've done and we've done it a few places is we'll put a kind of the runway to the ladder with a gate and then at the end of the runway is either an anchor point or access to the horizontal lifeline system. So when they come out, they go on before they exit the kind of corralled area they hook on to the fall protection and then they go on the roof from there. That's most common on [00:58:00] roofs that have a little bit of a slope to them. I could think of one client that has it's a pretty low slope. It's definitely under four 12, but it's a white TPO roof. So when it's wet or if it's even snowed at all, it is absolutely treacherous. And so we definitely wanted 100 percent tie off up there. They didn't want to try to ring the guardrails all around. I'm not sure that it would have worked anyway unless they were permanently mounted because of the slipperiness of the roof and the counterweight and the fact that it was sloped. So it probably would have had to have it permanently penetrating. So we made sure that there was a swing gate at the ladder, that it was tied into the ladder, that it was highly secure all the way back to the point where they tie off onto the fall protection. So that's another option as well. You can always tie that runway back [00:59:00] into an anchor point.
Peter Koch: [00:59:03] Yeah, that makes sense, and I haven't seen it employed, but I can see where that could be employed well, especially from a snow removal standpoint as we think about the New England area and you might have a multi-tiered roof where you might have a steep pitch above, but you've got an overhang that is within that four 12. And just to be safe on that, as you come up to stand on that, it's going to be less than six feet sometimes and having that horizontal lifeline running behind you that I can tie into and then shoveled down to the leading edge of that roof and then come back to shovel against the end.
David Kozlowsky: [00:59:41] So, that goes beyond. So that goes beyond a kind of a controlled access zone into what we call a designated area.
Peter Koch: [00:59:50] Ok.
David Kozlowsky: [00:59:51] So we've done that quite a few times on roofs. So especially for shoveling operations on large roofs. One of the complaints is, well, I you [01:00:00] know, first of all, this snow up there, I can't tie off to, you know, roof anchors because they're buried in snow. The cables are buried or I need 10 guys up there shoveling and your cables only rated for two. I can't have five cable systems running around the whole roof. I mean, it's just not going to work. So what we do is a designated area. We take a section, we take the warning line and ring the roof with morning lines. So you can have basically as many people as you want back from the edge shoveling snow to one or more designated areas, which are areas closer than 15 feet where employees will stay permanently as movers to get the snow from the roof off the roof. So in those areas, what we do is we warning line it or guardrail it off and then install a couple of anchors so that when they go beyond the warning line and remove the warning line, they go into an area that has [01:01:00] anchors for fall protection. Those employees stay in that area tied off and move the snow off the roof and have everybody else kind of feeding snow towards them for shoveling. So again, another hybrid solution that's not uniform throughout the roof, picking pieces that work the best for each area.
Peter Koch: [01:01:20] Now that makes, it makes sense. And I'm thinking it from thinking about it, from a business owner or a building owner standpoint. You might not actually have your guys removing the snow, but if you're installing a system like this, you're going to need to do a little bit of training about how this particular system works with your subcontractors so that they can take advantage of the safety or the protection pieces that you have, regardless of compliance, because again, go back to a comment that you made before. If one of your subcontractors falls off the roof at some point in time, you're going to get hauled into that lawsuit, or you're going to get hauled into the worker's comp claim as well. So regardless of how it works, you're going to get [01:02:00] tied back to it.
David Kozlowsky: [01:02:01] From that, you're much more versed in that area than I am. So you would have more information about that other than I do know there is a bit of gray area in this particular type of applications to fire is who's actually responsible for the fall protection. The way it's mostly been handled is the building owner provides it because usually what happens is they'll say, OK, you can't do this unless you have fall protection, and then they'll either put it back on the contractor to bring all of their own fall protection, which becomes difficult when the roof is covered in snow. So the contractor kicks it back to the building owner and says, Well, OK, that's all fine and good, but what do you expect me to put up there when it's already covered in snow? So there's a little bit of gray area there. I know for building maintenance, especially façade maintenance, which is a different set of standards. We won't go into that today. But if façade maintenance, if you're over the side of the roof suspending doing [01:03:00] anything that does fall back on the building owner exclusively. So that's definitely there's no gray area there. But for this, I'm not really sure. Maybe, you'd have some insight into, you know, who is actually ultimately responsible for this or is it basically what I've been saying? It's basically an agreement between the building owner and the contractor as to who's going to supply it.
Peter Koch: [01:03:27] So OSHA's going to look at it from the perspective of the you're going to have the exposing employer, the controlling employer or the creating employer. So there could be multiple different roles that the employer or the subcontractor can play, depending on what they're doing. So do you own the building and did you hire the subcontractor? Did you create the hazard? Did you expose the employee to the hazard? So there is some liability around there from an OSHA standpoint, depending on what part [01:04:00] you play in. That role from a workers comp standpoint, it's going to come down to who are you employed by? And so if I'm the worker's comp person and I'm insuring the subcontractor and the subcontractor didn't put the or didn't use fall protection, it doesn't matter because they got hurt. It's going to be on my dime and it's going to be something that I'm going to have to manage as the worker's comp carrier between myself and the person that I am insuring from a loss control consultant standpoint. When I'm going out to work with a subcontractor who might be in the business of either roofing or if they're going to do something for a snow removal or maintenance, then my recommendation is you have to protect your employees. So there's two routes for you to go. You can either work with that building owner to provide you with the appropriate fall protection that [01:05:00] fits within the work that you're going to be doing and the workflow that you have to do to maintain safety, quality and productivity, or you bring it yourself and you implement it there. So at the end of that long description, I think the bottom line comes down to not from a worker's comp standpoint, but or even from a worker's comp standpoint, because it helps clarify is to make sure that there's a contract that you describe who's responsible for what within the contract that you have with the subcontractor. So if you're the building owner or the business owner and you're reaching out to a subcontractor, make sure it's outlined in the requirement. Who's responsible for the fall protection and following all of the OSHA rules around fall protection? That would be that'd be my recommendation to one to make it clear and to then to have something to fall back to if there ever is the unfortunate situation where you do have a problem.
Peter Koch: [01:05:56] It's been a great conversation so far around fall protection. What I like [01:06:00] to touch on it, just a couple of fringe things that come on to the flat roof discussion here. I almost said flat Earth discussion, but the flat roof discussion, right? So are there any requirements or changes to the requirements around or if there is around roofs size? So if I got a big roof or a small roof, are there any changes around what I need to do for fall protection around roof size, David?
David Kozlowsky: [01:06:25] Not per the standard other than the roof size and the amount of equipment on the roof would probably it would do more to limit your options rather than to require a different set of standards. The only deciding factor in 1910.28 is the slope of the roof. And then after that, you know, the larger the roof, the more options you have if you have a small 20 by 20 roof. Obviously, it's going to be hard to stay more than six or 15 feet from the edge at all times. So it just basically would just do [01:07:00] to limit your options.
Peter Koch: [01:07:01] That's good. That's a really good point and just a good thing to consider because I want people that are listening to understand that we're talking about the general industry standard 1910.28, not the construction standard where there are some changes if you're doing if you're working as a roofer or doing roof work, actually, there are some roof size requirements in there and we're not going to touch on those. That's going to be a topic for another podcast. So thanks for that clarification. Another one I have are what are the fall protection requirements if I'm actually doing an installation or building, say, an HVAC system on an existing roof. So I'm not maintaining, but I'm not actually building the roof. Are there any differences in what's required for fall protection if I'm doing that kind of activity, either as a subcontractor or as the building owner?
David Kozlowsky: [01:07:54] Yeah, so that's basically going to go back to the activity. So [01:08:00] as you were saying before about the liability, the difference between, you know, workers comp and liability. So workers comp is made to cover the employees of the organization. And so basically, the 1910.28 is the general industry standard is I mean, it's not really a perfect correlation, but I kind of like in that towards the worker's comp kind of thing where it applies to the employee. So if you're XYZ company and you're maintaining the roof and your specific employees are up there, that's what 1910.28 is mainly supposed to cover. Not exactly like I said, but mainly once you switch over, like when you said the word construction, you hit the nail right on the head. You're doing roofing construction with, say, building a new HVAC system. Then you really did cross over from [01:09:00] general industry into construction. So the standards that the workers, including the roofers and anybody working on erecting or dismantling the existing HVAC would fall under the construction standard, so they would have to follow that set of rules as far as that's concerned.
Peter Koch: [01:09:21] So just making that differentiation, knowing that if I'm building something, constructing something, I'm going to be having to look into that different set of standards. And again, I hate to keep saying this, but there's just so much in this one particular topic on flat roofs for general industry that we don't want to cross too much into the construction side of things. So we'll deal with that in a different podcast. So one more challenge and this happens. Actually, it's happened fairly recently within Maine's history, especially in our wintertime, are skylights and skylights and flat roofs. We've had employees [01:10:00] who are up there doing maintenance, who are up there doing inspections actually fall through a skylight that's hidden underneath the snow or they're not paying attention and they take a step back and they fall into the skylight. So what are the requirements around skylights for flat roofs regarding fall protection?
David Kozlowsky: [01:10:20] So the rule of thumb for protecting a skylight can start with the curb height, so the guard rail standard is forty two inches. So in a situation where you might have an architectural skylight that might actually have a forty two inch curb height so that glass doesn't start until you're at forty two inches, and that really becomes a non-issue at that point because you're not. It's not technically part of the walking working surface. Once the glass portion gets lower than 42 whether it be a architectural type skylight or one of the smaller like the dome light type skylights, [01:11:00] then those. I'm just going to come out and say those need to be protected either with a screen or a guardrail. There are limited situations if you have documentation from the manufacturer stating that the glass is rated for, you know, a walk on surface. Basically, if you don't have that documentation from the manufacturer, regardless of however strong you think it might be, then you will need to. You will need to get that protected. If an inspector goes up there and sees a skylight and it's not protected, they're going to ask you for documentation showing that. And if you don't have it, you'll get cited. I've seen it happen a couple of times, actually, especially those the ones that get ignored. Most people pretty much know those little dome skylights, you know, by the time, even if they're new from the factory with whatever pound load on them, by the time they've been up there for 20 years and [01:12:00] they're all faded and cracked. And, you know, I mean, that's pretty self-explanatory. The ones that I see people get dinged on the most is the architectural ones because there are a lot of them have really heavy duty double pane glass, and some of them are designed to be walk on for maintenance and whatnot. And so I see people get dinged on those because they don't have they don't have the paperwork. So if you have paperwork, you're OK. But other than that, you should definitely have a guardrail or a screen of some type over it.
Peter Koch: [01:12:33] And then again, the guardrail has to meet those certain certifications or qualifications for strength. And also, I would imagine the screen has to have similar ratings for walk on or fall through, correct.
David Kozlowsky: [01:12:47] So basically, the screen kind of it's kind of a little bit different. It's a little bit different application, but the screen falls under protecting a hole, an open hole. [01:13:00] So that's really more what it's like. And the standard for protecting an open hole is that the fall protection, if you don't use a guardrail, whether you use a safety net or some other in a screen, believe it or not, loosely falls under a safety net standard. It's kind of a rigid net if you think about it. So that has to be able to withstand and you're going to have to forgive me because I think I've forgotten the exact number. It's either a three hundred and fifty or a four hundred pound bag of sand dropped from the highest point from which a person may fall, but not less than 42 inches. So in other words, if the nets mounted five feet below the surface, it has to be able to withstand that times. Five feet three. I think it's a four hundred pound is the on site and then three hundred and fifty, I think, is the test weight. But anyway, so then if you're at the walking, working surface or above, the standard says a minimum of 42 [01:14:00] inches. So I believe that most screens would be designed to that four hundred pound bag of sand at forty two inch drop. So that would be the equivalent strength required for that, right?
Peter Koch: [01:14:14] Nice. And so again, if you're going to purchase one or you're out looking for to retrofit or to replace, it's easiest actually to go and look for the manufacturer's certifications and qualifications so that you know that it's going to meet those standards. So that's always good to know. You can just even if you go build your own, have your welders fab up something and there are some particular standards that it has to meet. And then you have to prove that you are able that it's able to do that. And when you test it, it can't just be tested at that. It has to be tested beyond what the rating actually is.
David Kozlowsky: [01:14:50] Mm hmm. So and you could if you wanted to build your own, I mean, you could. But you would have to either invest in some onsite [01:15:00] testing to make sure you cover it and document it thoroughly or get it, get it engineered. So you'd have to hire a P.E. To come in and do all the calculations and stamp it. I believe OSHA would accept either one of those. I can't say the same for ANSI because they've just kind of gotten a little bit crazy with the requirements, but OSHA would, I believe, accept either one of those, yeah.
Peter Koch: [01:15:26] And you know, either way, you want to go, it's. I do find that there's enough suppliers out there and manufacturers out there that can produce something either as a one off. If you have some, some need that doesn't fit what's standard out there or they have enough that will fit some of the standard sizes for your skylights, and it'll be great.
David Kozlowsky: [01:15:49] There definitely is, and they're reasonably priced too good.
Peter Koch: [01:15:53] All right. So we're getting towards the end of where we are, and I've got one question that I've been wanting to ask you ever since our first podcast [01:16:00] since you have you got tons of creative ideas? You know, I've worked with you. Way back. Well, before we started this podcast, when I first started working for MEMIC, we actually worked together with the client to try to get some flat roof fall protection for snow removal, believe it or not. And the question is, if cost and technology were no issue and I know I mean pie in the sky. But if cost and technology were no issue, what would you create as the perfect fall prevention system for a roof?
David Kozlowsky: [01:16:31] Oh, that's so easy because and you really opened that up by saying cost and technology. Yeah, because I we've joked with clients eight million times that the first person to in invent levitation technology was going to become perfect. There's eight million reasons and times when you're on the top of something [01:17:00] and you need to protect yourself from falling off, but there is nothing above you to tie off to. There's no beam or roof or structure of any kind, and you're left constructing this massive support thing to hang a single anchor point over somebody's tank or roof or something that they need to work on. And you could ever invent a levitating anchorage point where you could just hang in mid-air and let somebody tie off too. You would put a whole lot of people out of business?
Peter Koch: [01:17:32] You definitely win. I totally thought of that. There's been many times where I'm sitting there going, if I could only have that. And you know what? That's funny because I'm right there with you. If I could, just if I could just not fall, like, take something where I could, if I could step off into space and I'm not going to fall would be perfect.
David Kozlowsky: [01:17:48] Or if you could just or if you could invent a levitating anchor point where you could just bring it above you and just tie off to it like that would be the way to go.
Peter Koch: [01:17:58] Or I think that's the [01:18:00]scouting thing. I remember when I was in scouts, when I first in scouts, they sent me off. I had to go get the left handed and smoke shifter to be able to be attached to the Skyhook. And those were the two things that I searched all over the campsite for, and they never existed, so
David Kozlowsky: [01:18:16] They never existed.
Peter Koch: [01:18:19] Awesome. So thanks, Dave. That about wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast. So thank you so much for coming on again and sharing your expertise with our listeners.
David Kozlowsky: [01:18:29] No, thank you. I love doing these. It's fun, and I appreciate that you invite me on. Thank you.
Peter Koch: [01:18:35] Oh, fantastic. So where can our listeners find out more about Safe Approach in your business and what you do
David Kozlowsky: [01:18:42] If you can go on the internet at www.safeapprocah.com? You can email us at David Kay@safeapproach.com or sales@safeapproach.com or the 800 number 800-471-1157 and we'll be happy to help.
Peter Koch: [01:18:58] Perfect. Thanks. [01:19:00] I appreciate it, and thanks for all the listeners out there for joining us today. Today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking about fall protection specifically on roofs with David Kozlowski, president and owner of Safe Approach, right here in Portland, Maine. If you have any questions about fall protection or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. Email me at Podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources, links to other podcasts with Dave, as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog. So you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates, and if you haven't done so already, I really appreciate it. If you took a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on, and if you've already done that and subscribe. Thank you because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing [01:20:00] the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think you'll get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
When it comes to workplace safety, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can shed light on why you can’t gain real traction in developing your safety culture. From physiological needs to self-Actualization and accountability, this episode will look at how miss alignment of business objectives and employee needs can be the cause of on-going crisis management that will prevent us from moving our safety culture forward.
In 2005 Patrick Nelson, while serving in the US Army paratroops, had an experience that changed his life and his perspective on being a leader. Leadership, good or bad, is made up of moments. On this podcast, Patrick helps us see the impact of those moments and how leaders can engage safety through story telling.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. It was a summer a while ago, and my wife Laura, pregnant with our first daughter and I were traveling back from a quick trip to visit my family and celebrate a birthday. It's about a five hour drive one way, and we're like, we always do with family trying to fit it in with an increasingly hectic work schedule. So we had left late from my family's house and our ETA back to Maine was somewhere around two a.m. and as was my habit, I was driving and around two hours or so out from our home. Laura asked if I wanted to take a break and have her drive. And I remember in the moment choosing to tell her, nah I'm OK. And then she should go ahead and catch some sleep so she would be all set for work in the morning. Leading my family, right? I remember telling her that, and then she asked me if I was sure and she had this look on her face like, Are you really sure you're OK? And [00:01:00] the next thing I remember is her screaming at me, and then we were in the guardrail. So leadership, good or bad is made up of moments, and these moments are where decisions and choices get made. Sometimes they're obviously critical to the team's path, while other times the purpose of those moments is not so obvious. Sometimes the choice in the moment is easy, and sometimes it's hard. Sometimes you can clearly see the potential impact of the choice, while in other moments the future of that choice is cloudy, but always. In hindsight, if we look closely enough, we can see the choice or choices in the moments that were made that were the cause of the success or failure and the night that we crashed into the guardrail. I was given at least two of those moments, and it's only by the grace of God and my wife screaming at me that my family has more. So as a leader, whether you're a spouse, your coach or manager, supervisor, [00:02:00] CEO, Commander, Sargent doesn't matter. You will have leadership moments where you're going to be at a crossroads and have the opportunity to choose to act or pass on that moment. And when it comes to safety, these moments are all around us. You think about a moment where you saw one of your team maybe not wearing safety glasses or choosing to take a shortcut that you yourself had taken just the day before, or maybe even with that employee together? Or that employee might be rushing to get the job done, making normal work a crisis. And you didn't take a moment, you name it. I expect we've all had an experience like this to reflect on. And then when you do choose to act on that moment, especially in the workplace for workplace safety, what do you get in the response when you act on that moment? It's my experience that that receiver is not always gushing to thank you and really appreciative of you stopping to have them put his safety glasses on. Most likely, they're [00:03:00] sullen and possibly can't understand why you're bringing the nanny state to bear in this particular opportunity, because it was just for a moment that they weren't wearing their PPE or that it took too long. And why are we doing it this way here anyway? Or add your excuse, you can find any excuse so you don't act or you don't act in a way that can engage the individual or your team, and the cycle of moments start all over again. Well, today I have the distinct privilege of speaking to someone who sees the importance of recognizing these moments and choosing to engage. Joining me on the podcast is Patrick Nelson. Patrick is an experienced leader, having served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army, leading soldiers through three combat deployments earning a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Beyond his military career, he has a master's degree in sports management from Minnesota state and another in organizational development from Pepperdine University. Patrick [00:04:00] lives in Minnesota and is the CEO of Loyalty Point Leadership, working with small businesses and Fortune 500 companies to deploy leadership development programs. There's a ton to Patrick's story, and we're only going to scratch the surface today. So with that introduction, Patrick, welcome to the podcast today.
Patrick Nelson: [00:04:20] Thanks, Peter. It is great to be here, and I just want to thank you for sharing that very personal story at the beginning because I think as you'll find throughout our short time together today that sharing stories is very important to me to really move the needle on safety. So I think it's awesome that you did that. Thank you.
Peter Koch: [00:04:40] I appreciate that. And yeah, I noticed that like we, we just met a couple of days ago talking over WebEx and trying to figure out, Hey, so how does this all fit in with the safety podcast? And I have found that you speak the truth like stories are very important to you. And you found that it really does make [00:05:00] an impact. And that's going to be part of what we talk about today because, I don't know, engaging in safety. I have found in my career it's been 18 years with MEMIC. Now, as a safety management consultant, engaging people in safety is really important and I think you've had a similar experience as well with trying to engage people regardless of what that is.
Patrick Nelson: [00:05:22] I did, yeah, you know, when I was in the military, I used to have to give pre-mission briefings before every combat mission we rolled out on, much like the civilian world, whether it's a start up meeting the shift change a tower talk whatever you want to call it. I was faced with the same challenge that many people are faced keeping people engaged in those meetings. You're providing some valuable information, but a lot of times that information is the same thing those employees are hearing every single day. And I sat in on a couple of these with different clients throughout the country, in different industries, and it seemed [00:06:00] like people were more worried about finding the pen to sign in than they were listening to what the person had to say. And one of the things that I learned in my time in the military giving these briefings is the power of being able to use personal stories to keep people engaged. I knew that I had to get creative and think outside the box instead of just going through my little checklist. And you know, hey guys, make sure you got your helmet on. You got your eye protection, everybody's got their gloves on. Telling very personal and brief is a very key word because we don't have the longest attention spans, but personal and brief stories related to those topics that people can specifically relate to is really what's going to get people engaged.
Peter Koch: [00:06:46] Yeah, right on. So like when you were given those pre mission briefings and possibly before you started seeing the value of telling those stories, like how did you know that you were getting the message across? [00:07:00] Or maybe that you weren't getting the message across? Like, what was the what were the team's reaction when they were like, All right, Patrick, I've had enough of this. Let's just get going on the mission.
Patrick Nelson: [00:07:09] Yeah, that's a good question. You can tell, by the way, people look at you. I mean, you can tell when people are fully engaged in a conversation with you. Or you could also tell when they're kind of just stared at you blankly and their mind is thinking about 12 different other things. And that's something that I realize, especially in a combat situation where even though you're in a very dangerous place, it's still very easy to get complacent. Guys are thinking about home. They're thinking about their families, their mind can wander and the same thing happens whether you're working in construction or on the manufacturing line, especially what I found during COVID. People are thinking about their kids that are, you know, there's a kid have to home school. They're thinking about their parents that, you know, might be in an age population that may be at a higher [00:08:00] risk. It's easy to get distracted from the very important stuff. And so one of the things is just having that eye contact and making sure that people are engaged. And another thing that I actually used to do was I have one of my soldiers leave that briefing. I let him know the day before, Hey, tomorrow you're going to go ahead and leave the briefing, and I'd sit down right next to them and help them prepare. And I would stand right next to them when they were doing it to throw them a lifeline in case they needed some help to make sure that everything was covered. Worst case scenario, they were going to get up there and they were going to stink it up. However, it was going to be an opportunity for them to step outside of their comfort zone and a huge learning opportunity for them and to keep them engaged in the process.
Peter Koch: [00:08:43] Yeah, that's awesome. That's that leadership moment. Like, here's the moment I have. I can either do it myself or I can. I can recognize that somebody else might have a better story to tell or have better impact with my team since, you know, they've been listening to me for the last, however many weeks or days. And then what I like to about [00:09:00] that particular instance that you described was you didn't just throw them the checklist and say, All right, buddy tag, you're it. It's OK, here's the day. Here's your responsibility. This is what we're going to go through. Let's talk it through. Let's make sure we can figure it out so that you're giving them the resource to be successful in that point, which is another great leadership piece, whether it's in safety or just leadership in general. Awesome. Awesome part there.
Patrick Nelson: [00:09:26] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as you know, Peter, it's inherent in anybody who considers himself a leader to be able to coach and mentor those that follow them.
Peter Koch: [00:09:37] You know, we're initially talking about leadership here and you know, your experience in the military when you talked about it, it's a combat zone. So the choices that are made within that particular venue for combat, you can connect the consequences really easily. And even though you said you get complacent, you don't always see [00:10:00] it. Sometimes it happens surprisingly. But looking in at from the outside, there's more implications to not taking advantage of the moment in those situations that than there are, say, maybe in construction or maybe in manufacturing or something else where you doing the same thing day after day after day, but honestly. Even though you might not have the same number of opportunities to lose your life as you do in combat, you have a myriad of opportunities in any industry to be injured to change your life in an instant. You had a particular experience, I'm sure, out of many different experiences across your seven years in the military where you saw the impact of a moment. And I wonder if you might take some time and relate that story so that we can hear it and kind of get an idea where you're coming from. And then we can talk [00:11:00] about that story and how it's impacted you and how you see things differently for current and future.
Patrick Nelson: [00:11:09] Yeah, absolutely, Peter. You know, I have that one traumatic experience that has changed my life, and it's been that experience from 15, 16 years ago that has led me to right here being a guest on your podcast right now. And it was June 8th, 2005. I was operating out of a small forward operating base near the Pakistani border. So I was in Afghanistan. This was the type of place we were short on everything except the enemy. We faced regular indirect fire attacks participate in several large battles that saw between 50 to one hundred enemy fighters each time. And on this particular morning, we were getting resupplied with some ammunition by a chinook helicopter. Resupply procedures were a common part of what we did, and our platoon was divided into two sections. So any time a resupply [00:12:00] would come in, one of those sessions would be designated as the hot gun. Basically, they were responsible for standing by to respond to any type of attack. The other section, which responds with unloading the supplies from the helicopter. So on this particular morning, my section was the hot gun. We're going to get resupplied with some ammunition. But the other section had a sergeant leaving to go on R&R and I was going to go ahead and backfill his position with them. So as the helicopter approached, I hopped in the Humvee with my good friend Luke. And just as we were about to drive out to the landing zone, my soldier Emmanuel Hernandez, hopped in the back. Now he was supposed to be back with the hot gun, so I turned around and I was about to yell at him. But I thought for a second, you know what, I value that kind of work ethic. He wants to come lift some heavy boxes and help out the team. I know that our section will be fine without him. I value that in [00:13:00] my soldiers, so I didn't say anything. And as I was turning around. I noticed that he didn't have his helmet on, and so I literally opened my mouth. But I quickly realized I don't have mine on, either. It's kind of hard for me to say something if I'm not doing the right thing, so I said nothing. As we got out to the landing zone, a group of 10 of us stepped to the side of the aircraft so they could take a machine gun off the back ramp. The rotors on the helicopter were turning, couldn't hear each other. My platoon sergeant handed me a piece of paper with some serial numbers to items we were expecting, basically saying, Hey, it's your responsibility to make sure we get these specific items. So I grab that piece of paper from him and I turn my back to that group so I could ground guide Luke in the Humvee to back them up a little bit closer to the helicopter. And the next thing I remember. Everything went dark, and as I was laying on the ground, disoriented, unable to [00:14:00] hear. I thought maybe somebody came up behind me and had just hit me on the back of the head maybe played a joke that went too far.
Patrick Nelson: [00:14:09] But then I looked up and there were bodies of blood all over the ground in my hearing came back, the helicopter quickly powered down and I heard that very distinct whistle of an incoming rocket. And so I got up and I dove underneath the Humvee for cover as rockets started to impact all around. And as I was laying there, I realized there's a rocket that had landed next to it, instead it knocked me to the ground. So as the barrage finally ended. I crawled out from underneath the Humvee, started making my way back to the soldiers that were still on the ground, unsure of what I was going to find. And as I was doing that, a marine yelled from behind me that I'd been hit. Now, up until that point, I had not felt any pain, but I turned my head and look at the back of my uniform and it was shredded and blood was starting to pour out. And it was at that moment that the pain all of a sudden hit me. The other soldiers quickly [00:15:00] triage those of us that were hurt, loaded us into whatever type of vehicle they could find and brought us to this small clinic on our base that was ran by an Afghan doctor who treated locals. Now my wounds were very, very minor compared to everybody else. I was peppered in the back with shrapnel, small holes in there, nothing too serious, but it definitely hurt. And I was quickly bandaged up by Luke, and I saw Sergeant Michael Kelly, a supply sergeant from the Massachusetts National Guard, who is recently attached to our unit.
Patrick Nelson: [00:15:33] He was laying on this elevated stretcher off the ground, and the local Afghan doctor who worked in that clinic was performing CPR on him. He's standing on this. I'll never forget this red milk crate because he was like five feet, two inches tall. And so he's standing on this red milk crate performing CPR on Michael. And I did a quick lap around the clinic to see who else was hurt. I came across my platoon sergeant, one of the just handed me the piece of paper right before [00:16:00] the explosion. He's laying on a stretcher, on the ground, on the outside of the clinic because the inside was already full of others who were hurt. The femoral artery and his leg was severed along with other severe wounds. And by the time I came back around, I couldn't have been more than thirty or forty five seconds and they have lowered Michael to the ground and we're zipping them up into a body bag. And I found my way into a small room in the back of the clinic where I found my soldier, Emmanuel Hernandez, he's laying on a table. His head is bandaged. He's unconscious. But we were fortunate to have a special forces battalion surgeon in our area that day who responded, so I knew he was giving the best care available and I could see his chest rise and fall. So I knew that he was breathing and I just I grabbed him by the hand, whispered to him everything was going to be OK.
Patrick Nelson: [00:16:52] Medevac helicopters arrived brought us to four surgical teams spread throughout the country. I was on a helicopter ride with my platoon sergeant, [00:17:00] who had by then lost consciousness. But thanks to the quick thinking of the soldiers on the ground, we're putting a tourniquet on his leg and the medical staff that treated him. He survived and he kept his leg. The surgical team removed several pieces of shrapnel from my back. They left a few souvenirs in there that were little too deep to get out that I still carry with me. But they stitched me up and bandaged me up, sent me back to the landing zone for another helicopter ride to Bagram Airfield for some more advanced care. And as I was waiting there, my commander approach to see how I was doing. I said, I'm going to be just fine. How is? How is Emmanuel? And he looked at me. He said he was going to be OK. I just felt such relief. And he turned to walk away, and he got about four or five steps. And he turned around. And with tears coming down his cheeks. He said, I'm sorry that I lied. Hernandez didn't make it. And [00:18:00] my knees got weak as I hit the ground, my commander embraced me. Emanuel died because shrapnel from the explosion hit him in the head. He died because I was not doing the right thing. Because I didn't have the courage to speak up and to say something, and there's been so many days where I thought how simple it would have been if I would have just said, Hey guys, wait, let's go get our helmets quick.
Patrick Nelson: [00:18:27] I mean, nothing would have been delayed. It would have taken a matter of moments just this morning at breakfast. Emanuel was telling another soldier how he couldn't wait to get home and started having kids with his wife. And if only I would have stopped and said something. His wife, Jessica, would still have her husband. His mother would still have her son. And Emmanuel would still have his life ahead of him. But guess what, we've done it like that hundreds and times before. And nothing has ever happened. It's so [00:19:00] easy, I don't care whether you're in a combat zone or you're out there, you know, paving roads or working on some type of line or swinging a hammer. It's so easy to get complacent and to sort of fall and get that tunnel vision and get used to doing things a certain way, especially if it's the wrong way. You know, if you stay in your industry long enough, you might have some lucky days, but you may not have a lucky career because sooner or later, whether it's your fault or not. Something can happen to you. I know it's such a cliche. So one in a million chance. But Peter, I'm here to tell you that it absolutely can happen. You know, I like to ask people this when I'm working with clients, I'll say, Hey, who here has ever bought a lottery ticket in their life like a Powerball Mega million? And most people raise their hand, right? And we bought that ticket knowing that the chances of us winning [00:20:00] are astronomical.
Patrick Nelson: [00:20:03] But we have this sliver of belief that maybe just maybe it might be us. Well, let me tell you, if you have that attitude towards winning a lottery jackpot that it could happen to you. I definitely hope you have that attitude towards workplace safety because the chances of you getting hurt at work are a heck of a lot higher than you winning a lottery jackpot. Again, it's so easy to get comfortable to get used to doing things one way or another. And there's a phenomenon called the diffusion of responsibility when you're in groups of people. You're less likely to speak up to say something or to lend a hand. And why is that? Because you think somebody else is going to do it?
Peter Koch: [00:20:55] It's not my job.
Patrick Nelson: [00:20:56] It's not my job, right? It's not my responsibility. Nobody [00:21:00] else is speaking up. So I guess everything's OK. And it doesn't matter to me if it's your second day on the job or if you've been there for twenty five years, you can get sucked into that diffusion of responsibility. I got another story that I'll share later here with you where that happened to me just two short years ago. But thankfully, I have an awesome wife just like yours, who spoke up and was able to help change that situation.
Peter Koch: [00:21:30] Right on. Oh my gosh, that that is a hugely powerful story, and I thank you for sharing that and realize you're on the podcast to help share things, but that to share the story in the way that you did and for us to realize all of the all the decisions that that went into that one moment, like in that that hindsight 20 20 analysis of the plan and what happened [00:22:00] all the way back to that moment where you look back at them and you open your mouth and you were like, not this time. And then the story goes on from there. So that's a hugely powerful story, and it resonates, resonates for me. I know the diffusion of responsibility kind of thinking about that. I geez, I could go through my career and find hundreds of times where that's happened, where I almost raised my hand, but I didn't quite feel like it was my job. And as a leader, right, do you think about as a leader, it is your job, but that is your only job. So take away everything else that you have as a leader, if you're in charge of a family, you're in charge of a platoon, you're in charge of a team. Whatever it is, you're only job is to make sure that your team is properly equipped for success. And [00:23:00] if you don't take that moment to say something. Like you said, you buy the lottery ticket and some days you win and some days you lose, but as a leader, you really can't take those chances.
Patrick Nelson: [00:23:14] Yeah, absolutely. For everybody listening right now. You're listening to this because more than likely you work in an industry or, you know, somebody that works in an industry where the consequences are very real if something happens. And again, it's not a matter of if a lot of times, unfortunately, it's a matter of when. Again, when I go into clients, I love to ask people. It used to be a variety of people. It might be that second day employee in there or that's employee who's been there 10, 15, 20 years. But I'll ask them who here has ever taken a shortcut when it comes to safety or not wearing the proper PPE? Been complacent been negligent not follow procedure and every hand in that room [00:24:00] goes up. We've all been guilty of it at one point in our career or another. But again, go back to what I said. You might have some lucky days, but if you stay in that industry long enough, you may not have a lucky career. We got sucked in to that comfort zone of being and we were in a combat zone where our lives are on the line. Twenty four seven. And we got sucked into it. So if it can happen to me during combat operations in Afghanistan, I know that it absolutely can happen to you.
Peter Koch: [00:24:35] Yeah, complacency it's the bane of what we do. I mean, even if your job is different day to day, hour to hour, there's still things that are going to pull your mind away from it. There's still things that are going to force you into position where you're going to recognize a moment and then need to make a choice. And then when we get complacent, you start to think about, well, like coming [00:25:00] up to a yellow light. What do you do? Right. So the yellow light means, do I speed up and get through it before it turns red? Or do I slow down and pay attention, or maybe even stop and let the traffic go through? So if I've had the experience of being lucky time after time, after time, I might not take that opportunity to say something or to go back and get my helmet or to put my PPE on or, you know, I think we could probably swap stories for a few hours about successes and failures personally that we've seen and then that we've heard other people tell us about or things that I've had to go and investigate as loss control consultant of a fatality that has occurred on the work site where the same thing if we walk back to. The critical decision that was made that allowed the scenario to unfold the way it did. It was a leadership failure. Almost always, it's a leadership failure.
Patrick Nelson: [00:26:00] Yep, [00:26:00] I absolutely agree with you, you know, the research is clear, ninety nine point some percent of all incidents are completely preventable. Yeah, save those lone acts of God. But there are opportunities there when you're doing, whether it's your root cause analysis, you're asking why five times whatever process it is that you're using, you're going to get back to that situation where that could have easily been prevented. And you'll probably find about five or six different situations where somebody could have easily raise their hand or spoke up, and they didn't for whatever reason it is. And so, yes, as leaders, absolutely again, our inherent responsibility to take care of those around us.
Peter Koch: [00:26:45] Yeah. And so beyond the diffusion of responsibility, like why in your experience talking to all, all your clients and having your experience within the military and even outside that, why do you think leaders don't [00:27:00] make that choice? I mean, you have your personal experience. I've had my personal experiences where I haven't stepped up and made that choice. Why else do you think leaders don't step into the breach to say something?
Patrick Nelson: [00:27:15] Well, first of all, you chose your words very apropos there, because you said choice, because I like to say safety is not an option, but it's still a choice. It still comes down to that individual. And I think there's a plethora of reasons of why and a lot of the ones that I see is. Pressure. We have to meet our numbers, we don't want to come in and have to work this weekend, and a lot of times that pressure is driven internally. Now there can absolutely be external factors and it's the way a lot of times it's even the way people choose their words. You're not going to go into a company that's [00:28:00] going to tell you blatantly, you know, we disregard safety so we can meet our numbers. You know, a lot of them are going to expose like, Oh, no, safety is our number one priority. And if you need to slow down, go ahead and slow down, we support you. But yet the words that they're choosing are being received by the people that are out there doing the dangerous work as, Oh boy, we need to get this done and we need to get people to realize you don't need to compromise safety for performance or vice versa. You can be a very high performing team and be really safe at your job as well. We can do both at the same time. That is absolutely possible. So there's definitely that idea of the pressure driven situations where leaders may not want to step up and say something. Leaders may not want to what they see as rock the boat, and that was one of my things that held me back with not speaking up with Emmanuel.
Patrick Nelson: [00:28:59] Look, we're [00:29:00] we're in a combat zone. I don't want to have to yell at him. You know, he's just trying to come and help. I don't want to say anything and have to get into him and. It's like I found out the consequences of not speaking up, and so one of the things is not knowing how to have those difficult conversations with people we don't like as humans. We don't like conflict. The majority of us, we do not like conflict. We're going to shy away from it. And again, one of the reasons is because we think, you know, if we go tell somebody that they're doing something wrong or give them that negative developmental critical or whatever nomenclature you put on that feedback is it's going to cause some adversity or tension there in that relationship, and we don't want that. However, there are absolutely ways to be able to have those conversations to take sort of that judgment that comes out of it, and it's really just focusing on the behavior of that person and try to make it as objective as possible. [00:30:00] And for me, it really starts with empathy, and empathy is really kind of been a buzzword in leadership circles over the last couple of years. But it comes down to empathy, and a lot of people think of empathy as this very soft and cuddly type thing. And you know, I come from I was in a unit full of paratroopers, one hundred and twenty alpha males in that unit, and I can tell you, I learned a lot about empathy.
Patrick Nelson: [00:30:26] It's just what it really is. It's being able to see things from somebody else's perspective. You know, I'm not for treating everybody the same. I'm for treating everybody fairly. And its leadership is not a one size fits all approach to everybody, I had the opportunity to work with the diverse team of soldiers from all different walks of life and from all different areas across our country and even the world. And the one size fits all approach doesn't always work. You know, I'd have those soldiers where I could yell at them till I'm [00:31:00] blue in the face and it just would not get across or I'd have them where I just had to raise my voice just a little bit. And that was it. They understood. And so it's being able to really know your people and how to have those conversations. You got to know what motivates them. And I'm not talking about, you know, money or bonuses, right? Nobody's coming to work if they're not getting paid. We know that. But there are still reasons that people have chosen that job, especially in the market. Today, you can go out there and you can get a paycheck down the road. Almost any other place right now. There are reasons that they are right there in your organization and you need to find out what those intrinsic motivators are and really leverage those in your relationship and how you communicate with that person.
Peter Koch: [00:31:50] Let's take a quick break. In our experience here at MEMIC, successful companies are safe companies, and those companies have good leaders from front line seasonal supervisors [00:32:00] to middle management and beyond. Growing the leadership team is a critical part of that success. MEMIC recognizes the value of leadership and safety, and that not all supervisors and managers have had formal leadership training. That's why we've created a series of resources and workshops specifically for supervisors and managers called integrating safety into business goals from the breakdown of three basic skills every supervisor needs through how recognition works and conflict management. Integrating safety into business goals is a great starting point for developing your leadership team. Already, a MEMIC policyholder then reach out to your MEMIC Safety Management consultant for more information about these resources. And if you're not already a policyholder and you're interested in how MEMIC can partner with you for workplace safety, contact your independent insurance agent and ask about MEMIC. Now, let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:33:00] Yeah, [00:33:00] it's great, so tie in for me, like how you how you use the power of stories to connect in and bring the message of safety because. I think it's easy to talk about success as a company and you can get recognition because you're successful as a company and we met our numbers here, but safety is one of those weird things where it's the measurement of the negative right. It's the measurement of the thing that doesn't happen. And yeah, you can only save so much money from an insurance standpoint, and you can show that you saved this much money because we didn't have this many people get hurt, but there are people who will look at that and go, Well, it's because we worked harder because we were luckier because of this or because of that. So. Engaging people in safety with the power of a story to help with that empathy, I think is key. So how does that how does that work together for you? How do you see using a story to tie [00:34:00] safety or make safety important for people?
Patrick Nelson: [00:34:03] Yeah, again, it absolutely comes down to engaging people, and in my experiences, I found that telling those personal brief, powerful stories is what really can get people's attention. And you know what? Three weeks or three months down the road, they may not remember every single word that you said, but they're going to remember how you made them feel. And so I really focus on that emotional aspect of it, things that people can easily relate to any time you start telling a story and you're using the words my son or daughter, my mother or father, brother, sister, right? People start to be able to pay attention. And through some of the work that I've done with some clients is I helped equip some of those people with the stories. And at first, I honestly did not know how it would translate into the civilian world again. [00:35:00] I had all that great experience in the military, very bureaucratic organization. My soldiers had to listen to me. They didn't have much of a choice. But again, I think a leader is somebody who influences outcomes and inspires others. Is that about being in control or having power, notoriety, prestige? Anyways, I digress. Telling personal stories and equipping them with every single person, I saw the impact that it can have. So these organizations I work with, they've the numbers are there, right? They've seen that decrease in their recordable incident rate. Like you were saying, the business case, we all know the business case for safety is there. But more than anything, it's that personal and moral obligation that we all have to take care of each other. And what's even more interesting, Peter. Is that I help equip these people with their own what I call a safety stump speech and some of the most powerful ones that I [00:36:00] heard and ones that really helped move the needle on safety had nothing to do with an incident on a job site. I've heard people tell very personal stories of, you know, accidents at home, accidents or situations that they even heard about, or that one of their friends or family were involved. And those are the type of stories when somebody can get up there and they start getting tears in their eyes and they tell these people, Look, I care about you. And I'm here to help you and to keep you safe. It's really developing that connection and engagement with the person. Again, it may not be remembering every single word that that person says in that story, but it's really that connection that's built. And it gets people to start to take ownership over safety. I mean, again, that I go into all these clients and that's what they say. We want our employees to start taking ownership of safety and in order to get their, [00:37:00] well one, it obviously has to start at the top and be mirrored up there because as humans, we have a tendency to mirror the behavior of others around us. So if people up there are not doing the right thing, I can expect others to be able to do the same. And the second thing is it's being able to empower people. To be able to tell their story and to share it with others, giving them the opportunities, and again, as you know, as a safety expert, Peter. It's about being proactive.
Peter Koch: [00:37:31] Yeah, it really is. As you were talking about that, what was coming to mind for me is something you said earlier on was the words that you use are important when you are addressing somebody. From a safety standpoint, because it helps them engage, and if you promote that storytelling within your company and again, whether it's storytelling that happens because of an incident that occurred at your business or it's a personal story. I think that emotional connection can almost be like [00:38:00] this guy or gal cares. So when you're going to build that kind of emotional trust bank up with that person so that when you come back to them later on and you're in that moment, you have that, only you have that millisecond to make a decision. And you might not be able to be warm and fuzzy in that moment to tell that person that put their PPE back on or to put the lockout back on that or to get off the frickin top of the ladder or whatever it is.
Patrick Nelson: [00:38:31] Right
Peter Koch: [00:38:33] They are going to know that you have their back and they're going to look at you and go, OK, he's not just being a jerk. He really cares and I'm going to do that and that's going to pay it forward later on. I think there's a key part in that. That's an awesome thought using stories that way. Patrick, thanks for connecting that for me.
Patrick Nelson: [00:38:54] Yeah. Well, you're welcome. I love that you said the emotional trust bank. I never heard that before, [00:39:00] but I am going to be taking that now, and I'm going to help people open their own emotional trust bank in those relationships because I think that's important. What's interesting is you're reminded me of the very first platoon leader I had on my first deployment to Afghanistan. He was a guy by the name of John Post. And a young lieutenant, a few years removed from West Point, what this guy lacked in experience he more than made up for in his leadership behavior. So this was the type of guy and I've seen him do it. He could sit you down and tell you the 12 different ways you sucked at life, but you leave the conversation with a smile on your face. Ready to charge up that proverbial hill because you knew he cared about you. You knew he had your best interests in mind, and he was going to give you every single resource that you needed to be successful.
Peter Koch: [00:39:48] Yeah, and that's hard work as a leader. I mean, it really is hard. It's harder than going and doing the job that your, that your guys are doing or your gals are doing like that technical [00:40:00] skill of doing the job is one thing and you as a leader, you probably came from that world. You came, you got your job as a leader, as a foreman or a supervisor or a manager because you were good at that job or you were good at the tasks that you are now leading people in. But I think the harder part is connecting with those people and making sure that you are able to motivate them to do the right thing when you're not there, right? So that, you know, as a leader, when you go away and you have to manage the other project that these people understand what the expectations are and they're doing it for the right reasons. Because if they're only doing it, going back to our initial part of this conversation, when you're doing the pre shift meeting or pre-deployment meeting. And you're just checking the boxes if they're only doing it because they're checking the boxes that guaranteed at [00:41:00] some point in time, they're going to take that shortcut. And if you're not there to take advantage of the moment, somebody else on your team needs to be there to take advantage of the moment and if you haven't built that, trust up. It's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen.
Patrick Nelson: [00:41:14] Absolutely.
Peter Koch: [00:41:15] Right on. You know, thinking about influence there before I became the risk manager at the ski area that I worked at. You know, I was the patrol director and I was like, Oh, I figured all this safety stuff out and I got responsibility for being the risk manager. And the first phone call that I took as the risk manager was from a father. And it was a father of a young, like a 16 year old girl who was getting her first job as a lift operator or a lift attendant at the ski area. And he called me up and he had worked in the local mill. We have a paper mill within our area. And he was a supervisor and a manager up there. And so he gets working around equipment. I mean, he knows what [00:42:00] can happen if you make a mistake, if you get in the way of equipment is not going to stop, you know, equipment plus people, you add them together the equipment's almost always going to win and in the phone call, he said to me, it's like I expect you to make sure that my daughter has all the tools that she needs in order to be safe on the job. And I remember that meeting with this guy, I don't remember his name because it was a fairly brief, it might have been a five or six minute phone call. But I remember that conversation because it really made me think about the responsibility that I had, even just as a safety person who has. And if there's a safety person and I know there are listening to this podcast today, you are that individual that has all the responsibility for safety, but no authority. So I'm thinking, Wow, now I'm this guy is looking at me and I'm [00:43:00] responsible for his daughter's safety, and I need to know whether or not the lift op. supervisor has all the tools to help keep this guy safe. So then I have to develop a relationship with the lift ops. manager, a supervisor, so that I can influence him to make changes if he needs to. Because I didn't have any authority over his position, all I could do is offer him resources. And if I hadn't built up trust with him so that he knows that I've got his back, then it's just going to be a head nod. And as soon as I go away, he's back to his old jobs and tasks. And the successful part of that story was that the girl was successful. She had a great season. She enjoyed it really well. Got a thank you note from the dad at the at the end of the season and we went on from there. That was 25 or so years ago, but those little, those little connections of who is going to influence you. And it's typically because you will remember the [00:44:00] emotional connection of that particular story. That's pretty awesome.
Patrick Nelson: [00:44:06] Yeah, absolutely, I mean, again, that's just reinforces exactly what we're talking about here. It happens in moments and we remember again, like you said, that emotional connection that we build with another person, that's what we're going to carry forward.
Peter Koch: [00:44:19] Yeah, awesome. So I have another thought here to maybe explore with you a little bit. And it's about it's about role perception, right? And how that affects an individual's decision to say something or not say something. And it kind of goes back to that that leaders piece, right? So if I'm a leader and you might be the designated leader or you might be working in a team where you are all peers. So the leader is not physically present in your work group at that time and you're all peers. The diffusion of responsibility, right? So it's not my job type [00:45:00] of piece. How does role perception like somebody's role perception fit into their choosing to take advantage of the moment and say something or hide in the background and not take advantage of that? I'm not sure if I've asked that question well enough, but can you? You think about that and maybe throw that around in the safety mix for a bit?
Patrick Nelson: [00:45:22] Yeah. Well, you know, I can relate it to my experiences that I've had, especially here in the civilian world with the companies that I've had the pleasure of working with in a lot of it comes down honestly to culture. And again, if people are taking ownership, are we empowering these employees to be able to speak up, to be able to make decisions in the absence of maybe that person who's technically in charge? And there's several different ways. Are we empowering people to stop the job? I mean, it never fails when I go into an organization and [00:46:00] I start asking, Hey, who here can stop the job? And they said, Well, anybody can. And then I said, Well, how do they know? We tell them every single day. And then I ask them if they one hundred percent believe that every single person out there would stop the job if they saw an incident or didn't know something. And of course, the answer is no right. You can tell them to your blue in the face, but there's misconceptions out there where people don't feel empowered. One of them is when it comes to stop the job. There are some people, unfortunately, that think when you say stop the job or whatever again nomenclature you put on, it means you're hitting this big red button and you're shutting everything down. Stopping the job could mean those are the very rare circumstances, right? Right. Stopping the job. You mean you're just taking a step back. You're asking a question to get some clarity or something may have changed. And then you diving back into your work. Another thing that hampers that empowerment of people is they think they're going to get in trouble if they stop the job. [00:47:00] And a lot of that kind of comes back to that having that pressure on us to perform to meet some type of number. People think they're going to get in trouble. Now again, that's usually not happening. But as humans, we have this innate fear that if we do something wrong or if we slow things down, or if it's not the right reason, we're going to get in trouble for it. And so one thing that I tried to make clear to people is you need to go out there and you need to stop the job and you stop the job one. Maybe it's for no reason, but to show them you're not hitting this big red button. And that's OK to do so because I would rather have somebody out in the job nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a thousand because they didn't know something in order to catch up. One reason that prevented an immediate incident from happening. Because those nine hundred and ninety nine other times are learning opportunities, chances for us as leaders to help grow and develop those around us. So it's really [00:48:00] about being able to empower people to make those decisions to feel comfortable, to be able to speak up. And again, a lot of it points back to just people taking individual ownership over their safety at work. Nobody is getting paid enough to not go home at the end of their shift. Nobody wants to be that person knocking on the door, picking up that phone, letting that little girl or boy know their mommy or daddy is not coming home. Nobody ever wants to be in that position. But yet we don't talk about it. And so I think whether you're a large organization or a small organization is having those conversations. And again, just I think a lot of it goes back to being proactive when it comes to safety.
Peter Koch: [00:48:48] That's interesting. I want to clarify something here. I think I heard you say that. As an example to kind of lead by that example, to stop the job, to get people to understand is as a leader, [00:49:00] go and stop a job. Right.
Patrick Nelson: [00:49:04] Ya. Absolutely.
Peter Koch: [00:49:05] How many leaders do that like? I think so. If you're listening and you're a leader, how many times have you gone onto a job and stop the job to ask a question? And that's all you're asking. That's all you're doing. You're just asking a question for clarification. And it might be you're stopping the job for a moment, and it might be your stopping the job for 15 minutes because of the complexity of the question that you're asking. But have you actually done that? And whether it be because you see a problem or because you're just going to show that it is possible to stop the job?
Patrick Nelson: [00:49:39] Yeah, absolutely. And another point with that is whether you are a HSC safety professional or that's an additional duty or you're just a leader coming around and checking on your people. People should not pucker up when you come around thinking you're coming to catch them doing something wrong. If people are doing that, [00:50:00] then your visibility on the floor on the job site could use some work. You know,
Peter Koch: [00:50:08] Agreed.
Patrick Nelson: [00:50:10] People should get excited when you come around, they should, you know, like, all right, he's here, you know, it shouldn't be some big surprise, like you're once a year sort of visit again. I know you've got other tasks and responsibilities that might tie you to the desk for a little bit. And I always have people say, Well, I wish I was able to spend more time in the field with my guys. Well, apparently you're not making it a priority.
Peter Koch: [00:50:31] Surprise, right?
Patrick Nelson: [00:50:33] Some of those other tasks are tasks that are tying down to that desk and delegate them to somebody else.
Peter Koch: [00:50:39] Yeah, that's you know, that was when I went from and again, so interesting job career path for me to get where I am. But I was a ski bum to start with, got a job as a ski school instructor, was a patroller for a while and then I moved from a patroller to the patrol director's job. And when I got the patrol director's job, I had [00:51:00] gone from skiing. I don't know, maybe one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty days a year, which is I'm pretty excited about that. Like, I like doing that to pushing a lot of paper right and dealing with all that stuff. And I remember having that same thought. I wish I could get out more. And so the thing that got me to do that was when I got in in the morning. The first thing that I did before I did anything else was I put my ski boots on, and if I hadn't, if I didn't put my ski boots on, I was destined to ride desk jockey for the rest of the day and deal with stuff that's happened in the office. But if I had my boots on, I had an excuse to go out and almost ninety five percent of the time if I had my boots on, I was going to be out for a few hours to be able to go out with my guys and gals and see what was going on out there and build that relationship. But I had to choose to do it. It didn't just happen magically, and you can't look at your boss and go, I don't have enough time [00:52:00] to be out there in the field because I have so much stuff to do. Your boss isn't going to go well. We'll take away some of that responsibility, pay you the same amount so that you can go deal with your people, you have to be able to figure that out. You might be able to go to your boss and talk about strategy. But don't expect the responsibilities to get lessened so that you can go out and do that, part of a leader is figuring out how you connect with your people.
Patrick Nelson: [00:52:26] Yeah, that's absolutely what it is. And I like to ask people, I say, Look, are you a manager or a leader? Now you can be both. But those are very distinct positions. You manage things, data processes, equipment schedules, but you lead people. And it's kind of hard to lead people if you're not out there with them.
Peter Koch: [00:52:47] Yep. Great point, great point. And I think we lose that in the in the cluster of everything that's going on, I think we do lose that and to be a good leader, there's a balance because in order to be a good leader, you [00:53:00] need to be able to spend some of that focus time to understand the impact of the product of the work that your people are doing. So you have those conceptual skills to be able to see where things are going. But then you also have to have some of those human and technical skills to be in the field, to ask good questions, to lend a hand. Maybe if you need to lend a hand in the field, that's awesome.
Patrick Nelson: [00:53:22] Right. Absolutely. And you know, you can ask anybody what good leadership looks like and we all know it. We all know what good leadership looks like. I'll sit there and I'll ask people, I'll give them a piece of paper and say, Build me a perfect leader right there right now, whether they're accountable and empathetic and good communicators, good listeners, and that laundry list of things that we know go into making somebody good leader now look. I've been a leader in the military, I've lead people in combat. I teach leadership now and I don't encompass all of those things. We know a good leadership looks like. But it takes work to be able to do that [00:54:00] and exactly like you're saying. I mean, there's twenty five different other things that are pulling us in different directions. You got emails and reports and conference calls and meetings and. Again, it's being able to as a leader to find that balance. And again, a lot of it might come down to being able to delegate. And one thing I like to say is like, Look, you can delegate authority, but you can't delegate responsibility as a leader because when it comes down to it, it is still your responsibility.
Peter Koch: [00:54:30] Yeah, your responsibility to make that choice, to see the moment and act in that moment, act in that moment. That's great. Awesome. Well, gosh, it's almost been an hour. Holy cow. This has gone really fast, actually. So I guess, you know, we started this thing talking about stories and how the power of stories can really connect with your with your team and help build [00:55:00] that emotional trust up and then be able to help you connect with them to make safety important. You had mentioned you had another story that you might want to share, and I wonder if you want to lay that on us here?
Patrick Nelson: [00:55:13] Yeah, absolutely. You know, I love sharing this story because again, it just shows the impact that we can have on those around us. So this was February of 2019. My wife and I are coming home from church on a Sunday morning. We're making it right at a stoplight and it goes into two lanes. And I can see ahead that something is blocking traffic. People are starting to merge over. And as we creep closer, there's about five or six guys from the instant oil change business that's right there on the side of the street, and they're pounding on the windows of this car that's blocking traffic. And as I get closer, I see there's an older gentleman slumped over in the driver's seat. Again, they're pounding on the windows, trying to get this guy's attention traffic's blocking [00:56:00] like these guys got this under control, so I shoot right on by. But I did not get very far because my wife turns to me and she said, if that was you or my dad, I want you to stop because you know what you're doing. And she was right. I came back around the block. I parked, I ran out there by then. They had busted the back window. They had gotten the guy out onto the road. One guy was doing chest compressions. Five others were standing around their thumbs up there you know what? So I did what we're trained to do, I went up to his head, I put my jacket under a head tilt and lift, started clearing his airway with all the chest compressions, food and other not nice stuff were coming and blocking that airway. So I'm fish hook in some nasty stuff out of this guy's throat to clear that airway. Me and this guy are tag-team and CPR. I still hadn't heard the siren, so I started to question, OK, did anybody even call 9-1-1? I could barely detect [00:57:00] a pulse on this guy. He looked like he was dead. But Peter, out of nowhere, like Clark Kent coming out of the phone booth, this guy shows up with an AED, a guy driving in a car. He's not an off duty EMT, he's not part of a volunteer fire department. He's a guy in a car driving by. And he stops and he gets the AED, and I'm sure most people listening have been through the training. If you haven't, it talks you through it. It is dummy proof. We get it hooked up, give them a big old shock. We continue CPR. Finally, the ambulance arrives. We let them take over. I go back to my car and go home. And of course, now all I'm thinking about is that guy. Like, What's his status? Later that afternoon, I call the non-emergency number and the Public Safety Office because I have to ask knowing that they're probably not going to tell me anything, but I have to ask. And they said when we dropped him off at the hospital. Things [00:58:00] weren't looking too good. He had gone over 10 minutes without oxygen to his brain. Later that evening on a neighborhood Facebook page, people are talking about this incident and somebody shares in the comments, they said, Yeah, that was Carl from the Home Depot. So Monday morning, I wake up and I'm in Home Depot and I'm asking around about Carl if anybody knows anything and they said yeah, it's not looking too good. And Tuesday morning, I go back into the Home Depot. Same thing Wednesday, same thing. Thursday, I go in and they said Carl's sitting up in his hospital bed telling jokes. He had a major clog the Windowmaker artery that put a couple of stents, then he was going to be OK. Now, fast forward four months later, and I'm in Home Depot for like the fourth or fifth time that day because I'm not a DIY guy. I can barely change the light bulb in my house, according to my wife. We needed something hung up on the wall. We call her dad. But anyways, again, I [00:59:00] digress and I run into Carl. And I said, Carl, the last time I saw you, you were laying in the middle of the road and fish hooking pieces of your lunch out of your throat. And now I like to share that story, Peter, because. First of all, I could not save Carl's life, I played a very, very minor role, but a role that would not have happened basically if my wife didn't have the courage to speak up. To kind of stop the job and say, Hey. We need to do something. The guy with the AED is the one who saved Carl's life. He had the courage to stop. He could have easily been sucked into the diffusion of responsibility been like, Oh, that crowd over there. They got that under control. The ambulance is probably going to be here in like forty five seconds. And he could have just shot right on by that guy, had the courage to stop and to do something. Our words and our actions can have such a tremendous impact [01:00:00] on those around us or our lack thereof. Now, if you speak up and say something. Point out a safety incident you may not never know. What you truly prevented from happening, but if you don't speak up. Sooner or later, you're going to find out, just like I did, by not speaking up and telling Emanuel to put on his helmet by me, not wearing my helmet. Sooner or later, you're going to find out what your inaction can cause and so, you know, sharing that it's almost sort of the circle of life almost right, it's my decision to not speak up because again, it was a decision that I made to not say something. And Emanuel losing his life, but then that man in that car who stopped at the AED who made the decision to stop and to put into [01:01:00] action that AED and save Carl's life. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that's really going to move the needle on safety. It's not going to be. Here's the hottest new piece of PPE that's going to save your life. Here's the newest OSHA regulation that's going to move the needle. It's going to be getting people to start taking safety, personal,
Peter Koch: [01:01:18] Personal and relational, personal and relational. You've got to connect it back with them. Thank you very much for sharing that, and it is cool how there is that circle in there where you know the lack of choice versus the. Even though it was kind of a forced choice because, you know, sometimes you have that like you, you will see the moment. And you will start to pass by the moment choosing not to act, but then there'll be somebody or something else that'll smack you upside the head and go, Hey, dummy. That's your moment. That's your moment. And we all have those moments. And I think out of all of this, I'm hoping that people will [01:02:00] recognize the different moments that they have as they go through their life and as they go through their work that they can substantially influence the outcome of someone else's life if they take advantage of that moment. Awesome, thank you so much, Patrick, for sharing, for sharing your expertise and sharing your stories with us very, very engaging. I really have enjoyed listening and talking with you. So before we go, where can our listeners find out more about loyalty point leadership and more about you? As you know, as a speaker, as a leader, as a connector for leadership and for safety.
Patrick Nelson: [01:02:47] Yeah, absolutely. You know, www.loyaltypointleadership.com find me on LinkedIn, Patrick Nelson loyalty point leadership. I'd love [01:03:00] to engage with anybody that wants to talk safety. I'd love to be a resource for you going forward and I'd love to learn from you. It's important leadership, a journey. It's not a destination. It's not like you go to some sort of leadership class and you get blessed off and now your leader go forth. You're good to go. We learn something from everybody, and I learned something from being on the podcast here today with you, Peter, that emotional trust bank. I'm going to carry that with me. That's going to be something. You can find me 10 years down the road and I'm going to be talking about that. So I appreciate that. And yes, would love for people to stay in touch.
Peter Koch: [01:03:37] Thank you, Patrick. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us today and to all of our listeners out there today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, we've been speaking about leadership and engaging people in safety with Patrick Nelson, CEO of Loyalty Point Leadership, and about engaging your team. And he's been gracious enough to spend an hour with us today and talk about that. So again, thank you for [01:04:00] that, Patrick.
Patrick Nelson: [01:04:01] You're welcome. Have a great day.
Peter Koch: [01:04:03] Thanks. And if you all have any questions about leadership, safety or like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes for today's podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find out more about Patrick or other leadership podcasts that we've had, and then our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates, and if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it. If you took a minute to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whatever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thanks because it really, truly helps us spread the word about safety. So please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support and until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you [01:05:00] learned here is even better.
Back in 1892, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September of each year the Labor Day holiday. Do you know the history and the struggle of the American worker that pre-dates this historic day? On this podcast, Randy Klatt, Director or Region 2 Loss Control here at MEMIC helps me explore what it was like to be a worker in the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds and workplace injuries, fatalities, child labor, and deplorable conditions were the catalysts for fair wages, the 8 hour workday, and workplace safety.
Wage Trends, 1800-1900 (nber.org)
Age of workers
Lewis Hine - Photographer
These Appalling Images Exposed Child Labor in America - HISTORY
The Photographs of Lewis Hine: The Industrial Revolution and Child Laborers [Photo Gallery] | EHS Today
Teaching With Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor | National Archives
Search Results: "Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940" - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (Library of Congress) (loc.gov)
Search Results: "" - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (Library of Congress) (loc.gov)
Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999: Improvements in Workplace Safety -- United States, 1900-1999 (cdc.gov)
History of Workplace Safety — SafetyLine Lone Worker
Deadliest Workplace Accidents | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
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Child Workers and Workplace Accidents: What was the Price Paid for Industrializing America? – Our Great American Heritage
(1857) Frederick Douglass, "If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress" • (blackpast.org)
Haymarket Riot - HISTORY
https://www.dol.gov/general/laborday/history
Labor Day 2021: Facts, Meaning & Founding - HISTORY
History of Labor Day | U.S. Department of Labor (dol.gov)
Deadliest Workplace Accidents | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
History of the Holidays: Labor Day | History
#82 - Comparative wages, prices, and cost of living : (from the Sixteenth ... - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library
History of The US Minimum Wage - From The Very First Minimum Wage (bebusinessed.com)
Profile of work injuries incurred by young workers (bls.gov)
History of Workplace Safety in the United States, 1880-1970 (eh.net)
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch, as we're about to celebrate Labor Day. I expect that you're getting up and gearing up for family and friends around the pool, the barbecue, the yard, getting people together, trying to enjoy that day off. Well, while you're doing that? Have you ever thought about where we get the Labor Day holiday from, where did it hey come from? Why do we have it? Why was it even started in the first place? So for today's episode, how workplace safety influenced Labor Day and vice versa. Celebrating the American worker. I'm speaking with Randy Klatt, CSP director of Region two, lost control here at MEMIC. Randy leads a team of consultants serving the central and southern Maine area. So, Randy, welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited to have you on to talk about Labor Day today.
Randy Klatt: [00:00:55] Thank you, Peter. It's always great to talk to you. Happy holiday.
Peter Koch: [00:00:59] Yeah, it's coming [00:01:00] right up here. And, you know, I was thinking about, well, the podcast and MEMIC and what our mission is to get out there and to work with companies to help keep workers safe. And I was thinking about the Labor Day holiday. And I'm like, you know what? I've enjoyed the Labor Day holiday now. I've enjoyed time off or on the Labor Day holiday. But what is it? Where to come from? And that got me to thinking having a conversation with you actually around. Well, what was it like to be a worker? Well, before our time being a worker, before our parents, and probably before our grandparents, maybe around the time of our great grandparents, because prior to, you know, the early nineteen hundreds. Labor Day didn't exist. And I think we kind of take it for granted. So let's talk about that. What was it like to be a worker in, say, the late eighteen hundreds and what were the conditions? What was going on? And I know [00:02:00] you've been doing a little bit of reading. I've been doing some reading, too. We certainly don't have any firsthand experience, even though we're both a little grayer than we were last year. We're not that gray yet. But there are some fascinating history about work in the late eighteen hundreds. What do you think it was like out there?
Randy Klatt: [00:02:18] Oh, I think it was pretty horrible, quite frankly. And there is plenty of gray. In fact, I am all gray now. So thanks for the plug. But that's the way it is. Yeah, it we when we think of the industrial revolution, we sometimes think about progress and automation and heavy machinery and, you know, the wonderful products and everything that we developed and could put out there. What we don't really think about often enough is the workers who actually made all that happen. And often the horrendous conditions that they had to work under and for what we would really call minimal pay and no benefits whatsoever. [00:03:00]
Peter Koch: [00:03:01] So some of the benefits you got to go home maybe at the end of the day.
Randy Klatt: [00:03:06] Yeah, that was your benefit. Maybe one day off a week and maybe enough money to put a little food on the table and keep a roof over your head, if you were lucky. It was really quite horrendous. If you look at some of the statistics regarding how much people were paid in your average manufacturing facility and, you know, the textile mills or the steel mills. It's an eye opener, even in today's standards, if you adjust these things for inflation and when you're when you're making 55 cents an hour in 1860, I'm sorry, per day. That's easy to confuse, isn't it? Fifty five cents a day. Not per hour. You know, bring that to today's standards. It's still poultry. It's just amazing. [00:04:00]
Peter Koch: [00:04:00] Yeah. It's really hard to think that you could live on that. And I think that's why you had multiple people in the same family, from dad to mom many times, all the way down to the kids going out and getting a job instead of going to school or maybe after school if they had the opportunity to go to school, because, you know, you add 55 cents a day up and it doesn't go very far when you've got to purchase food and pay for rent and mend clothes and all of the things that come with just the daily burden of life.
Randy Klatt: [00:04:39] Right. And you add to that the strenuous physical labor that was involved in most cases, and then the hazardous conditions. We go into manufacturing facilities today and we see some things that are well in our world. They're pretty scary. Oh, my gosh. You really need a guard on that in [00:05:00] running nip point. Well, take that back a hundred and twenty years ago, and there were things spinning and turning and pulling every which way all over the building, and no one gave it a second thought. And you sent people in there to work in close proximity to all of that every day and just accept it, because if you don't want this job for fifty five cents a day, then someone else will. Yeah. So you're almost a commodity to me is if you're not going to work, then we'll find someone else who will. Because these are good jobs. Fifty five cents a day. Oh, my goodness.
Peter Koch: [00:05:38] And really, some of the only jobs, you know, when we started to see the advent of us moving from that agrarian society to the advent of the industrial revolution and people moving into cities and towns to be closer to where the work is, because they couldn't find jobs or the jobs were too taxing in the agrarian culture, [00:06:00] in agriculture and farming, getting those better jobs in manufacturing and textiles and steel and construction and carpentry, just kind of looking more at some of those wages. You know, the difference in that that textile manufacturing, daily wage of 55 cents in 1860, you could make a whole dollar, 40 a day as a skilled carpenter. Just a few years later, in in the later eighteen hundreds. So depending on what job you had, I mean, you could you could earn some decent wages rather than just being a farmhand for a while or again, dealing with all the hazards that we knew about within the agricultural society and working on a farm, getting kicked by a cow or getting caught up in some of the horse or ox driven equipment to plow the fields and the hours that were there moving into the or moving into the cities. Sometimes, [00:07:00] you know, you're trading maybe one evil for another, but you're getting paid more for it.
Randy Klatt: [00:07:08] Yeah. And if not more, you're actually being paid if you work a full day in most cases. Anyway, you were actually paid for that day. When you're on the farm, any farmer out there today understands this. Clearly, it's still the case. Mother Nature rules the day. And you just might not have the crop this fall or to harvest. And you don't have enough to feed your family, much less to sell to actually make a living. So seeing these jobs was an attraction for people. Nevertheless, it was still not what we would call desirable in the way of a job today. I was interested how Andrew Carnegie got his start. Most people know who Andrew Carnegie was. And, you know, the forerunner to U.S. Steel Corporation, my gosh, in [00:08:00] the railroads and all kinds of industry. And at one point was the richest man in America. He actually started his first job in this country in 1848 at the ripe old age of 12. And he was a bobbin boy, changing the spools of thread in a cotton mill. And he had to work 12 hours a day, six days a week. So he did have one day off. And for that, what, 72 hours of labor for a 12 year old boys starting wage was a dollar twenty per week. So even adjusted to it by inflation or with inflation over the years, that equal that's equivalent to about thirty six dollars in today's numbers. Can you imagine telling a 12 year old today that I'd like you to work 72 hours this week and I'm going to pay you thirty six dollars to do it?
Peter Koch: [00:08:59] I think the conversation [00:09:00] would have stopped at work.
Randy Klatt: [00:09:04] Well, quite possibly.
Peter Koch: [00:09:06] Good. And then you get into all the rest of the reasons you don't want to work is the limited wage. And how come I don't have a day off and. Well, you have one day off but it's not enough days off. And yeah, there's a lot of challenges out there.
Randy Klatt: [00:09:20] Yeah, you probably have to pay your babysitter thirty six dollars to watch your kids for a couple, two or three hours when you go out for an evening.
Peter Koch: [00:09:27] For sure.
Randy Klatt: [00:09:28] Can you imagine that
Peter Koch: [00:09:31] You had mentioned this just a bit ago, too, about the conditions that you'd work in. And I doing some research for this looking or you can find so many different really amazing images of workers from this time frame. And one of the most prolific photographers that were out there is Louis Hine. And some of the most famous pictures that he has are from like the steelworkers having lunch [00:10:00] on the suspended beam. Therefore, I'm not sure what they were building, you remember what they were building in that particular picture, I can't recall.
Randy Klatt: [00:10:08] I don't remember which building it was. I believe it was New York City.
Peter Koch: [00:10:11] Yeah, I think it was to regardless. But that's the picture that people think of when they think of Louis Hines. However, when you start to look at other photos that he took, it's really representative of the American worker in the late. Eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds. And there are thousands of photos which depict kids, really young kids, women, children, men all working together in some very dangerous occupations, whether it be textiles or in the fishing industry or in some of the other manufacturing industries where, you know, those in running nip points, you're surrounded by in running nip points. There's one of those photos we were talking about earlier [00:11:00] where there's a couple of kids standing on a mechanical loom right next to all the bobbins. And the caption is, they had to stand on the loom because they weren't tall enough to reach the bobbins that they had to change out.
Randy Klatt: [00:11:17] Yeah, exactly. So eight year olds, nine year olds working these 60, 70 hour weeks around this equipment with absolutely no regard to their safety, simply get the job done. And we see that mentality some today. You know, we've got to get the job done. So we bypassed some things, but certainly not to the scale that we were doing back then, and not just with adults, but with children full time employed as fish cutters. And yeah, they cut their hands a lot. But, you know, that's part of the job. We're going to just overlook that piece because we're paying them by box. [00:12:00] So, you know, piecework was also something that was fairly prevalent, too. So it simply encouraged people to do things quicker, faster, which, of course, is often less safe. But as long as they got the job done, then they were happy to go home with their twenty five cents because they were able to get four boxes of fish cut for the day and they were paid five cents a box. So woohoo. Yeah. And you just
Peter Koch: [00:12:26] Bring that extra money home to help the family get by for the week. And in those photos, you know, you often see adults with bandages or with a missing limb or a digit. And kids as well. There's a couple of images that I saw where, you know, it's captioned. You know, they're talking about the kid who has a big bandage on his hand, one of those fish cutters. And there's another photo there of all of the fish cutters, all the kids that were probably in one particular factory. And they all had knives [00:13:00] and some of the knives were as big as a kid's forearm, for crying out loud as long as the kids for he's holding this enormous knife out there. And you would be scared and today to hand a kid a knife like that. But if the kid came to work and he was part of the workforce, here you go. And the kids were proud of what they did. I mean, you can't take that away from the kids those days. I mean, they were working for their family. They were working for the wage. They were trying to do the best they can in some fairly deplorable conditions. Really challenging conditions.
Randy Klatt: [00:13:35] Absolutely. And it wasn't just the manufacturing facilities either. There some great photos of the newsies. You know, there was one of the most enjoyable musicals I've seen in the theater was newsies about a young boy selling newspapers. But the reality is you have seven and eight year olds out running around the streets before dawn trying to sell newspapers, and they're getting [00:14:00] paid pennies to do so. So industry during these this time and we're talking anywhere from eighteen fifties or sixties up through the turn of the century into 1920s, it was pretty darn brutal for most people in most occupations. Not to say that it was everyone, but a lot of people made some money. Mm hmm. Including Mr. Andrew Carnegie. There is a reason he became a multimillionaire and the richest man in America.
Peter Koch: [00:14:39] Certainly. And I think that's part of what we're celebrating today is we are celebrating. You know, the labor that the American worker, that through the courage and determination in some of those really challenging places allowed our country to be where it is today. And granted, we [00:15:00] are not in. The best place all the time, but we can certainly look at, especially around work, the work that we do and the innovations that have come out of the American worker and the labor force that's there. There's a lot that they've done and a lot that they've allowed us to do. And that we take for granted today. A lot of those things that we take for granted today, whether it be a day off or equal wage or a living wage, are things that came out of the labor force and is part of what Labor Day really is. And we'll talk about more of that kind of later on as we go, because we certainly didn't end with a photographer taking pictures of kids with bandages on their hands. That got us to Labor Day because there were you know, there were injuries and there are definitely fatalities that occurred. And individual fatalities happened probably more frequently than we thought. They're doing a little research. Again, there's [00:16:00] the death calendar. If you if you want to look it up and talking about an article about from achievements in public health. Nineteen hundred through 1999 and improvements in workplace safety. So there's a death calendar in industry. So all industries for Allegheny County. And it has the months of July through June in that order. And they have little red x's in each of the boxes where somebody has died. And sometimes there's one, sometimes there's multiple. And this is just one county where it occurred. And there are very few days that are blank or that do not have a red X in that calendar. It's a fairly stunning graphic to think about that back in that back in that time frame,
Randy Klatt: [00:16:49] I was really impressed with the impact that that calendar has. Well, first of all, how many times have we ever seen a death calendar? [00:17:00] I mean, that's just the topic. The title itself is pretty indicative of disaster. But nineteen O' six July through nineteen O' seven and June five hundred and twenty six workers. And you're right, it's hard to find a date there where there's no red X and many of them have multiple. That's just inconceivable. And that's, like you said, one county, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Oh, my goodness.
Peter Koch: [00:17:31] There's one week, August 19. Oh six where? Twenty one through twenty four. Those three days in there. Four days in there. There's an average, I think of probably four X's in each of those days, if I can peer through some of the blurriness of the reproduced image. So like one week you're talking close to 20 people, 20 people, different days, probably different occupations passed. [00:18:00] And never came back home from work. So there's that part again, where, you know, you have that that vision of leaving for work, kissing the family goodbye, saying goodbye to your girlfriend, your wife, kissing the kids, whatever, with the intent that you're going to be able to come back home and enjoy something of your labors for that day and your family to for you to come back home to. And you never do. Five hundred and twenty six people in that year in that county didn't come back in 1906, 1907.
Randy Klatt: [00:18:36] Yeah. When we look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as you alluded to earlier, statistics weren't well, they certainly weren't to the point where they are today. So much of it was manual and so much of this was undocumented. So who knows really how many people died. Those, I guess, are the ones that were identified. It could have been a whole lot more. But [00:19:00] we're talking twenty three thousand people a year, in some cases, working out through an equivalent of somewhere around sixty one deaths per 100000 workers. Today's rate is somewhere just over three. So we have certainly come a long, long way since those days.
Peter Koch: [00:19:24] Yeah, I think so. And you bring up a really good point around, you know, injuries, statistics being important because, you know, individual injuries and even individual fatalities will have you know, people will get focused on that and then you'll move off to the next thing. It was one person who got injured. It was one person who didn't come home. And it is a tragedy. But we don't tend to look at those individual incidences as critical. But only when you start to pull all of those statistics [00:20:00] together and you look at it as a whole. Did they become really powerful like the image that we were just talking about? So if you get a chance, go up and Google, search that death calendar for an industry for Allegheny County, and it'll pop up and you'll take a look at. And that's a really powerful image when you see all of those red Xs, because we live in an age where information is plentiful and it's easy to pull that trend together. It wasn't always that easy like you talked about before. And sometimes it really took like a mass casualty incident for workplace injuries or fatalities to get noticed beyond the immediate family and friends and the workers that it truly affected.
Peter Koch: [00:20:38] And our history of work is really riddled with those issues. And again, we didn't start keeping good records probably until the eighteen hundreds and into the nineteen hundreds. But you get back you know, there are some statistics back there from a website [00:21:00] called The Deadliest Workplace Accidents in the American Experience. So back in the late 60s in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the Pemberton mill, large cotton goods factory collapsed without warning and it killed one hundred and forty five workers and injuring another one hundred and sixty six. And again, an injury back in 1860 is not like an injury. It is today in two thousand twenty one. We're going to go to the doctor, going to get good treatment. Chances that you're going to make it out of the hospital whole and return to the workforce is pretty high. Back then, you had an injury. There's a good chance you never return to the workforce. And then instead of being part of the family growing, you became a burden because they needed to support you and you could no longer go back to work.
Randy Klatt: [00:21:49] Yeah. At that point, you became a real liability for everyone else, right? Yeah. We weren't talking about days of health insurance and disability insurance [00:22:00] and EMS coverage for your community. So you have emergency responders and fully manned fire departments. And we just that wasn't there. You get hurt. What are the odds that that's going to become infected or you're not going to get the right care? It could have been treated properly and you might get back to work, but there was no way to access the care. So you ended up with a disability for the rest of your life and no way to be compensated for that. It really is a sad part of this industrial revolution that we don't often think about. What did it really take and what are those mass casualty incidents that we really should know about? And then on Labor Day, look back and appreciate what people went through to get to where we are today.
Peter Koch: [00:22:53] Yeah, because even after Labor Day was thought about and initially [00:23:00] celebrated, Labor Day, initially was celebrated in the late eighteen hundreds, so 1882 was that first Labor Day celebration in New York. And there's a couple of myths out there, not myths, but stories out there about competing people who suggested that you gather the laborers together to celebrate labor and to hear people talk about labor and organized labor and what you could do as a as a community of laborers. Well, yeah, that's the first the first celebration, 1882. And they talk about Peter J. Maguire being from the Carpenters Union and then Matthew Maguire from the Machinists Union were the two guys that are credited with first bringing Labor Day into the forefront here in the Americas.
Randy Klatt: [00:23:50] Which obviously came from labor. And this wasn't recognized by anyone else, by the federal government or state government [00:24:00] or any other organization. It was the laborers who actually took the day off in 1882 unpaid to parade, to celebrate their accomplishments or to at least try to make people aware of the significant contribution they have.
Peter Koch: [00:24:16] Yeah, so and the power that you have together that the power that you have as a group to recognize that there are some challenges out there and to really fight for the rights of the American worker back then. And there was a lot to fight for back then. And still even after they celebrated Labor Day. And again, you alluded to it took the day off, not were given the day paid to have off and celebrate Labor Day with your family. The first labor days were people didn't go to work. It was almost like a protest. They didn't show up that day. They went to New York and they marched the Labor Day parade to go to Union Square in New York City and march, [00:25:00] almost in protest. So, yeah, it's an interesting piece. We celebrate Labor Day today as a holiday or as an opportunity. And they celebrated Labor Day really as a chance back then, which is pretty interesting.
Randy Klatt: [00:25:15] Indeed it is. And we're talking 1882. But if you look up some of the worst disasters in history and you started to read some of those, at least one of those on that list, there are all many years after those first Labor Day celebrations and even after it was actually a recognized federal holiday. So there were still a lot of struggles to be had down the road by workers to reach that equitable pay and equitable treatment and safer workplaces and all those things of the livable wage you mentioned earlier.
Peter Koch: [00:25:54] Yeah,
Randy Klatt: [00:25:54] It was still worth fighting for. And you still [00:26:00] had a pretty good chance of not coming home after going to work, especially if you were in heavy industry is still working in mining in particular. Oh, my gosh. Imagine being underground in a mine with the conditions they were in around the turn of the century.
Peter Koch: [00:26:18] Oh, my gosh. No, I can't. And some of those pictures from Lewis Hine were showed groups of boys, young boys who were working in the mines. And you read some of those descriptions and what they did and they were they were the ones that went places in the mines that are grown adult couldn't go. So not only were they exposed to all of the same exposures that are hazards that an adult would be in a mine, which back then was a myriad of things that weren't controlled, everything from air quality issues to explosives to all sorts of things that never really came into play until labor [00:27:00] started to look into it and say, we need to do something about this. But the boys were then, for like I guess lack of a better term, allowed to go wiggle their way in the places and place charges and find different passages where a full grown adult couldn't go. Being a little claustrophobic myself, I'm not sure that I could do that.
Randy Klatt: [00:27:22] Yeah, that wouldn't be on my list of to dos, that's for sure. And the worst mining disaster in American history occurred in nineteen O' seven. So just a few years after the turn of the century. And the wording just kind of gets to me when it describes this, the underground explosion. This was in West Virginia that kills three hundred and sixty two out of the three hundred and eighty men and boys working that day. Oh, my goodness.
Peter Koch: [00:27:55] That's it's almost a whole a whole community of people that were wiped out. You [00:28:00] know, it's three hundred men and boys, three hundred men and boys that, you know, had families to go back to. You've just cut out half of the population of probably a mining town, you know, within that one particular event that occurred.
Randy Klatt: [00:28:16] Exactly.
Peter Koch: [00:28:17] And it didn't stop there. And it wasn't just in the mines where things were really challenging. And we found a lot of a lot of people getting injured or killed. We talk about this often, especially if we're talking about the history of OSHA and where OSHA came out of and safety in America. One of the watershed moments, I think, in workplace safety came out of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire disaster that happened back in or on March 25th in 1911, which the history of that particular fire. Not even looking at pictures, just reading a [00:29:00] description of it can almost cause nightmares. It's pretty can be pretty scary.
Randy Klatt: [00:29:04] It sure can. And a well known incident that we've learned a lot about being in the worker's comp industry and knowing that this was one of the key moments that brought forth the need for some sort of compensation for injured and fatally injured workers. But I agree. You read the read the description of what happened when this factory started to burn and where the people attempted to evacuate when there are 600 workers in this building. And of course, the fire hoses weren't working because they were rotted and the bowels were rusted shut. And so their panic ensued as they tried to get out and only a few people could fit into the elevator at a time. So, of course, eventually that broke down with many people still trapped in the building. So many fell to [00:30:00] their deaths in the elevator shafts, trying to somehow escape the floor that was on fire. And so many died in the building. But then just to learn that there were 58 people who died jumping to the sidewalks from the building, it's just that is horrifying to think about the loss, a total of a hundred and forty six people.
Peter Koch: [00:30:22] Yeah, and in those the conditions in in how this all came about is the tragedy. I mean, I think I know when I've described part of this in a class before, people immediately think about 9/11 and those iconic images of people plummeting from the Twin Towers. And, you know, that's that is a horrible image to have fixed in your mind. And it is a horrible reason for those things to happen, to have a plane, a terrorist attack happen on our home soil [00:31:00] for that to occur. But in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, we did this to ourselves. Right. So the doors the exit doors were chained closed because management didn't want people taking breaks when they shouldn't be taking breaks. You know, I guess having someone work 12 hours a day, six days a week just isn't enough. Right. So. Got to make sure that they're not taking a break when they shouldn't. You know, the fire started in a rag bin. Right. So we look at this often. We go different places and we see a bin full of used oily rags in a maintenance facility. And we talk to people about, hey, this is going to combust at some point in time, like, yeah, we'll take care of it. We'll take care of it at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, something that we take for granted, the exit routes. Right. So your fire escapes were too narrow. There wasn't enough room on the fire escape to handle the occupancy [00:32:00] of the floor of the building. So when people went out to the fire escape, the fire escape collapsed. So consider that like oh fire. Right. So I'm going to go out and I'm going to go out. What I know is the fire escape, and I'm going to walk onto that. And I'm assuming that fire escape is going to hold me and it doesn't. And it collapses and prevents everyone else from escaping. And then considering the response and you said this early on, like we didn't we had some organized EMS, we had some especially in the cities, there was fire response. A lot of it was volunteer, some of it was professional. But the fire occurred on the eighth floor. The hoses only reached to the seventh floor like. So that math just doesn't add up. Right. So there's lots of things that we take for granted today that came out of these. Disasters. [00:33:00] One of those is workplace safety. In a in a focus on workplace safety, another one is building code and making sure that the building is able to support the number of people and what they're doing in there and how do they get out in the in the event of an emergency. And we tend to forget that these rules aren't there just so that our jobs can be more annoying. But they're there because there has been substantial issues. And they talk about this in the history of Triangle Shirtwaist, too, with like 18 minutes from the time of the fire to the time that was all done and all. One hundred and forty six people died. Eighteen minutes. That's crazy to think that that many people would die almost in an instant.
Peter Koch: [00:33:47] Let's take a quick break. Maybe you didn't know, but MEMIC is committed to making workers' comp work better for everyone. It's been our hallmark since day one. And through compassion, partnerships and a relentless commitment to workplace [00:34:00] safety, we make an impact, whether it's our claim specialist, connecting injured workers with the best medical care and helping them understand the worker's comp system or our safety specialist conducting training for frontline staff and workplace assessments with your supervisors. We understand your industry and how a robust safety program is a pillar of any successful company. Already a MEMIC policyholder. Then reach out to your MEMIC safety management consultant for more information about resources that can help. And if not, and you're interested in how MEMIC can partner with you for workplace safety. Contact your independent insurance agent. Now, let's get back to today's episode.
Randy Klatt: [00:34:45] It is crazy. And as you said, self-induced. And we see that to some degree in business today when we do mention something about the regs or the exit was partially blocked or you can't get to the fire [00:35:00] extinguisher. And, you know, those sorts of things that we always point out. And it's the overriding philosophy of, yeah, we'll get to it, but really, we have to do business first and it's not going to happen. What are the odds? Right. What are the odds that this building is going to catch on fire, that we're going to have a problem and that's not the right way to look at workplace safety. And we should have learned from these incidents. Every manager, every supervisor, every business owner should have a real good appreciation of history. So we don't repeat it.
Peter Koch: [00:35:39] It's that's a very good point. There's a phrase out there for those who don't know their history are destined to step in it again. Right. Or fall into it again, or however you want to finish that particular phrase. And there's an author out. There was this quote came out of another website that we're looking through, the [00:36:00] article called Child Workers and Workplace Accidents. What's the price paid for Industrializing America? They talk about how between the years of 1830 to 1880, there's this overworks generation of Americans that reached adulthood with hunchbacked weakness, both legs, damaged pelvises, missing limbs from working in those conditions for so long. And you have a generation that has human damage that doesn't allow them to interact in the same way with everyone else that we take for granted today. And I thought it was an interesting connection, because if we just take the example of how industrial technology back in the eighteen hundreds changed a generation and moved that same phrase to today and how technology take the industrial out of it, technology has changed a generation. What kind of injuries [00:37:00] are we seeing in a lot of young people today? And it might not always be work related. It might be just someone going to the doctor because they've got aches and pains, but it's neck injuries, it's wrist injuries, it's overexertion injuries. And most of it's coming from the phone posture. The technology posture of the hunched back, the rounded shoulders, the hands together, typing with their thumbs, staring at a small screen for hours a day. And you're seeing injuries or challenges to people that are really we saw similar things from introduction of technology back in the eighteen hundreds to. So, again, that whole concept of we need to understand our history to be able to see our current day and possibly even the effect of the current day on the future accurately, too. So there's a lot in this history that we can really take forward. [00:38:00]
Randy Klatt: [00:38:00] Right. That's those are great points. It's all about those musculoskeletal disorders that take place over time and know. One hundred and fifty years ago, it was manual labor in horrible conditions and long hours and no days off. That resulted in these injuries and these long term problems that people had today. We still have a lot of people working in industry and construction and such. But you're right, there are a lot more people using the computer or using a phone or a tablet. And we actually have young people who are starting to grow spines out of their cervical spine. So like bone spurs that are developing, which is not that uncommon with elderly people because you do have to hold your head up. Right. The human head weighs 12 pounds, 15 pounds, give or take. And [00:39:00] that takes some effort to hold up. We don't really think about it until we put our head down looking at the phone. Then after a few hours, our neck really starts to hurt and we ignore it. And over time, we forget the pain and we just deal with it. And we're actually starting to grow these things out of our spine that are being found in teenagers when normally they wouldn't be found until you're in your 70s. So there are workplace challenges today that we really need to face that are, you know, from different causal factors. But again, looking at history, we should be able to learn from them and find a better way. And let's listen to your safety consultant when they make recommendations. Gosh darn it,
Peter Koch: [00:39:50] Every once in a while. Don't delete the email. Read it through. Think about it before you delete it, possibly, right?
Randy Klatt: [00:39:55] That's right. We know what we're talking about. So interesting [00:40:00] that that even in 1911, we see this disaster and it did spur a lot of work in building codes and, you know, the sort of standards for the workplace. But it was still another 60 years before OSHA was founded. The Occupational Safety and Health Act was founded. So it took a long time even to get to that point where we actually had federal regulations about workplace safety.
Peter Koch: [00:40:35] Yeah. And even beyond or even before that. So OSHA, from a workplace safety standpoint, which is near and dear to our hearts, but just from a fair labor part, like what's fair, what's fair work, what constitutes fair work that even get passed until 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act, where they addressed child labor and they addressed [00:41:00] the workday and they addressed fair wages and living wages, all which kind of come together to help the American worker be a more valuable component of the success of America.
Randy Klatt: [00:41:13] It did take a long time, way too long.
Peter Koch: [00:41:17] Way too long. And, you know, like we said it before, our current workplaces aren't free from problems. They're not free from hazards or free from people getting injured. We have come, like you said, we've come a long way. But the way there was really hard won. And whenever you've got struggle, there's going to be some progress. And to flip that around, Frederick Douglas, it's a quote that comes out of the, uh, around 1857. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. So you look at all the challenges that occurred back there and that started the labor union. It started to pull organized the different factions, not [00:42:00] factions, but the different groups from the different industries to come together and start to advocate for better conditions in the workplace. And those unions came forward and they fought for better hours, equal pay and safer working conditions. And actually, you know, Randy, when you think about it, that's somewhat on how MEMIC was actually formed and not on that, you know, not out of that particular quote. But really, there was a struggle in Maine in the early 1980s through the early nineteen nineties and through those struggles MEMIC was actually formed. It was it didn't come out of it wasn't somebody's brainchild because they thought it would be an awesome idea. It was a response to a crisis like a lot of this. Right. So the [00:43:00] the Labor Standards Act and the building codes and OSHA you hear many times that OSHA standards were written in blood because they were there's every standard in that OSHA standards book is because there's somebody or some body part that's attached to that, that didn't make it home or didn't make it home with the person after the incident occurred.
Randy Klatt: [00:43:27] Yeah. And then early 1990s, Maine had one of the worst, if not the worst, workplace injury records. Our injury rate was really high and worker's compensation insurance was extremely expensive. And insurers were, in fact, withdrawing from the state. And we got to a real crisis point with the businesses in Maine and something had to be done. So thank goodness MEMIC was founded. An initial [00:44:00] mission statement really did talk about not only providing great insurance and great safety services, but we wanted to promote fair and equitable treatment for all workers. And that's still true today. We've updated the mission statement and our vision and values and all that along the way. But that's still at the core of what we do is taking care of people. And ideally, we take care of people before there's an injury. That's our role as a safety consultant, is to get out there and find those issues, find those emergency exits that are blocked and make sure that they're taken care of. So in the event of a disaster, we actually get people out of the building instead of trapping them inside. But when injuries do occur, MEMIC is also there to provide the insurance benefits and medical care so that people can get back to work healthy and happy as soon as possible. So it is an important mission. I never conceived of myself [00:45:00] working for an insurance company. I know I don't like to pay insurance premiums any more than anybody else does. But this is an important piece of every worker's life, and it is important.
Peter Koch: [00:45:14] Yeah. And we're not saying that, you know, MEMIC was formed so that you could celebrate Labor Day, but I think it fits within the whole the whole thought of, you know, Labor Day came out of a struggle. And there's good things that come out of a struggle. And we have a long history of struggling for things and to things in America. You know, after those first two celebrations in New York in 1882, it still wasn't a national holiday like you didn't once. They all met together and had the parade in New York and they figured out which McGuire was the one to recognize as the person who suggested Labor Day still wasn't a national thing. I mean, that was [00:46:00] just New York City. And it took five more years for the first state in the Union to actually recognize Labor Day as an official holiday. And I don't have a lot of information about that. But Oregon was the first state back in 1887 to make Labor Day an official holiday. So I'd be curious if we can go back in time and kind of look at that first Labor Day. And was it just the day off or was it like our current Labor Day and certain companies you get that benefit of having a paid day off. So I'm not sure all of the labor in Oregon were paid for that first Labor Day holiday, but that was the first state to declare Labor Day a holiday. Oregon in 1887.
Randy Klatt: [00:46:50] Oh, go Oregon.
Peter Koch: [00:46:51] There you go.
Randy Klatt: [00:46:52] Go Ducks!
Peter Koch: [00:46:52] And even after that, it still didn't catch on. It's still a number of years, another five or six years [00:47:00] for more states to sign things into law. There again, seven more years. Grover Cleveland, are the president at the time finally signed the Labor Day holiday into law. So then it was a national holiday. And prior to that, in between 1887 and 94, 23 other states had adopted the holiday. And then Grover Cleveland signed it into law because it was becoming a trend, I guess, across the nation.
Randy Klatt: [00:47:32] Ya he saw the inevitable, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Looked at it, decided to do the right the right thing for a change.
Peter Koch: [00:47:38] And that's even that's an interesting history, because there, you know, prior to that, in that same year was the Pullman strike where the railroad workers were on went on strike for two, almost three months. And it was pretty nasty. There was a lot of violence and [00:48:00] some deaths, both on the strikers side and on the government side that tried to break it up. But ultimately, the labor won it out, but it was still, you know, still a violent part of our history. So, you know, again, 1894, a watershed time in our history to signing Labor Day as a holiday into law. But there is still a lot of struggle around that just to make it happen.
Randy Klatt: [00:48:30] Yeah. Can you imagine having to riot and to get into gunfights on the streets and calling in the Pinkerton agents to protect your facility and all those kinds of things just because you're not willing to pay a fair wage or workers are complaining of unsafe working conditions?
Peter Koch: [00:48:54] Sure, I don't think I can. I don't think I can. And I think it [00:49:00] highlights, you know, as we think about Labor Day and we think about the roots of Labor Day, it highlights, again, the need for both parties to come to the table rationally to talk about what's right and not what's just good for the one, but what's good for more than just the one. How are we going to be successful as a company as well as be successful as the individual? Because, you know, there are many cases where when you just focus on the company being successful and not the workers being successful, you're not going to end up being successful as a company. And we've talked about a lot of challenges, there's hundreds, if not thousands of companies out there that have not been able to be successful for one reason or the other, and sometimes it is because they didn't have the right priorities in mind when they started looking at labor.
Randy Klatt: [00:49:59] After [00:50:00] all, who is the company? We want to make the company successful. And I don't know of any company that will be successful if their workforce isn't successful. They're the ones that make it happen. So protecting those workers is not only the right thing to do from an ethical standpoint, but certainly the right thing to do from an economic standpoint. We all know just the small part of that whole pie being the worker's compensation insurance premium and how much that costs of business. And just like any insurance, the more you use it, the more it costs. So you can drive those direct costs of an injury through the roof pretty darn quickly. And it would be far less expensive to get ahead of the game and take care of those workers in the first place so that that doesn't happen. Safety is always a pay me now or pay me later proposal and [00:51:00] now is going to be a lot less expensive than later. It's just that's the way it always works.
Peter Koch: [00:51:06] It always does. And we can be really short sighted. And think about the not putting out a little bit now, but it's like you said, it's going to come around later. Back to you. Well, so we've been talking about Labor Day here for almost an hour. And I think it's good for us to recognize. Right. So back before 1994 or excuse me, back before 1894, even farther than 1994, right back before 1894, Labor Day didn't exist. We didn't recognize the success of and the input of the American worker, that construction worker, the textile worker, the manufacturing person, the firefighter, the police officer, the nurse, the doctor, the whoever it is, the [00:52:00] American labor, the person that's out there doing things and making things for to make America successful and then to try to be successful on their own. That symbiotic relationship between the work that needs to be done and the worker that's going to do it. And the history of Labor Day is just filled with struggle, courage, defiance, injuries. And as we've talked about, even death out there today, we celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September. And most of us will enjoy a day off from work sharing time and maybe a meal with friends and family.
Peter Koch: [00:52:34] And it's become the last hurrah before summer ends and the school year starts in earnest. So people are celebrating a lot of things. And when we do it, it's easy to forget the history of our modern workplace and how we got the eight hour workday overtime pay holidays or even machine guards, air quality monitoring respirators, lock out tag out, fall protection, all of the tools and standards [00:53:00] that give us the opportunity to come home after work and see those friends and family. So when you're celebrating, don't forget the thousands of workers out there in retail, hospitality, food service, emergency services and health care that are going to celebrate Labor Day by working for us or in some cases with one of our loved ones. So this Labor Day, remember that it's not just a holiday from work, but it's a holiday about work. And without the lives and the limbs of the workers that came before us and the unions and officials that spoke out, we would not have the day to celebrate. There's a good chance more of us would be spending this first Monday of September in the hospital or worse yet, in the morgue.
Peter Koch: [00:53:49] Thanks again to everyone for joining us. And today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking about the history of Labor Day and how it has influenced safety with Randy Klatt, director of Region two here at MEMIC. If you have any suggestions for a safety related podcast [00:54:00] topic or we'd like to hear more about a topic we've touched on. Email me at podcast@MEMIC.com Also, check out our show notes for today's podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to the articles and resources we used for today and our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a few minutes to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. If you've already done that. Thanks. Hope you've subscribed because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show. With a business associate friend or a family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even [00:55:00] better.
In June 2021, the FDA revoked its Emergency Use Authorization for Filtering Facepiece Respirators. Learn what an EUA is and how it affects the use of non-NIOSH approved N-95 respirator in healthcare.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch, and the topic today is revoked EUAs. Often I need to hear or read something a second time to understand what's going on. And it's not for lack of education or interest. It's just sometimes a sentence tries to do way too much with too few words or letters or using abbreviations to try to help with understanding. So try to wrap your brain around this. Early on in the sars-cov-2 pandemic, the FDA as a department of the DHHS, created the FRREUAs for HCP in conjunction with NIOSH and the CDC to help combat the spread of covid-19 now due to the increase in availability of NIOSH approved and n-95 FRRs, the FDA has revoked the FRREUA for [00:01:00] HCP. Got it. Yeah, I don't. I didn't either. Every one of those, TLAs adds meeting to the message. And a TLA is a three letter abbreviation, by the way, so that's way too many TLAs packed into two sentences to be functional and I expect that if it was in print you would have to read it again and maybe again and maybe google some of those to figure out what all the pieces are. But just listening, I expect it was almost as confusing as it was to read. And if I were to pull a number of us who heard that headline for the first time, everyone would have a different opinion on its meaning. And unfortunately, many times when I'm in the field talking with clients about new regulations or safety standards, there's often confusion and most often a different opinion on the meaning or applicability. And the FDA's recent revocation of the FRREUA is no exception. So to help clear the air on the [00:02:00] podcast with me today is Steve Badger, CSP, OHST and safety management consultant with MEMIC. Steve has more than 35 years of experience working in the paper, medical sterilization and construction industries. He's an authorized training instructor for the OSHA Training Institute in Manchester, New Hampshire, and is a member of the American Industrial Hygiene Association. Steve uses his experience in different industries and formal training in industrial hygiene practices and indoor air quality testing to help the companies he works with manage their respiratory protections, challenges and others today. Steve is going to help us shed some light on the recent FRREUA revocation. So, Steve, welcome back to the podcast.
Steve Badger: [00:02:45] Thank you very much, Peter. Glad to be here.
Peter Koch: [00:02:47] That's fantastic. It's been a little while since we've had a conversation here. So I was really happy to I actually read some information that you sent out about the revaccinated EUAs and [00:03:00] it sparked the conversation for us about what they are and why they got revoked. And I thought it would be an interesting conversation to have on the podcast and try to get the word out about some of this. So I'd like to start by jumping right in and define some of those TLAs or three letter abbreviation. Let's start right with an EUA. What isn't EUA in the first place and why are they issued?
Steve Badger: [00:03:26] Sure. And an EUA stands for emergency use authorization is really a mechanism to facilitate the availability and the use of medical countermeasures such as vaccines and other medical equipment during public health emergencies. And you see this happen rarely they're not done frequently. But as it says in their own definitions, that the public health emergencies, we don't have a lot of them, but when we have them, we need to be able to use our resources and things that are available to try to help us get [00:04:00] beyond that. And obviously, the covid-19 pandemic has proved to be that in more than one area, including the vaccines, as well as the filtering Facebook's respirators. Now, under this particular EAU, the FDA meeting, the Food and Drug Administration is the one that issued this particular set of EUAs and they can do, as I mentioned earlier, medical products, vaccines to diagnose or treat or even prevent serious life threatening diseases and conditions when there's no approved or adequate available alternatives. In this case here, you know, we're talking about filtering face piece respirators. And as we know that has been a contentious issue from the beginning as to the availability of NIOSH approved respirators.
Peter Koch: [00:04:52] Why don't we help people understand? Because there's lots of different terminology about respirators and some people just think a mask is [00:05:00] a respirator or a respirator is a mask. We see we see people in a doctor's office wearing a mask. We see people on a construction site wearing a mask. We see firefighters wearing a mask. So when we talk about an n-95 respirator, what are we talking about and what's the difference between, say that and like a half face respirator and maybe that surgical mask that you might find in your doctor's office?
Steve Badger: [00:05:27] Great question. The really the difference comes down to what is doing the filtering and filtering face piece respirator. The ones that we're talking about here, the mask itself is the filter. It's filtering out everything that you're breathing in. The whole entire thing acts as a filter and you know it. The same with a surgical mask is designed to filter out throughout your whole breathing zone everything that's there as opposed to say, you know, elastomeric like a half face or a full face, negative pressure [00:06:00] respirator that is fit tested. They've got it. It's got a seal that has to seal. And then the ear that's getting to you is being filtered through actual filters, cartridges that are designed to filter out different types of contaminants. So there's a big difference between those and the filtering face piece in its function and its ability and its protective qualities. Because if you think about a filtering face piece, it's filtering in both directions, whereas the elastomeric respirators, the cartridges you're breathing in, when you exhale, you're breathing out through an exhalation valve that's not filtered. So this was one of the reasons why these this particular type of respirator wasn't the first and best choice when it came to the health care professionals,
Peter Koch: [00:06:51] Because it's filtering the filtering face piece or like a paper mask. Respirator would filter both ways, both in the inhalation and the [00:07:00] exhalation, as I hear you correctly.
Steve Badger: [00:07:02] Correct.
Peter Koch: [00:07:02] Now, with the filtering face piece and especially the n-95 respirators, some of the similarities beyond the filtering on the inhalation, they do have to be fit tested, is that correct, the n-95 respirators?
Steve Badger: [00:07:18] Yes, that is correct. They do have to be fit tested. And the initial people that are first using these things, it was absolutely mandated that everyone had to be fit tested before they could wear them and they had to get a medical approval before they could even do the fit testing to make sure that they were physically capable of wearing these respirators with the people that had already been fit tested. And maybe they've been beyond that year from the initial time that they had been tested. They were given a, I will say, a waiver, but an extension so that they did not have to get that additional fit test within that year, that they as long as they were using the same type and brand of filtering [00:08:00] face piece respirator, that they could extend that fit test beyond that year deadline.
Peter Koch: [00:08:07] Oh, good. So that that actually took some pressure off the numbers of people that would have to be tested for an n-95 or one of the respirators that would have been covered under the EUA originally. Now what's the biggest difference between that filtering face piece and say like the surgical mask that you might see in the doctor's office or the dentist office?
Steve Badger: [00:08:34] The largest difference really comes down to the pore size. And when we talk about pore size, we're talking about what is the maximum, you know, filtration of that particular respirator or in this case, surgical mask. Now, with the filtering face piece, we know that it will filter out 95 percent of the particles at a certain size and which is which is a very good filter, a very good filter, 95 percent, [00:09:00] as opposed to a surgical mask, which really doesn't have the small enough pores to prevent the viruses from actually getting through that. And they're not fitted as well so that people, if they don't have them appropriately put across their nose or across their face, there's still gaps in them that can allow the escape of the of the virus.
Peter Koch: [00:09:24] Good. So that makes sense then why someone who would be required to say treat or come into contact with someone who might have covid-19 needing to wear that n-95 mask instead of just the surgical mask? But, you know, there again, that's the requirement, higher level of protection, especially when there's a significant exposure. And then for everyone else, when there's other options for us to go out there. That's why that cloth face mask or even a surgical type mask would be functional for someone of the public [00:10:00] who maybe isn't required to come into contact with someone who has covid-19, I remember early on masks, you couldn't find them, you couldn't find n-95 mask's anywhere. And I know just outside of the covid-19 pandemic, I mean, respirators are used in industry all the time for particulate respiratory protection, chemical respiratory protection. There's many reasons why you might use an a 95 respirator and you couldn't find them. You just couldn't find them anywhere. So I guess this is a good time to maybe talk a little bit about the history here and to get a better understanding of why the EUAs were issued in the first place. So we did talk about the FDA, the federal Food and Drug Administration, and they are in charge of approving medical products and vaccines for use, and especially when it comes to the medical industry themselves to be approved for [00:11:00] medical use. It's not just, say, NIOSH. Correct. So if I'm going to use a respirator, an approved respirator for medical use, NIOSH isn't the only organization that will approve that respirator for use, is that correct? That needs to be the FDA.
Steve Badger: [00:11:17] Well, it is the NIOSH does the approval and how to look at this is that they do the testing, they do the approval. And then the FDA says, OK, based on the NIOSH testing and approval, we will accept these particular respirators.
Peter Koch: [00:11:35] Gotcha, I think that's a that's a good point for qualification there. So NIOSH still doing the testing. And then the FDA is saying that these are the group of respirators that are going to be functional for a health care setting. Awesome. All right. So let's look more about the historical context. And if we all remember back to the start of the covid-19 pandemic, which seems like forever [00:12:00] ago, but it wasn't all that long ago, actually, that the virus was determined to be transmitted through the air and into the respiratory system via the droplets expelled when an infected person coughed, sneezed or they spoke. What wasn't really well understood then was how a mask could protect you and why someone in a health care settings should wear an approved n-95 mask and someone not in health care could wear a mask that wasn't approved. So let's talk a little bit about what an n-95 is and then what makes it approved and then we'll get into the timeline. So Steve, take us through what an n-95 respirator n-95 mask is and what makes it approved versus a mask that might not be approved.
Steve Badger: [00:12:41] You know, certainly the n-95 respirator is exactly what it sounds. It's designed to filter out 95 percent of the particles within its range, what it's approved for. And so, you know, when we take a look at what's on the outside of the respirator [00:13:00] and what gets inside, it's designed to filter out 95 percent. And that approval process, as we mentioned earlier, is done by NIOSH, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. And they do a lot of testing on these respirators and they put them through their paces to make sure that they really are what the manufacturer tells us they are and that they're going to, you know, meet those standards. Now, to take that one step further, these n-95 respirators, which were, you know, being approved obviously very quickly, the supplies of these got used up. And so they started looking at these different alternatives as to, OK, maybe these aren't approved yet, but there are respirators out there that have been through other trials, through other organizations throughout the world that may be good enough to be able to provide some protection for the health care professionals.
Peter Koch: [00:13:58] Oh, all right, I [00:14:00] think I understand so NIOSH is going to approve an n-95 respirator based on their testing and it has to meet a minimum qualification for the for filtering out 95 percent of a certain size particle or particles above a certain size. But there are other organizations I know Canada has their own organization and other countries have their own certification organizations for different types of personal protective equipment. So but it might not be the same testing method or it might not be they might not have the same standard possibly that NIOSH does so when the supply got short. Am I correct that businesses started to look for other supply chains that might not be approved by NIOSH? Am I correct in that?
Steve Badger: [00:14:50] Absolutely, that is correct. They started looking outside of the U.S. because of the fact that the U.S. supplies fell [00:15:00] behind very quickly. And so they started looking at countries that everywhere from, you know, Vietnam to New Zealand to places Europe, Italy, that that had companies that were creating respirators that met their standard for it would be an n-95. But they had not yet approved them for use in the United States.
Peter Koch: [00:15:24] Very good. So that that sets up kind of sets up a challenge. Right. So as your safety person at the hospital or OSHA or the FDA are going to say, these are the things that you have to use, the companies might not have enough of those things. So they go look someplace else, find other respirators that meet a certain standard, but not the NIOSH standard. So now there's a challenge there. There are companies that are trying to protect their workers, but there aren't enough of the NIOSH approved [00:16:00] n-95 filtering face pieces to go around. So the FDA takes the next step. And I'm expecting that's the emergency use authorization, correct?
Steve Badger: [00:16:12] Correct. You know, any time that there is an emergency use authorization, there has to be some reasoning behind it. And for this case here, you know, they gave three main reasons as to why they wanted to implement this. And, you know, first of all, it was the sars-cov-2 virus that causes covid-19 causes serious life threatening disease. There was no question about that at this point, including severe respiratory illness. The second reason was that based on scientific evidence available to the FDA, that there was some benefit of using these filtering face piece respirators, even though they were not NIOSH approved. And third of all is that, you know, there just wasn't any other available alternatives. There was just nothing else out there that was in the pipeline that could possibly [00:17:00] take the place of that or help supplement that. So this is why the FDA decided that this was a good time to implement this particular EUA.
Peter Koch: [00:17:13] That's great. And as I understand it, too, there were multiple or at least there were two EUAs that were issued. So talk to us about the first EUA that was issued and then we can talk about the second one.
Steve Badger: [00:17:26] Sure. The first EUA was the imported NIOSH Non-NIOSH approved disposable filtering face piece respirators, and that one really covered respirators that were made outside of the United States everywhere but China. And we'll talk about a little bit about that in the second one as to why they separated those. But this particular one this first one was for every other country, the Italy, the Australia, the New Zealand that were making respirators that had not been previously [00:18:00] NIOSH approved. And within that EUA, they had what's called exhibit one. Exhibit one was the list of approved filtering face piece respirators that could be used by health care professionals under this EUA.
Peter Koch: [00:18:17] Ok, so once that EUA was issued, they had a list of all the different respirators. So the health care community could go out and choose from that list. They couldn't find NIOSH approved filtering face pieces. They could then look at which ones were then being approved through the emergency use authorization. That's cool. So that list one was a pretty critical list for people to have get their hands on. And then I think it was still hard to find some of those. And then there was another EUA that was issued and you referenced that earlier. That was the one for respirators manufactured in China. So can you talk a little bit about that one?
Steve Badger: [00:18:56] Yes. The first EUA approved about 50, [00:19:00] I believe it was 54 different types of respirators from different countries. And as we talked about the use and the need and far outweighed the number that were available. So the second EUA was issued in October of 2020, and that was for respirators that were constructed in the country of China. Now, that particular list was also quite extensive and they actually had about 200 approved respirators that went into Appendix A of that EUA that were approved from that point that the EUA was initiated. So now they've brought in the they had the rest of the world will say in the. First, the EUA and then China and their respirators were the second EUA.
Peter Koch: [00:19:55] Right, and so through your reading, were you able to determine why they had a [00:20:00] separate EUA for the respirators made in China versus the ones that may have been made in the other parts of the world?
Steve Badger: [00:20:07] There's been nothing that I've been able to find in the reading that would indicate why? You know, there's a lot of conjecture out there as far as, you know, thinking about the fact that, you know, early on they thought that maybe, you know, they wouldn't have to go to that extreme to get enough respirators available. But, yeah, there's definitely nothing in writing that I've been able to find that's indicated as why it was separate after the fact. You know, when we talk about here later on, but after the fact, it became obvious that there were a lot of knockoffs and a lot of, you know, fake respirators that were being sent in, ones that weren't nearly close to approval. And so, you know, after the fact, they started, you know, weeding out those pretty quickly when they started testing them.
Peter Koch: [00:20:59] Yeah. [00:21:00] So I do remember some of that information coming through. There were a number of respirators that were packaged to represent themselves as being NIOSH approved or had the OSHA seal of approval, which isn't a thing. You know, she doesn't approve those. They just say you're supposed to wear a particular type of PPE. And then there were some testing information that was placed out there, too, about how the NIOSH respirators and respirators made in other parts of the world and even some of those in China did come it did come very close to meeting that NIOSH standard over the samples that they had. But there are others that didn't do it at all. And so part of the approval, as I see it, is how I've come to understand this as a safety professional is one of the reasons that you want in a third party testing and approving is because it provides you with some information about [00:22:00] the minimum amount of protection that you're going to get. So if you buy something that's going to have the stamp of approval on it, you should you should be able to feel comfortable that it will that it will protect you at this particular level. And so then if you take that protection level and then you look at what you're trying to be protected from, if they match up and you use it the way it's supposed to, you have managed the hazard or exposure to that hazard in a good way. But if it's not going to meet that base level of approval, then it may very well put you at greater risk if you're going to use something that that doesn't have that minimum level of protection.
Peter Koch: [00:22:42] Let's take a quick break, integrating workplace safety into your business is a key part of the long term success of any company. And like most components of success, there is no one size fits all solution. MEMIC is committed to partnering with employers across all industries for workplace [00:23:00] safety. And we recognize the key to that partnership is understanding the unique demands of the industries that we ensure our safety experts bring experience from the industries that they serve. And this experience provides a unique perspective through a critical eye when it comes to understanding the particular exposures and challenges of an industry from construction, retail and manufacturing to hospitality and health care. Our team of experts will work with policyholders to identify opportunities to improve safety. Interested in finding more about MEMIC, check us out at MEMIC.com. Or better yet, contact your local independent insurance agent for more information. If you're already insured by MEMIC, then check out our safety resources at MEMIC.com/workplacesafety and sign up for access to our video lending library, our LMS platform or our Safety Director Resource Library. Now let's [00:24:00] get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:24:04] I think as we as we start to look at the EUAs this, you know, the podcast is pretty short today. There is a pretty focused topic. There's not a ton that we need to go through. But we learned about what an EUA is, what the FRRs are, who does the approval process, who issued the emergency use authorization in the first place and why. Now, let's talk about the well, the title of the podcast is that they have been revoked or the EUAs have been revacated. So why were the EUAs revoked here? Why did the FAA pull the EUAs for those filtering face pieces?
Steve Badger: [00:24:48] Yeah, looking at, you know, the beginning of this, where they were authorized, the EUAs were issued from that point on, we had a list for [00:25:00] the exhibit one and also for Appendix A for the second. And that list of respirators were really, you know, for lack of a better term, we're really unknowns. And so what NIOSH did was they started doing testing on these particular filtering face piece respirators to see if they met the n-95 standard that 95 percent filtration. And so the process that they would go through is they would take ten samples that were sent to them by the manufacturers. They would test them and come up with an average filtration. And so as they started going through and doing these testing, they found out early on that there were many that either didn't make it or that were very bad respirators that they could tell that they were bad, they tell that they were they were the fakes, that they were the fraudulent ones. And so what they did was they started [00:26:00] eliminating some of these from that list, from that approved list and a couple of different times during 2020, they took some of these out, started weeding them down to the ones that actually that they could say would filter out 95 percent. Now, it's important to note at this point that this did not give them a NIOSH approval. OK, what all this did was that NIOSH did this testing and that they were able to say that in this testing that it did reach that 95 percent. So none of these respirators were able to gain NIOSH approval numbers from this particular testing. So as time went on, the manufacturers that NIOSH had approved previously started catching up on the numbers of respirators that were being in demand as the pandemic, you know, slowly started coming down and the number of cases and the health care workers were able to better protect themselves with NIOSH respirators. [00:27:00] These lists, this Appendix A and exhibit one, they started becoming less and less important. And so in the end of June or actually towards the end of June, the FDA decided to revoke both of these EUAs, meaning that these respirators are no longer approved for use by health care professionals.
Peter Koch: [00:27:25] And that's another interesting point to note, that the lists were kind of live. So the Appendix A. And the list one, as NIOSH started testing, they actually eliminated some of the respirators from those list. Is that correct? Did I hear that correctly?
Steve Badger: [00:27:43] Yes, they did, they initially they eliminated from the second EUA, the ones from China there was about I want to say it was about 75 respirators that did not meet the first cut right out of the gate. And there was a there was several from [00:28:00] the first the UK from the European and other nations that were creating them. And so they were slowly, you know, they would get several of these on that list and they would eliminate them. And so they would, you know, say, OK, from this point on, from this date on, these are no longer part of this EUA and therefore the health care providers should not be using these.
Peter Koch: [00:28:23] Yeah, and I think that's a good point, because if this ever does happen again and another EUA is issued for non-NIOSH approved filtering face pieces that. The purchasing groups for these health care organizations need to understand that, unfortunately, we can only work as fast as we can work and that those lists could be live. So are the lists will be live. And as more testing gets done, those lists might change. So it's important to go back to those lists on a regular basis, work with your suppliers to make sure that you have [00:29:00] you're working off the most accurate list and you're getting the equipment that's best suited for your for your workers. So we come to the end and the EUAs are revoked and what I'm hearing, Steve, is that you're saying because manufacturing picked up enough with the NIOSH approved n-95 respirators, that that there are enough now to go around to outfit the needs of our health care professionals. So that's really the reason why they were revoked, because there wasn't a need for emergency use anymore. We were able to use the approved respirators in most cases. Is that correct?
Steve Badger: [00:29:43] Yes, it is correct and you know, and obviously there's a couple of reasons for that. I mean, one, we don't have the certainly have not had the number of cases that we had initially early on, you know, and also, you know, we have to think about respirators as they are. They're the last [00:30:00] line of defense. And so when we think about, you know, you know, hazards and controls that, you know, the controls that have been put into place have also helped eliminate a lot of these potential exposures to the point where maybe not as many respirators are needed to be used because they are that last line of defense. And therefore, you know, if something happens to them, the respirator fails, that person could still be exposed. So we want to try, you know, to eliminate those hazards initially before you get to that respirator point.
Peter Koch: [00:30:32] Very good now. All right. So the EUAs are revoked the non NIOSH approved respirators are no longer approved for use in a health care setting. What do I do, I've got maybe a stockpile of respirators that were once approved by the EUA and they're no longer functional or at least no longer proved to be used in a health care setting. So does the FDA have [00:31:00] any recommendations going forward?
Steve Badger: [00:31:03] Yes, they do. They have several recommendations for the stockpiles of these things that they're assuming that are out there for the health care professionals. And just because these respirators are no longer a part of this EUA, doesn't mean that they can't be used for other purposes outside of the health care organizations that you could, you know, actually, you know, redistribute these through, you know, into non health care settings, such as, you know, construction or even general industry? You might be able to you know, they offer the suggestion that maybe you could donate them to other countries or other places where approved respirators are still in very short, you know, short quantities as they're very much in demand. They also, you know, tell us that we may even consider, you know, holding on to them to [00:32:00] be used for other purposes so that's where they've kind of left it with us, that we don't want to just, you know, we just don't want to throw these things away, that there are other uses for them. And I think that's very good advice.
Peter Koch: [00:32:12] Yeah, I think it's great advice as well. So just because you have a resource, make sure you're using the resource appropriately just for that health care setting of if I'm a health care professional and I'm going to be exposed to someone who potentially has covid-19, I want to make sure I'm protected. So you want to make sure you're using that NIOSH respirator. And since you should be able to have sourced enough of those for the exposure potential that that is out there now. But like you said at the end, there again, it's a good idea. As we you know, we look at where we are currently and there's starting to be an uptick in cases, an uptick with the Delta variant and maybe some other variants that are coming down the road. It's [00:33:00] always good to be prepared. So we don't want to be in a place again where we're scrambling to find respirators. We want to make sure that we have things in stock. So, you know, good advice, use it or do with those stockpiled respirators, what you, as your company feels is going to be the best use for them. And if that is a donation grade, if that's moving them to a different industry, fine, too. If that is holding on to them just in case, that's not a bad idea either. So, Steve, why don't we try? So we learned a lot today in a very short time. And I think most of it is kind of clearing up some of those three letter abbreviations like EUA and FRR and even some larger abbreviations like NIOSH or CDC. So why don't we take that sentence those two sentences we had in the intro and let's try to add the actual words that come up and see if it makes any more sense to us. So here we go. Early [00:34:00] on in the sars-cov-2 or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus two pandemic the Food and Drug Administration as a Department of the Department of Health and Human Services created the filtering face piece respirator emergency use authorization for health care providers. They did this in conjunction with the National Institute for Occupational safety and Health, or NIOSH and the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, to help combat the spread of covid-19. Now, due to the increase in availability of the NIOSH approved n-95 filtering face piece respirators, the Food and Drug Administration has revoked the filtering face piece respirator emergency use authorization for health care providers. Makes a little more sense. Still a mouthful to say, but there seems to make more sense to that. So I [00:35:00] guess at the end here, Steve, as you were going through the emergency use authorization, the process and how they were revoked, is there anything else that you want to add to that or maybe something that you found really interesting as you were going through that?
Steve Badger: [00:35:17] Yeah, you know, I would say that I probably one of them the most interesting things that I found going through this was, you know, the ability of the government organizations to be able to work together to get to that point where these EUAs were being issued. Because, you know, it wasn't just the FDA. They had to rely on the NIOSH group for their testing and approval. And, you know, and that all, you know, in conjunction with the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, that they had to all work together to make this work. And I think that that's the part that really drove home to me. The point that, you know, when we're in a crisis and these things happen, that these people can work together, that they can, you [00:36:00] know, do you know the right thing and get these things out to people and in a big hurry. I mean, this was these are not something that typically happens overnight. And in this case, here it did. These were given this temporary approval and this emergency approval. And so they were they were able to help that health care professionals out of a very tough position.
Peter Koch: [00:36:26] Yeah, I think that's a really good point. The working across departments at the federal level can be challenging at times. And they definitely collaborated well together and came up with a with good response for a very, very challenging situation for sure. So, Steve, if someone had more questions about the FDA or and or the emergency use authorizations, something happens in the future. They see something over the Internet that there was a new EUA or they want to learn more about these [00:37:00] EUAs in particular, where would they go for more information?
Steve Badger: [00:37:05] Certainly the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA has a website that you can go on and, you know, you can look and search for EUAs under that website and it will bring up all of them. And they're, quite frankly, right now there's quite a few of them out there for different types of medical processes and procedures. And also the vaccines, the very vaccines that we're taking to prevent covid fall under these EUAs. So you kind of have to do a little bit of searching through there. And the other place that I would look in regards to the filtering face piece respirators is whether or not the respirator that you've chosen that you have in your hand, is it NIOSH approved or not? Easy enough to go on to the NIOSH website and actually determine that you can do a search and look to see which respirators are really approved? You know, it's not just stamped [00:38:00] on the box from, you know, someplace, you know, out of nowhere that you can actually make sure that that thing is actually what it says that it is so that you're getting that protection factor that you're expecting.
Peter Koch: [00:38:12] That's a great point. And to not all, you know, don't always trust the packaging. So if you're looking to purchase n-95 respirators, a good idea is to double check them against the list there for the NIOSH approved respirators. And you'd find that you said right on the NIOSH site or is that the FDA site, Steve?
Steve Badger: [00:38:33] You would find it on the NIOSH site for which respirators are approved and they will be given approval number. And you can determine that, you know, from that list is whether or not that one you have in your hand, if it's NIOSH approved, it's going to have a number associated with it that matches up with that NIOSH site.
Peter Koch: [00:38:53] Very good. And most of your reputable distributors are going to be familiar with that and be able to help [00:39:00] you if you're purchasing PPE for your organization, whether your health care or not, they should be able to work with you and then know what's approved and what's not approved. And if you ask them questions, is it on it? What's the number they should be able to give you that. So if you're wanting to double check, you can always ask those questions of your supplier. All right. Very good. Steve, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your expertise with us today.
Steve Badger: [00:39:27] You're very welcome, Peter. Thank you for having me.
Peter Koch: [00:39:29] Excellent. We'll have to bring you on again and talk some more about respirators. I, I know we've been chatting back and forth about a podcast, around respiratory Protection, and it's a pretty enormous topic. And we've got to kind of whittle it down so we can fit it in within our podcast format here. So we'll have you back on again. And I'm looking forward to speaking with you.
Steve Badger: [00:39:50] Thank you.
Peter Koch: [00:39:50] Perfect. So thanks again for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, we've been speaking with Steve Badger, safety management [00:40:00] consultant, with a MEMIC about the Food and Drug Administration's revoked emergency use authorizations for filtering face piece respirators. If you have any questions or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, e-mail me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources and our entire podcast archive. Did you know we've had more than 50 episodes so far and we're still going strong and hope to do another 50. And while you're there on the website, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thanks, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of [00:41:00] it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
In a February 2021 article from Harvard Health Publishing, research links some surprising health problems to slouching, including incontinence and constipation. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Al Brown, MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics takes a look at slouching, how it affects your health and some strategies for prevention.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. My name is Peter Koch, your host, and today we are here with Al Brown, the director of ergonomics for MEMIC. And we're going to talk about slouching. So we don't want you to be a slouch. And I want you to think about this right now. And I bet you if you heard this, you might have even sat up or stood up a little bit more straight. But think about your posture right at this moment or just moments ago whether your drive in your car, sitting at your desk, maybe you're sitting on the riding lawnmower or you're sitting on your couch at home or whatever you're doing. What's your posture like? Are you seated? Is your low back curved or your shoulders hunched forward? Is your head in a forward posture that's slouching? We're going to talk about that and the effects of slouching, how we got there, because that's certainly not how we were, how we were designed to sit and to stand. But that's a common posture and it has a lot of different negative effects on [00:01:00] our body and sometimes even our longevity. So I guess with that, Al, welcome to the podcast today. Thanks for being back again and sharing some fascinating it I think a little frightening information about what slouching might do for you. So talk to me about slouching. What's going on with slouching and why is this a big deal? Because I don't know. I like the slouch every once in a while. Right. Feels good. So what's the problem with it?
Al Brown: [00:01:26] Well, first, Pete, thanks. Thanks for having me back. Much appreciated. It's an interesting thing. It's a phenomenon I'm watching unfold as I travel about different industries and particularly the office world and even watching my own kids. And the advent of the laptop, I think sort of was the thing that started that precluded all this. And, you know, the laptop is a lovely thing. It's portable. It allows us a lot of information in this little thing that we just kind of carry in our hand. But when we interface [00:02:00] with it. We sit down and we place it somewhere, they call it a laptop for a reason, a lot of times that's where it ends up. And but unfortunately, particularly, the younger crowd has pretty good vision. So they flip open that screen the keyboards down where their hands are and overcomes the head to view the content. This is sort of the initial start of creating muscle memory and this forward slouching posture, it's unconscious subconscious, not really recognized, and a lot of things begin to happen physiologically and it's very subtle over time. And then you begin to see the results of it after someone's been doing it for a couple of months, a couple of years. And I see it oftentimes when we have someone new young coming in to MEMIC and they have been a laptop user and are now [00:03:00] shifting to a desktop. And that's where the behaviors become very apparent to me when I see them positioning themselves in front of the screen. We talk about proper ergonomics and how to set up, and it's very hard for them sometimes to adapt to it because of all the things that we that have occurred because of the excessive laptop using and the slouching, which will get into more detail today.
Peter Koch: [00:03:25] Sure, I see it well, I see it myself sometimes. I've lots of times I'm going to work off an iPad with a keyboard attached to it and the same thing that it'll sit right on my lap and my head will be bent over and I'll type and you'll get a little tightness in the back of your neck. And I don't have the greatest eyesight anymore. I'm certainly not one of the younger users anymore, unfortunately. But looking through my progressive lenses or my bifocals, I'll have to look down or look up to see part of that screen. And you really have a limited range of motion. I see it with my daughter, too. So a couple [00:04:00] of daughters in high school, of course, just about every kid in Maine gets a laptop or they have a laptop and they're doing all their work on it. They're sitting at the kitchen table. They're sitting on the couch. They're sitting on the porch. My youngest daughter was sitting in a hammock the other day, leaning back kind of in this banana shape with a laptop on her lap and like, wow, that's really uncomfortable looking. But yeah, so that's the habit that they're in. So I can only imagine what happens when you try to move to a different place, whether it be a desktop or you watch I'll actually watch my oldest daughter, who's home now who drive and she'll be in the same head forward position when she's driving seat back a little bit of that. You referenced this before we were talking the low rider position. So sit back a little bit, head forward, kind of looking just above the steering wheel in that same [00:05:00] posture translates between her laptop use at home and the car driving. And if she concentrates, she'll stand up straight. But if you just watch her kind of relax, sometimes that forward head posture will just become a normal a normal thing for her.
Al Brown: [00:05:16] It's almost like if you look at it from a profile view, someone sitting at the desk. You'll see almost a C, you know, shape, you know, where the head is forward and then you follow the curve around at the mid thoracic area and even the lower back, which has normally, you know, a curve in the opposite direction of the mid back, is actually now continuing that same shape down to the pelvis. So you get this giant C shape and that has an impact all the way through the body. What happens is basically you're shutting your abdominal muscles off and you're kind of hanging on your back muscles. I always reference [00:06:00] a shirt, and when you're sitting there leaning forward, the shirt on the front side's all wrinkled up, which kind of represents muscles that are sort of tightening up. And then you look at the fabric on the back of the shirt and it's being overstretched, which happens to the muscles on the back of the body. They're being sort of statically stretched passively for an extended period of time. If you stay in the position long enough, it actually creates inflammation in a lot of the soft tissue. And then you start to see diagnoses like fibromyalgia and myofascial pain. And we can all experience it. You know, for the listeners at home, you can take one of your fingers gently and pull it back words so that it's fully extended and just keep a stretch on it for, oh, you know, maybe 15 to 30 seconds, a good stretch on it and then release it and curl it up. And you can feel that stiffness [00:07:00] that you've started. And think of that finger stained in that position for an hour, two hours. Eventually the tissue becomes in flames and you create an injury. So over time, someone who slouches at a computer is doing that same thing to all the muscle tissue on the back side of the body and weakening the abdominals on the front side. So that's just that's just the musculoskeletal system, you know, and sitting, you know, we have to throw in you look down at the hips and the hip flexors are shortening up. And so when you go to a standing position, you never get somebody that goes fully erect simply because the longer we do it, the more our body adapts and our more the muscles will shorten, tendons will shorten, ligaments will shorten. And so unless you take an active role in sort of reopening your body back up, you will, like you had mentioned your daughter, you'll see that transferred to from the hammock to the desk to [00:08:00] the car, and it becomes normalized in the brain. And we'll start to hear complaints about it because and people will only make a change when they get the discomfort. And we see young folks going for shoulder surgeries now, having back pain. I think the tag line now thirty's the new 40.
Peter Koch: [00:08:22] Oh boy.
Al Brown: [00:08:22] And those comorbidities are coming sooner simply because of this sort of slouched posture.
Peter Koch: [00:08:29] Wow. So and I always think about it, too, that there are you have complementary muscle groups. So, you know, when you're in the habit in that C shape to stretch out those back muscles and kind of relax those abdominal muscles, then you go to come back and combat that. If you haven't been working those abdominal muscles to help keep yourself in good posture, it will become more difficult over time to combat the bad posture that you have to move out of that habit. So the [00:09:00] longer you spend in it, the worse it is for you.
Al Brown: [00:09:03] Yeah, I mean, what it does to tightens up those hip flexors and then you keep the back the inward curve of the back actually goes concave or convex. It goes in the opposite direction. And what happens, it's very difficult to roll out of that posture again. You know, if you think of yourself sitting, there's two ways to sit to a certain extent. I mean, all kinds of ways to sit. But one is sort of sitting back on your sacrum, which is what the slouches will sit on. So if you just kind of let your back roll that your low back flatten and you roll back on your tailbone and your head has to come forward as that happens. So you are creating that C. But if you actually arch your back and you pull your pelvis around, you actually come up on there's these two sitting bones as they're skilled, tuberose, and there's two of them, you'll pull yourself around up on top of those and you'll feel your core go [00:10:00] upright and your head will align. The chair should positively support you than the back of the chair should be in there and supporting your back for the low riders of the folks have been doing the slouching. If we pull their chair up into that position, they feel like they're almost being thrown into the computer. And that's because that visual mental image they have of themselves and sort of their muscle memory keeps them in that forward C posture.
Peter Koch: [00:10:28] Yeah, that kinesthetic sense. They think their father forward and they should be because their natural well, their habitual place to be is in that forward head posture. Yeah. I just think that's where they are.
Al Brown: [00:10:39] You'll see it in like older people go to the dentist now, you know, and the dentist tends to lay a pretty flat and you know, because as we age we tend to go into that forward posture. It's we're trying to look for stability. And what happens is when they lay you down on the chair, someone that's, you know, creeping [00:11:00] over into the forward posture, they'll go, oh, that's far enough that you've got me almost upside down. And there's still about 45 degrees, you know, before they even get the flat. So they'll slowly creep that person down as their muscles and their memory kind of relaxes a bit and they can sneak them down. But you can't get them really flat because of all the physical changes that's occurring earlier in young adults.
Peter Koch: [00:11:24] When you think about that example of a dentist chair, it must change sleep patterns as well because you know, might not be able to lay flat or stretch out or get into that position. So you might not be able to be in a truly comfortable, restful position where your body can recover, which is really what sleep is for.
Al Brown: [00:11:44] Yeah, you'll notice that the number of pillow starts stacking up behind you if you lay on your back and you'll know that when you roll over on your belly and your hands fall asleep a lot quicker, that again, welcome to the C posture. That's where your head. And so those are all indicators, [00:12:00] you know. So it's one of those things that we the more static activity you spend in front of a computer in time, you really need to spend a lot of time sort of resetting the body and opening it back up. You need to set yourself up neutral. But you had mentioned earlier on we were talking that you like to slouch and everybody does. It's a position of fatigue. After a while, you just can't hold yourself upright and you'll slouch. So every 30 minutes you probably should get up and move or change or change your posture. The advent of the dynamic workstation helps because I always tell folks when you start to lean or slouch, just pop the buttons and lift the desk because you'll bring your pelvis underneath you and you'll change that pattern because you won't stand in a slouch. You can, but it'll be more difficult to do that. So and that's kind of the cue. But every 30 minutes, you should be changing your position and posture.
Peter Koch: [00:12:57] I think people listening might agree [00:13:00] with that, but they might find it difficult. And I know for me, if I have a project that I'm doing that requires concentration and you get into that zone and you're focused on what you're doing, 30 minutes goes by like that.
Al Brown: [00:13:12] It does.
Peter Koch: [00:13:13] And if I take that moment to stand up, it may pull me out of the zone, which isn't really true. I mean, I you will move out of it a little bit, but like you said, move from the sitting position, come up to the standing position, do your work for a little while and sit back down. It doesn't have to be a disruptive process. It doesn't sound like just have to change that posture so you can stretch things out, get back to a better posture and then keep going with your project.
Al Brown: [00:13:42] I mean, you can even just roll your pelvis when you're sitting there. If your back is flat and you've got that C, you just roll your pelvis up into a more arched back and that in itself sort of just recuse the brain a bit. And again, we're just talking about what's happening [00:14:00] in the musculoskeletal system. I mean, there's other implications that are out there that, you know, and I think the it was the Harvard the Harvard Health Publishing in February 15th, 2021. They just came out and there was a Megan Markovsky who's at Women and Brigham's that associated with Harvard. You know, they start they're starting to look at other kind of physiological changes, you know, things like incontinence, constipation, and you can really see how mechanically you begin to impact your body. You know, I've said for years, you know, if you sit in that seat position, you know, think about your intestines. It's a giant hose that goes back and forth inside your gut. And that's convoluted enough with a lot of bends. But now when you sit in the C position, you just push it down. So you've not only [00:15:00] you've got this convoluted tube, but now you're going to compress it. And so think about food, trying to move through, you know, peristalsis or whatever that is trying to move down through and there's a little push back, you know, acid reflux, you know, like, oh, gee, I just or gastric upset or I don't feel so good. And again, you're mushing your intestines when you sit in that that poor position. Breathing is another example. You know, your diaphragm are these two conical shape muscles at the base of your of your lungs. That their job is when they're nice and perky is to pull those lungs down. And that creates a negative pressure in the air goes in. And then when they relax, your lungs are elastic, that passively it'll push the air back out. When you're sitting in that C posture slouched. Those diaphragm muscles are not perky. They're almost flattened out. So they have no ability to pull down. So to get a deep breath or even [00:16:00] to breathe normally, you have to almost start raising your shoulders, which is a lot of work. I mean, if you just you know, if you just take your shoulders and try to raise them up, you know, 60 times, you know, a minute or just, you know, even less than that when we breathe. But I mean, just that's very fatiguing because you're lifting up a large mass each time to breathe. So you're working harder to breathe and digest. Just from slouching.
Peter Koch: [00:16:25] That's amazing. And so I get to see the breathing, definitely the breathing thing. And you might find yourself to be a little short of breath sometimes, too, if you're sitting in that position. Some of the results of slouching that you talked about, the incontinence, the heartburn, acid reflux, are those immediate or would you find those to be something that that occurs hours or maybe even 24 hours later after you've had a bout of slouching? I'm trying to think of like that what that Q would be. And are people connecting their posture of what they [00:17:00] did all day yesterday? To now they wake up on Saturday morning after having spent all day or all week in the office and that slouched position. And now they're struggling to enjoy life on Saturday because of what's happening. So when one of those physical cues occur.
Al Brown: [00:17:19] You know, it probably if I were to theorize, I would I would think that it's maybe not something that you notice right away because you're, and particularly if you're younger, you're very tolerant and you probably are a little more active and moving around. But as you continue to have a job that requires that you sit and you begin to change that body physiologically and like you had mentioned, you know, from the hammock to the computer to the car, you repeat that same behavior to sitting at night, chill and watching a movie. You are you are [00:18:00] exposing yourself to that same issue. So it becomes more apparent and probably sort of insidiously sneaks in on you. And that's when you at some point discomfort, you know, you kind of go, what's going on? And I don't think people connect the dots to that sitting piece and off to the doc getting tested and finding out what's going on. Now you're starting to medicate, but when you really look back at the root cause you've got to reopen your body back up. You got to look at your behaviors, because until you change those, you're still mechanically beating yourself up.
Peter Koch: [00:18:37] Right. And I think a lot of people feel that the amount of exercise that they have, maybe at the end of the day they get an hour's walk in or something like that after they've been sitting in that slouch position for let's just call it an hour, six hours at work. Maybe they get up and walk around a little bit at lunch or whatever. So they sit slouched for six hours and then they got two more hours on the couch [00:19:00] and they got maybe an hour commute back and forth. So now you're at eight, nine, ten hours of slouched position. But I got one hour of exercise. You talk about how that's not quite enough and maybe you can elaborate a little bit about that right now, too.
Al Brown: [00:19:16] Yeah. James Levine works at Mayo Clinic and he actually wrote the book Stand Up. I think your chair is killing you, something like that. Or, you know, sitting is the new smoking kind of came from that sort of tagline. But when you look at I mean, that's kind of our mentality. I'm guilty of it, that I'll sit and do my work all day long in front of a computer. And then I think, oh, I got to get out and take my run or I have to lift or I have to exercise. But you won't. The degradation, degradation you've done to your body during those seven to eight to ten hours to eleven hours of sitting, you cannot recover from that one hour of [00:20:00] exercise, I think in Australia that. Actually coined the term they had done some research down there on this, and it's called the Active Couch Potato. So you still are going to suffer the you know, if you're sitting for 11 hours a day, there are I think there's 35 medical conditions, you know, type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers, that the risk factors will go up exponentially just from that sitting. And you can't recover by just having that one hour of exercise. It's something that you need to incorporate throughout the whole day of movement and each time you move. That's when I always encourage folks to sort of reset their body upright, you know, recue the game of Jenga, you know, get the blocks realigned, because if you don't, you continue down that road of impacting your health negatively.
Peter Koch: [00:20:57] Sure, sure. It's an important point [00:21:00] that I don't think we can stress enough, regardless of if it's the positions that you're in at work or if it's positions that you would like to be in when you're at home. It's we're not made to be stationary. We're made to be active. Everything about us is made to be active from just the amount of assistance the large muscle gives to our heart, to move blood around from our lower extremities to upper extremities, to try to fight off gravity. We're made to move around. We're not made to just sit in one place
Al Brown: [00:21:33] Yup everything sucks down to the earth. So and when you sit down, unfortunately, you shut off the largest muscles in the body. And so now you've lost all that assistance that any time they contract, they actually will milk and push the fluid back up. I mean, it assists your cardiovascular system, obviously, the venous return and the arterial flow, but the lymphatic system really kind of depends [00:22:00] on it. So and it's the filtering system that gets the junk out of your body. So, again, when you sit slouched, you sit and you sit. You know, you've not only are you mechanically compressing all the structures, but then you shut off the big muscles in the body that are assisting. So the accumulated effect of all that going on, you know, you'll start to have those physiological changes and you'll start, you know, like I said, shoulders from the mechanics of your shoulder change completely. And, you know, I can see folks I've seen folks that are queuing up for shoulder surgery and I'm going before you go there. Wait a minute. You need to open up your body first. They go what? And it's amazing how much a person has lost how to pull themselves back into neutral. And it's very cumbersome. It's exhausting for the first week to 10 days. But once they get it and they break on through to the other side, they actually feel a [00:23:00] whole bunch better. It's kind of. You know, it's like walking around with a stick and holding it in your hand and tipping the stick forward, maybe 15 to 20 degrees, that creates sort of a bit of a force on the wrist and hand and shoulder and arm. You're like, oh, you know, after you do that for a while, it's kind of my wrist is getting shaky where if you just balance that stick on your hand and walk around, you know, a little more of a challenge, but it's less awkward forced on the wrist. So you're just kind of bouncing around. So same thing with your body. When you get it all set up and you balance it out, you're much more efficient and it takes a lot less energy to move it around
Peter Koch: [00:23:38] A lot less. Take us through that exercise again of going from that C position and straightening up in your chair just by tipping your pelvis. I think that's that could be a simple thing that people can do. And if the folks listening to us right now, again, like I started this podcast, think about where you are, think about that C position is [00:24:00] your head forward or your shoulders hunched as your back round. And then Al is going to take us through that sequence of how just sit up straighter just by tipping your pelvis in a different direction. So when you do that.
Al Brown: [00:24:11] Yeah. I mean, think about yourself right now and where you're sitting. And if you can imagine that you had on a pair of. Pants or jeans, let's call them jeans, and they have back pockets and are you sitting on your back pockets right now? Are you rolled back? And so those back pockets are actually sort of facing down and on the seat. And if you are, then that's the start of C sitting. You actually are doing more sacral sitting. You know, you're sitting back on that sacrum. So what we want to do is rotate your pelvis and bring you out of that position. So and what you're going to notice is that as you as you bring your pelvis around, you're going to notice that you're getting taller. And you're also probably going to notice that your head will start to tuck back [00:25:00] in because your head follows your butt here, Pete, I'm telling you. So if your pelvis rolls forward and your pelvis is going forward, your head's going to go forward as your pelvis rolls backwards and comes behind your head is going to want to like the game of Jenga. We have to push the block up on top with the block on the bottom to keep it all balanced. So what I want folks to do now is get off your hip pockets and I want you to almost like you're pushing your belly forward and you're arching your back and you're trying to take your head up, you know, up towards the ceiling. So you rotate that pelvis forward and you'll feel a shift up on to that that part of your pelvis. So that's neutral sitting. That's hard to do right now, probably for most folks of in here going, OK, I'm working really hard to do that. That's why you want a good supportive chair that in that position now you want that inward curve of your back filled by your chair so that lumbar support becomes very important. You can't just and some [00:26:00] people do. Perch there are perchers that will sit on the edge of the chair and perch. That's OK. But that's a fatiguing thing to do. And eventually what you're going to do is you're going to, out of fatigue, roll back onto your hip pockets. OK, so, you know, again, it's just what you're doing is you're going have your hip pockets, you're going towards the ceiling with your head and you're rotating your pelvis forward so you'll feel an inward curve in your low back. And that's a more neutral position for your body.
Peter Koch: [00:26:27] And I think that's a good reset for folks when you're you stayed at your chair for a while. And if you can think about that sequence when you've been at your chair and you do tip your pelvis and you sit up straighter and you get a curve in your low back and your head tucks back, that's a cue to continue to get taller and stand up and adjust your desk, get up a little bit, maybe move the laptop from your lap to maybe the counter or maybe someplace else. So you're not sitting in that position slouched all the time.
Al Brown: [00:26:59] What [00:27:00] you know, one thing we didn't mention is the disk pressure. So you know that you have your vertebrae and then the disks are in between. So the vertebrae, the bony structure, the disc is soft tissue, very rugged structure, but again, exposed to long passive forces. It's impacted and sitting. If you think about it, you bring your thighs sort of towards your abdomen, you know, to about a 90 degree position that actually because of the attachment of like your hamstrings are attached to your pelvis and as you bring up that thigh, will tend to pull the pelvis around and want to force you into that C position. That's why it's good to have normal length in your hamstrings and all that kind of good stuff. But if you pull your thigh up into that position and your back does round off and just sitting in and of itself puts about 40 to 50 percent more force on that disc. So just the act of [00:28:00] sitting, you've loaded your back. So it's important to get up. And when you get up, another great thing to do is when you stand, you just hands on waist, feet, shoulder width apart, and you just do a little bit of and keep your chin tucked. You don't want to do the what is it, the limbo where your head goes way back. You keep your head your head tucked and you do a little bit of back extension and there should just be a little bit of pressure in the low back and maybe a little bit of stretching on the front side. But that resets that disc could actually reposition some of the pressure, the gel inside it. It's a slow, gentle movement. It's not something that you force. But any time you're sitting in a car and sitting at your desk, you know, every 30 minutes, that's one of those things you get up and just sort of reset your body in that regard.
Peter Koch: [00:28:52] People will do that. As they feel really fatigued, you'll get really tired, you'll start feeling all those bodily [00:29:00] cues, you'll get achy, you'll get stiff in your mind, I'll get a little foggy. But you really want to make those changes before those cues happen. That's the whole idea
Al Brown: [00:29:09] Right it's too late when you're hurting.
Peter Koch: [00:29:12] Exactly.
Al Brown: [00:29:12] Water over the dam.
Peter Koch: [00:29:13] Yeah. And we ignore those cues, too. So like, oh, just a few more minutes or I'm almost done or I'm going to get this here, but we got to get into that habit and be more intentional, I think. And that's the key word to be intentional about how we go about our day in our body position as we sit at our desk or stand at our desk because our well doesn't even need to be at a desk. You could it could be anywhere you can be in an excavator working for a construction company or a bulldozer or you can be a truck driver. You're going to find yourself in those C positions often. Or I was driving actually back from this area yesterday and there's summer. So there's a lot of road construction and there are quite a few folks out there as flaggers. And you can look at posture's as they get as the day [00:30:00] gets on, they'll be in that standing C position where they might have started to be in the beginning of the day. When they're fresh, they're upright, their shoulders are back, their heads where it needs to be. And as the day goes on, they get kind of in that old man position where they're leaning on the stop sign instead of standing up with the stop sign.
Al Brown: [00:30:19] That used to be a more brutal job, you know, because back they figured out that remember the day when they used to just have a little handle? I do stop sign and they would just flip it around.
Peter Koch: [00:30:29] And they were holding it instead of on a poll right?
Al Brown: [00:30:30] They were holding it. So and some genius came along, probably some famous ergonomist and said, you know, if you had a longer pole, that would be less force on the body. And so you'll see that that long pole is present in all construction.
Peter Koch: [00:30:48] It's ubiquitous now.
Al Brown: [00:30:48] It's ubiquitous. But the problem is, is you're right. You know, here's a person standing there all day long not moving, you know, because you can walk longer [00:31:00] than you can stand still. That makes sense?
Peter Koch: [00:31:04] Does it make sense to me?
Al Brown: [00:31:06] So, like, if you stand there and don't move, Pete, and then I'm going to go walk and we're going to see how many hours I can walk and how many hours you can stand still and see who can last longer. I'm going to last longer simply because I'm sharing the load throughout my whole body. And it's just brief moments. You're statically loading and you can't move.
Peter Koch: [00:31:26] Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about our E-Ergo resource that can be used to help solve ergonomic challenges at your workplace. Sometimes contacting, contracting with and scheduling an ergonomist or occupational health nurse for an onsite evaluation doesn't fit with our Just-In-Time workflow in a competitive economy, fixing the problem right now is essential, and improving worker comfort and efficiency are key components to ongoing success. Free to our policyholders MEMICs E-Ergo, Tool can help you overcome ergonomic challenges. [00:32:00] With just five quick photos or a short 30 second video and a brief description of what's being shown, you can send us the critical demands and essential functions within the work tasks once received. Our ergonomics team can identify risks and exposures and provide reasonable suggestions for ergonomic improvement within just a few short days. Start the E-Ergo process by logging into the MEMIC safety director at www.MEMIC.com/Workplace Safety. Now let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:32:35] And you talked about it before the podcast as we were discussing this, the body carburetor. When I'm moving that carburetors move in your lungs, your heart, there's a demand in there. You've got enough cardiovascular activity to support that demand. But when I'm just standing there and I was on the way home late yesterday evening watching the [00:33:00] gentleman stand with the stop sign, and it was for whatever reason, it was a long stop. We must have been there for ten minutes. And I don't think he shifted maybe once or twice during that entire ten minutes. And I'm look at him going, That that can't be comfortable because if it was me, I'd have been shifting back and forth, moving side to side, because I can't I can't stand in that one position. My back will hurt. My knees will hurt. My feet will hurt. Because my carburetor is not going the way it's supposed to, it's not getting enough air, right? There's not enough not enough air to make combustion happen. Kind of.
Al Brown: [00:33:35] You know, it's funny as a related topic, which I always like to reference this, you know, the sort of the beginning research of cardiovascular function and how it impacts us from a static to a dynamic activity is Jeremy Morris, who's an epidemiologist out of London, and he died in the 90s at 99 and a half years old. But he did the study on the double decker buses [00:34:00] in London and looked at the drivers and compared them to the I'm going to call them ticket takers. And the drivers sat. The whole day and the ticket takers would put in an average, I think it was, if I think back in the piece of research, I read about 600 steps a day that was.
Peter Koch: [00:34:21] Just going up and down.
Al Brown: [00:34:22] Up and down the double decker bus to punch tickets. And in the cardiovascular incident rate for the drivers was 50 percent higher. Then the ticket takers, and that was true cardiac events, that's not you know, they just have, you know, higher risk. And it was you know, it is a longevity. You know, they did it over a long period of time and they just set up incident rate driver to take, you know, and took into account some other. Variables, but for the most part, the drivers were out of, you know, 50 percent higher incidence rate of cardiovascular issues.
Peter Koch: [00:34:58] Wow. And that's supported [00:35:00] in current day. I know a professor that I've worked with in the past, Dr. Delia Roberts, who's done a lot of work within the recreation industry with her fit for ski program. But she's got a fit for Drive program for the long haul truckers out in British Columbia and did a study from a blood sugar standpoint and the effect of diet and lack of exercise sitting in the truck all the time. And just a couple of changes with a little bit of dietary change to manage blood sugar better and then more frequent breaks to be able to increase cardiovascular activity, change alertness, changed accident rates. There's not the studies not long enough to see the morbidity or cardiovascular incidents. But as the study goes on, as she keeps working with them, I bet she'll find some of the same results as the guy from London.
Al Brown: [00:35:54] Sure. Yeah, no, it's I think it was Dr. Levine. He had mentioned that, you know, post dinner, post [00:36:00] lunch, post dinner or go take a go take a 15 minute walk and blood sugar drops by about 20 percent, you know, so it sort of stirs the mix. And it's a healthier mix for you at that point as opposed to, you know, when you get up and now you're hypoglycemic because you just ate and you're like, that lazy boy over there was pretty good. I think I'm just going to go take a nap and, you know, and so it's a you know, one of those things that that it's not rocket science. It's not a magic pill, but it is common sense. It makes a huge difference in our body physiologically. It's kind of like the posture thing. I mean, it's your parents, you know, coming in and going straight up, straighten up, you know, when you're thinking, come on, leave me alone. But it's more present nowadays because of the advent of the laptop. And you throw a phone, a cell phone, and most folks will just bend their neck over and take a look at that cell phone. [00:37:00] So they're just contributing to it when they look even at their cell phone. So it's or you see, you know, a person sitting on the park bench or somewhere in a chair and they're just in that giant seat posture with their forearms down on their lap, you know, looking at whatever's going on the screen. And you're like, oh, you know, it's a physics problem because. You know, we always talk about the head weighing somewhere between, you know, there's 10 pounders and there's 15 pounders, but let's call it 13. But for every 10 degrees, you know, we live in a world of gravity, as you'd mentioned earlier. So for every 10 degrees that head comes forward, we add another 10 pounds of force to the neck and shoulders, to that flat and back to that disc, compressing the front side abdominal intestinal area, lowering the diaphragm so now it can expand. It's just it's messy all the way around.
Peter Koch: [00:37:54] All the way around.
Al Brown: [00:37:54] All the way around. Nothing good.
Peter Koch: [00:37:57] Nothing good can come of this. And [00:38:00] then there's the habit. Right. So you do it for long enough. And how many of us are conditioned to look at that phone? Right. So the phone vibrates or you hear a sound that sounds like your ringtone and you automatically look down at your phone or at least look down at your pocket or wherever it's stored. And it's not even your phone. It's somebody else's phone. But we're conditioned to do that. So we have this habit of looking down, looking at something that's in our lap or below shoulder height. And once you get into a habit. It becomes really hard to break that habit
Al Brown: [00:38:36] Once the genie is out of the bottle. It's hard to get them back in. Yeah, same thing with the posture. I mean, once you're down that and again, because we have a younger population that's kind of they you know, they didn't know life without a cell phone and a laptop. You know, I can go back to when none of that existed, you know, and as I do presentations now, I realize [00:39:00] that, you know, sometimes folks are looking at me like, wow, you know, it's just that it's always been part of my life. So but then I see this change in body posture that's beginning to occur because that thing that's in front of them and when you're young, you just don't think about those things. You're going to live forever and never have an ache or a pain. But, you know, you can talk to anybody who's. In the in the twilight, as would be the twilight, the twilight of life, and they'll say, you get achy and you do. So you don't want to contribute to it. If there are things that are that you can do that are easy, it's just a matter of initiating those and make sure you incorporate those into your daily life.
Peter Koch: [00:39:45] And the younger you are, like you had said, the easier it is to not notice or feel like you've recovered from. But again, if you continue those postures over and over and over again, you're not recovering enough. You're recovering a little bit enough [00:40:00] to not find that discomfort anymore. But as soon as you go back to that posture again, you're doing the same damage that you did before or the postures having the same effect as it did before. So all of a sudden, you know, you're 13, 14, 15, 16, not a care in the world high school. It's great looking on the college. It's awesome at the college. It's great you get out into the workforce and now you're 28 or 30 years old and you've spent 15 years or longer in that posture. Now, going back to that little demonstration you asked people to consider by taking your index finger and pulling it back. So now do that for a day instead of doing it for 15 seconds. And that's, you know
Al Brown: [00:40:44] Do it for a day, do it for a week, do it for a month. Do it for 15 years. And the accumulation of trauma. Leads to.
Peter Koch: [00:40:56] Sure. And it's not just in one place, it's not just work, we talk about this for [00:41:00] hearing conservation. When we talk about hearing conservation programs in the workplace and regardless of how much time you spend in your workday, it's almost always more time in loud noises outside of your workday. For most people,
Al Brown: [00:41:18] They're not as loud, though. At home, the chainsaw is not as loud at home as it is at work.
Peter Koch: [00:41:22] right the homeowner chainsaw is always less,
Al Brown: [00:41:25] Right you don't need the safety stuff. Oh, no, it's a different animal altogether.
Peter Koch: [00:41:29] But as you start adding it up, so now you ask people, OK, so how long do you spend in this, this decibel level? Sorry, it's a hundred decibels and we're going to do this job for an hour or two hours or 15 minutes and we're going to take a break and we're going to go back the noise. And overall, they might be four hours in that that noise environment at work out of an eight hour day. Certainly there's other work that you're going to do. It's going to be louder for longer, but on average, it's not going to be that loud for that long. And then you start adding up the time that people [00:42:00] spend with headphones in with the music up to 100 decibels, or they're going to mow the lawn at home and it takes them a couple hours. I'm not wearing hearing protection or they're using the chainsaw or they're on their snowmobile or they're on their four wheeler or they're out shooting or they're out at a bar or at a concert. And all of a sudden you add up all this time and you've got a lot more time and loud noise outside of work than you do in work. But you have to add it all together. So you have four hours at work, you got six or seven hours outside of work, and now most of your day and it creeps up on you. And like you said, with posture, your body will get a little more achy regardless of how good you take care of it. So when you don't take good care of it, you just end up getting achy sooner. And you get to that point one day. And like you said before, what was it.
Al Brown: [00:42:52] 30 is the new 40.
Peter Koch: [00:42:53] That's scary.
Al Brown: [00:42:55] Yeah, I mentioned that the other day in the presentation. And some of the folks like I don't understand what you mean. [00:43:00] And I said, you know what? But someone in their 60s felt at 40. Because of the technology that now exists in a lot of our lives, those folks using more of the technology and slouching are going to feel those discomforts 30. So there's been a 10 year slip backwards. You know, I mentioned things like technology, like simple things like when we used to back a car, if you would rotate your body, which is good, you like to rotate your body because it helps to sort of lengthen a lot of these old, like tissues in your body. But now today you just look down at the camera and line up the lines. Still can't do it.
Peter Koch: [00:43:38] That's a whole other topic.
Al Brown: [00:43:39] So you just you don't you know, or if to answer the phone, you would have to run to get the phone or, you know, walk or go to the room where it was attached to the wall or on the counter. And now you just lift it out of your pocket and decide if you're going to answer it or not or
Peter Koch: [00:43:55] Or if it's not for you. You throw the phone to whoever it was.
Al Brown: [00:43:58] Yeah. And [00:44:00] that's where you get a lot of your entertainment now, too, you know, from screen time to actually music. So you don't have to go put an album on. You don't have to get a cassette. You don't you don't have to go turn the TV on and adjust the ears on the you know, it's so I mean, those are all kind of funny, very vintage things, but it's true. So we have eliminated movement.
Peter Koch: [00:44:21] Yeah. That almost the devolution said go back even farther. And you talk about the work where we used to do and get back to the agrarian society that we used to be. And you spent the majority your day in the field. They are your milk and cows or you're preparing the field or you're standing at the stove or you're doing you're splitting wood. Whatever those things were, it was you were spending the majority your time in activity and you got home at the end of the day and there was only just enough time to eat, relax for a little bit and then get enough sleep so that you can get up in the morning. And now we have all these conveniences which have [00:45:00] almost devolved our ability to be that active.
Al Brown: [00:45:05] That's right.
Peter Koch: [00:45:06] I have a I have a very good friend of mine who's whose dad has been a dairy farmer all his life, and the dad is now getting into his 70s. But, you know, he will still put in more physical activity in his day just by he still goes out and milks the cows. He's not anywhere near as fast anymore. And he's a little more grumpy. It's sometimes when things don't go his way. But he still puts in a pretty physical day that would kick most people's butts. They would be exhausted. He gets back at the end of the day and he's like, yep, just the same thing I've been doing for the last 60 years or so. . So it's interesting how that lack of activity has crept into our lives and it's made it easy for us to relax. But that relaxation has it [00:46:00] doesn't always have its benefits. It has it detracts from our ability to have really a pain free longer life.
Al Brown: [00:46:08] Hmm. There was there was an utter pun in there, but I just couldn't fit it in. Utterly amazing that he does so well at this age.
Peter Koch: [00:46:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it right in the bucket.
Al Brown: [00:46:22] There you go. You know, you know, the one thing if you think about, you know, a couple of things we didn't I'm going to throw these in the bucket too. TMJ. Oh yeah. Jaw pain. Because as soon as you project the head forward, you change the function of the jaw, headaches, vision issues. When we look at a computer screen, we blink a whole bunch less so we get dry eyes. So there is a whole bunch of products out there from ballooning my glasses etc. And it's just mechanically you just don't you're not remoistening your eyes often, [00:47:00] as you would if you were just looking out into the world as opposed to a screen. So we blink a whole bunch less. So it's, you know, again, just more things that are not good when we slouch and we tip forward. So you got to pull back.
Peter Koch: [00:47:14] Got to pull back and it becomes habit. And when we get into a habit, our body adjusts to the habit that we're in. So it starts to shut down those things that it doesn't need, but it does need those things. But we're driving that negative behavior through habit. So just over time, just the shortening of the oh, I don't need to be that long as your muscles just shorten up and all of a sudden my hip flexor is getting out of the car becomes painful because my hip flexors have been shortened so much for sitting all the time because you're sitting in front of your computer screen and then long commute, you're not walking as much. So those habits and I think that's a key part to remember too, to break that habit, [00:48:00] you need to be intentional, but you need to try to break those habits so that you. Can be more pain free and not suffer some of the changes that will occur in your body over time through those habits that you've built up for the last 15, 20, sometimes even 30 years. You think nowadays going back through the oh, I was in the in the grocery store the other day and I kept hearing like a video playing. I'm looking around. I can't see anybody like I was expecting someone to be watching a video as a shopping. But what it was there was a kid, probably six years old, in the cart groceries all around him. And he was just watching the video. He was on his phone. And so he's six years old. And we're creating that habit of head because he was head forward looking at the phone [00:49:00] in his lap.
Al Brown: [00:49:00] Yeah, he's been indoctrinated.
Peter Koch: [00:49:03] There we go.
Al Brown: [00:49:03] There we go. Yeah.
Peter Koch: [00:49:04] So, you know, intentionality about the technology that we have and that intentionality of what we do with it and around it and how it affects us. It's important for us to know those effects. And we'll put the reference of the study that you referenced earlier in the podcast. Show notes. But can you maybe talk a little bit more about the Harvard study that talked about those the effects of what's going on when you have that C posture?
Al Brown: [00:49:29] Yes, it's fairly recent
Peter Koch: [00:49:30] You said 2021. Right.
Al Brown: [00:49:33] It's a newsletter they put out. And I think it was Megan Markovsky, who's a physical therapist. And I think it was a Kyle Staller. He's a gastroenterologist at Mass General. But it was an interesting read because I've theorized for a number of years that, you know, mechanically you're compressing all those structures. So they're now beginning to go. And [00:50:00] I'm sure they they've thought the same. I mean, that's what starts the theory. And then they're probably much better about doing the research than me. I just tend to get stuck, you know, bite onto that bone and I'm not going to change. But I feel that's the case. But, I can give you the link to that?
Peter Koch: [00:50:16] Yeah, please.
Al Brown: [00:50:16] And beginning to recognize that that slouch posture is so common, but it's going to create so many common problems that they're probably seeing those same complaints over and over again. And at some point you start to put two and two together and you go, all right, you know, and we can't in the medical world, sometimes we are so busy treating the symptoms, we forget to think about the root cause. And when you when you walk it back and you start looking at it and again in the world we live in, in safety and risk and exposure, I mean, that's what we're always doing, is trying to find the root cause because you can sit there and throw things, tools, money. But until you've discovered where the problem is and again, this [00:51:00] is you know, it's pretty basic to me that it is just, you know, just repeated unconscious behavior of sitting in front of something that you're looking down at throughout the day. And we do a lot more things on that computer than we've ever done in the past. You know, I mean, how many jobs now are just what is about 80 to 85 percent? I think we're closer to 87 percent of jobs now are sedentary and they're sedentary, most likely because of technology. Sure. I mean, look at our logging industry nowadays.
Peter Koch: [00:51:29] Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Al Brown: [00:51:30] You know, there's no more log runs down the river with people with spikes on their boots, running around with pick poles. And, you know, it's you know, there's a forwarder. They go in. I don't mean that they don't even have to get out of the seat. Now, the whole forward spins back around. They drive back out the way they came.
Peter Koch: [00:51:47] And it's like the Starship Enterprise in there with the amount of controls that they have because they can do everything from that seat. Everything most of the things that your hand crew was going to do, you know, 30, 40 years ago, [00:52:00] it's all done by machine now.
Al Brown: [00:52:03] Yeah. So and that's an office that bounces around, you know. So think about now we got that forward head posture with our C posture and you're going to go over stumps and bumps and that creates a forward momentum of your head and core, which translates into a huge extra load on the back. So, yeah, that's an office on steroids.
Peter Koch: [00:52:25] It's watching a guy a couple of days ago at a at a resort. They're doing a big construction job and they're hauling Phil from the pit up the up the mountain road, which is pretty bouncy, full of water bars.
Al Brown: [00:52:37] Don't you think Phil should walk?
Peter Koch: [00:52:38] Well, you know, Phil could walk, but Greg's on his way, so you never know. Put that in the bucket, too. So and, you know, I got a good view of the driver, so and all day long, he probably made twenty trips while we were there doing the training all day. And as he drove past us just in the, you know, maybe [00:53:00] six, seven hundred feet that we could see the truck, a lot of bounce happen and you can see the guy bounce. Up and down in the head, moving back and forth, he looked like he was at a heavy metal concert for crying out loud. How much motion was happening? Even with the air right seat, there was still enough movement. And so he's doing that all day. And just the compression just from being in the posture. And like you said, now you add the bouncing adding to gravity and velocity in that, too. So things aren't going to go well. Over time.
Al Brown: [00:53:29] Yeah, I'm sure he had his fill of that job.
Peter Koch: [00:53:36] And on that note. All right. So we've talked about some solutions for this, right? We have we want to be intentional about how we're setting up our workstation. We want to be intentional about when we take breaks and not just wait for our body to cue us with a pain or fatigue response. You gave us that little exercise [00:54:00] of being able to tilt your pelvis the opposite way to sit up straighter, tuck your head back and get up every 30 minutes or so. What else can we do to combat that forward head posture? And let's talk specifically about maybe the office environments or when you you're actually working at a computer, you maybe you have a laptop and that's the only thing that you have assigned to you for a machine to work on.
Al Brown: [00:54:27] Yeah. I mean, simple things. If you only have a laptop, go out and buy a secondary keyboard and a mouse and just move that laptop up so that if you have good vision and that's, you know, you might have a single lens, single vision lens, not a progressive like you or me, but if you have a single lens glass or you have good vision, most likely you want to put that that laptop screen [00:55:00] up. So where the content that you're viewing is at eye level and then the keyboard should be down so that your upper arm is parallel to your core and your forearms parallel to the floor, that keeps us the quietest and be in a good chair because again, we don't want it with the laptop or the screen too low. You're going to, you know, slump over into the seat position. So that's one of the basic things to do. And with this work from home that we just saw recently, we really kind of pushed at least get a secondary keyboard and mouse and get away from using the laptop for both. If you have a you know, you move that up a level and you go get a docking station and get a screen at home, that's at the right height and the keyboard and all that kind of good stuff. Those things all influence where your head goes. So it's important that you look at where those screens are now as a sort of side note, if you're a progressive lens where that screen won't go as high because you can actually go in the opposite [00:56:00] direction with your head going backwards. So we really want that game of Jenga balanced. So you might have to lower the screen a bit lower than contented eye height might have to be fifteen or so degrees below that level because of the way you use your lenses. Paperwork is another thing that a lot of folks will just lay it. A classic was to push the keyboard away so that the arms were extended and then the paperwork was laid between the keyboard and your belly to a certain extent. So you had an extreme forward head posture to look down at that paperwork, reverse that, put the paperwork on the other side and put the paperwork on a slight incline, 15, 20 degrees. You don't want to cover the screens, but a little bit of a document holder. And it can even be something basic, like a little binder that's propped up and it'll raise that document up enough that you can glance down with your eyes because your eyes can look down 15 to 20 degrees without you tipping your head and you can read the document [00:57:00] and then look back up at the screen. So, you know, look at the things that you interact with on a daily basis and try to get them at eye level, your iPhone or your iPhone Android. Sorry didn't mean to sell advertisement for anything, you know, think about bringing it up to your eyes as opposed to bringing your head down to it. And I know that can be tiring because that that phone weighs a ton, particularly if you're sitting there reading it for a while. Sometimes I tell folks just to cross their arm over almost like they're sticking their arm, like they're half folding their arms. So you might have the left arm under the right arm sort of up in the armpit area and it can support your hand. So the phone is in a better position for your hands. Had to stay upright.
Peter Koch: [00:57:52] Sure. It moves it out a little bit farther away from your body. Yeah.
Al Brown: [00:57:54] Yeah. And you can do it sort of passively and kind of read what's going on. So that's kind of the workstation. Think [00:58:00] about those things and all the stuff you interact with. Same thing in the car, like adjust your mirrors. So that when you're sitting upright in the car, you can see, you know, you might frame out the back window and if halfway through a drive you look in the mirror and all of a sudden you're looking at the ceiling, you're going, oh, and tells you that you've just gone into a forward head see posture. So. Correcting those mirrors so that they give you cues of where you are, you can do fun, little things to like once you have your screens at the right place. I often thought this would be a cool thing to do, is you put a little and you could you could do anything you want. I'm thinking this would be sort of the Elton John kind of tool to help you keep good portion. I reference Elton John simply because I'm thinking eyeglasses, but if you put a little mirror at the top of your screens, you know, just there that when you're in the right position, you can see your eyes. OK, so as the day goes on, all you have to do is and that's why I called the Elton John's, I put a set of glasses [00:59:00] over so you could see yourself in the eyeglasses reflecting back things like you're wearing eyeglasses as the day goes on, if you fade out of out of sight. And you don't see yourself, you pop back up until you see yourself, and it also cues you to get up and move because you're obviously fatigued and slouching. And then just from a walking around standpoint, because here's a showstopper. You never look at yourself. OK, so, you know, how do you have to rely on these internal memory, muscle memory kinesiology to understand where you are in space. So, you know, you're not looking at yourself. So when you were in great posture walking around, you typically don't see you. Let me say that again. When you're walking around in great posture and your head's upright and you might occasionally see your hands swing by, but other than that, you really won't see much of you at all, which tells you you're in good shape. If [01:00:00] you're hanging over in the seat posture and you're seeing a lot of you, you're creating a lot of problems for yourself.
Peter Koch: [01:00:06] Chances are that's not so good right.
Al Brown: [01:00:09] You'll see it coming. Yeah, it's one of those things are good position. You won't see much of you.
Peter Koch: [01:00:16] Yeah, that's an interesting key. And I really hadn't thought of it that way. But it is if I'm looking down, you know, you can see your feet, you can see your knees, some of us might see, you know, shirts or skirts or whatever. But if you're sitting up or standing up straight, you're not really seeing anything now. You might see hands, you might see a toe, but you're looking around. You're looking at the world around you instead of yourself and the sidewalk all the time.
Al Brown: [01:00:40] Good, solid game of Jenga. You know, you're upright.
Peter Koch: [01:00:45] So what are some work if people want to find more information about the effects of slouching and maybe some different ways to counteract it or how to set your workstation up or to do things to counteract slouching, where might they [01:01:00] go to find stuff?
Al Brown: [01:01:02] You can go to our safety director and we have a lot of resources there on the effects of sitting and ways to set up proper ways to set up a workstation. We have work from home references simply because most of us have been doing that for the past year and a couple of months. And we also have stretches, a couple of good stretch posters, movement. I call them resetting posters because it's I mean, some of them are stretches, but a lot of it is just resetting your body. Kind of like I talked about standing up and doing some back bends. That's really sort of a resetting of the body in the back. So there's great material there. You know, James Levine's book on Stand Up, you know, I don't get any royalties from that recommendation, but I found it a great a great quick read. It's one of those kind of
Peter Koch: [01:01:55] It is a really good book. Yeah. Yeah.
Al Brown: [01:01:57] It just kind of hits the physiology of it and you kind of [01:02:00] go, huh? And it really touches on some other things to some. We didn't talk about obesity and all that kind of stuff from sitting and lowering your metabolism, but he really does a great job and he did a solid piece of research on that fidgetors and non-fidgetors and moving so a great book to reference and certainly online. There's always good, good references there. We'll put that the Harvard newsletter on the back side so that you can take a peek at that.
Peter Koch: [01:02:27] Be great. There's a ton of resources out there. Just when you're searching for stuff, always try to go to a reputable resource. There's always new and different information that's out there. Sometimes it's not always the best. So not that you have to start with MEMIC resources, but certainly, like you said, we've got a ton of resources out there. The Harvard Medical Review is also a great place to go. And then some of the books that are out there are good as well. But as long as you're talking about how to counteract those things with just natural stuff, like it's not going to be a quick, easy it's an easy [01:03:00] fix when you think about it set up straight. Right. Get up and move. Those are too quick and easy things to do, but they tend to be difficult because of the habits. So it's not a pill, it's not a surgery. It's not. I can go see somebody else and they can fix me. You kind of have to fix yourself. So that could be the biggest challenge. So when the solution that someone proffers for you to fix your fix, what ails you is that magic pill or the surgery or something revolutionary that someone else can do for you, it's probably not going to correct it. Might help for a little while, but might not correct that all the way. So those things that you can do for yourself are going to be immediately helpful. Just be intentional about them.
Al Brown: [01:03:43] Yeah, I mean, those are just addressing the symptoms. If you think about it and you know, what we're talking about is addressing the root cause. So it's harder, much cheaper, but it works. And, you know, you know, gravity's going to get you in the end anyway. So, you know, [01:04:00] don't help it along.
Peter Koch: [01:04:02] Don't give up.
Al Brown: [01:04:03] Don't. Yeah. Don't start doing the things that are going to happen to you anyway with aging and the breakdown of the body by mimicking those postures. Hmm, I was a little commercial break there, mimicking those postures early on. And again, it's just be mindful. Sure. Of where you are in space. Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Koch: [01:04:29] Excellent. Well, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast and sharing all this great information with us and the listeners out there. So appreciate it again very much.
Al Brown: [01:04:39] Thank you very much. Appreciate being here. Always fun.
Peter Koch: [01:04:42] Always fun. Thanks to all of our listeners out there for joining us today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking about how slouching can affect your health with Al Brown PT and director of ergonomics at MEMIC. If you have any questions or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email [01:05:00] me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources, links to other podcasts with our as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. If you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thanks, because it really helps us spread the word. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe. That really helps us to please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
In 2020, Fall protection was once again, number one of OSHA’s Top Ten most frequently cited standards. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Steve Badger, CSP, OHST, and Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC breaks down OSHA’s Top 10 and how it can be used as a tool for continuous improvement of your safety program.
Peter Koch: [00:00:03] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. Well, we all make lists. I don't know about you, but I love to check stuff off my list. For me, it represents an accomplishment or at the very least, something I don't have to worry about anymore until, of course, it resurfaces on my lists again, lists tend to be an important part of any safety management process, and they can help keep us on track for the myriad of different topics, hazards and exposures that must be addressed by our teams every day in the workplace. It can be overwhelming about the number of things that we have to manage. So lists become an important part and sometimes we generate lists to help us focus our limited resources and energies. So consider hazard or injury mapping. These are two great ways to generate and prioritized injury prevention and hazard mitigation [00:01:00] efforts and strategies. Well, if you're not sure what those two things are, we can put some resources in the show notes. But this is not a podcast about hazard and injury mapping. We're talking about lists today and specifically OSHA's top 10 list. So OSHA has a myriad of different lists and their lists can also help employers and business owners find a starting place in workplace safety. So to help us with that today on the podcast, with me is Steve Badger, CSP, OHST and safety management consultant with MEMIC. Steve has more than 20 years of experience working with the paper, medical, sterilization and construction industries. He's also an authorized instructor for the OSHA Institute in Manchester, New Hampshire. Steve's experience in different industries and workplace safety, as well as his connection to the OSHA Institute, has allowed him insight into OSHA's top 10 lists and how they can be used to help us focus on the right areas [00:02:00] and overcome some of the barriers to enhancing safety in the workplace. So, Steve, welcome today to the podcast.
Steve Badger: [00:02:08] Thank you, Peter. Thank you very much for having me on here today. And just a little bit about myself and my safety history. I started way back in 1986. I worked for Johnson and Johnson, and that was my really my first exposure to safety. And, you know, what we had to do. And the very first part of it was hazard communications and, you know, those things called material safety data sheets that just came out of nowhere supposedly. And, you know, that had to put together a program. And you have to think about the fact we didn't have a lot of computers back then. We didn't have a lot of resources back then to be able to go in and look these things up. We had to call people. And if we were lucky, we had a thermal fax that we could have somebody fax something to us. And it was a very difficult process when you worked in a laboratory like I did, where [00:03:00] there was a chemical part and there was also a microbiology part. And, you know, in trying to put these HAZCOM safety data sheets and programs together. So that that was that was where I get started with that. And then I moved back to Maine after that. And I worked for an environmental safety company doing lots of air testing and air monitoring and industrial hygiene related stuff.
Steve Badger: [00:03:22] Then I moved back out of state again, went down to the southern part of the country, down to Kentucky and Tennessee, and did a lot of work at the Tennessee Valley Authority Plants doing industrial hygiene, monitoring and safety related to that. Shortly after that, I came back to Maine again and did some more work in the environmental field and started doing a lot of work in the paper industry, doing safety related job safety analysis and things like that for the different companies that I worked for. And then a while after that, I started as the safety director for Fisher Plow, which gave me some industry related [00:04:00] background, which was really interesting. You know, to see a snowplow being made is something that we take for granted every year here in the northeast part of the country. But there's a lot that goes into that, a lot of safety and environmental concerns there. So and then, of course, I've been with MEMIC now for about ten and a half years as a full time employee. So, you know, I feel my background has been varied and it really has helped me in the years.
Peter Koch: [00:04:26] Yeah. It really kind of rounds everything out when you have that experience in all those different industries and makes you be able to I think at least that on my side, to be able to appreciate some of the challenges that a particular industry might have with either compliance or managing safety within their particular industry. But tell me a little bit more, because I know working with you over the last 10 years when I kind of think about OSHA and I want to have kind of an interpretation of maybe what a standard says, especially around the environmental [00:05:00] side of things or HAZCOM side of. Things I tend to think of you and I go back to you and I start thinking about, well, what would Steve what's Steve's got some insight into that maybe he can give me a little guidance in those areas. So talk to me a little bit about kind of your experience with OSHA and how you became, I guess, as interested as you are in the standards and then kind of going through their lists.
Steve Badger: [00:05:24] Sure, absolutely. You know, my interests have always been and I'm a numbers kind of guy and I like looking at, you know, these lists and frequencies and, you know, and how these things tie together with the frequently cited standards. How do they apply to the real world? You know, how do they apply to the injuries and incidents of that happened out there? You know, is there any correlation to it? And we certainly can talk about that later on as we go through this. But, yeah, that was my interest was really looking at and trying to figure out, you know, why are these top [00:06:00] ten violations? Why are they there? And, you know, is OSHA focusing on these things or is it these things that they see every day is they're driving from point A to point B or they get a complaint or something. And so, you know, trying to figure that out, you know, is really important. And we certainly can delve a little deeper into that is as we go through this. But, you know, it really gives us an insight as to what hazards are out there.
Peter Koch: [00:06:28] Yeah, perfect. And OSHA has tons of lists as we start to go through. And they really become a good repository for us for numbers as and they take numbers from the Bureau of Labor Standards and they pull them together and they analyze them and try to figure out sort of where some of the focus's are. And one of those lists we're going to talk about today is the top 10 most frequently cited standards. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what are the top 10 most frequently cited standards and where do they come from, [00:07:00] where they derived from?
Steve Badger: [00:07:02] Sure. Certainly the number one and it has been number one most years, certainly within the last 15 years, is fall protection or the lack thereof. And most of that comes from the residential construction. And in a lot of that is because, you know, is you know, is complaints are made war as OSHA happens to be driving by. They're going from point A to point B, they see somebody in an imminent danger situation, meaning that, you know, the worst hasn't happened yet. They have not been injured, but they are in a situation where they could be injured or it could be a fatality if the person should fall. So that's the number one citation that's out there. Number two, which is near and dear to me, is the hazard communications and hazard communications for the general industry side of things. It's always been number one for the last 15 years in [00:08:00] the overall list. When you combine the two together, it usually comes in second or third. And typically that has to do with one not having a written program. It's usually, number one, not having the safety data sheets, as we now call them, in place, and people just not being trained. You know what are the hazards of these chemicals? Number three, this past year was respiratory protection. And there's a whole host of reasons. Again, take a look at what was going on in our past year, you know, with covid-19 and, you know, and other issues and the difficulty of getting respirators. A lot of people took some shortcuts with respiratory protection.
Steve Badger: [00:08:41] Maybe, you know, some of those were things like not having a medical clearance to be able to wear a respirator. That was a big one. And again, not having a written program in which would have indicated to them that they needed to do these things, scaffolding came in number four. You know, scaffolding is one [00:09:00] of those things in construction and general industry that people use to get to upper heights, to be able to access something that they might not be able to get to from the ground. And there's a lot of rules and regulations around scaffolding, and it's very easy to make a mistake when it comes to scaffolding. Ladders was number five and typically with the ladder use, it was people not using them appropriately. And as most of us know, there's right ways and wrong ways of dealing with or handling ladders and how we access them and how we secure them from falling. And, you know, that message just doesn't seem to get out there sometimes. Number six was lock-out tag-out or controlling hazardous energy. And this one has more than just electrical implications. This has to do with pneumatics and hydraulics and lots of other types of hazardous energy that can seriously hurt or killed somebody. Number seven this past year was powered industrial trucks or forklifts. And typically [00:10:00] the citations that went along with that had to do with the, you know, the operators not being properly trained or the authorization from the employer, even though they might have been trained, they weren't authorized to use it, you know, in doing their daily inspections to make sure that that powered industrial truck is actually safe to operate.
Steve Badger: [00:10:20] We get to number eight, which was, again, a fall protection related issue. And in this case, here, it was training requirements and these training requirements, this had to do with not having a written program, not doing what we call training that is documented by a competent person that is not a certified training. And so there was a lot of citations. So between number one being fall protection and number eight, there was nearly 7000 citations alone just in those two areas. Number nine, was eye and face protection, personal protective equipment and again, these are very important [00:11:00] ones because we only have two eyes and if we're not protecting our eyes, you know, we lose something there. And so there was a lot of those types of citations. And then number 10 this past year was machine guarding. You know, we talk about, you know, guarding on pulleys and saws and all kinds of different types of machinery that has nip points and places where people could get their hands caught or their arms caught or some other part of their body or something they're wearing gets pulled into that piece of equipment. So, you know, it certainly is something that we you know, we could spend a whole day talking about just machine guarding because there's so many different issues around that. So that really rounds out that top 10.
Peter Koch: [00:11:44] Yeah. And it sounds like as we start to look at each of these top fall protection, hazard communication, respiratory protection, scaffolding ladders, lock out, tag out forklifts, fall protection again eye and face safety or PPE and then machine [00:12:00] guarding. You know, as we start to look at that long list, there's a lot that goes into each of those standards. And it seems that OSHA is you know, those citations are coming from particular parts of those standards that employers tend to miss. And I think that's one of the important things that we can think of this list as it is a reminder that, hey, these issues are out there. And, yes, they're coming from citations and OSHA is doing their enforcement process and finding these citations that way. But really, it's a good reminder that this happens all over. You know, if you have someone that uses ladders within your facility, know that Ladders was number five this year of the most frequently cited standards for OSHA. And if you have ladders, there's probably something that you can do to improve in that section. So ladders or utilizing [00:13:00] this list as sometimes a guide or a check to say, hey, how am I actually doing? How would I stand up as an employer for workplace safety based on this year's standards? So let's think about this. So this was this was from 2020, correct? The list that you just read off was from 2020.
Steve Badger: [00:13:23] Yes, that's correct. This is for fiscal year 2020. So I caution people, if you go out there and you're looking for these and these lists from other sources, maybe a magazine or maybe some other online service, you just have to be careful because sometimes these numbers don't seem to match up because they're doing fiscal year versus calendar year. And so the numbers can be a little bit differently because the fiscal year for 2020 ended in on September 30th. So we had several months after that to where some of these numbers may not match up. And [00:14:00] you're looking and you're going, wait a minute, you know, how can it be that much different? And it is because of the calendar year versus fiscal year.
Peter Koch: [00:14:06] It's a really good point, especially if you're trying to prioritize something and say, well, where do I want to focus? I want to focus on the place that maybe has the most frequency and it doesn't line up. So that's a really good point. Let's talk a little bit about because this is not the first year that has done this. They've done this for quite a while and have put together these lists of the top 10 most frequently cited standards. How does this year's lineup match up to say what happened in the past? So are they the same standards that keep getting cited all the time? Or are there significant differences from year to year?
Steve Badger: [00:14:45] Yeah, it's a great question because, you know, when you look back, I mean, just for an example, in 2011, the top three citations frequently cited violations were fall protection scaffolding and HAZCOM. [00:15:00] 2012 fall protection HAZCOM scaffolding, you jump forward a couple of years to 2016, fall protection HAZCOM scaffolding. So as you could see, these things do not change greatly from year to year. That top 10 tend to stay top 10. Now, there is some movement within that in this particular year, you know, for fiscal year 2020, the biggest mover within that was the respiratory protection. And as I mentioned, I think a lot of that was probably had to do with, you know, covid issues that people, you know, what are you giving people respirators because of the fear of somebody catching it or passing it along to someone else. So there was a lot of those type of issues, and most of those came because of initially just giving somebody a respirator and not making sure that they're medically cleared to wear it, which is, as we all know, could be a pretty dangerous situation for anyone that has any breathing difficulties,
Peter Koch: [00:15:56] As could many of these standards. If you think about [00:16:00] it, especially as you have mentioned, as you're describing some of the citations, many of those around training or authorization and OSHA as well as myself. And I think you personally as well think that there's a responsibility on the employers part to not only choose the people that should be doing the particular tasks correctly, but then authorize them to do that task, give them permission to do that task. And then the employer has a responsibility to provide the appropriate level of training so that they can be competent in the task that they're doing. And part of that is understanding the hazards that they're exposed to and the controls that need to be in place. And respiratory protection is a really good one. Because you put a respirator on and you see it all the time, you know, people will wear a paper mask, respirator, sweep and dust up in the shop someplace or they'll have a full face respirator on with. [00:17:00] And what you can see is their beards sticking out underneath the bottom of it. So they've understood that there's a hazard. They're utilizing a particular piece of equipment to help protect them from it. But they're not really understanding the limitations of that piece of PPE. So they're using it incorrectly and probably or possibly putting themselves at greater risk for the hazard that they're exposed to.
Steve Badger: [00:17:28] Yeah, absolutely. With the respiratory protection, it can give you a false sense of security that, you know, it's doing something for you. Whereas like you mentioned, you know, somebody's beard is sticking out from their respirator. That human hair is many, many times larger than a lot of the particles in the things that were inhaling. They get down deep into our lungs and cause the infections and those type of issues. So wherever that hair is sticking out, there's that much less protection that we have. And so it does give us a [00:18:00] false sense of security. Sometimes if we're not properly fit tested, we're not properly trained. To even put it on can be a big issue because that was something I always used to do with respiratory protection training. Was just hand some of your respirator and tell, OK, put it on. And, you know, probably half of the people would have it on sideways or backwards or, you know, upside down because they just didn't understand how that was to go on. So you can imagine with the covid-19 issues and, you know, respirators just being handed out, there was probably a lot of people wearing those incorrectly.
Peter Koch: [00:18:33] Yeah, I can totally imagine that. And then the same thing happens with fall protection. You see that often people using ladders incorrectly, people using harnesses incorrectly. And some of it stems from inappropriate training or lack thereof. Some of it stems from not having the right equipment and some of it stems from possibly ignorance around what the hazards are and the limitations of that particular equipment that they're handed given or that they've [00:19:00] brought themselves to the job site sometimes. So it's interesting if and if you go back to 2011 and fall protection in 2012, fall protection 2016 fall protection, and here we are again in 2020 fall protection is number one HAZCOM number two. To 2016 HAZCOM number two, 2012 HAZCOM's number two. Why are we seeing the same, I know you're not going to have an official, you know, Nostradamus like a predictive answer here. But I guess in your opinion, why are we seeing the same citations over and over and over again?
Steve Badger: [00:19:45] Yeah, I think there's a few really important reasons that I think sometimes it comes to, you know, lack of knowledge, you know, people, you know, they received these citations and they and they're, you know, doing work. [00:20:00] And so we'll pick one here has the communications and they buy a chemical, they don't realize that, you know, even though you go to, you know, your local hardware store and you buy this chemical, that you have to train people how to use it properly. And so there's some of that is lack of knowledge when it comes to things like fall protection. Sometimes, you know, people are in that mindset that, you know, this is the way we've always done it and we haven't had any serious injuries before. We've never had that, you know, that big issue that has come up. So they don't tend to change until there's something to motivate them to change. And so it could be an injury. It could be a citation. Sometimes people worry about the cost. You know, these you know, they're always fearful of, you know, they have their own business.
Steve Badger: [00:20:50] And if we put, you know, all this money into fall protection, you know, is that going to leave anything left for the business, you know, profit wise? And I always talk to people about that [00:21:00] and let them know, look, you know, can you afford the cost of somebody getting injured? You know, that's going to be a much greater cost to you than buying and training people how to wear a harness, you know, appropriately, you know, that personal fall protection stuff. So, you know, culture. Culture is always a big one that we always talk about, because sometimes people just, you know, don't have that culture within their company that helps them understand from the top down that, you know, your safety is our number one goal. You know, it is. And, you know, sometimes people will say it's number two or number three goal for a company. But, you know, the companies that have the best cultures, they understand that their workers, their employees are their number one asset. And if they don't protect those people, they are going to be in trouble.
Peter Koch: [00:21:54] Sure. I think that's those are all good, good insight into why we keep seeing [00:22:00] it and when you really think about it again. So if you take those factors, it could be culture, it could be cost, could be motivation, could be something else that's driving someone to not take a step in the right direction. We're also seeing, I think when we can talk about this next here we are seeing the same citations or the same categories of citations show up because they're the most frequently people are exposed, the most frequently to these things in the workplace. And that shows up. I think, unfortunately, as we start to look at our lagging indicators, they show up in our injury statistics. So can you talk a little bit about maybe how these citations correlate to or these standards, standard citations correlate into injuries and maybe what BLS or the Bureau of Labor Statistics might show for us?
Steve Badger: [00:23:00] Sure, [00:23:00] absolutely. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I'm kind of a numbers guy, I like to look at the numbers. And in this case here, if you take the data that came out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2019, when we look at construction, you know, residential injuries, fatalities, that happened because people did not have proper fall protection. There were more than two thousand seven hundred and ten injuries just in that year of 2000, 19 from people falling to a lower level. There was also seven hundred and eleven fatalities, which was the number one thing that caused fatalities in construction and it is every single year. So 711 people that went to work last year, that did not come home. So it absolutely correlates to these citations. Another example of this is exposure to harmful substances in the environment and which is covered by hazard [00:24:00] communications. There were over 640 fatalities related to that. People using chemicals and think bad things happen, whether it was overcome with the chemical, the vapors or the gases that were related to that. Or maybe there was a physical hazard, something exploded or burned and caused that type. And then looking at respiratory protection number three in 2019, which was where we started this covid thing, they were five hundred and thirty three violations just on no medical evaluations. And so when you think about that and how many people may have been injured from that, you know, is hard to tell because sometimes those numbers don't always translate to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But you can see from these numbers that they really do tie back to this top 10 citations in a very disturbing way.
Peter Koch: [00:24:59] Sure. And [00:25:00] it's really interesting. I just I just pulled up while you were speaking there. I went on to, you know, your favorite site, Google. Right. And I searched OSHA top 10 most frequently cited standards for 2019. And so you related that in 2019. And residential construction falls to the lower level, generated twenty seven hundred or so injuries and over 700 fatalities. Well, guess what? The top citation was in 2019 fall protection. And there are, you know, upwards of 6000 different citations for fall protection, just the general requirements. So not providing or not protecting the worker from the unprotected edge at some point in time. And then number two, so the second point, you had so exposure to harmful substances and environments of 642 fatalities. Hazard communication was number two in 2019 with 3600 citations. [00:26:00] So it's substantial. There's a strong correlation between what we're seeing as the top 10 most frequently cited standards and that lagging indicator of injuries and fatalities. And you talked about earlier, like, why do we keep seeing the same ones over and over? One of those was lack of motivation until there's an injury or a citation and then we come into compliance or we step up our game a little bit. But predictively, I think and as a safety guy and I like numbers, too, maybe not quite as much as you like numbers, but I like numbers, too. As we start to look predictively, you know, you put these two things up here, you put the BLS information up in front of you for the injuries and fatalities around cause. And then you start to look at the most frequently cited standards. And I think you've got a pretty good roadmap of where to look in your business, at least a checklist [00:27:00] of what to look into and see how do I measure up. So how am I doing on fall protection where does my HAZCOM program look like if I got scaffolding, how does that work? And I went, who's authorized to use it? Who's authorized to set it up, how do I inspect it? Do I even know what OSHA requires for compliance around scaffolding or did I just buy it off a buddy and we're working on it because I need it. Which is not a bad thing by it. However you need it. If you need that tool to do your job, awesome. But then understand what the limitations are and where you should be focusing in order to keep your people safe. And again, so you want to get the biggest bang for your buck. The top ten might be a place to start for sure. For sure. Any other thoughts on that, Steve? Any other thoughts are on correlation between citations and injuries and how the numbers kind of fit together and places that employers can or things that employers can use to. Focus on. [00:28:00]
Steve Badger: [00:28:01] Yeah, I you know, I think the you hit it, kind of hit it on the head there about not knowing, you know, kind of not knowing what they don't know. And that's where I think, you know, we you know, we can certainly help with that. You know, when companies come to us and say, you know, we use scaffolding and but we're not sure what we're supposed to be doing or with hazard communications, what are we you know, I can read the standard and I get very confused by it, which we hear a lot. You know, what do I have to do? So that's where, you know, we do some training. You know, we sit down with our insureds and talk about these things and, you know, try to put it into terms that people can understand, because that's all about, you know, when we talk about hazard communication, they you know, that's a that rule, that law that is in effect is the right to know law. And so you have that right to know, but you also have the right to understand. And so, you know, for the employee that's working with this stuff, they need to understand that if they do something inappropriate, [00:29:00] that bad things can happen from that.
Peter Koch: [00:29:03] Sure. Perfect. I think that's great. So a couple of places to look. Look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, their information. Look at the top 10. And, you know, certainly use your insurance carrier, MEMIC. If you have a different carrier, use them or your trusted agent partners to look out. Or maybe you're some of the industry experts that are out there to kind of get some more information on some of these areas that you might not have full knowledge of. And they can be complicated. I was looking at you know, workplace safety. There's really two components. There's the moral component to it of like I really want to make sure that all my employees go home in the condition that they came in. I don't want them to get hurt. They could be sore. They can be tired just from physical activity and labor. But I wanted to get hurt. I want them to be safe so there's their moral component. And then sometimes that moral component, you get [00:30:00] to a point where I don't really know how to do it. And the compliance side of it, the standards that OSHA put out together put there is that tends to help with that because it gives you a baseline. Here's the minimum that you can do to try to mitigate the exposure to the hazard that your employees have while they're in the workplace. So those two pieces together and certainly the OSHA top ten gives you an idea of where to focus and what's going to give you the biggest bang for your buck generally. And obviously, if you're operating a company that doesn't have hazards that are encompassed by the top ten, it's not going to give you a whole lot of help. But certainly if you do if you use any of those things, the top 10 is going to going to give you an idea of where to look and then what standards to focus on. So not a bad deal. Well, let's talk a little bit about how Osha comes up with these. You mentioned earlier that [00:31:00] there were there are different ways that, you know, OSHA might drive by or OSHA might come to your business to inspect or to look for how you're doing on the compliance piece. And it's that partnership of helping keep the American workers safe by working with the employers out there to get them to understand where some of the gaps are within their safety process. So how does OSHA come by the citations and how do they come by citing businesses for not following the standards?
Steve Badger: [00:31:38] Yeah, that's great, and I'm glad you mentioned the partnership part of this, Peter, because that's how we absolutely need to look at this. This is a partnership. OSHA's job is to protect that worker, your employee, just like it is yours. And that's why it's a partnership. It's not and it should never be an adversarial type of relationship. They're [00:32:00] not there to cite you. They're not there to fine you. They don't get their you know, their funding from the number of citations that they give out. They're there to help you keep your people safe. So, you know, it should be treated as a partnership, not as a bad thing. You know, I always use the example. You know, it's like police. Their goal isn't to write tickets. Their goal is to keep people safe. And with OSHA is to ensure a safe and healthful workplace that's written into their preamble, into their you know, this is their purpose is to help create that environment. So moving on to, you know, what do how they go about these inspections is, you know, they really it breaks down into two different types of inspections. There's programmed inspections. We'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. And then there's unprogrammed ones. Now, these unprogrammed ones can be anything from an imminent danger situation, meaning that they happen to be driving from point A to point [00:33:00] B, they see somebody on a roof or maybe they're working in a trench where they're not being protected. If that trench should collapse, they could they could be crushed or killed in there. Those they call those imminent danger situations where they have to stop at those because the worst has not happened yet. But potentially it could. And so that their number one, you know, unprogrammed is these imminent danger type of situations or somebody may call them and say, hey, you know, if you know these you know, this is this roofing project going on somewhere. And, you know, there's a bunch of people working without fall protection. They absolutely are going to respond to that because we know what those outcomes of those falls can be, that they can be fatalities.
Peter Koch: [00:33:51] No, I just I was thinking, as you're talking about imminent danger, there's an interesting video on YouTube, and I'm sure you've seen it. An [00:34:00] OSHA compliance officer had driven past road construction that's going on. And there's an open trench happening there. And all you can see in the video is he's already come on site and he's introduced himself and he's asking just questions like, hey, what do you doing how long you've been working there? He's asking the guy to get out of the trench, pretty unstable. The guy is pretty much standing on a pipe in the middle in the middle of the trench and within. I don't think the video goes for longer than maybe 40, 45 seconds. Within that 45 second time frame, the size of the trench start to sluff and the guy jumps from where he's standing to another pipe to get out of the way of the collapsing trench. And had the OSHA guy not been there, the person might have might have been in a lower segment of the trench and not able to jump out of the way had been buried. So that imminent danger piece is [00:35:00] helpful. And I think it highlights sometimes As an employee or as an employer, we might not recognize the danger that we're in, which is why we have standards there. So I might be really comfortable with that risk up until the time that I get crushed or I do fall or I am exposed to very hazardous chemical and all of a sudden I'm not in a place where I can work anymore.
Peter Koch: [00:35:28] Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about MEMIC online instructor led training for OSHA's 10 hour construction and general industry standards outreach workshops. Taking an OSHA 10 hour construction or General Industry Standards outreach course is a great way to set the baseline for workplace safety knowledge with a focus on hazards and controls. MEMICs authorized OSHA outreach trainers take the course's attendees through the required topics for the 1910 or 1926 OSHA standards. [00:36:00]Free to our policyholders. These online outreach courses are a great way to balance the need for engaging training around the OSHA Standards and scheduling time for staff to travel to attend an in-person class. Check out the full schedule of MEMIC workshops at www.MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety. Now let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:36:28] So it's an interesting it's an interesting video, I think it really does highlight how a compliance officer can, especially in an imminent danger situation, be able to help. But unfortunately, there's not that many compliance officers and they're not going to be able to drive by every workplace in order to help you be safe. So there's other ways that OSHA has from a priority standpoint in these unprogrammed inspections. And you talked a little bit about someone [00:37:00] maybe calling in a complaint or a referral that be another one of those ways to for them to be called to an inspection, correct?
Steve Badger: [00:37:09] That is correct. complaints, they may be called in complaints. They maybe somebody has filled out a form and submitted it, you know, through the through their website. Those complaints they do take seriously and they certainly take more seriously those ones where someone has taken the time to fill out a form and put it in. It can be done anonymously. They get a lot of calls, quite frankly, people maybe disgruntled former employees or maybe somebody didn't get a job bid that they were hoping to get. You know, they get a lot of these complaints. So they, you know, being not many people to be out there and do these inspections, they have to pick their battles, they have to pick, you know, what ones, you know, mean the most. And if somebody fills out that form, they're going to take that seriously. Referrals can come [00:38:00] from a number of different sources. They can come from here in the state of Maine. We have safety works they may have gone into and done a walk through of a certain facility or a business and found some hazards and made sure that the employer knew about those hazards. And if they have chosen not to fix those or not to correct those hazards, they may refer that, you know, further on other referrals come from places like EMS, fire, police, where they maybe they've had to go and take somebody, you know, to a hospital to get care because they fell off a roof. So sometimes those referrals can come from those directions as well. The second most common of the unprogrammed inspections are the fatalities and catastrophes. That's where the worst has happened. Something bad has happened. Somebodies fallen off a roof. They've been killed or somebody has been put into the hospital because of a situation. And that's also one of those things where, you know, you as [00:39:00] an employer have to make sure that OSHA is aware of these things. OSHA requires that any fatalities that happen on your job site, you have to notify them within eight hours of that fatality catastrophes such as somebody being put into the hospital, you have up to 16 I mean, sorry, 24 hours excuse me, to be able to put that in. But you have to let them know that is part of the rules as part of the law, that you have to let them know about those. And so they will absolutely follow up on those things. You know, anything whether there's an amputation or somebody loses an eye, they're going to investigate that. They're going to require you to, you know, talk to them a little bit about that and what you're doing to prevent that from happening again.
Peter Koch: [00:39:45] And I think for those specifically, I meant obviously imminent danger is something that's pretty obvious from a fatality and catastrophe. You know, something has happened. Like you had said, the worst has happened. And OSHA now [00:40:00] is trying to work with you not so much to point fingers and say, hey, you're doing something wrong. But, hey, let's look at your process. And what did you do? How did you, how did this come to be? Why did it happen? Because, you know, honestly, not that the OSHA standard covers all of the situations that could be out there from a workplace hazard standpoint, but in particular for the most frequent causes of injuries and fatalities. The standard if you apply the standard well, it will cover the majority of the potential problems that would cause injuries or fatalities that are out there. Catastrophe's serious enough injuries to put somebody in the hospital for a period of time. And they're really there to help you figure out how to prevent this from happening again. And obviously, they're doing it from a compliance standpoint, but they have to that's part of their mission [00:41:00] standpoint. And you can you know, if you took the OSHA top 10 standard or top 10 most frequently cited standards to begin with and started to go through your business. And how are you doing on the compliance piece? You may never get to the imminent danger inspection, the complaint or referral inspection or the fatality or catastrophe inspection. So, you know, one of the other, they can help you get to a place where the injury or fatality, either will never happen again or won't happen in the first place. Awesome. So there's one more type of inspection out there we talked about the unprogrammed, the inspections. And why don't you talk a little bit about the programed, inspections, because I think that's a pretty interesting piece because it does have more numbers involved in it and how they determine where they go.
Steve Badger: [00:41:49] Absolutely. With the programed inspections, there are different. A couple of different kinds that we want to talk about first is sometimes they have a local emphasis [00:42:00] program where the local will say state of Maine, OSHA taking statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics or, you know, taking them from other sources that there are a lot of particular injuries in a particular occupation. And so they will take those and say, OK, we're going to focus on that this particular year here in the state of Maine. You know, at different times we've had sawmill's we've had things in the health care industry for local emphasis in what they will do is they will focus on those because they're higher than, you know, the average types of the numbers of injuries and the frequencies. The other type that goes kind of goes along with that are national emphasis programs where OSHA as a whole is a federal agency is focusing on a particular subject, in this case, one really common one is silica. The exposure to crystalline silica is a huge one for [00:43:00] them at this point, because silica is one of those things that, you know, it's naturally found mineral in the ground. People, you know, people get exposed to crystalline silica through, you know, cutting of concrete and things like that and dust and so, you know, as more time goes on, they're finding out that the levels of exposure are higher than what they should be. So as they are going along in time, they ended up, you know, doing more of these inspections and keeping the exposures down so that people aren't getting sick from this. Again, that partnership, you know, helping those employers, you know, realize that, wait a minute, this is something that is serious can make people sick prematurely and have breathing difficulties, which, you know, with silica, a good example that once you have it, you know, you once you have silicosis, it doesn't go away. It's something you have for life. So we certainly want to try to avoid that as much as possible.
Peter Koch: [00:43:58] Yeah, for sure. Now, with [00:44:00] the program inspections, if I wanted to find out what emphasis programs were, were in my area, in my state or maybe what national emphasis programs were and what I would be affected by, where would I go? Where do I look that up? Because it's not something that you see a lot in the newspaper or find unless you're following safety publications, you're not going to see it all the time. So as a business owner, how do I find out what those national or local emphasis programs are?
Steve Badger: [00:44:30] Yeah, absolutely, the best place to take a look for these are is at the OSHA.gov website, www.OSHA.gov for government is absolutely the best place to go. And if you do a search when you go in there, they have a very, very good search engine for their website. And you go in there and you plug in local emphasis or national emphasis programs, you will see you there will pop up and tell you different [00:45:00] ones and even some past ones that they've looked at, you know, previously. And then maybe now they put an end to it. You know, maybe they're focusing on something different to, you know, a different type of industry or something. But that is by far the best place to look. Some of the trade magazines will have some of that information, but it doesn't really go into why they're focusing on those particular things as much as OSHA does.
Peter Koch: [00:45:25] Good. I think that's a good place. So. OSHA.gov, good place to go. I know I go there fairly often as part of my job and I guess as a safety, as a safety consultant, you're going to go there as a safety person at a particular facility. It might be a good place for you to check out to. I know quite a while ago here in Maine, I know that one of the, I Can't remember if it was a local emphasis program or a national emphasis program, it was an emphasis program around amputations for metal [00:46:00] fabrication facilities or metal fab businesses. And the employer that I was working for at the time had fabrication shops. So we had employees that were actually working under that classification. And I remember getting a letter saying that, you know, chances are because of the national emphasis program or because of the emphasis program for metal fabrication facilities, an inspection may occur. So you get notice right in the program inspections. If you have employees that fall under that classification for the work that's happening and you may get a letter in the mail saying that you might get inspected, it doesn't mean you're going to get inspected, but you very well might get inspected.
Steve Badger: [00:46:50] Absolutely. And, you know, if you do get that letter, that doesn't necessarily mean that you've done something wrong. I always like to point that out as well. Just because [00:47:00] you're in that particular class code or that particular industry, they're going to try to see as many of those industries as many of those businesses as possible within that period of time that that emphasis program is open. So, yeah, I always like to stress that, that it's not just because you've done something wrong, it's just because you're in that particular industry.
Peter Koch: [00:47:22] Yeah, right on. I think it's worthwhile just spending a minute or two here about if an inspection does happen, if she shows up on your job site for whatever the inspection priority is, could be imminent danger could be because you called them for a fatality, could be because it was a referral or you might be part of the program inspection, sort of what happened. So I guess if they show up, they're going to provide proof of who they are. They are they're required to produce their identification, their badge and state the purpose of what's going to happen and then really have an opening conference with you to tell [00:48:00] you what's going on, why they're there. And one of the things that will probably happen, I mean, it doesn't happen all the time, at least in my perspective. But you might actually have a request from the OSHA compliance officer for you to hand over, give them five years of your OSHA logs. Now, I think it's there's some pretty good data in those OSHA logs. But do you have any insight of why OSHA wants to look at those OSHA logs and maybe how those OSHA logs can be used as the employer as a as a good place to continue their safety efforts?
Steve Badger: [00:48:41] Yeah, absolutely, you know, and I'm glad you again mentioned about the partnership thing, because that is where, you know, that partnership, you know, begins when they come on the site after they've been identified themselves. And, you know, in that, you know, that relationship is very important to build on from the beginning, that, again, they're not they are their [00:49:00] purpose is not there to fine you or to berate you or, you know, make you feel bad about what happened. It's to find out what did happen. And so that's kind of where this the OSHA logs come into play as well as because they want to know, you know, they want to look at these five years, you know, sometimes they don't. But they want to see what types of injuries you've been having as a business and are there like repeated numbers of injuries of certain types, like, for instance, you know, if you have a large number of hand cuts, we'll say each year. You know, you you've had, you know, in this department or that department year after year, you're seeing that that's going to kind of indicate to them that you are not controlling that hazard as well as you should be.
Steve Badger: [00:49:47] And so they're going to look for those type of things and point those out and say, OK, let's focus on this a little bit. I see I see them also look at like hearing related issues where, you know, there's been hearing loss. And [00:50:00] if there's multiple people that have had a hearing loss within your industry or within your company, what are you doing about that? You know, that kind of opens the door. They'll ask some, you know, some questions about that. But again, it's all in that spirit of partnership that they want to help you try to identify what those issues are and how to help control them. They're not going to offer you and say, OK, you need to do X, Y, Z. That's not their purpose. Their purpose is to, you know, say, hey, you know what? This is an issue. You know, they don't authorize pieces of equipment. They don't you know, that's not their job. It's to try to help identify what those things are.
Peter Koch: [00:50:40] Nice. And it seems that they're really using that OSHA log in the same way we should be, not we being safety consultants, but we as the employers should be using that OSHA log to really look at it for trends. They're looking OSHA looking for insight into how's that business doing? They might not have experience [00:51:00] in that particular business or that well in that particular industry, but they're going there and they're looking for clues as to What is the what are the challenges, what are the problem. Not so much problems. What are the challenges that the company is having around workplace safety? And then and then pointing out maybe here are some places where you can step it up a little bit and do a better job for workplace safety. And again, there's a list. It's an OSHA list. It's a list you keep for OSHA, but it's certainly a list that OSHA requiring of the injuries and illnesses that you're going to have in the log. Another pretty good list for us to use to help get ahead of the curve from a workplace safety standpoint. There's a lot more on inspections, we can do a whole podcast around OSHA inspections and what the process is and what the rights are of employees and employers, I don't think this is the place to talk about those now. I thought [00:52:00] it was important to kind of get an idea of some of the paperwork that might go around those OSHA logs.
Peter Koch: [00:52:05] But let's talk a little bit about now that we Know about the OSHA top 10 list and where it comes from, that we see repeated citations year after year. We have many of the same standards are in the top 10 list year after year. And sometimes, like fall protection is going to be number one in years running. What can we do with that? Like, how do we get to a place where we can take the OSHA top 10 or even some of the other information that OSHA provides us in the lists and develop solutions around injury prevention and hazard mitigation?
Steve Badger: [00:52:44] Sure. That's great to be able to follow up with this, because, you know, really, you know, first and foremost for me is the employer's mindset that, you know, I mentioned when we started out that, you know, that philosophy, you know, [00:53:00]it's too costly or, you know, it can't be done that changing that mindset to it can be done. And how are we going to do it that that is key to changing that company culture, which goes hand in hand with that. And as IO mentioned, that's going to be a top down. That's going to start with the ownership, the management. And just saying, you know what, we've had enough of this. We are going to change our belief in how we approach safety. And taking a look at this list and other lists are going to be the way to do that, to change that culture, to stop thinking about it from a lagging perspective. As you mentioned earlier, those lagging indicators changing it from reactive to proactive. How can we do these things initially? How can we prevent these things from happening?
Peter Koch: [00:53:51] Have you had experience? I don't mean to interrupt. I'm just thinking about this from changing that mindset from a can't be done to a can be done. I expect you've had stories [00:54:00] with the employers that you work with where they've had a significant injury or maybe even an unfortunate fatality within their workplace. And they've had to deal with family and co-workers of the injured or the severely injured employee or the employee that's passed and their mindset changes. It goes from it can't be done to a can be done because they have a mission that's really not we see that happen often. But what we would rather have is them use these proactively, like you said, like don't wait for the problem to happen. Like, if all protections your gig, if that's what you do day in, day out within your industry, it could be construction, it could be roofing, it could even be maintenance. It could be as an arborist, it could be whatever it is. If you have a fall protection component to your business, know [00:55:00] that it's going to happen to you. So be proactive with. So have you seen that happen within the employers that you work with where you have a significant event that changes the mindset?
Steve Badger: [00:55:12] Yeah, yeah, I've seen it in more than one time, you know, with more than one of these in this top 10 where either a fatality or a serious injury has happened. And that really has changed the culture, which, you know, you hate to see it happen because of that. But you're glad to see that it's being taken seriously at that point where all of a sudden, you know, somebody says, you know what, we've got to stop thinking about this the way we did 30 years ago or 40 years ago. We have to come into the 21st century and say, OK, this can be done. How can we do it? You know, I've worked with companies that work again fall protection is one of the big ones where it used to be that to put up trusses, they'd be walking the plate, you know, meaning that they're on the top and they're doing this balancing act [00:56:00] and they're trying to hold these trusses up and nail them together. And, you know, having the mindset, is there a better way? Is there a better way to do this? Well, maybe it's putting together on the ground and lifting all up in one big piece. So you've eliminated that fall hazard. And that's how we always want to approach these things, is can we eliminate them first or can we reduce that hazard to the point where it's going to be negligible or something we can better wrap our hands around?
Peter Koch: [00:56:29] Yeah, that's great and again, proactively looking at it and using this list to go there and then moving further through the solutions piece, the employer is a critical part of this, like their mindset, like you said, and moving in that company culture from top to bottom. But then we get to the employees and they play a significant part in this, too. So how does the employee piece fit into injury prevention and hazard mitigation?
Steve Badger: [00:57:00] Certainly [00:57:00] we want to you know, obviously when the employer wants to start with, you know, the employee awareness, so what the hazards are in the workplace. You know, these are, you know, what the hazards are. And this is what we are going to do to prevent these from happening. It may be, you know, training. It may be, you know, proper fall protection, it may be scaffold, you know, construction, training, all of these different types of training. And then, you know, the important thing is there is that the employee sees that this culture is changing, that, you know, it's really a positive step. And that's going to give them that buy in that place where they understand that. You know what? It really is up to me. My boss isn't going to be there every minute of the day. But, you know, I had this conversation with somebody recently about having respect for themselves so that they're not, you know, injuring themselves or worse, but also respecting the company as well. You know, that even though I may not have somebody, [00:58:00] you know, standing over me, making me wear this harness, that I'm going to do it because it's the right thing to do.
Peter Koch: [00:58:06] Yeah. For them to get by. And I kind of think about that from an awareness standpoint. How do you use the top ten list? Well, maybe you end up using that in a safety meeting or a toolbox talk or it gets posted up in the break room. And maybe you can put up a history of showing the last three years of OSHA top ten and look at where the top ten standards are and then what am I doing or what is the employer doing about this and what are the employee's responsibilities around what we're doing? So, again, awareness, you can use the lists that OSHA puts together to help with some of that awareness to get some buy in and start some of the training, possibly with your employees. What part do supervisors play in this process, Steve?
Steve Badger: [00:58:57] Sure, absolutely. Supervisors are critical [00:59:00] to this because they're kind of that middle management level where, you know, they're the ones that may be in charge of this job site or they may be in charge of a crew. And doing inspections are absolutely critical. You know, doing a walk through and making sure people are doing the right thing, that they're using their equipment, they're using their ladder properly, they're using their scaffolding properly. That's been inspected and those sorts of things. And when not which does happen, you know, when they find something being very consistent and how they enforce that, I can't stress that one enough because, you know, just because someone's been there 15 years doesn't mean that they have any special rights or, you know, or are free pass because they've been there 15 years. It's got to be a consistent enforcement, you know, just not the new guy that comes in the door or the new gal that comes in the door. It's got to be everyone. It's got to be consistent because other than that, if it's not, people are not going to have that buy [01:00:00] in. And it is critical.
Peter Koch: [01:00:03] True, very true. You bring up a really good point that 15 or 30 year or, you know, 10 year employee who's been there for forever and now all of a sudden you have maybe a new supervisor who's come in, come in from a different company, doesn't have the same longevity with that company or, you know, you might have to two people that have worked together for the last 10 or 15 years. And one of them moves into a supervisory position. That consistency of enforcement or application of the standards for what you're seeing is really important. And it helps, I think, with that buy in. Right. So the employee buy in. If I see someone being treated a little bit differently than I am, if I'm getting told to wear my harness or put on my respirator or put on my seatbelt in the fork truck, but the other guy is not. Chances [01:01:00] are when the supervisor is not around, I'm not going to use it because chances are the employee is going to think that and supervisor doesn't really care that much. They're just picking on me. And so why should I why should I do it?
Steve Badger: [01:01:15] Exactly.
Peter Koch: [01:01:16] Awesome, and all this kind of fits in with continuous improvement. So talk a little bit about the importance of continually moving your safety program forward and maybe how the OSHA lists the top 10 list can be used for that.
Steve Badger: [01:01:37] Absolutely. Yes. And I think, again, is this is a critical part of safety programs, is that it's not something you write once you put it on the shelf and blow the dust off it once a year, you know, to bring it out, it's got to be something that you're visiting regularly, that as technology improves, as you know, training improves and, you know, different types [01:02:00] of things that are out there improve that you're updating that program to meet those new you know, that new equipment. You know, respirators is a big one that they always talk about where, you know, they specifically say in the standard that they want you to go back at least annually to update your program. You want to have a program administrator that takes a look in. Is there something better? You know, and there's several of the standards that are out there that actually have that component to it that they don't want. You just having this being a static document that, you know, you sit it on the shelf and, you know, it never changes. It's going to be something that's improved. And as this top 10, you know, tying it into that is that, you know, as you know, maybe there's better and, you know, more improved lock-out tag-out devices, you know, that are out there. There's you know, it used to be that you had a lock, you had a tag and you would throw that on anything. Well, nowadays, there's equipment that you can lock [01:03:00] and tag out almost anything that's out there. So things have changed over the years. And so should your program.
Peter Koch: [01:03:07] Nice. And again, using that list as a way to almost as a checklist and again it doesn't go through that list, doesn't highlight all of the standards, only the ones that are most frequently cited, which again correlates into the most frequent causes of injuries and fatalities. So it's a good list to start looking at and say, all right, in my continuous improvement process, how am I doing in all of these? And at least it gives you some sort of barometer and way to check. So maybe you have that when it comes out every year. Take a look at it, use it as a focus for a while in your safety toolbox talks. And then if you are the EHS guy or gal at the business that you're working for, maybe use that as the checklist, how we do it. Like if OSHA comes today, am I going to [01:04:00] be part of that number of the most frequently cited standards or are they going to come in and look at it? Go nope your fall protection program looks good or nope your respiratory protection looks good or HAZCOM looks good.
Peter Koch: [01:04:14] And then knowing that if you miss the piece, that's OK, Continuous improvement, make a change, add that to the process and move forward. That's really great advice. Excellent. We're kind of coming to the end of the podcast time here. And I do want to ask you this question, Steve, because you've had quite a bit of experience with OSHA over the years. You're an authorized trainer for OSHA. What do you know now about OSHA that you wish you had known when you started out back in the 80s doing workplace safety and work in an industry?
Steve Badger: [01:04:51] That's an interesting question, Peter. I tend to look at it the other way around. Really. There's things that I know now that I wish I didn't know then, you [01:05:00] know, you know, types of things, you know, think things like, you know, the dollar numbers that are thrown out there with the citations. I mean, to me, that that's a very unimportant number when we're talking about lists, it's not as important as, you know, what is that violation in and how do we fix it? You know, too often I see people focusing on those numbers that, oh, I got this fine for 5000 or I got this fine for 10000. Yeah, that's the least important part. It really is. And that's why I say I tend to wish that I didn't, you know, back then when I first started in safety in 1986, that wasn't a factor. That was you know, it was doing it for the right reason. And rather than worrying about those money issues, are the money issues important? Sure. But it's not something that should be the focus. You know, that's not that you know why we should be doing this.
Peter Koch: [01:05:56] Right. And I think, like with any good partner, there's some accountability [01:06:00] in there. And I think from an OSHA standpoint, they have little to do around accountability. So there needs to be you need to have some skin in the game. Right. As an employer. And part of that skin in the game is going to be dollars and cents. But like you said, and I think that's a really, really great point, is the dollars and cents are not the important part of this. The focus is what part of the standard what part of that compliance? Aren't you following? Because in that non-compliance, there's a gap someplace in your program where one of Those employees that you hire, which may not have the same understanding that the rest of your employee employees do, is going to fall or is going to use a piece of equipment incorrectly. And you're going to be in that position as the supervisor or the manager or the vice president or the owner of the company to make that call to the significant other to say, hey, you know, Judy fell today and [01:07:00] I'm not sure if she's going to make it home. That's never a place where you want to be. And that's not the time to decide to make a change. I mean, it is you certainly want to stand up, recognize that and make a change, however. Do it before that, use these lists to help recognize where some of the gaps are. I guess that's might be a good place to kind of a good way to think about it for sure. Right. So we're kind of getting again, like I said, we're getting to the end. One more question for you, Steve. If someone had more questions about OSHA and their top 10 lists, where can they go for more information?
Steve Badger: [01:07:40] Yeah, certainly the again, going back to the OSHA.gov website is really good because one of one of the things they do is they give you this top 10, but then they also break it down into the top five violations under each of those top 10 so that you can kind of see, OK, when like number one [01:08:00] here says fall protection, general requirements. But what does that really mean? You know, in the case, you know, when they're talking, you know, when they break that down, they're looking at the residential construction as being the number one within that particular area. Unprotected sides and edges is the second largest. And so it kind of breaks down for you what individually within those sections are the points of pain that we're looking at that, you know, you take a look at that list, that secondary list, and you say, OK, are we protecting our people from unprotected sides and edges? You know, we work on roofs that are low sloped. Are we protecting our people? This gives you an idea of one. You know what they're looking for. But two what are hurting people falls from those heights.
Peter Koch: [01:08:50] Yeah, that's great. So perfect, Steve. I think that's great. So recommending people go back to OSHA and there's lots more information. We've just kind of scratched the surface there [01:09:00] of what that top 10 list can break down for us. So thank you for that. This about wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast. Thanks for sharing your expertise with us today, Steve.
Steve Badger: [01:09:12] Very welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Peter.
Peter Koch: [01:09:14] Yeah, beautiful.
Peter Koch: [01:09:15] So thanks again for joining us. And thank you to all of our listeners out there. Today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, we've been speaking with Steve Badger, safety management consultant with MEMIC, about OSHA's top 10 list and how they can be used to improve your company's safety in the workplace. If you have any questions or I'd like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show Notes that MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find additional resources and our entire podcast archive. While you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it if you took [01:10:00] a minute to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service you found us on. And if you've already done that, thank you, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
According to the Pew Research Center, during July 4 and 5 more than 90,000 people visit hospital emergency rooms for treatment of injuries sustained during the holiday. This episode will cover safety issues that are not just workplace related, and explore the Top 5 injury causes that center around the 4th of July holiday, as well as share some tips on how to not become a statistic this summer.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hey there, listeners, this is Peter Koch, host of the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. This podcast is dedicated to discussing, describing and even debating safety across all industries and applications with industry leaders, top executives and safety experts right here at MEMIC. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's safe. That's a statement from Glenda Lynch, from a flyer that she created around firework safety after her son died of injuries sustained when a firework mortar went off prematurely. Fireworks are one of the top five causes of injuries around the Fourth of July holiday. And this story is a particularly tragic one. So in today's episode, I'm going to take a slightly different tack and cover safety issues that are not just workplace related and explore injury causes that center around summer and the Independence Day holiday, as well as share some tips on how to not become a statistic [00:01:00] this summer. So let's jump right into it. According to the Pew Research Center, during July four and five, more than 90,000 people visit hospital emergency rooms for treatment of injuries sustained during that July 4th holiday. In his July 2019 article, Drew DeSilver writes that the average daily number of E.R. visits across June, July and August hovers around 40,000 or less than half the average of the Independence Day holiday visits, even the Memorial Day and Labor Day holidays that don't compare with the average totals for July four and five.
Peter Koch: [00:01:37] The Elite Care E.R. center out of Texas published an article that highlighted the top five causes of injuries around the July 4th holiday. They are, according to them, outdoor grilling and cooking, swimming and boating, fireworks and last but most fatal car crashes. So let's go through those and start in reverse order. Tackling outdoor cooking and grilling first. The National [00:02:00] Fire Protection Agency, or NFPA, states that 64 percent of all American households own at least one outdoor barbecue grill or smoker. And between grease fires leaking propane, spilled charcoal and the misuse of flammable liquids. There are lots of ways someone could get hurt when they're grilling and chilling. Add to that, adult beverages and other distractions. And it's no wonder that outdoor cooking makes the top five injury causes list. Here are some stats from the NFPA. July is the peak month for grill fires and averages 18 percent for the entire year. July is followed by June with just 15 percent and May with 13 and then August with 12 in 2014 through 2018 fire departments went to an annual average of 8,900 home fires involving grills, hibachi or barbecues. And in that same time frame, an average of nearly 20,000 people [00:03:00] per year went to the emergency room because of injuries involving grills. Nearly half or 9,500 or 48 percent of those injuries were for thermal burns, including both burns from fire and from contact with hot objects. So let's look at a couple of tips that can keep you safe this summer when you're grilling outside.
Peter Koch: [00:03:21] First, outside, any grill that generates heat from combustion, propane, charcoal, wood pellets, whatever should be used outside. Yes, outside, even when it's raining. Never, ever use your grill in the garage shed or the kitchen. Keep it well away from the house, out from under the eaves and away from other combustible materials like the deck railing or furniture. Second, the grill top and sides get hot, so keep the kiddos, pets and other unpredictable partygoers away from the grill. I remember two different gatherings where people at the party unintentionally mixed [00:04:00] it up with the hot sections of the grill. Both times involve the dog and both were Rube Goldberg-esk occurrences. So in the first instance, the Unleashed family dog bumped into the walker of the grandmother. The grandmother toppled over into the people that were helping her get to a seat on the deck. One of those stumbled into the six year old that was walking near the grill, who then fell into the grill where hot water from the pot of boiling corn was on the side burner, which eventually sloshed out onto his arm and his face. Not a great day. The second instance was a leash dog that took off after a ball, the trailing leash wrapped around the leg of the charcoal grill, dumping its contents onto the deck. The coals caught the grease from the food on fire, which ignited the wood of the deck. [00:04:48] And the injury occurred then when the person with the fire extinguisher ran through the sliding glass door coming out of the house onto the deck, you just really can't make it up.
Peter Koch: The next [00:05:00] safety tip involves two steps, but first, I'll explain why these steps are important. I visited a friend a number of summers ago for what I had assumed to be a barbecue. When my family and I arrived, my friend was in the process of removing the dripping, charred and blackened husk of the gas grill from his deck. Seems he had lit the grill to preheat, then went into the house to get whatever it was he was going to serve and then promptly got distracted. When he returned, the grill had black smoke roiling out of it and flames shooting out from every opening. He pushed open the lid with the hopes of putting the fire out with long tongs, which then promptly intensified the fire. He finally put it out with copious amounts of water from the hose. I expect that you know what happened and maybe it's even happened to you. Seems that the heat from the closed grill during that extended pre-heat time ignited all of the leftover grease in the bottom of that grill and opening the lid, it just fanned the flames. It's a good thing the propane [00:06:00] didn't explode.
Peter Koch: [00:06:02] The moral of the story, keep your grill clean by removing grease from the inside of the grill and from the trap trays below. Then never, ever leave your grill unattended when it's on. The last grilling safety tip is always, always keep the lid of the grill open when the lighting it. I don't have a personal story to share, but there are plenty of people out there who have experienced the woosh and subsequent loss of facial hair or worse, when the un-ignited gas trapped under the closed lid finally reaches a mixture that will support combustion. Keep these in mind when cranking up the grill this summer, and there's a good chance you won't contribute to the summer injury statistics. Speaking of stats, though, statistically boating and swimming, the next two on the list are very safe. But both activities can cause injury if you don't take precautions before and during enjoying the water. The most common causes [00:07:00] of accidents when boating or swimming are participating at a level above your ability. Intoxication, distraction and in particular with boating, speed. Though boat speed can have a negative effect on swimmers when they share the same waterway. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources provide boaters some great safety reminders. So you want to check them out on their website or I'll go through some of them here. So first and foremost is to leave the alcoholic beverages on the shore and be a sober boater.
Peter Koch: [00:07:31] Operating a boat is the same as operating a motor vehicle. Don't drink and drive applies on the water as well. This leads to a similar rule for boaters, distractions of any kind can lead to collisions or other boating accidents, phones and passengers can be an even bigger distraction on the water than they are in the car. Operators and pilots must keep their attention to the waterway, put the phone down and have a spotter when towing skiers, [00:08:00] tubers or other devices. The next tip is apropos as we open up around covid and they say to practice social distancing when boating, they mean it from a stop the spread perspective. But I think this message has larger implications. Think about it. Nothing good can happen if your boat tries to occupy the same physical location as another object or person. Consider the following. Give other boaters space, keep up good right away practices and don't try to squeeze in. It's hard to crash into someone or something if you keep your distance. The next tip is for when things go wrong on the water, and that is to wear a life jacket. A wearable life jacket can save your life, but remember only when you wear it. The U.S. Coast Guard makes the following recommendations around life jackets and they're pretty important. So all recreational vessels must have a U.S. Coast Guard approved life jacket for each person on board.
Peter Koch: [00:08:56] That means not just one for the kiddos, but one for everyone on [00:09:00] board. No sharing. The second is federal law requires that when a vessel is underway, children under 13 years of age must wear their life jacket. There are exceptions for when they are below deck or within an enclosed cabin, but for the most part, when they're on the boat, they need to be in a life jacket. Though it's not always required by law, a life jacket should be worn at all times when the vessel is under way because, you know, if you go overboard or something happens in an emergency, you're probably not going to be next to the life jacket. So it's always best to have it on. And that brings us to the fourth tip. Wearable lifejackets must be readily accessible, and you must be able to put your life jacket on in a reasonable amount of time in an emergency. They should not be stowed in plastic bags or in locked or closed compartments or have other gear stowed on top of them. They really need to be accessible. Own your wake is the last tip on the list [00:10:00] of boating safety tips here, and it crosses over to the safety of others and swimmers, too. So when operating a vessel that generates a wake, be aware of the proximity of other boaters, swimmers and paddlers and some of the effect that your wake may have on them.
Peter Koch: [00:10:15] Swimmers and paddlers have some responsibility here as well, though we all need to share the resource. So just because you can swim or paddle in a particular area or at a particular time, it doesn't mean that you should keep in mind that from the cockpit of a motorized vessel or sailboat, a swimmer or a paddler is a really small target and is easily missed. As for swimmers, while the old adage wait for an hour before swimming, after eating may not always be necessary, some precautions to prevent drowning are the Red Cross, through which I took my own swim lessons when I was a kid and then went on to become a certified lifeguard instructor in my teen years. They have some excellent advice to [00:11:00] prevent drowning. They call it the Circle of Drowning Prevention, which describe the different layers essential to prevent drowning and helps us plan ahead for any aquatic activities. So first in that circle is to learn swimming and water safety skills before you get in or around the water. This is all about being water competent and your competency depends on the environment that you're going to be in. You'll need different skills if you're floating in a shallow backyard pool versus recreating or swimming in the ocean or cold mountain lake. According to Water Safety USA, which is a coalition of Red Cross and other aquatic safety groups, necessary basic skills should cover the following.
Peter Koch: [00:11:42] You should be able to step or jump in water over your head, then turn around or over and orient towards safety. Then you should be able to float or tread water and then at the very least swim 25 yards to safety using controlled breathing and then exit [00:12:00] the water. They also say that you should be able to perform these skills, whether you're in a swimsuit or you're fully clothed. That's harder than it sounds. So maybe you should practice. The second is to be water smart. This covers a whole slew of points, many of which are common sense, but all can be found missing in any drowning or near drowning news story. I'm not going to list them all, but honestly, as a former lifeguard, a few do bear repeating. So first, like with anything else, know your limitations. Most drowning scenarios occur when someone gets in and pardon the pun, over their head, they panic and then become too exhausted to continue keeping themselves above water. The second is to know your environment, understand the topography, temperature and the currents in the area that you're swimming. Even a backyard pool can have a shallow and a deep end that can be the nemesis for the non-swimmer. And then last in this list is never [00:13:00] swim alone. If you think you can rescue yourself, really think again while it's possible your preparedness and the environment will dictate your success.
Peter Koch: [00:13:10] So when I was in my teens the same summer I was taking a lifeguard class, my parents took my brother and I to a water park. There was a really cool water slide that we were trying to get our dad to go on with us. We finally convinced them and it was it was superb. The slide followed a number of drops and loops and then finally emptied into this deep pool where you had to swim toward the shallow end and then finally walk out. So I go down the slide. I remember landing in the pool and then taking a few strokes ahead, turning around and watch for my brother and my dad. So they shot out of the slide one right after the other. Splash, splash. My brother popped up and swam to the side and then started heading towards the shallow end. My dad, however, stayed under a little longer than I think he should have and then finally struggled to the surface. So I went out to him and then after helping him to the shallow end, [00:14:00] I found out that he didn't know how deep the pool was and thought that he could just float his way to the shallow end and then stand up. When they hit the water, he got all disoriented. Then he panicked. And I learned then that he had never figured out how to swim. And all those years, the last part of water competency is to be ready to help others.
Peter Koch: [00:14:20] This is essential whether recreating in the backyard pool or fishing off the dock or pier, you don't ever want to have that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach of not knowing what to do when your co-worker friend or your father is struggling in the water. So be prepared, go take a class, try to figure it out, have stuff with you and be prepared so that you know what to do if someone falls in and they need your help. If you want more great information about boating and swimming safety, check out the resources at USCGBoaters.org and the water safety resources at RedCross.org. So no list of Fourth of July injury causes [00:15:00] would be complete without fireworks. You may think that many of the injuries caused by fireworks are the result of mishandling or horseplay. Not all of them are. Some happened to recreational users who might not understand all of the implications of what they're using. And some even happened to professionals. Many years ago now, I remember well when I was planning for this podcast, I was remembering some of the experiences that I had with fireworks. And many years ago now, I recall attending a fireworks display. One summer, bunch of friends and I were on the beach and the fireworks were being launched from a raft out in the middle of the lake.
Peter Koch: [00:15:38] During what I thought was going to be a normal pause in the display, I looked down from the sky to the water just in time to see the mortars being launched out toward the other side of the lake, streaking across the water. In the glow of that fire, you could see the technicians jumping into the water. Well, it turns out that one of the racks that [00:16:00] held the firework launch tubes had become unsecured and had tipped over in the process of trying to reload and launch. No one was hurt, thank goodness. But it wasn't until years later that I thought about the implications of what would happen if that wreck had flopped over the other way and launched toward the beach. We all missed serious injury that day and they were set off by professionals. Tragedy and fireworks can really go hand in hand, and especially in the hands of untrained and unexperienced people. The quote at the beginning of the podcast from Glenda Linge Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's safe rings true when it comes to fireworks. Her son Shane was with his dad at a backyard fireworks show when a mortar, which he had loaded into the launch tube, exploded in his face. The news reports explain that the impact shattered his forehead, cracked his skull in half, and the heat from the firework burned his brain. [00:17:00] Shane never regained consciousness, and they had to make the decision to take him off life support.
Peter Koch: [00:17:08] Glenda became an advocate for firework safety and regulation after that fatal accident. They learn from the investigation that the premature ignition of the fireworks could have been caused from either static electricity or possibly even embers left in the tube from the previously launched mortar in the hands of inexperienced people or unqualified people, fireworks can be dangerous and they can be dangerous at many different levels. Injuries occur from small burns to life threatening injuries to fatal injuries. The Consumer Product Safety Commission reminds us that even if fireworks are illegal in the state that you're in, all fireworks come with risk. Their data shows that 62 percent of the 90 100 fireworks related injuries in 2018 occurred in the months [00:18:00] surrounding the Fourth of July. So that would be June 22nd through July 22nd, 62 percent, even children under five are part of that statistic and half of their firework related injuries are from sparklers. Fun fact. Did you know that sparklers, even the ones that you can buy at the convenience or big box store, burn around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hot enough to melt some metals, so keep them away from the kiddos. The CPSC gives some great tips around fireworks safety. So check them out, make sure consumer fireworks are legal in your area before buying or using them. And as a consumer, never use or make professional grade fireworks.
Peter Koch: [00:18:43] Now, as an aside here, fireworks packaged in brown paper are often made for professional displays and are not for consumer use. So that's a pretty big hint if you're looking for fireworks to use in your backyard. Next, never place any part of your body directly over a fireworks [00:19:00] device when lighting the fuse always move to a safe distance immediately after lighting the firework. Never point or throw fireworks at another person or towards an occupied area, always light fireworks, one at a time, and then move away from them quickly. Keep a bucket of water or a garden hose handy in case of fire or other problem. Always soak misfired fireworks with water thoroughly before throwing them away and never try to relight them. After fireworks complete their burning douse the spent device with plenty of water from a bucket or hose before discarding the device to prevent a trash fire. The bottom line is all fireworks carry risk. Know, and prepare to control the risk before using them. Or just go to watch the professionals shoot them off. They can be a beautiful display and a fun time with your friends and family.
Peter Koch: Let's take a quick break and reflect this Fourth [00:20:00] of July and both the success and struggle that we have had as a nation since independence and political separation from Great Britain was declared in 1776 and how we've been shaped by them. This is a shout out to all of the workers that make it possible for Americans to enjoy the Fourth of July holiday. [00:20:19] They are the reason your favorite restaurant, bar, hotel, resort, state or national park campground or a convenience store are open on those days. The rest of us have off. I'm not going to list all of the occupations and industries here as there are far too many. And I know that I'll miss one. But let's not forget the police, fire, EMS warden and ranger teams that respond when our recreation day goes wrong. If you want to do something for the countless workers that have and continue to work to keep the doors open and the lights on in those establishments that we like to frequent as a customer. Start by saying thanks and as an employer, start by keeping them safe. They all [00:21:00] need to go home to their family and friends at the end of the day. If you need a place to find safety resources, then you can check out the MEMIC safety director at www.MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety. Now, let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: Last on the list are car accidents around the Fourth of July, and I would like to welcome Randy Klatt, director of region two loss control here at MEMIC as our expert on transportation exposures to help me dissect some disturbing statistics around driving fatalities. So thanks for being here, Randy. I wanted you to help me understand some of the fatality statistics that the National Safety Council has put out. [00:21:44] They have a website or a Web page called Holiday Traffic Fatality Estimate. And here you can go through any of the big holidays. So New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. And they have Independence Day or the Fourth of July. And that's what we're talking about here. And [00:22:00] they're talking about four hundred and eighty-two people may die over the Independence Day holiday, which goes this year from Friday through Monday. They're looking at like three point two five days, which is where they get the average over. But that seems to be a fairly substantial amount of fatalities that are happening just over the road. Now in the podcast, before I've been talking about other areas where injuries can happen and fatalities happen, but certainly none of the other activities grilling, using fireworks, swimming and boating are coming up with the same number of fatalities that the National Safety Council is estimating may happen over this Fourth of July weekend. So let's talk about those stats for a little bit and why they're important. And then let's get into some things that you can do to not become a statistic, because that's the whole point of this. We want people to stay alive during their holiday period. So let's talk a little bit about the stats.
Randy Klatt: [00:23:00] We [00:23:00] certainly do want them to stay alive Peter, and we also want them to remain uninjured. So we could talk about the nearly 500 people that are estimated to be killed on that holiday weekend. But you could add to that, oh, probably one hundred thousand injuries from accidents as well. Now, that's just mind boggling when you think about it. And of course, the real problem is most people don't think about it. They're using their car every day. It's something that especially in America, we rely on. And most every car has one person in it and there are millions of them on the road. And that's just what we do. And we don't really consider that it's probably the most hazardous thing that you're going to do in any given day. And of course, with the topic of this discussion, you had holiday weekend, summertime weather you had a little alcohol and maybe some long hours. And it's not surprising that those [00:24:00] estimates will rise. Also noted that the statistics were increased. Their estimate was increased slightly this year due to the covid pandemic shut down, relaxing this year. So unlike last year when most people were stuck at home, this is the first Independence Day weekend where we'll be out and about in more normal conditions. So they're not really sure what's going to happen.
Peter Koch: [00:24:26] Right. A lot of pent up expectations or desires that kind of get out and be in the world again, which is going to put a lot more traffic on the road and a lot more challenges. I think.
Randy Klatt: [00:24:37] I think you're right. And again, we take driving for granted. And I say everybody does it every day. Of course, that's not quite true. Some people don't. And there is a large percentage of the population that hasn't driven very much in the last year due to everything that's happened. And now they're going to be out there. Maybe they are taking the road trip to [00:25:00] someone's house or an extended weekend holiday somewhere. And they haven't been on the roads very much. And. Well, do you think we can get rusty at driving? Yeah, I think we can. It's operating a mechanical device, you know, a moving vehicle. So there may be an element of that, too. It's just, jeez, we haven't been out in traffic very much and we don't remember the way like we would if we'd driven it every day of the week. And, you know, there's going to be some of that sort of thing going on.
Peter Koch: [00:25:32] That's a really good point. I experienced that myself as we got back out into the field as loss control consultants. And some of my policyholders are quite far away. And I hadn't seen him in a while or been to their place of business in a while. And I'm making the trip for the first time and like, wow, this has been spent 18 months since I've been on this road. And now you forget kind of where you're going and where all your turns are and where you're going to be. And you end up maybe not [00:26:00] focusing so much on the road, but the map or the path that you're supposed to take. So you might miss some of the cues. You might miss a turn, panic a little bit more and possibly even make a wrong turn or try to get out of that wrong turn, get back into traffic when someone else is trying to pull up behind you. So you might not be rusty. The mechanics of driving like you still know where the gas pedal is and the brake pedal and the steering column and everything, but you might not know the path and that, as we've discovered before, when you add one more thing to think about in that complex process of driving puts us at substantial risk for making mistakes and actually being distracted not from a phone or from a conversation or for something else, but just by not knowing where the heck you're going.
Randy Klatt: [00:26:46] Yeah, I had a similar experience just yesterday, I went to a policyholder I hadn’t been to and a year and a half and at a particular intersection when I went by, I realized, holy cow, there's a building that wasn't there last year, you know, [00:27:00] huge brand new. And you find yourself kind of watching or gazing. Wow, that's interesting. Well, guess what? The vehicle's still moving at 35 miles an hour, and that's when things happen. You know, in my driver training and we've always talked about reaction time and, you know, how long it takes for a driver to react to what happens to perceive an issue and then actually do something about it. And how many feet per second you're traveling. And anyway, that's still applies. Physics doesn't go away. And so the distracted brain, that's a thing. It's a real thing. And it may be worse this year when you realize that, wow, there are a lot of buildings out there that weren't there last year or other things, highway construction and things like that, that we really have to be careful.
Peter Koch: [00:27:49] Certainly and some of that is going to, you know, take away from your schedule. Right. So not, you know, not realizing that, you know, we're out for the first time again, traveling someplace at [00:28:00] a distance and not knowing where all those construction stops are so used to take me two hours to get from point A to point B, and now it's going to take me two and a half hours to get from point A to point B, and people feel the pressure of not being someplace on time or meeting that deadline. So even that could be a challenge. And again, distracting.
Randy Klatt: [00:28:19] Right. And just imagine if over this three-day weekend, if we were to crash three major airline airplanes in this country. Imagine the outrage, the publicity, the media coverage, the government intervention that would happen. I mean, it would just be just a tremendous reaction to something horrible like that. Well, equivalent lives lost. That's exactly what's going to happen over this weekend and sadly enough, the National Safety Council's predictions over the years are freakily,[00:29:00] really accurate. So talking about five hundred people that are here now that might not be here after the weekend, and that's sad. So, yeah, let's do everything we can to prevent that to you, to your family, to your friends, to coworkers, to your staff if you have a chance to talk to them before the weekend. It's just it's a reminder. I know everybody knows how to drive and they'll get the eye rolls and whatever, but it's a real thing that too many people take for granted.
Peter Koch: [00:29:31] So let's talk about some of those things that might cause that accident, that result in a fatality. So what are some of the more common things? We talked a lot about distraction. So that's on the table. We've chatted about that. But what are some of the things that would contribute to the accident that would cause a fatality?
Randy Klatt: [00:29:49] Well, again, those statistics are pretty consistent over the years as well. Number one is excessive speed. And we just talked about not knowing the area or being late or, you know, things [00:30:00] like that that might delay your trip. And the tendency would be to increase your speed to make up some time. And that's when you're really pushing the envelope a little bit. So always be cognizant of your speed. And along with that, a different issue. But related is following distance because we're always just too darn close to the car in front of us. Doesn't matter if you're on an interstate highway or you're on a two lane country road somewhere, you have to allow space in front of you so that you as a human being can make those decisions, react and do something when something unusual happens in front of you, be that the car in front of you slams on their brakes or an animal runs out in front of you or a child or whatever the case may be, not giving it enough time and space puts you at the mercy of physics and then you're stuck. So you've sealed the deal unknowingly until you find yourself when it's too late, [00:31:00] you're too close. So if you can allow more space in front of you, drive the appropriate speed for the conditions and the laws. And of course, we always say use your safety belt, that's almost a no brainer in the in the country now we're up to about 90 percent seatbelt use across the country, give or take a few percentage points and different states. Every state but one has a law for front seat passengers and drivers to wear their seatbelt, so do so. I can say as a paramedic back many years ago, I never took a body out of a seatbelt.
Randy Klatt: [00:31:39] I took a lot of bodies out of cars. Now we know that people do die while wearing their seatbelts. The statistics are pretty clear that they aren't magic, but they do certainly help and they limit injuries to those that are just injured in accidents as well. And I always ask the question on driver training [00:32:00] about the seatbelt, and I say, will it help prevent injuries? Will it help prevent an accident? And of course, ninety nine percent of people say no. And that won't prevent an accident that will help you if you are in one. It helped prevent the injury or decrease the odds of a serious injury. And I ask what would happen if you're driving your car and suddenly you have to swerve, you have to swerve left because a car pulls out or that animal or whatever. If It's a small animal hit the animal only if it's small, but if it's a person, you might want to swerve. And if you do that, what's going to happen to you in the driver's seat if you're not wearing your belt? Well, you're probably not going to be able to control that car beyond that first swerve, you can be thrown down in the console or you lose the grip on the wheel, that kind of thing, because you're not buckled in. And we all make that first maneuver sometimes too late. But we all see the skid [00:33:00] marks of the tire tracks that go off the road. Well, they made the first move. They just worried it could make the second one to keep them keep the car under control after they missed the object or whatever it is. So, yeah, the belt is important in that regard, too.
Peter Koch: [00:33:16] You think about professional drivers, professional racers that are dealing with a lot of G’s in their movement from side to side, whether it be rally car drivers or Indy car drivers? And they're driving in a harness for two reasons. One, that's going to keep them within that crash cage if the car goes off the road, but it keeps them in the bucket so that they can then steer and not use the steering wheel to hang on kind of lose a little directional control when you're just hanging onto the steering wheel instead of actually using it to steer the car.
Randy Klatt: [00:33:46] Right. Right. And similarly to when you do a little bit of that gazing of the what's going by you on the roadway or that new building that's up, you have a hold of the wheel and you turn your head to the left to look at it. What's the tendency to happen? A [00:34:00] car goes to the left. Yeah, it's going to move the way you're looking because that's what you've done with the wheel. So there is a lot to driving that we just don't think that much about. And two cars in the same place at the same time just shouldn't happen. It's going to be a human failure that makes that occur, which means it is avoidable. So that's what I want everyone to do, not only over this weekend, but every day take this driving task seriously and arrive alive. That's the goal.
Peter Koch: [00:34:33] That's good. I think there's one more. One more, cause that's kind of the elephant in the room that we need to we need to talk about. So, you know, we talked about speed driving or driving distance between you and the car in front of you, and then seatbelts as a good injury prevention strategy are all good injury prevention strategies. But I think impaired driving is something that we need to talk about and not from a distracted impairment, but other [00:35:00] impairments. How much in your experience and whether it's statistics or your experience prior to coming to MEMIC, how much does alcohol or other substances that will alter your mental state, how much do they contribute to driving accidents and fatalities?
Randy Klatt: [00:35:20] Well, sadly, significant contribution from personal experience. I was a paramedic for about six years, so I worked a lot of traffic accidents, a lot of fatalities. Now, this was back in the day when seatbelt use was about twenty five percent. So fatality numbers were higher and survivability was far less in vehicles. But I can tell you that I can count on one hand, in fact a portion of one hand, the number of accidents, fatal accidents that I remember working that did not involve alcohol.
Peter Koch: Wow.
Randy Klatt: It was [00:36:00] just as prevalent as can be. I worked every Friday night. I had shifts that were to two days a week. Twenty-four hour shifts each. But Friday night was one of them. And I wouldn't say you could set your clock by it, but we knew it was coming, especially as the weather got warmer. It was motorcycles and cars and it was people out having fun on long, sunny, beautiful, warm days. I saw very little actually as a result of weather. In fact, the one fatal accident I do remember that wasn't alcohol related did have a weather contribution to it in the way of icy roads, but. It's just people out having fun, too much fun. I remember riding in the back of the ambulance with one of the fatalities because we actually at that time occasionally transported a body to the morgue.
Randy Klatt: [00:36:52] And I had to be in the back, you had to have someone in the back if there was someone else in there. I remember just looking at the poor young man under the sheet [00:37:00] and thinking to myself, boy, I hope you had a good time tonight because you're done. And that's just so sad and so unnecessary. The statistics say that back then when I was a medic, about 50 percent of all accidents were involving alcohol. We've gotten better at that. It's gone down to about twenty eight percent. So that's a positive move. If you remember Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the MADD organization, they're still around and you don't hear about them quite so much, but they made a huge difference. There is much more awareness of it. And I think designated drivers and especially the advent of on demand transportation like Uber and Lyft and all that, people are taking advantage of that and they're being smarter about it. Yet still, nearly a third of fatal accidents will have an alcohol component involved. So it's still a significant problem that we need to address. And it's going to be worse over the holiday [00:38:00] weekend because, again, look at the statistics from the NSC and Independence Day holiday statistic has more involvement of alcohol than any other weekends.
Peter Koch: [00:38:13] Yeah. If you go through that statistic, it does show that for Independence Day, the difference between the annual average and the Independence Day average or the Independence Day estimates are almost 10 percent. So you're going to have 10 percent more. So if we're at 28 percent for this Independence Day on annual average for an alcohol related auto fatality, Independence Day, you're going to have close to 40 percent are going to be involved with some sort of or have some sort of alcohol involvement.
Randy Klatt: [00:38:41] Yeah, and that's sad because that goes back to that. That's the same as it was in the 80s when I was a medic. The light bulb hasn't quite come on bright enough yet
Peter Koch: [00:38:52] Or it's on and we just sort of dim it down when the holidays come around, I guess.
Randy Klatt: [00:38:56] Well, yeah, it doesn't apply to me because I can handle this, right? Yeah, [00:39:00] well, not so much. We're all human beings. We're all subject to making mistakes. And if you add something like alcohol or drugs, it just makes that worse. And I would also say, don't forget your prescription medications, allergy pills and, you know, muscle relaxants for that back pain and all those other things that are pretty typical that people often have to take. They usually say don't operate heavy equipment, which I would include a vehicle, so just be really careful. Go have fun. Have a great holiday weekend. And you can consume some adult beverages and have a good time yet. Do it safely. And if you plan ahead, plan your trip appropriately. Understand the risk you're facing with driving any time. But how if you are tired on a long weekend after having a good time and the weather's been hot and maybe you had a few drinks, it's [00:40:00] probably not a good combination to then get on the road.
Peter Koch: [00:40:03] Yeah, all good points. All really great points. You know, check your speed, make sure you have great following distance between you in the car in front of you, wear your seatbelts and then at the end of the day, make sure you understand what your limits are. And don't get in that car if you've had too much to drink, if you've taken something that could change your mental status. So it's going to modify how successful you would be in that car. So thanks, Randy. I appreciate you coming on and going through some of those stats with us and giving us some good feedback and some suggestions for a safe and healthy holiday weekend. Appreciate you being on the podcast again.
Randy Klatt: [00:40:39] Any time, Peter. Thank you for having me. Be careful out there.
Peter Koch: [00:40:42] So that about wraps up this week’s Safety Experts Podcast. Thanks to all of you who listened today. And if you're looking for additional resources around holiday safety, check out the MEMIC safety director at MEMIC.com. If you have any questions for me or I'd like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast, e-mail [00:41:00] me at podcast@ MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find links to resources for a deeper dive into this topic. While you're there, you can check out our entire podcast archive and as well sign up for our Safety Net blog. So you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute to subscribe and review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you find us on. If you've already done that, thank you. Because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
Heat stress is no joke. Exposure to excessive heat and working in hot environments can cause Heat Exhaustion, Heat Cramps, and even Heat Stroke. The stress that heat puts on the body can be deadly if not identified and addressed.
On this episode, Thomas Bernard, PhD, CIH, CSP, and PE talks about heat stress, its effect on the body and how to prevent it. Tom is a professor at the University of South Florida, College of Public Health and director of the Sunshine ERC a NIOSH Education and Research Center. He has done extensive work studying the components of heat stress and has helped develop heat stress management programs for a variety of occupations.
Pete Koch: [00:00:03] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. Heat stress is no joke. Exposure to excessive heat and working in hot environments can cause heat exhaustion, heat cramps and even heat stroke. The stress that he puts on the body can be deadly if not identified and addressed. And even in its early stages, heat stress can deteriorate mental and physical performance to the point where minor hazards can become major exposures. Personal factors can also complicate the prevention of heat related emergencies. So a better understanding of how heat affects the body and how to gauge how hot is too hot are key. So on the podcast today with me is Thomas Bernard, Ph.D. in C.I.H. and Tom is a professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health and the director of the Sunshine ERC, a NIOSH Education and research center. Some of Tom's other [00:01:00] certifications and qualifications are a Fulbright scholar from the Lambroso University in the United Kingdom. He's certified in public health. He's a certified safety professional, a certified industrial hygienist, a certified professional ergonomist, and a registered professional engineer. Tom's interests in heat stress include how clothing affects heat retention and dispersion, physiological monitoring, personal cooling methods and exposure assessment. He has done extensive work studying the components of heat stress and has developed heat stress management programs for a variety of occupations. Tom, welcome to the podcast.
Thomas Bernard: [00:01:37] Peter it's great to be here and I'm looking forward to talking to you about heat stress and maybe just a tad bit of cold stress as well.
Pete Koch: [00:01:45] That's fantastic. And, you know, as we were talking before the podcast, the heat stress piece really was supposed to be the main focus. But I threw a couple of questions in there at the end about cold. My background is really in the ski industry. But as we talked about before, there are some [00:02:00] heat related challenges, even in colder occupations. And cold has its own set of unique challenges that I hope we get to touch on just a little bit. So maybe at the end. So as we start to flow through here, why don't you tell me a little bit about how you got interested in heat stress and came to understand that it needed more further study?
Thomas Bernard: [00:02:19] It can be, and in some regards, a long story. So it goes back to the fact that the early 70s, I was working at a department at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, and this lab was famous for their heat stress work. And while I was studying metabolic demands of coal miners, I was in this department and actually participated in a couple of experiments that were going on at that time. So I think my introduction to heat stress was back when I was a graduate student. It continued at my time at Westinghouse, [00:03:00] where I was primarily interested in heat stress in nuclear power plants. And in fact, we developed some guidelines for the power industry that started with the nuclear field, but was eventually distributed out to all the electric power industry. I ended my move to the University of South Florida. That became a major interest in terms of a research agenda and that's been going on for more than 30 years. And I still remain fascinated by it.
Pete Koch: [00:03:38] It really is a fascinating piece, just the effect. I mean, we're warm blooded creatures, so you wouldn't imagine that living in heat or working in heat would have such an effect on us. But it really does. And I think everyone listening can relate to being too hot at one point in time in their lives or maybe multiple times. So I think it's a good [00:04:00] time to talk a little bit about what the effects of heat stress are on the body. What does it do to us and what are some of the things that we might feel when we start getting too hot?
Thomas Bernard: [00:04:10] And you know, you're right. So the first thing I want to point out is that, yes, this has been the experience of almost all of us. My caution to the health and safety people are because it's such a common experience that we often don't appreciate all of the risks. If you allow me a very bad analogy, it's like driving. We all drive. We all thoroughly under appreciate the risks that we undertake every time we drive. So in terms of response, we're warm blooded. That is true. But the other is we're fundamentally tropical animals so that we evolved in a way that we're accustomed to dealing with heat and we have natural physiological [00:05:00] responses. So the first of those is as we need to dissipate heat from the body. And by the way, heat stress is a problem of taking that internally generated heat and dissipating it out to the outside environment. So when we work, we generate heat that has to be dissipated out. The very first thing that happens is we increase our blood flow to the skin. So it's a cardiovascular demand and a cardiovascular response. Once it reaches the skin, then the most important way we have of dissipating that heat is then by sweat evaporation. So the second response is that evaporation of sweat or sweating and the evaporation of sweat and the other responses that's very kind of been there is that we do have an increase in our body core temperature as [00:06:00] well as an increase in our skin temperature. So the basic responses, our cardiovascular body temperatures and the sweating.
Pete Koch: [00:06:11] So when those and those are all normal responses to us getting too warm and that that in itself is heat stress or getting warm, I guess. And then we go beyond our and our body starts to not be able to dissipate heat enough. And we get into some really negative effects then of heat stress, correct?
Thomas Bernard: [00:06:32] Yes, that's correct. And I may drift into this and later in our podcast. So I want to make a differentiation. So stress will be those things that are external to the body that are causing the physiological responses. And then heat strain represents those physiological responses. So like stress strain relationships and in other areas of science. So the stress [00:07:00] comes from the work demands and the environment. The strain is our response back to this and that strain becomes excessive. Then it's manifested in the heat related disorders and these can be seen in the excessive demands on the cardiovascular system and will usually then classify those illnesses as heat exhaustion. So a cardiovascular insufficiency and heat exhaustion can go hand in hand. The other is that if the temperatures get high enough that we actually affect the central nervous system. So we affect the brain and the way the brain helps control our responses to heat stress. And then those will be heat stroke so that when we have a CNS dysfunction, central nervous system [00:08:00] dysfunction, then we have heat stroke. Heat exhaustion is serious heat stroke as a medical emergency.
Pete Koch: [00:08:10] That's a really good differentiation there. And we're going to get in towards the end of the podcast about the responses to those, because those are a really it's a really key thing to understand, and especially when you get to that central nervous system shut down almost in the later stages of heat stroke or of that heat strain that you have to recognize it right away. And a lot of people don't. One of the things that I love to do is to actually coach. I coached high school girls soccer. We start our preseason early on, later in the summer, so early August, end of July. And we have some really hot days. And if you don't pay attention to how the girls are functioning during that practice, they can easily go into [00:09:00] a heat emergency. And you need to be prepared to manage that if you don't see the cues early on. And we'll talk more about that later on. But it's near and dear to my heart when we start talking about the responses to that. And so let's talk a little bit more about how, as you get into our bodies, inability to manage the stresses that are there, how does that affect the person from and we're talking about workplace safety. So how does that affect the person's ability to perform in the workplace?
Thomas Bernard: [00:09:36] Ok, and I appreciate your example of soccer, so let me deviate for a moment and the fact that you started in early August and I presume that you step up your practices, you don't go for it right away. And we do this in order to allow our athletes and in your example and workers [00:10:00] and mine to adapt physiologically to heat exposure. So what we have is a process of acclimatization, and it does a couple of things. One is that there's an earlier onset to sweating, and that's important because then we get cooling going earlier. The other is that we have water and salt management physiologically. And so acclimatization helps manage and retain electrolytes and so that the sweat becomes more and more diluted so that it becomes almost water. And that's important. OK, so another physiological adaptation as we get exposed. What we find is that at the very early step ups is that we are actually making the transition for something that's thermally [00:11:00] comfortable up to where we reach what would be ordinarily an occupational exposure limit. We're already beginning to see an increase in unsafe behaviors. And in fact, there's some classic studies that go back and show that from a neutral environment where unsafe behaviors are minimum, not zero, to where we get to the widely accepted occupational exposure limits, we already see more than a 50 percent increase in unsafe behaviors. And following from the unsafe behaviors are accidents. And with accidents, we have injuries and resulting losses to the environment or our equipment. So this becomes important and it continues to go up as the heat gets higher. Then with that, we get starting to get a decrease in work performance [00:12:00] because we're taking some of that cardiovascular capacity that we would ordinarily use to support work. And now we're shunting that blood off to the skin in order to be able to cool ourselves. So it's clear that productivity will decrease with increasing levels of heat stress. And that has all to do with how the body's allocating blood.
Pete Koch: [00:12:27] Since how the body allocates blood and how it responds to the environment in their own. Your own internal temperature is going to be different with every person. I imagine that heat stress will affect people differently. So it's not going to be it's not going to be a consistent response across the board like you would have with another exposure that might not be environmental, like fall protection or exposure to like a spinning machinery or something to that effect.
Thomas Bernard: [00:12:56] Yes, so heat stress has a lot to [00:13:00] interindividual variability, so there's some people who, first of all, there's a small group of people or just heat intolerant, but let's set them aside for a while. Even in the range of heat tolerant, you're going to see a huge variation. Some people can deal with heat stress in incredible ways, and other people are going to be somewhat less tolerant, not importantly less tolerant. And we set our guidelines to protect those people with less tolerance. So not the intolerant, but people with less tolerance. And then that means those people with a with a high level of tolerance. Wonder why it is that we are saying that you're in a heat stress situation. And, you know, it's not only the difference between people, but even [00:14:00] within the same person, the day to day variations can be quite substantial. So you may be less tolerant one day and more tolerant the next. And we really don't know why that is, but probably has to do with recovery and just how our days vary a little bit.
Pete Koch: [00:14:20] I can definitely see that with the athletes that I work with and because I can work with them every single day. And as a safety professional, I don't always get to work with the same group of people every day. Sometimes I do, but it's typically in a workshop or a training standpoint, and you're not going to have the same kind of physical demands that you would as an athlete on the field or a worker in a hot environment or highly physical environment that they might have that same challenge. So I can definitely see that in the athletes, you're going to have a group of people that are really, they're very tolerant to heat. They can manage it all the way through. And we do step our [00:15:00] practice sessions up. We start very slow and then we work our way up as we go through the summer. We step it up within the practice as well. So there's definitely a warm up period, a cool down period. And we don't just jump right into a lot of heavy physical activity so that we can work the athletes into that process or into getting warm and then getting their body used to be able to dissipate that heat as they go. What I've found with the athletes from the difference from day to day is there is a sort of an unknown component like you'd say, I just like I don't know why yesterday you were very tolerant to the same temperatures and today it's actually a couple of degrees cooler. The humidity is a little bit less and you are not responding in the same manner. Those are the outliers. I think consistently, though, what I've seen, especially with the younger athletes, [00:16:00] is their food management and their hydration management is relatively poor in that, you know, they might be drinking in practice. But what we typically tell them is that it's what you drank yesterday. It's going to help you hydrate for the practice today. And I think that's a key part. So in your studies, how does water management help someone deal with heat stress?
Thomas Bernard: [00:16:29] Yeah, water management is incredible stuff. But and I want to caution your listeners at the same time. It's not the answer to all your problems. So this is one thing I like to point out. So on a job where there's a lot of profuse sweating, we recommend that you plan to have one quart of water per hour per person, and then that tends to be on the high end of [00:17:00] what the what will actually be drunk, but assures that you'll have sufficient water or other drinks available. But it's important to know that you probably cannot replace more than about six quarts of water and a working shift be at eight or 10, 12 hours. You're almost always going to have a deficit of water by the end of the day. And then what we really rely on is that you get that hydration completed during the off hour. So let's just assume it's a day shift, you know, in the evening and in toward the night that the water gets replaced. So you show up to work the next day. We always assume well rested, fully recovered and hydrate. That's what we pray for when they show up for work the next morning,
Pete Koch: [00:18:00] And [00:18:00] that always happens. I mean, that's consistent, right? Everyone shows up well hydrated, well rested and prepared for the day. But that is an interesting part. I think education and again, getting into this, we'll get into it later as we talk about response and training. But education about, you know, if you're working in a hot environment, if you want to be prepared for that environment for the next day, what you do in the off hours really does affect you will affect your performance and response during the on hours as well. And it won't just help you at work. It will help you in the softball game after work or in the fishing expedition that you have over the weekend and any of that. So water management, education around that I think is good and great caution out there. It's not it's not the panacea. It will not be the solution for all the problems. And again, something that we'll talk about a little bit later on
Thomas Bernard: [00:18:54] One thought I left hanging there. You have to be well hydrated [00:19:00] in order to be as tolerant as you're going to be of heat. So hydration doesn't give you any sort of superpower. It allows you to be yourself when you're dehydrated, you detuned yourself. And so we have to be careful that that water is permissive. But it's not an intervention that will make things better. We only want them to be hydrated.
Pete Koch: [00:19:29] Excellent point. I like that water. Water is not a superpower. Perfect people. Yeah. And you hear it all the time. Drink water, drink water, drink water. Like it's going to make you better. It's only going to allow you to be yourself that sorry to repeat your words, but I think that's important for our listeners to take with them. And that's a really important point. Let's talk a little bit about now how you might measure heat stress and, you know, we all we all have that feeling of it's hot. Well, like, [00:20:00] how do we know what hot is? How do you measure hot? So in in my preparation for this podcast, the term Wet Bulb Globe Temperature came up in a lot of the research that I saw. And I have some understanding of that just from my years making snow because we used the wet bulb temperature to determine humidity and whether or not we could make snow actually above 32 degrees, which you can believe it or not. So how does Wet Bulb Globe Temperature? How does that get used in measuring heat stress? And how does it differ maybe from ambient temperature?
Thomas Bernard: [00:20:37] Ok, so let me try that in a couple of different ways. So first of all, remember, I mentioned that the primary way that we lose heat is by sweat evaporation. And so that means that we have to have that. Pardon me for a technical term for a moment, but we have to have a gradient that drives that's sweat [00:21:00] evaporation. So I've got saturated water vapor on my skin and that drives to the environment. Getting away from the technical point then for a moment is that the drier the air, the more rapid that sweat evaporation is going to be in, the greater cooling I get. And then, of course, is the air becomes more humid. That ability to move water off the skin and into the air gets lower and lower. And by the time I reach one hundred percent relative humidity, I can no longer get sweat evaporation. And that really limit starts in and around 70 percent or so you start to see a diminishing return. So that is humidity is really the critical issue and not the air temperature. So when we talk [00:22:00] about the how hot it is in terms of the air and even to the extent that we talk about radiant heat, those are relatively small thermal loads on the body when we in comparison to the metabolic demands.
Thomas Bernard: [00:22:16] So remember, I mentioned earlier, heat stress is a problem, getting internally generated heat out to the environment and the heat would be alone on the body from higher temperatures and radiant heat is probably no more than 10 percent of the metabolic rate. So it's not a big piece of it. And said the other way, sweat evaporation is that at least 90 percent of the heat loss there. So when we talk about assessing the environment, it turns out that we really want to wait that humidity. So the wet bulb temperature, the dew point are good [00:23:00] way. So when you listen to the weather station and they report, you know, they'll report dew point. Don't think about relative humidity, think about dew point. And once you start getting dew points that are up over 60, say, sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, you're starting to report that it's humid. And by the time you're up to 70, you're clearly in a very humid environment. And so when people say it's hot, they may report dry, they may be reporting dry bulb temperature, but they're probably really reporting this kind of synthesized humidity and temperature.
Thomas Bernard: [00:23:39] And if they're saying that it's hotter occupationally, it probably already is. All right. So that guidelines not too bad. And in fact, that might be that even though you're standing there, it feels a little bit comfortable. But when you begin to work and have to dissipate that extra heat, it's actually [00:24:00] going to be important. So WBGT getting back to actually your question is that that's wet bulb globe temperature. So wet bulb we now we've established is, is what is going to be sensitive to the level of humidity and the and the globe temperature is really a combination of the air temperature and radiant heat in the environment. So if you will, the wet bulb temperature represents our ability to dissipate heat to the environment and the globe. Temperature takes care of the convective and radiant heat load that we may have. And the WBGT is highly weighted to the wet bulb temperature so at 70 percent of the wet bulb temperature and 30 percent of the globe, and I like the WBGT [00:25:00] because it really represents in a very simple index, the ability of the body to dissipate heat to the environment and back our physiological responses will map to WBGT pretty well.
Pete Koch: [00:25:16] So then as we as we start to look at the workplace, how do you measure that in the workplace? Typically you see thermometers in the workplace or you might get someone with a weather report in the workplace. I know that we had when we were working at the ski area to look at the wet bulb temperature, to determine humidity in the air and making snow on the other end. So the cold part of that, we had thermometers and different devices that would do that. But it wasn't something that you just ran out to the hardware store and grabbed. So what do you use to measure that?
Thomas Bernard: [00:25:47] Yeah, well, in a minute, I'll tell you, how to go to the hardware store to get this stuff. But more likely, you need to have a high [00:26:00] quality instrument that will measure WBGT and there is a lot of cheaper things that pretend to measure this. So, so cheap is not going to be an answer. I'll provide you that answer in a moment. From a credible vendor a WBGT instrument is the usual way that a health and safety person will measure that in the environment. Globe temperature. Though, historically, is that somebody in the nineteen thirties, I think it was, went to the hardware store, got a toilet bowl float that happened to be a six inch copper globe copper sphere, put a thermometer into the middle of it and that became globe temperature. So, yes, you can go you're not going to go [00:27:00] to a hardware store anymore because they're plastic in the ellipsoid. But you can order online a fairly cheap six inch copper globe and make your own globe temperature. And in the same way, wet bulb temperature is you get a regular thermometer, you put a wick that can be something like a white shoelace that is then immersed in water and then allowed to freely evaporate to the air. So you can build, if you will, your own homemade WBGT device. That will be very good. And the thermometers have to be a good quality, but there are some not good thermometers that are readily available.
Pete Koch: [00:27:51] I think you've just given me a new science project for our homeschooling group, so I think we might be doing that in a couple of weeks. See how that goes. I'll get back to you [00:28:00] if I need a list of supplies. So considering that, you know, so the best way then for an employer to measure heat stress in the workplace is WBGT. And I think you've described why, because it does represent the workers ability to maintain their thermal equilibrium. What other factors contribute to heat stress in the workplace and how do they affect it?
Thomas Bernard: [00:28:28] So we talked about the environment and WBGT is a good measure of the environment and especially because we are concerned about the humidity. Obviously it once I say it out loud yet again, is the metabolic rate, the work demands.is the second job risk factor, because what's going to happen is whatever limiting WBGT there is, you're going to have to make it cooler and drier, [00:29:00] if you will, with the higher metabolic rate. So it's not going to be one value WBGT, but rather a relationship between the environment and the internal heat generation so that you can maintain thermal equilibrium. So the environment has to be more conducive to the sweat evaporation the harder you work and then. We have to worry about what they're wearing. So the third job risk factor is the clothing. Not most of all, occupational exposure limits are going to assume work clothes, so that would be something like a six ounce woven material, long sleeve shirt and eight ounce woven material pants. It could be coveralls as well as woven material that. But that's [00:30:00] the base unit. If you're in shorts. Or a T-shirt, you can afford to be a little bit higher than if you're in a double layer, coveralls are in the worst case, barrier clothing. Then we have to really change that threshold WBGT to match.
Pete Koch: [00:30:24] It sounds as we start to look at the workplace itself and we have the humidity and the temperature and the WBGT in the environments, and then we have the work rate in the environments, it's compounded really not just by what they wear to work, but what they're required to wear for work, possibly personal protective equipment and things of that nature. So that's even going to be a contributor. And if you can't remove one of those, then it really comes back down to trying to mitigate the environment [00:31:00] or mitigate exposure. So maybe the amount of work time or time in the environment.
Thomas Bernard: [00:31:07] Yes, that's correct. So and let me just go off on a tangent for a moment. It's almost always going to be the clothing that's going to be the big factor, a full face, negative pressure respirator, which is about the worst that you can imagine, really doesn't affect heat stress. You'll be very uncomfortable. But it won't affect your level of heat stress. The same can be said about gloves and shoes. That's where the major part of the body surface is covered. That's the question of what the PPE effect will be. And I totally lost track in your question.
Pete Koch: [00:31:51] That's OK. I think just thinking more about the PPE itself, and I think that's a good point. And it's not going to be one particular piece [00:32:00] of PPE, but it's going to be the combined effect. And how much of the body is covered by clothing and PPE? Because, again, if you're if you're in a full-face respirator, but you are in a position where you can have more of your skin lightly covered instead of, you know, I was actually thinking about working in the woods and as a logger here in Maine in the summer, you might be in the woods. You're going to have chaps or you're going to have Cutter's pants on. And that's covering a fairly sizable chunk of skin with a fairly heavy fabric that's way more than. And that 12-ounce cotton woven pant that you're going to have. So it's going to have a different effect than, say, someone with minimal or clothing that's not that heavy wearing a full face respirator. So I think that's a good point. It's not just one piece of PPE or PPE itself, but a combination of all that are going to come together to drive [00:33:00] the heat stress higher.
Thomas Bernard: [00:33:03] Yes, that's right. And then getting to the issue of mitigation, if we work just in the context of the job risk factors that we've been talking about, you have to pair up your actions so that you're on average, say, over the course of an hour, you get it within what would be the occupational exposure limit. So if you're wearing PPE, that's really interfering with sweat, evaporation, taking some time where you can dock that in order to be able to cool down will be important with the metabolic rate. If you're going to have periods of high metabolic rate, you're going to have to balance those with periods of lower metabolic rate or if you were in a very hot environment, periods where that environment will be a little bit cooler. But it's that combination of those three [00:34:00] things that are going to dictate how it is. You can mitigate that level of heat stress.
Pete Koch: [00:34:09] I think that's a good way to think about it. And I think many times as I work with employers, they're really looking for one solution. And when it comes to heat stress, it's not just a single thing that you that you're going to be able to do. It's an advantage that you get to look at the combination of things and make some modifications. But it's not like, drink water or go to the shady spot that's going to be the solution. So there are different things that the employer is going to have to look at. Kind of brings up a point. I want to just kind of maybe jump back a little bit and talk about what factors contribute heat stress. And as I was thinking about outdoor activities, I was thinking about the flager on the side of the road, standing there all day in direct sunlight. How much does direct sunlight change [00:35:00] the impact of temperature?
Thomas Bernard: [00:35:03] So the direct sunlight, you know, you'd rather be obviously in the shade than the sun, but the sun is going to make you feel warmer. So there's going to be a sensation because it's heating the skin. But the thermal load, if you will, is still going to be small compared to even the metabolic rate of just standing there. All right. And so it's important. And in the effect might be actually a little bit of a side effect is that you're warming the skin, which means you're going to bring a little bit more blood with the opportunity, especially standing, with the opportunity for that blood to pool down to the legs. And then you're going to feel faint and then you might succumb to a heat syncope, which [00:36:00] is a painting of that. All right. So, you know, just building on your example of the flagger they're going to want to walk a little bit or pump that blood back up to the heart, but the sun is going to make them uncomfortable. It's not adding substantially to the level of heat stress.
Pete Koch: [00:36:24] Gotcha. And again, it's a combination of different things. Right. So thinking about that flager again and that static posture of being there, gravity always wins. So pulling blood down to the extremities, not providing enough oxygenated blood back to the brain, we actually talk about that from a fall protection standpoint. So, you know what happens if you're hanging in a harness for too long? How long are you going to be able to stay conscious in that particular position without being able to move? And it's one of the strategies for response after you've fallen to be able to move to be able to get muscle pump, to help your heart [00:37:00] move blood back up into the organs that need it to keep you, keep you awake, keep you alive. So, again, the combination of different things to look at, so movement to get the blood flowing and in this case, not only for oxygen, but to help dissipate your warmth back to all parts of the skin and not just the parts where the blood's hanging out down in the legs, so interesting. As we think about prevention, some more continuing down that track. Is there reliable data to support effective regulations around heat stress in the workplace and still trying to balance quality and productivity at the same time? Because I know that's always the thing. Like we have to have productivity, productivity, productivity and quality and quality. But if the person's not able to do it, you're not going to be able to manage either of those. So is there good data to support that?
Thomas Bernard: [00:37:53] So the answer is yes, and then maybe some of your listeners aren't going to want to really [00:38:00] know the answer to the issue of productivity. OK, so let's talk about two parts of what regulations and I'd even broaden it to say what's good professional practice, OK, whether there's a standard or not. So one is that we're going to have to do exposure assessment. And is there good data to support that need that? The answer is yes. And the primary data asks the question, where can most people maintain thermal equilibrium? So how can they tolerate that environment for long periods of time? And you'll see these. Generally expressed as a WBGT limit at a given metabolic rate, and then the side of that is, of course, the increasing metabolic rates could lead [00:39:00] to a reduction. And what that limiting WBGT will be and then adjusting that for any kind of clothing that's being worn. So that's the exposure assessment. The point being is that it's well-established. We understand and know it. And it also follows the public health model that we're protective of most people. And we've already talked that there's a huge range. So we have to be careful that we don't fall into the trap of face validity where somebody will say, well, wait a minute, everybody, almost everybody can tolerate something higher.
Thomas Bernard: [00:39:41] All right. But we don't know who those people are and we don't know how much higher than the other part is. What's the least you want to be doing to manage those exposures? And so I have my I have my list [00:40:00] of what you minimally have to do. And that falls into training, which is just, you know, accepted gospel truth in any occupational health and safety issue. I call them hygiene practices, but there are things that individuals can do to reduce their individual risk. Hydration is one example of hygiene practice. Arguably, acclimatization in terms of adjusting expectations is another hygiene practice. And then the third is surveillance. And that's really knowing what your environment is that a give them time because it does change during the course of the day. And it's also medical surveillance. It's the employer keeping track of even first day. So the data, so they can better appreciate what's happening in their workforce. [00:41:00] And then in the final thing is having an emergency response plan and if you will, I'm going to go I'm going to go back to your example of the harness and having fallen and now somebody is just sitting there.
Thomas Bernard: [00:41:15] All right. I heard a safety professional probably 20 years ago say, talking about a fall protection program. And they said if your emergency response is calling 9-1-1, you're in trouble. And that is also the case in heat stress. If you think your emergency response plan is that somebody is going to dial nine one and you have nothing else to do, you're in trouble. Right. So it's those four components. It's having the training. It's practicing heat stress hygiene, it's doing surveillance, and it's having an [00:42:00] emergency response plan. And that emergency response plan, in my mind, also includes just first aid. Then I think in this way, what we've done is put in the backstop just in case we've made a mistake with our surveillance or we have someone who is heat intolerant because our usual standards don't protect everyone it protects ninety nine percent of the exposures or one percent of the exposures is once during a summer per person. All right. So that's not exactly overwhelming odds of protection. And so we do need to have that backup. We do need to say, OK, when that person slips through our protection, that we've got them covered.
Pete Koch: [00:43:00] Let's [00:43:00] take a quick break. How hot is too hot, anyway, as we are hearing during this podcast, often it's not as simple as looking at the thermometer, humidity, airflow, the physical nature of the work and how the person is equipped all play a part. Not identifying and mitigating heat exposure in the workplace can cause serious or even fatal illnesses and injuries because workers will react differently to different conditions when hot environments are identified in the workplace. Employers must be equipped to respond appropriately for resources to help you identify and respond to heat stress exposures. Check out the heat stress resources from NIOSH through the Center for Disease Controls Web site CDC.gov and search heat stress. If you're a policyholder with MEMIC, you can sign into the MEMIC safety director and search for heat stress to find more resources there. Now let's get back to today's episode.
Pete Koch: [00:44:00] So I like that as [00:44:00] we talk about those basic work practices, those are the essential things that we need to do to make sure that we can respond properly to heat stress in the workplace. So let's go back and take training just as one of those pieces, because I think training around heat stress is quite varied if it's done at all in in different environments. So let's talk a little bit about what might be important for an employer to do for training for their employees around heat stress.
Thomas Bernard: [00:44:32] So training is going to be much like an employer would do for every other health and safety. So I always have to be careful to keep that perspective that they've got more than one problem to deal with. But once we work within that format is that you want the employee to be able to understand their hazards and then make rational decisions [00:45:00] about how to deal with those hazards to protect themselves and protect others. So you want to educate them to what are the factors that cause heat stress? So that's the environment, especially the humidity, the work demands. And if there are special clothing that they have to wear so they understand how these contribute, then having a little bit of basic understanding about what are the physiological responses so that there is a cardiovascular demand and there is a demand on water. We give up water from our body in order to cool ourselves, hence the need for hydration. So they've got that rationale for the hydration. Importantly then what they need to know or what are the signs and the symptoms of heat related disorders so that they can immediately recognize them. And we rely on people [00:46:00] to recognize them in themselves. But very importantly, we rely on people recognizing the signs in somebody else. And these then go toward the early recognition of the disorder. Then we can have the proper first aid or the proper response. So they need education on what these are. So that leads to what's the first aid, an emergency response plan.
Pete Koch: [00:46:28] I think that's great and really kind of outlines well, it takes that training component and it incorporates all of those other components into it. So as an employer, really seeing it as not just a standalone piece, but if you're going to have if you're going to have a heat exposure within the workplace, then the training should include all of those components all the way up into. What do you do as an employee if you recognize this in one of your co-workers, which is a key part. And we actually [00:47:00] talk about that quite a bit on the cold side, like we talk about hypothermia, exposure, because a lot of folks, you're not going to know that you are in the early stages of hypothermia if you've got the fumble, stumbles and mumbles. So it really relies on your partner, your co-worker to understand what those symptoms are and start to address those we're going to touch. I'm going to ask you another question about cold stress here in a minute. But at the time of this podcast, there's actually a bill within the Maine legislature that's proposing setting a standard for maximum and minimum temperatures for indoor places of employment. And I just wondered, with all your experience around heat stress and how it affects the person and the variability of that, what are your thoughts about setting those limits and making them legislation for state?
Thomas Bernard: [00:47:51] Again, I'm not opposed to legislation. I think, in fact, legislation and the actual rulemaking. The rules are [00:48:00] really very important. And I am a proponent of these. There's just a couple of things. First of all, I did a quick read of the brief legislation that's in front of the Maine legislature, I presume by maximums they're really thinking in terms of heat stress. And when they talk about minimums, they're really talking about cold. And these are really two different things. So let's talk first about heat, I think heat stress has to recognize that there are the three job risk factors that we've been talking about and therefore, any exposure assessment needs to be framed in the way that we've been talking about. And you're not going to do that by saying, here's the temperature. If you do that, you're going to be setting a temperature so low, that everybody's [00:49:00] going to fall under it. And I don't think there will be very many people that are happy about that circumstance. For cold stress, if I can just go there for a moment and you started to allude to it. So I do want to come back. First of all, about cold stress, humidity no longer plays a role, so it air temperature and a bit air speed, but it's more nuanced than that. So you talked about hypothermia and hypothermia. We worry a lot about what is the temperature and then what is the clothing. And really to manage that cold stress exposure, we have to have enough insulation on to protect ourselves from hypothermia for any given temperature and work demand because remember, you're generating heat. And then what you want to do is preserve enough of that heat that you don't lose body [00:50:00] temperature, but then you need to allow the rest of it to dissipate.
Thomas Bernard: [00:50:05] And so adjusting clothing, insulation and being in the skiing industry, you know how to do that. And I'm not a skier, but I imagine going up the chairlift, you're going to be all bundled up because your metabolic demands are low and then you're going to loosen up your clothing before you start heading down, because now your metabolic rate is high. So you have to adjust the effective insulation of that clothing. So this is key for managing hypothermia. Then the other thing we worry about is actually a localized effect. So it's getting frostbite or frost nip. And that then is what is the air temperature and what is the air speed, because that will dictate the rate of cooling of a patch of skin. So in cold stress, we have both hypothermia managed by clothing and we have local [00:51:00] effects that are managed by. Basically, if you will, managing the wind chill, and that works, the other thing that's worth noting from the safety point of view is, remember, we talk that the risk and the probability of an accident that could be an acute injury or loss of property or however it might manifest itself, goes up with heat and it does. But it goes up on the cold stress side and it goes up 10 times more. So cold stress in terms of having a risk associated with accidents is much more of a worry. It's I think it's a worry on the heat stress side, but it's an incredible concern on the cold stress.
Pete Koch: [00:51:51] If I can ask a follow up question around that, why does it go up so much more? Why do the probability of accidents go up so much more [00:52:00] in cold than it does in heat?
Thomas Bernard: [00:52:02] And I don't have a clue.
Pete Koch: Fair enough.
Thomas Bernard: But I got to tell you, it's an absurd phenomenon, right? It is there clearly enough that it's a problem. And I reported on it in an aluminum smelter, which is really a very hot place that if you're located in a northern location with a lot of air ventilation and smelters require a lot of air. When it gets to be zero outside or subzero, it gets incredibly cold in there at that time. And so we saw the accidents increase. But we're not the only investigators that found it. There were many others, too, who observed the same thing.
Pete Koch: [00:52:52] I've totally found that in my experience with the ski industry as well, that I don't know that I could have, from my experience, say that it went up 10 times. But [00:53:00] I do know that even with a little cold stress. Your reaction time lessens physical reaction time, mental capacity at a much lower rate than I think for heat stress. I think your body can get warmer and still have a relatively functional processing capacity whereas you start to get cold and you start to shiver or you start to stop shivering, which is worse, you're not able to function anywhere near as well as you could just a few minutes ago before that that metabolic change happened for you.
Thomas Bernard: [00:53:40] So if I can abuse something that I told you earlier, we're tropical animals. So we have learned to adapt, not learn to adapt. We have. Physiologically, the capacity to deal with heat being tropical animals, [00:54:00] we've relied totally on behavioral modification to manage cold.
Pete Koch: [00:54:07] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, tons of sense. So I guess kind of coming back to that legislative question then to have a hard and fast maximum and a hard and fast minimum from a temperature and just looking at temperature and they haven't even defined temperature in that particular bill that's there. I think there's probably a lot more work to do to make legislation functional for the protection of employees that still allows quality and productivity to live symbiotically in that.
Thomas Bernard: [00:54:39] Thank you for bringing us back to the productivity. So let me get to that in a moment. Yes. You know, there's an incredible amount of work that staff and the Department of Labor are going to have to do to try to actually make this workable. That that was a fine action by the legislature, [00:55:00] if that's what they take. And other than, you know, in my mind, I read that by I say, well, they've given a command to the agency, develop something. The agency is going to quickly discover that this is a more complex process than that legislation would suggest. And that's fine. You know, we rely on the rulemaking process to discover those things all the time. The second part of this is that if you manage the heat stress and I'm also an expert on the cold side, but the cold stress, your quality of work is probably going to stay pretty close to the site. But what's going to happen is that you are going to have a decrease in productivity. And this is just simply inevitable because you're taking physiological [00:56:00] capacity and redirecting it from work to dissipating heat. You simply can't avoid it. So from a compliance point of view, I don't like thinking about compliance point of views, but it frames it well enough to maintain that level of compliance by necessity or your productivity is going to drop. How well you manage that heat will tell you how much your productivity is going to drop. And if you think you can beat that by saying, OK, we will just pay people a piece rate, their productivity is still going to drop. It might not drop as much, but I posit that I study again to show even increased rate productivity drops. But if you're not managing that exposure, what's happening is that the workers are taking on more risk and they're not doing it consciously. So that's not a willful taking on a risk. That's an unconscious [00:57:00] take on of risk that will lead to a higher probability of a heat related disorder and especially a heat stroke.
Pete Koch: [00:57:12] I think that's a really good point. That's because it's a fine line, internal perception of where you are metabolically in your temperature. It's not easy. So as you're working, you're going to feel hot. But that moment that you go from feeling hot to not being able to manage the load anymore is a pretty fine line. And then going from that to heat stroke is an even finer line, and it's different for every person. So it really does make sense to try to manage that and knowing that productivity is going to have to suffer because it's a math thing. When you kind of get to it, what goes in has to come out. Otherwise the person is going to get hurt. That takes us into and I think it's a good lead into what [00:58:00] might be the appropriate medical response for heat stress. And if we start to look at it from. All right, so we've done what we can within the workplace, but this individual is not reacting well to the mitigation that we've had. And they're starting to experience heat exhaustion or heat stroke. And we're going to call 9-1-1. We know that's an important part of the response, but it's not the only part of the response. What's the appropriate response to heat stress once an employee has reached the point where they need intervention?
Thomas Bernard: [00:58:33] So if you'll allow me to get away from the model that heat stress and the fact that now they're experiencing heat related disorder, which is the excessive strain, is that and pardon me, but that's just my obsession. So it's staged. You know, if it's a mild heat exhaustion it's going to be a symptoms driven identification [00:59:00] and the risk. And if you will, that's the early recognition. We like that. If somebody is reporting that they feel fatigued and they're thirsty and we like that, dizzy maybe a little bit of a headache, then they can stop work, go into as cool places they can find and drink. And chances are within 15 minutes they're fine and they're fully recovered and ready to go back to work. We like that. That's early recognition, early treatment. And if they go into a more advanced so a severe heat exhaustion, their body core temperature, we're not going to measure the body core temperature, by the way. And I'm not advising that, but it's going to be somewhere and still in the vicinity of what we would expect. But the cardiovascular demands are going to be huge. All right. So they're going to, again, [01:00:00] report headaches and tired. You know, their blood circulation is where we would want it to be. But now we're also starting to rely on signs, OK, they're going to be wobbly. They're just not going to be walking that straight line. We're going to notice that drop and physical capacity. Then we have to if they're not coming off the job to try to cool down, recover, we need to pull them off.
Thomas Bernard: [01:00:29] Right. So this may be where we're starting to make bad judgments. And in the buddy system needs to see that and again, it's sitting in a cool place, it's drinking fluids and keeping a close eye in severe heat exhaustion. My friends in the sports area will take a towel soaked in ice water, put it over [01:01:00] their head and shoulders. And they use this not because it cools them better, but it helps give them an idea about the severity of the severe heat exhaustion. Right. So if they begin to feel better relatively quickly, then they know they're dealing with heat exhaustion. On the other hand, if they're not there, they're keeping an eye on the symptoms for heat stroke. And this is important now for heat stroke, nobody is going to report symptoms so much like you use the example of the hypothermia. The same is true for heat stroke. You're now not thinking this is now a central nervous system failing your brain is letting you down. And now this really requires your buddy to notice this. And in the cases that I've worked on, it's often gibberish that they're just [01:02:00] talking nonsense. They're going off and doing things. They don't know where they are. They just threw down your tools and left the job. OK, so behaviors that you just don't expect and you've got to open up your head to what are behaviors that are normal. And if anybody says I quit, the last thing you let them do is leave.
Thomas Bernard: [01:02:23] All right. Because this is going, you know the “Bernard Pointer” is this looks like a heat stroke. Then the absolute best way to deal with that is put them in a cold water or ice water immersion bath. So you want to emerge and you'll see the old emergency medicine textbooks say, no, no, don't do that. Now, clearly, all of the evidence is ice water immersion is the best way to cool them down. Now, if you're out doing the timber harvesting that you discussed, [01:03:00] you know, hopefully you've got that one quart of water per person per hour. You know, who's sitting there and you probably have some left over. Hopefully it's cold. Well, you wrap somebody in a tarp and dump all of those in alright. You do whatever you can to cool them down. Right. And then you call 9-1-1. Notice that we're not calling nine one waiting that 15, 20 minutes, one hour for them to show up. And by the way, you want to alert them that you're dealing with a possible heat stroke so they can prepare to deal with that so that they can get them to the emergency room. So that's part of the plan. And when I'm working with but like right away maintenance, where they could be almost anywhere then knowing where you are and going over that [01:04:00] emergency plan, making sure you have cell phone service and everything else that you need, becomes part of that tool box safety meeting prior to any job that you begin.
Pete Koch: [01:04:12] Those are great points, and it's interesting how a lot of those points are relative to really any job that has a significant risk of serious injury, whether it be fall protection or you're working around heavy machinery. Working alone is not the best thing, because, again, if you're risk assessment about the job that you're doing indicates that you're going to be in a high heat environment, you have the potential to not understand your own symptoms. So having someone there that can help is a pretty key part. And I do think that people do miss that part of their hazard assessment, like they talk about the environment, but they think about weather like high winds or something unexpected. But you can have a day that's, you know, in the high 90s and very [01:05:00] humid and very close and still. And you could have a significant heat load on the person and there could be a lot of heat stress. And then the person can experience a lot of heat strain from that. Great recap on the medical response there.
Thomas Bernard: [01:05:14] And I just want to go back and reiterate about the buddy system, because when you do, you know, there's reports in the literature of these cases of heat strokes and a number of times that somebody wanders off and dies alone. You know, even though I'll tell people you never leave anybody alone.
Pete Koch: [01:05:38] It's a great point. And that's an interesting point, too, because a lot of folks were like, oh, he just needs his space. He needs his time. Well, understand the environment that they're in and what they're responding to, because it might not just be they need a break from whatever they're doing, like you said. What's abnormal about their behavior? Is this something that they typically do or is this something very different than they've [01:06:00] presented in the past? And if it is, I think you said it was the “Bernard Pointer” don't let them leave. Right. I like that.
Pete Koch: [01:06:07] So we're kind of getting towards the end of the podcast here. I do have a couple last questions. And one of them I well, it's a big question, so I'm not sure if it's fair, but I'm going to ask it to you anyway. So what do you know now about heat stress that he had wished you had known when you first started out when like when you were in the working with the mines and in the smelters and all that before you came to your position as being a professor? What did you what do you know now that you wish you had known then?
Thomas Bernard: [01:06:36] Just about everything I know now. I wish I had known then I so I don't have a good answer. I've been asked this before and in some variation or another. And one response that I have is that every time I work on a case, for instance, I learn something new and I put that in my bucket [01:07:00] of knowledge. So I've got an accumulation of thirty or more years of this. Then, you know, I also think about this question all the time because I am a researcher that's beyond teaching. I investigate and we always are asking ourselves questions to this very day. We're rethinking what it is we know about acclimatization and the associated risks. What is it that we know about time weighted averaging and recently I've been more staging and thinking about severity. So we always think in terms of that hour after hour for an eight-hour day. But, you know, one of the things that we found is, for instance, of three degrees C I'm sorry, I think in degrees C increased, which is not huge changes the response of an individual from [01:08:00] being able to just thermal regulate to putting them into a situation where they're where they're at high risk for heat stroke doesn't it's not a big change from an upper limit to what can be a very serious outcome and how we can begin to do the risk assessment. So I'd like to say that you know every year I learn something new and I'm hoping, you know, next year, if you ask me that question, I've got more things to add to that list.
Pete Koch: [01:08:32] I think that's awesome with all the knowledge that you have. And then just being open to that. There's something else out there that we just don't know that can shed a little bit more light on what you already know to give you insights. Some places. I think that's an awesome response Tom. So thanks for that. Is there anything that I should have asked you? But I didn't ask, is there something else that you want to reflect on for us?
Thomas Bernard: [01:08:55] So the answer is we talked about the four [01:09:00] essential things. I want to go back and first put a context. If you suspect you have heat stress, those are the four things you need to do. That's the training the hygiene practices. Surveillance and having a first aid emergency response plan, when you get up to where you're reaching an occupational exposure limit, you also need to follow that typical hierarchy of controls. We're not likely to be able to do elimination and substitution, but there are engineering controls that are effective and administrative controls and there are personal cooling systems that work well. I want to go back, though, to the first four. And it's the hygiene practices, hydration we've really talked about. And it is about anywhere you go, people are going to talk about it. It is drinking cool flavored drinks doesn't [01:10:00] have to be electrolytes, but we know that they drink more electrolyte drinks than anything else. So I think that it just happened that there have been at least palatable water, its direction or self-determination, so that if you are feeling well, there ought to be a freedom to go recover. And most employers that I work with, you know, acknowledge that they do that. But it's getting the people to take advantage of that that tip, and especially if they're on piece rate, that the conflicting goal they ought to know about, if they've got chronic health issues, their personal care physician should clearly know that they work in a heat environment because there's not a disease or treatment that probably won't interfere with thermal regulation.
Thomas Bernard: [01:10:50] The for acute illness, you know, the public health person to me to stay home because you're going if you go to work, you're going [01:11:00] to infect somebody else. But if you do remember that any nausea, you're not going to drink and you're not going to eat well, vomiting and diarrhea are going to dehydrate you. Fever is going to reset your thermal regulatory system. There's just a whole bunch of things that say you shouldn't do that and that a good diet, well balanced diet, no fad diets, getting plenty of rest don't do drugs are, you know, good advice. And I probably forgot something in there. But that gets I think, you know, an the acclimatization, adjusting your expectations, you're not going to run with everybody else. Until you get used to working in the heat. And even then, there's somebody who's going to be less tolerant than everybody else. So there's going to be somebody who can't keep up with everybody else.
Pete Koch: [01:11:53] Those are all great tips. And some of them don't get pushed hard enough within the workplace. And I think that having [01:12:00] employees understand and then have a culture that gets them to feel that it is OK to not be first, especially when you're in that acclimatization process and that there's always going to be someone who is going to be better. It's not that you shouldn't try to be better, but know that heat is going to be in effect here. And it's going to effect everybody differently. And it's not something that you may be able to overcome in the same manner that someone else is. And then you really hit the nail on the head there, whether it's piece work or something else. But that permission to just say, hey, I've recognized in myself, that I've hit the limit and I need to go and cool down before I can come back and be a functional part of this job team again. And that's a really key part. And I do think that's missed often in our training or our discussions with our employees. You see it often when you walk into different places. And there's just something odd about the culture. They're like people are working super hard. But you're also looking at looking at people thinking [01:13:00] you probably need to step away from that machine for a little bit and take a break, reset and come back to it because you're bound to get injured. Good, good. Really good points there, Tom. Thank you for those. I think I could talk to you for another few hours, but. Well, I think we're going to have to end it here pretty soon
Pete Koch: [01:13:18] If our listeners are interested. And I know they're going to be, about finding more out about heat stress and your work around heat stress, where can they go?
Thomas Bernard: [01:13:27] That's great. I'm always willing to kind of help where I can. I'm not going to send you to my website because I've got to get it back right again. The systems people moved on a server behind on that. But there's some materials that I can make available.
Pete Koch: [01:13:47] There are other organizations like NIOSH that have done research on heat stress and how to prevent it within the workplace, too. So but there's other places to go as well. So [01:14:00] besides NIOSH, are there any other organizational places or websites that folks can go that you would recommend?
Thomas Bernard: [01:14:07] Yeah, a great resource is NIOSH. They've revisited their criteria document three and two types, so they issued one, revised it once and revised it again, that's almost unheard of. So it really reflects, I think, the current thinking. Their most recent revision is 2016. So anybody serious about heat stress management, she should avail themselves of the NIOSH criteria document dated 2016. If you just do an Internet search, you're likely to find it. OSHA and NIOSH have materials on heat stress on their websites and I think they're generally pretty good. My only hesitation [01:15:00] and it’s a modest hesitation is that they will in some areas talk about stages of heat reflected in the heat index. And I think their ideas generally right. I'm not sure that I totally agree with their thresholds. I think a couple of them are too high in a couple of them were too low. But the idea, you know, the content for training programs and heat alerts and all of the things that they discuss are really very sound approaches, because I've been on the physical agents committee and the ACGIH. But I'll remind you that the ACGIH has a TLV for heat stress and strain and associated documentation so members can easily get a copy of this and nonmembers it is available for purchase. And I'll [01:16:00] give a heads up. We're in the process of doing a major revision not of the thresholds, but the associated documentation. So in a year I think it's going to be even better.
Pete Koch: [01:16:12] What we'll do is we'll take those, we'll take those documents and we'll put those links on to the podcast website. So you go to MEMIC.com/podcasts. They'll be able to see the transcript from this and then they'll also be able to grab those resources. I think that's great. You spent a ton of time with us and I really, truly appreciate this conversation. Tom, it's been fantastic to have you on and share your expertise with us. Really.
Thomas Bernard: [01:16:39] It was fun to do it. So I appreciate the opportunity.
Pete Koch: [01:16:45] And Tom, thanks again for joining us. And thank you to all of our listeners out there. Today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, we have been speaking about heat stress with Thomas Bernhard, Ph.D. Tom is a professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health [01:17:00] and the director of the Sunshine ERC a NIOSH Education and Research Center. If you have any questions or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find additional resources as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for the Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a few minutes to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that and you subscribe, thank you. Because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast [01:18:00] is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
In 2018, BLS data shows hand, wrist, and finger injuries comprise more than 43% of all upper extremity injuries that caused days away from work. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Al Brown, MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics takes a look hand injuries causes and some strategies for prevention including MEMIC’s E-Ergo™️️ tool, use of gloves, and tool and workplace design.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. Besides our voices, our hands allow us to express creativity and emotion through gestures and complex movements. The hand and wrist, believe it or not, have more than 27 different bones and 30 muscles, in addition to tendons and ligaments that allow for a staggering number of movements in positions. We use our hands every day to point, grasp, move, support, throw, catch, you name it. Our hands are usually involved with what we're doing, even gesturing right now. As I'm talking, I'm using my hands. You can't see them, but I am using my hands. Without them or even without one of them will struggle to live up to our potential. Think about it for a minute. Consider your day. So far, whenever you're listening to this podcast, what have you done that didn't require one or both of your hands? How did you put on your glasses or put in your contacts or on your sunglasses? How did you tie your shoes or brush your teeth, drive your car, [00:01:00] grab that cup of coffee? Using our hands to do things is so commonplace that we typically take them for granted until we hurt one of them. So a story, I had to take my dad to the E.R. the other day after a fall and we were checking in. And as we were checking in, a chef who, you know, you could tell he was a chef because he had the apron and the chef's coat that had his name on it. Chef Andy, he walked in holding his left index finger covered in a bloody rag, and he was treated in the next space over from my dad and I. And once the bleeding was stopped and I was listening, he was whisked away to see the orthopedic surgeon because they couldn't treat him there. I expect he's going to have a good outcome, but I imagine, at least for the next few weeks, he'll struggle with everyday activities, not to mention his work duties. So cuts and lacerations, crushing injuries, struck by injuries are all pretty common. There's good data out there to show that PPE can help reduce the severity of the injury that was caused by the event. However, there are a raft of other injuries [00:02:00] that are even more difficult to prevent because they're not always caused by a specific event like a splinter or a laceration. Injuries caused by prolonged static or awkward postures can be just as crippling as a traumatic event, and the healing process can be way more prolonged and dependent upon the injured person's changing their behavior or the workplace changing configuration or tools. So on the podcast with me today is Al Brown PT and director of Ergonomics, for Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Company, or MEMIC. Al has been on the podcast a number of times before and always brings a great perspective as to how the body interacts with the stressors in the workplace and what to do about them. Today Al is going to help me get a better grasp. Pardon the pun, of the causes of hand and wrist injuries and how to prevent them. Al welcome back to the podcast.
Al Brown: [00:02:51] Thanks, Peter. Appreciate that. I have to hand it to you. That was a great intro.
Peter Koch: [00:02:55] Oh, I'd Shake your hand Al for that for being on so many times and hopefully we'll stop being [00:03:00] quite so punny as we get moving
Al Brown: [00:03:03] Jazz hands. I'm so excited about this.
Peter Koch: [00:03:07] So this is awesome to have you back on. And I know we've talked about this subject a lot because hand injuries, regardless of what it is, are very common and one of the more common types of workplace injuries that we're going to see. So let's talk about some of the stats that are out there like we know it's a problem, but how big a problem are hand and wrist injuries out there in the workplace?
Al Brown: [00:03:28] Looking back through some of the data and when you look back through some of the Bureau of Labor reporting and OSHA, they probably account for about a third of work related injuries. And that's when you sort of include, you know, the hand, the wrist and a little bit of the, you know, the forearm. But they account for about a third and their second, probably only to back injuries when you look at that data. So significant. Significant. [00:04:00] And then, you know, there's you know, when you look at costs, for example, loss of a thumb, you were talking about the gentleman that walked into the E.R. with the bloodied finger had he chopped off his thumb and could not put it back on. That's a thirty five thousand dollar for permanent disability kind of thing. That that's a chunk of change. When you think about it, you know, when you look at tendon repairs, they can cost up to 70,000 dollars. So it because of the intricacy of the hand, the fine motor activity, the abilities, there's a lot of things that can go wrong. You know, we often think about hand injuries to in the world of manual material handling, lifting, moving, carpentry, things like that, the chef. But we do see a lot of hand injuries just in the office environment, too. As matter of fact, a good portion when we look at banking and looking at law firms and accounting for in places like that, [00:05:00]probably the leading injury. Second, I should back up and say slip trips and fall seems to be number one, but when we look at strains, sprains and injuries along those lines, their leading body part injury is the hand. Wrist and hand or upper extremity. So it is very common that we see these across all industries.
Peter Koch: [00:05:21] Yeah, and I think people tend to think about the severity of the hand or wrist injury with those traumatic type injuries. And I imagine you have stories like this, too. I have a friend way back when I was actually building houses, he was a phenomenal carpenter, an amazing guitar player, fingerpicking guitar player, could play just about any style, could hear it, and within a few minutes figure out the melody without any music in front of them. And just amazing guy. And he was ripping some plywood on a table saw without a guard, and he got a little kickback and put his hand down [00:06:00] on top of the spinning blade and pretty much cut his hand from his index finger across the meat of his thumb down to his wrist. And it took enough of the muscle out of there where it took him almost five years to get the dexterity back, to be able to finger pick again. And just, you know, you think about those severity things. People think about machinery, like you said before, with the severity of the injury. But we've also seen some pretty significant injuries that have come from those awkward postures or repetitive type injuries that might happen in an office. They just happen over a longer period of time. It's not that instantaneous. I touch something and it caught me or it crushed me and I have a permanent injury. So those same things can happen regardless. And I think it's important to know not just what can injure you in around the machinery, but what can injure you within in the other parts of the workplace. Those maybe not quite [00:07:00] so dangerous sounding jobs that are out there.
Al Brown: [00:07:03] My common thread, if you ever listen to the podcast that we've talked about, I always talk about gravity. I talk about neutral. And the reason, you know, we are a structure walking around in this world of gravity. So balance is real key. Our body likes that balance the wrist and hand. There's an orchestration between brain and hand. And it's funny, we're you know, we're right. People who are either right handed or left handed. There is a core of the population that is ambidextrous. But you're either right handed or left handed, right handed people, believe it or not, your right hand is controlled by the left side of your brain and your left hand is controlled by the right side of your brain. So about 80 percent of the population is right handed. So there's about 10 to 15 percent of the population that's left handed. You talk about guitar, you're going to buy a guitar. You know, just and you said my son was left handed. He said, I went into the store, music store and I said, hey, we'd like to get a left handed guitar. They totally [00:08:00] discouraged us from doing that because they said wherever he goes, if he walks in somewhere and that happens to be a guitar laying there and someone says, hey, you play the guitar, why don't you strike a tune for us? And he picks it up and it's a right handed guitar and he's learned on a left handed guitar, he will have a very hard time playing it unless you're Jimi Hendrix.
Peter Koch: [00:08:19] I was just thinking about that, too, right,
Al Brown: [00:08:22] Who flipped a right handed guitar upside down and learned to play it left handed. So there's, you know, looking at fine motor again, that's that relationship between brain and hand and the fact that it's such a complex structure and much of what we do is unconscious in nature. When you start to create those muscle patterns going between hand and you look at the complexity of it and it's repeated patterns over and over and over again, they say that the hand will go through twenty five million bends and stretches over a lifetime. That's one hand.
Peter Koch: [00:08:58] Wow.
Al Brown: [00:08:58] So, I mean, that's [00:09:00] just incredible. And if you are someone like a guitar player or a piano player or a carpenter, that hand is just put through those repeated motions over and over again. We do a lot of unconscious repeated behavior.
Peter Koch: [00:09:14] We definitely do. And there's that. We were talking about this before the podcast as well. There's that relationship between power and dexterity that the hand has. That's pretty amazing. You talk about a carpenter, right? So I need to have the dexterity in my hand to be able to pick up a nail and hold it in place. But I also have to have the power in my other hand to be able to mash that nail into whatever wood that I'm going to be driving it into. And so that's tough, too. Now, you are doing a little bit of research on some of those fun facts around, like what the hand can actually do. And I think it's pretty fascinating. So, like, if you think about power, like how strong are people's hands compared to how dexterous people's hands are because it lives in the same body, you can do the same thing. Dexterous things and pretty strong [00:10:00] things.
Al Brown: [00:10:01] Yeah. I looked up some of those things, but, hey, back to that hammer thing. Yeah. And the ability to hold on to that nail and come down and strike that thing with something very hard, hoping you don't hit the wrong nail.
Peter Koch: [00:10:17] Very true. Very true.
Al Brown: [00:10:19] There's a relationship there. A rookie, the new employee is going to hit more fingernails than maybe the person that is more seasoned. So, you know, there is that. But when we look at the extremes, it was a fun little search I did on the internet and I said, OK, what's one of the most powerful things the hand could do? And I said, well, grip. And I said, what's the most? So I looked up, what's the biggest deadlift of the world record for the deadlift? And I guess it was set back in May of 2020 by a person named Hawthorn Björnsson, nicknamed Thor, [00:11:00] very apropos from Iceland, and he lifted over eleven hundred pounds of force in the deadlift. So that's, you know, granted he does have an assist with the grip, with some straps. But other than that it is, you know, each hand is handling, you know, five hundred and fifty pounds of force that he has to hang on to in order to stand upright, that the large muscle body, large muscles in his body is his buttock, his back extensors, his quads have to lift, but he has to hang on to the weight with his hands. I'm going to go to the other extreme. You go to the other extreme. And I said, what's the most difficult piano piece to play? And there was a number of top choices. But the one I picked was it was Beethoven's number twenty nine B flat major Opus 106, which if you look at that online, it has got to be one of the fastest hand movements and so intricate that it's very difficult [00:12:00] to even the most seasoned piano players to play. So you look at that extreme from those fine manipulating motor activities that have to move each individual finger to lifting 1,100 pounds, you know, that that just fascinates me in the extreme abilities of the hand.
Peter Koch: [00:12:20] It is amazing what the hand can do. And that's just fascinating to be able to lift 1,100 pounds with the weak link being the coupling of your hands. Right. To be able to lift that whole thing. And then I'm pretty sure Thor's not a piano player. But, you know, if he is, he's probably not playing Beethoven. But you never know
Al Brown: [00:12:37] Could be could be.
Peter Koch: [00:12:41] Even to be dexterous enough to take a pencil and write your name, all of the fine motions that have to happen to be able to hold the pencil at the particular angle and then produce the motions and the movement with your hand, your wrist and your fingers to make the script occur on the page is all fascinating [00:13:00] and how your hand can do that and the connection between your brain. And we've all probably maybe some of our younger listeners might not have had this as much. But I bet you remember going back to school and getting a cramp in your hand, taking notes in class at some point in time, like you're just you're furiously writing notes to keep up with the professor who's up in front of you. And, you know, you're shaking your hand out because it hurts, because you're gripping it so hard that I'm not at neutral anymore. I'm causing some discomfort and from not so much overuse, but probably not the best posture or trying to produce those different fine motor functions in a way that's not allowing me not long enough circulation to move through. So really amazing what the hand can do. And fascinating, there's lots of different parts of the body that have that like we talked about the spine before, that have that's a lot of power and in functionality and movement [00:14:00] within that as well. But the hand really lots of cool things that can happen that it can do for sure.
Al Brown: [00:14:05] Well, it's been a big paradigm shift. I mean, you go back to me and you start with chalk on a chalkboard, go to a pencil, you know, and you know. So chalk is a different kind of prehensile grip to actually right on the chalk. Prehensile grips or the different things like pinch grips, like, you know, your thumb, your pulp grip. And, you know, there's three point chuck grip. The chalk was like a three point chuck grip. Then you went to a pencil, which was more like a prehensile grip or fine motor activity to now where we hover over a keyboard. So if we hearken back to the days, it's a matter of fact, the handwriting has gotten progressively worse simply because most folks are hanging out on the keyboard now, typing away. So the ability to write and take notes is really sort of it's just a different format.
Peter Koch: [00:14:51] I Finally feel normal because my handwriting has been messy all my life and now I fit in with everything else.
Al Brown: [00:14:56] You fit in with the rest of the crowd.
Peter Koch: [00:14:57] Lowering the bar [00:15:00] every day. Right. There we go. Just kidding.
Al Brown: [00:15:03] I'm still trying to figure out the keyboard. So, you know,
Peter Koch: [00:15:06] It is an interesting shift. And that shift from writing on the chalkboard to taking notes with a pen or pencil to the manual typewriter, to the automatic typewriter and now to the computer keyboard has really changed how writing or written communication affects our physical the physical demands. Right. So the written word hasn't changed. You could we could have a whole other podcast on how that is altered. But you think about written communication. I have to send something or write something that someone can read going from the student or the professor to the student, the student to the paper. And now, you know, all the way to the computer keyboard has really changed the demands of what the body needs to do in order to get the word onto whatever medium you're doing. And there's different exposures there. Right. So that exposure [00:16:00] of writing is very different than the exposure for typing, and it creates different challenges for us.
Al Brown: [00:16:06] Then throw in the mouse, you know, if we go back to that office environment and then, you know, a lot of things are sort of driven by the mouse and the mouse was a later invention from the keyboard. And then we all sort of kind of placed it out to the side. So then the fine activity of the hand, there's different shape mice out there nowadays because I can't tell you how many folks I deal with that have you know, they've got tingling in this hand. They've got discomfort like on the corner right below the bottom of your little finger, like way back by your wrist. There's a bone right there. And it's called your pisiform. And a lot of people that have limited space by their keyboard will be pivoting on that. And they create what's called a contact stressor. So you'll see it'll be red and angry and they'll go, it hurts right there. And it's yeah, I don't know why. And it's, you know, just hanging out [00:17:00] on that mouse and pivoting on that part of your wrist, just moving the mouse back and forth. So it's or you take people to ask about vertical mice, mice that are vertical. Well, if it's too vertical, your fingers want to drop down to earth. Welcome back to Gravity. So even though that's a small muscle group, you tend to hang on to that vertical mouse a little bit harder than you would maybe a semi vertical or a flat mouse. So all of a sudden you're noticing discomfort in the back side of the thumb or in the forearm, the different names from De Quervain’s tendonitis. And it's because you're trying to hang on to this mouse just because of its positioning. So those subtleties in life have become more frequent simply because the way we compose words nowadays are kind of hovering over these things in front of us.
Peter Koch: [00:17:52] So let's just break that out a little bit, because, you know, we've talked about some of the most frequent injuries being cuts, lacerations, abrasions, and we're going [00:18:00] to touch on those and prevention of those. But let's break apart the process of typing, because most people are going to do it. You know, even if you are, you don't have an office job, you don't have a job that demands you be in front of the computer all the time, the majority of us are going to be on something, whether it's an iPad or a phone or some electronic device that's going to have some sort of static posture that's you're going to be generating words with in some form or another. So why do we see so many repetitive stress or awkward posture type injuries or claims coming from keyboard and mouse use? He talked about the pisiform bone and the pivoting on that piece and mouse. But there's other stuff that happens to, you know, people do you know, how does that happen? What happens and what do we do to prevent it?
Al Brown: [00:18:49] Sure. Yeah, no, that's just one little tiny piece. But yeah, we could do a whole lot.
Peter Koch: [00:18:53] Yes, we could.
Al Brown: [00:18:54] Let me give you the highlights. I mean, some simple basic problems. We run into standard desks [00:19:00] that were those writing desks that we used to have in the past, that we still have are twenty nine and a half inches high and most chairs that we sit on probably go up to about 20 inches. The seat pan. There's quite a difference between twenty nine and a half and twenties, about nine and a half, almost ten inch difference between seat pan height. So if the desk, which often is the case, is too high, we have to manipulate that keyboard and put it in certain positions which as if we can't reach parallel if our forearm and wrists, are recess to be in line with our forearm and hovering over our keyboard. If we can't get to that posture on our current situation because the desk is too high, the chair's too low, we tend to either push the keyboard back or we put the keyboard might be too low or too high. We change that angle between wrist and forearm. And as that changes, the further it gets away from neutral, where the hand is parallel with the forearm, the more [00:20:00] you close down a place that delivers the nerve and blood supply to the wrist and the hands. And the more you start to fatigue the shoulders, too, and the more you start weight bearing on those and creating these awkward postures so you can get tingling in the fingers. If you're seated too low, your arm might wing out to the side and you might rested on the arm of your chair. It might be resting on the return on your desk and all of a sudden you expose and compress the little nerve that goes right around your elbow called your funny bone or your ulnar nerve. And you're noticing that your fourth and fifth finger kind of go and tingly. So again, just the height of the desk and this little discussion we're having will impact what happens to your hands if the reach to the mouse is too far. And again, remember standard keyboards, Pete, you've got the qwerty, which are the letters which are typically like a typewriter, but then, I don't know, someone mandated we got to have a number [00:21:00] pad. So they hung that out on to the right side of the keyboard. And then if you look at 80 percent of the population is right handed. Where do they all tend to put the mouse? To the right hand side of the keyboard? So now that arm has moved way out of neutral to go get it and people tend to hang on. That's when they start pivoting on the wrist or loading up the wrist in hand. And that's when we start to see the forearm elbow tendinitis, because folks are parked in a very long distance away from the body. So we're trying to bring everything back in closer. You were talking about the connection between brain and hand. One of the suggestions we often give for the keyboard with the number pad to the right, with the mouse to the right with a with a standard bilateral mouse, one that you can use in either side is what you put the mouse on the left hand side of the keyboard. What do you think the response is when we say that?
Peter Koch: [00:21:52] I can't do that.
Al Brown: [00:21:53] I can't do that.
Peter Koch: [00:21:54] I can't do that.
Al Brown: [00:21:56] And it's a simple motor pattern, just moving something around and clicking it. But it [00:22:00] brings it's a quick, easy solution to bring things more into neutral and reduce the forces on the wrist and hand and shoulder and neck. And it takes a couple, three days. It's just a motor pattern, but that's a plan. But again, that's that right left brain. This is my dominant hand. Don't try me. Tell me. And again, you go back to injury. Many folks listening to the podcast today that may have been that are right handed, that might have fallen and sprained their wrist, the right wrist or fractured it. And we're casted very quickly discover how dependent they are on that right hand, but realize after a couple of days that the left hand is a good second choice and it steps up to the steps up to the plate and does a pretty good job after a couple, three days.
Peter Koch: [00:22:49] It is amazing how you can train your body to do a different act or an activity in a different way when you're forced to do it. But that's an interesting [00:23:00] part, too. And I think we'll talk about this as we go through that prevent the prevention piece. It's one of the challenging pieces of repetitive motion or awkward postures, because they're cumulative, because they take time to do that and it takes time for you to learn the other way to do it. You should be kind of doing this all along, switching from side to side so you don't have the repetition or the constant awkward posture of the constant pressure on that one side happening. But it just takes time. It's weird. I know one of my friends, they broke their right forearm and they were casted. So they really couldn't do a whole lot with that. And I remember them. The hardest thing for them to change was brushing their teeth. And they came to me one day. We got coffee together and a blistering hot cup of coffee and they took a sip of the coffee. And it burned. Right. But I took a sip of the coffee and it was hot, a little burning. But they were like incredible pain, like, [00:24:00] Dan, what's going on? It's like, well, I was brushing my teeth today with my left hand because I can't do it my right hand and I stab myself in the back of the throat with a toothbrush because they just didn't have the fine motor control of that. But, you know, a week later, they were like at no big deal. It works just fine. So it just takes a little while to figure it out, to learn it. Yeah. Yeah. That retraining of that.
Al Brown: [00:24:21] Yeah. Discomfort breeds change. But I mean, that's the only thing that kind of, you know, and that's the problem is that's why people won't learn, you know, kind of flip flop back and forth unless there's some discomfort or problem or, you know, something that restricts you. You typically don't change simply because it's just more efficient to just keep moving forward and using that your right hand or your, you know, whichever handed you are. Yeah. And why change, you know, until you have to.
Peter Koch: [00:24:46] Right. Right. Now, let's talk a little bit about anatomy and physiology of the hand and wrist, like we talked about that it is a really it's a very dexterous body part for us. We can do lots of things that can be powerful. It can be really it [00:25:00] can do a lot of fine motor stuff. But what allows it to do all those things? What's the anatomy that makes it all up? And then how does some of those postures affect the anatomy that cause some of those challenges in repetitive or awkward posture injuries?
Al Brown: [00:25:17] Sure. Yeah. Well, you had mentioned earlier there's about and again, it varies. Some people have some extra little bones in the hand, but somewhere between 27 and 29, bones that make up the wrist and hand and it's about it, believe it or not, that's about a quarter of all the bones in the body are little spot. Yeah, right there, you know, about thirty muscles, about 129 ligaments, about 17,000 touch receptors in the palm, you know. So when you look at all those things that come together. Now, here's the thing. Most of the muscles that run the fingers, there's only tendons up in the finger, the belly of itself, the muscle itself. So if you think of a bicep, because everybody's kind of familiar with the bicep, the biceps [00:26:00] has this big meaty part in the middle of your upper arm. And then it what it does is it pars down to like a tendonous structures that connects below the elbow and then another two tendonous structures that go up into the shoulder. Very much like the hand, the meaty part of that muscle for the fingers is in the palm of your hand and it's just the long tendon structures that go up into your fingers and those things run your fingers. You can kind of wave your fingers around. You can make it sort of, you know, like bring your knuckles down and straighten your fingers out that your lumbar curls. But then the thing that moves your wrists, those muscles, the long tendons go up your forearm and those meaty part of it is your forearm itself and then attach to the elbow one of the problems we run into when you make a fist. OK, if you if you hold your hand up in front of you so that your thumb is kind of facing you and you make a fist, OK, you're going to look at the upper fingertips. They're all curling down. [00:27:00] But as they curl down, you'll notice the knuckles, you know, sort of at the base of your finger where the hand comes up and then the base of the finger. If you look at the back of that, hand back your hand, which way is the back of your hand moving? It's actually moving backwards away from that curl. Well, that's an orchestration between the flexors and the extensors of the wrist. The flexors are curling your hand down, but the extensors at the same time are pulling your wrist back because it makes it a more efficient grip. And that's why your hand tends to drop back in. Those muscles, the flexors attached to the inside of your elbow, kind of the part of your forearm that doesn't have much hair sort of that. And you get a little bump on the inside of your elbow. The extensors go up, that sort of the hairy side of your forearm and attach on the outside of your elbow called the if people have injured that before, it's called tennis elbow. And the reason for that is it tends [00:28:00] to be an injury that tennis players got. And when they would hit backhand, the ball would hit the racket and do a quick jerk and they'd get sort of a torque on that tendon. Making a fist, that balance between those muscles is so important. And, you know, we will do if you took the hand and you had someone just grip and we can do this with a grip dinamometer where you can measure the grip strength. And say you could generate 100 pounds of force with that. And you did it in neutral, which means that hand is balanced and right there in front of you. But then if we put the hand in an awkward position, kind of reach out, you might have to flex the wrist a bit. People will lose when we have them do that same amount of effort and force. They'll lose anywhere between 20 and 40 percent of their ability to generate grip strength. So think about that in the world of work in that if I have to work in an awkward position with my wrist in hand, I think of a company that I was working with that were putting trailer lights on. They [00:29:00] had to hold the light, what they were holding the light with the left hand and then there reaching up around and back to put the knot on. So that hand was on a very awkward position for an extended period of time, very inefficient, lost most of their ability to generate force. So it took more energy to do that all day long. Fatigue came quicker. What do you think the quality of the work was by the end of the day?
Peter Koch: [00:29:25] Oh, I'm sure a lot more mistakes could happen there, too, right?
Al Brown: [00:29:27] Oh, dropping the nut, you know, not, you know, not fully tightening the nut. Even you start to lose your ability to palpate and feel and touch and your sensory your muscle strength goes. So now here is a worker hurting themselves, the product going out of the door, out the door. You know, you're driving down the road is the consumer. But yourself a nice new trailer and you're looking at the trailer lights banging along the road because they fell off, you know, and again and you bring the trailer back and go this trailer's horrible, I'm going to give it a one star. And so, again, [00:30:00] looking at design, how are workers working? How are their hands neutral? Understand that neutral position, set that workforce up so that they're more in a balanced position, better quality work, happier worker, happier customer.
Peter Koch: [00:30:13] Yeah, and you can't change you can't change anatomy. So you've got to change something else about the work. So either the tool that they're using or the ergonomics of it. We talked a little bit about how to set that, you know, an ergonomic workstation up to be more in neutral. And that's the key. You've talked about that before. You said it's been a theme throughout many of the podcasts. And it is because any time you interact with something you want to look at, if I can start the job in neutral, how far out of neutral do I go to complete the job and how often am I there and how long am I there so neutral posture is a fairly important thing to remember, regardless of what the task is, and especially for something that you're doing with your hands, arms or shoulders for sure.
Al Brown: [00:30:55] Pete I mean, think of tooling, you know, we were talking about pencils and computers [00:31:00] and you threw in typewriters. I forgot about those. I sort of skipped that era. But think about the morphing or the or the number of iterations. Of the screwdriver.
Peter Koch: [00:31:14] Right, right,
Al Brown: [00:31:15] You know, think about what a screwdriver looks like nowadays, it's you know, it's a pistol grip, you know, if that's what we're using and it's power driven. And, you know, think about, I remember having to put together a friend of mine said, hey, I got this shed and it was one of those aluminum sheds. And they said, I got it for free. And they handed me a bag of screws. I mean, we're talking a giant bag of screws like we're talking a small kitchen trash bag full of screws and said, could you put that together? And I had, there was no such thing as a power screwdriver. And, you know, two days later, I couldn't even, like, wash my hair after it was all over. I just couldn't move my hands [00:32:00] because of the number of rotations to put that together. But had I had a power screwdriver, life would have been glorious
Peter Koch: [00:32:08] Sure faster, quicker, less repetitions. But I think that that breeds even a better question because take the power screwdriver out of it. Take the screw gun out of it for a moment. You can buy a screwdriver in many different sizes and configurations, not just the, you know, a Philips versus a star versus a flat bit, but the handle can be configured very different. Some are bulbous, some are long. Some are short. Some are textured. Some are smooth. And really, if you're thinking about it, there's multiple reasons for some of the different configurations. But when we talk about ergonomics, if I can't have the power screwdriver with the pistol grip and I have to use a manual driver to do that, because sometimes you have to what's the best way? Like what's the best type of grip for that hand tool [00:33:00] that you aren't going to be able to pistol grip it with?
Al Brown: [00:33:04] We were just looking at some ergo film the other day, some film a company had sent to us in what's called our E Ergo process. It's where a company can submit video footage of a job and have us analyze it. They were manufacturing small products and in that particular case, and it's on a workbench and they're sitting and if they had a pistol screw gun, the problem is they actually have to, we call it deviate the wrist, which would be instead of flexing and extending. So instead of flexing your hand forward and extending it backwards, they actually have to deviate, which would be sort of tipping your hand toward your little finger side. And there's two deviations. There's ulnar and radial deviation where you can tip your hand towards your thumb side. But in this particular case, they'd have to go towards our little finger side with a pistol grip to actually do the work. In that particular case, a shaft electric screwdriver where they could literally [00:34:00] grab and come straight down with a power grip was much better for them. And with this particular tool, some of them are air driven, even we have them on a tool balancer. So when they release this thing, instead of laying it back down on the workbench, it actually hovers back up over the workbench so they can just reach up, pull down and do the screws. So in that particular case, a pistol grip would not have been effective, would have created probably more problems in some cases when there's really fine motor like small screws, even just a standard Old-World screwdriver works a whole bunch better. So, you know, you really have to look at the specific job and the tasks to determine what's the best tool. You know, you don't go out just by a bunch of pistol grip tool, you know, screwdriver to go there all fixed. You may be creating some of the problems along the way. So, again, go back to how do I keep that person's hand in good, neutral, working posture balanced? [00:35:00] You know, I wanted balance when I see really awkward extremes of the wrist. I know there's potential problems ahead.
Peter Koch: [00:35:07] Right, so that deviation on their side radial side or flexed forward or flexed backwards are things to consider with the position of the work that you're doing and then thinking about where neutral is and then determining what type of tool is going to keep you in that neutral position. Best give you the best grip. That's good advice.
Peter Koch: [00:35:31] Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about our E Ergo resource that can be used to help solve ergonomic challenges at your workplace, sometimes contacting, contracting with and scheduling an ergonomist or occupational health nurse for an onsite evaluation doesn't really fit with our Just-In-Time workflow. In a competitive economy fixing the problem right now is essential. And improving worker comfort and efficiency are key components to ongoing success. So [00:36:00] free to our policyholders. MEMIC's E Ergo tool can help you overcome ergonomic challenges. With just five quick photos or a short 30 second video and a brief description of what's being shown, you can send us the critical demands and essential functions within the work tasks once received are ergonomics team can identify risks and exposures and provide reasonable suggestions for ergonomic improvement within just a few short days. Start that E Ergo process now by logging into the MEMIC safety director at www.MEMIC.com/Workplace Safety. Now let's get back to today's episode.
Al Brown: [00:36:42] One thing I didn't mention is when you look at if you were looking at a tool like a hammer or very much like a tennis racket or something like that, people want to get the right size grip, too, because of the tool is too small. I see this in dental offices, too. Like if you look at the pics and the different fine motor things that they're doing on your teeth, [00:37:00] you may notice that some of your dentist, your hygienists have like fat handled tools now. Well, they discovered that those really small stainless steel, tiny tools, they were actually over gripping because it was too small. So they had to work harder. You can also go in the other direction if it's too fat over gripping. So if you're going to go out and buy a tennis racket or a racquetball racket or a nice hammer, it's always good to go down. There's like a couple of creases in your hand, but the one that kind of goes right across the middle of your hand, if you measure from that crease up to the tip of your middle finger, that's a good sort of rough way to measure what the circumference should be of that thing that you purchase. It's you know, it's a good way to kind of determine what's a good efficient grip for you.
Peter Koch: [00:37:47] Would a tool that measured, similar to this, the distance between that crease in your hand or the tip of your you said middle finger, index finger,
Al Brown: [00:37:57] Middle finger, middle finger
Peter Koch: [00:37:58] For that. So [00:38:00] if the circumference measure is pretty close to that, well, that feel pretty comfortable in your hand, like, is it does it pass sort of the straight face test of it feels good or will it feel fairly awkward in your hand if you're not if you're not used to it?
Al Brown: [00:38:14] It should for the most part, you know, call it rule of thumb.
Peter Koch: [00:38:18] I applaud you Al for bringing that in.
Al Brown: [00:38:22] That it will you know, and this is we're talking about a power grip, too. We're not talking about a dental tool that should be that creates. But we're talking more of a power type tool, a racket, something like that. Yes. Most likely that'll feel pretty comfortable because that's probably one of the more efficient grips that will keep the muscles that are holding it. Remember those muscles on the back side of your forearm, on the front side of the forearm, make that power grip, you know, coupled with the thumb. You know, the one thing we didn't talk about is that thumb opposes, which makes us very different from a simian hands. I mean, the hand of the ones that you see in the monkey, but the [00:39:00] human hand can oppose the thumb. There's nine muscles that run that thing. So that's what helps us determine that most efficient grip.
Peter Koch: [00:39:08] Is that one of the reasons we see, like if you think about landscaping or yard work, you're seeing a trend over the last I don't know how many years now you've seen it where you've gone from a very small wooden handle on your rake and your shovel to maybe a thicker fiberglass handle or a cushion, the thicker cushioned handle on that rake or the shovel or whatever hand tool that you're going to be using to give you a larger grip. Because I do remember like doing work when I was growing up or for my parents or my grandparents where, you know, you had the really thin broom handled rake to rake the yard with. And now if you grab one of those, I can tell you my forearms, my elbows, my wrists start to fatigue a lot more quickly. And, you know, old tendinitis kind of comes back, it feels like. But some of the larger grips, they feel a little bit more comfortable. So [00:40:00] is that the reason why they're doing that for those tools as well?
Al Brown: [00:40:04] Yeah, that's a perfect example, Pete. I mean, that's a that's a prime example of how there's been a transformation of tools. And part of that, too, is if you remember the old rakes and old shovels and things, a lot of them, they were wooden handles and sometimes they were then varnish. So they became very smooth. So it's even that texture to that. You now look at modern day tools. If you go down to the hardware store, there are a little bit more rubberized. There's a little bit higher friction surface maybe at the end in the middle, the rakes, because that ability to grip on you don't need as much force if there's a better texture between your hand. Same thing with gloves. You're seeing gloves. Now, remember the old leather gloves, the old sort of cowhide leather glove with the big gauntlet cuff on it. And, you know, people just hand them out and, you know, you just really couldn't grip very well with them. And in fact, ill-fitting [00:41:00] gloves can really reduce your ability to grip. You can lose 20 to 30 percent of your grip strength simply because the glove is ill-fitting. I remember working at a large industry here in Maine and all they handed out were those gloves in large. And they have hands of every size there. So the person that fit them well, you know, fit their hand well would probably do well again, fitting the work to the worker. But then you give someone that, you know, might be a small person or very large person, probably more small where the hand goes in there and he got all this extra material and then folks. Well, you can't how come you can't grip on to that? And it's not because they have any less skill or ability. It's just they're trying to overcome all this extra material. So, you know, it's amazing how tools and gloves and things like that have really changed. And it's important to look at the right tool, the right glove, the right, you know, the texture [00:42:00] when you're when you're looking at ergonomics.
Peter Koch: [00:42:02] So it enhances the grip. It provides better dexterity to give you the ability to use the hand and the arm in the way it was designed in the most powerful way so that you can do the work. Otherwise it gets in the way. I know I've been I've had that same thing where the only glove I have is one that doesn't fit well and all of a sudden it's I just can't do that. So what do you do? You take your glove off and then you go do the work and it might be better for you from a dexterity standpoint. It might be better for you from an economic standpoint, but it exposes you to all the other hazards which really haven't got into yet. And I think it's a good time to jump in to that particular exposure because we you know, we started this conversation with the chef coming into the E.R. with the bloody rag and cut his finger and having to go see the orthopedic surgeon. But there's a lot more ways that you can hurt your hands and probably for lack of a better term, more popular ways to hurt your hands [00:43:00] than a repetitive motion injury. So talk a little bit about that. What are the other ways beyond a poor ergonomics or a poor workstation set up where you can find hand and finger injuries?
Al Brown: [00:43:12] Sure, sure. I mean, if you look at some of the common causes, it's, you know, fatigue, distraction and attentiveness. I'm guessing the chef someone yelled to him, "hey, hey", he turned and was still chopping as he was still doing that unconscious behavior. And just that inattentiveness changed things. And, you know, there goes the finger. So he has a new restaurant called Nine Fingers. It's a great place that no. So probably serves finger sandwiches. But there you go. One of the one of the things I always try to encourage, particularly in the manufacturing or the construction industry, is very simple thing. Jewelry and one in particular rings are really they contribute big time [00:44:00] to hand injuries that simply I encourage employees or employers to just say take your ring off and just put it on a chain on your neck, if you want to make sure that it's still with you and all that kind of good thing, or they have these breakaway rings now that now exists, which I'm actually seeing more and more in the industry because a simple ring Pete, to give you an example, coming down a ladder, if you're walking, you coming down a ladder and your hand over your feet and you're in good contact if you're lowering your body in that left hand with that ring, gets hooked on the ladder rung and you lower yourself, you don't react quick enough to go back up to protect your finger. And oftentimes we've seen fingers that are literally amputated or degloved where the skin is kind of pulled up and off. So just taking that ring off, having a glove on would have probably helped a bit. But still, the other [00:45:00] exposure that has to is in the automotive industry and ring on it. And you are working with something that's electric, like the battery, and you happen to ground out with that hand. That ring will conduct the electricity and cook the base your finger pretty quickly. So again. So those are two just jewelry. You know, as I say, if you want to keep your finger, don't put a ring on it.
Peter Koch: [00:45:26] Oh, Beyonce.
Al Brown: [00:45:28] Oh, sorry Beyonce. But that is true, you know, so we really tried. I worked with the lumber company and really, you know, I actually put together a sort of a fact sheet on that the degloving and that kind of thing to convince workers that you really, it was funny because I had one worker got stood up there and there was his ring finger gone and he goes, oh, yeah, that happened to me. I said, so there you go.
Peter Koch: [00:45:53] Don't lose that story. Right. Gosh.
Al Brown: [00:45:56] So and then, you know, other things like an industry. And it's funny because I'm [00:46:00] an ergonomist. So I walk in the industry and I look at more kind of physiology things that can happen to tendinitis is the muscle strains. But in manufacturing, you know, there's a lot of I learned the term at MEMIC pinch points where there are open wheels and belts where a finger can fit in and that, you know, you can create a amputation, you can create a crush injury, you know, so guarding and things like that or something, just like your friend took the guard off the saw and decided, you know, something went. And again, it's usually a tool that sort of changes its behavior, maybe either misuse or inappropriate use of the tool or, you know, he didn't have the guard on. Quickly it occurs. You know, you're thinking that wasn't good.
Peter Koch: [00:46:50] No. And it just it really just takes an instant. I was reflecting, as you were talking about the ladder in the ring. And I imagine just about anyone [00:47:00] who's climbed a ladder. Often has had that experience where they're coming down and their ring catches for just a moment and it might not be enough to injure, but it's enough to remind you that, oh, that was close. And I got away with it. But, gosh, maybe the next time I'm not going to get away with it, maybe the next time I'm going to get caught and I'm going to actually start to load my entire body weight on that. And I'm going to what's going to happen. And there's plenty of evidence in the world to show that that's not a good thing. And again, like amputations, machinery, amputations, where someone either an improperly guarded tool or the employee purposely defeats the guard or the guard is not functional. And they get their body part, their finger, typically the tip of one of their fingers is going to get too close to those rotating parts. And there it's gone. And even, you know, we don't we take for granted a lot the weight of things that we work around. [00:48:00]Again, it's funny, there's always a story for something. But again, I worked with a guy. They were loading jersey barriers onto a back of a truck after they had finished a construction project. And as he was loading the second to last one, he was guiding it with his hand. Right. So had it on the inside of that. And it didn't touch really hard against the Jersey barrier. That was that it was sitting down against what had touched enough. So it crushed the tip of his middle finger inside his glove. But, you know, pretty much lost the tip of his finger from his nail bed up to the top because it was crushed with the weight of it. And it just took an instant. And he talked to him later on. He said, oh, I knew how heavy it was, but I only think about the quote unquote, impact of what would happen if it just tapped against another immovable object. So just we take things for granted. A lot of things for granted.
Al Brown: [00:48:53] Yeah. Speaking of granite, in the world of stone masonry and building stone [00:49:00] walls and landscaping, that same incident occurs when someone is moving a large rock and placing it on another. And it's actually referred to as the granite kiss. And that's where two rocks and your finger become. And so that's something you can't take for granted when you're placing rocks.
Peter Koch: [00:49:23] You sure can. And I would imagine you start to look at that type of industry and this goes to landscaping or even carpentry or any time you're going to be working with your hands in an environment where there's a lot of abrasive materials, just a glove. And again, the right fitting glove is going to go a long way to prevent many of those minor injuries. And in a minor injury like a cut or laceration, even someone's using a box knife to cut sheetrock or they're cutting up cardboard to put in the recycling piece. A fairly [00:50:00] minor injury is going to take that person out of the work for a little while to go get treated. And they might not even go to the doctor, but they got to go get a bandage and clean it out properly, because if they don't, chances are it's going to get infected and then it's going to be worse later on, where a simple 5, 10, 15 dollar pair of gloves, depending on how dexterous you really need your hands, would have fixed that or prevented the injury. The event would have still happened, like the slip with the knife or the granite kiss would have still happened. But the glove would have reduced the severity of that event. That's something we don't always think about. But it's a recommendation that happens almost all the time when we go down onto a job site where they're doing something manual with their hands and they're not using gloves, why not use gloves?
Al Brown: [00:50:47] Yeah, just think like passing lumber. You know, I worked at a lumber mill or just slide boards off what they call the green chain and sliding, you know, and if barehanded, how [00:51:00] many times have you slid a board through your hands and just taken a sliver somewhere? And just that tiny piece of wood is painful and we're not even talking about something that might be, you know PT, which has got the chemicals in it, which now you would you know, you've introduced a sliver with chemicals into your hand. So just a glove allows you to let that slip through and avoid or at least mitigate that risk a lot just by having that extra protection.
Peter Koch: [00:51:29] Sure.
Al Brown: [00:51:30] So, you know, I never sort of do anything without my gloves on. You know, as I've gotten older and I'm less physical, my hands are less resistant. I don't have the buildup. So even more important. And that's when you look at some of the data from OSHA, NIOSH, it's a lot of times it's the new employees, the sort of the new workforce less experienced that, you know, these things occur. So even more to protect and guard them. Folks [00:52:00] in the middle tend to be a little bit more seasons have been around, they kind of get the value of that, and then the next exposed group is more the older worker, 55 and older experienced understand. But their recovery time takes a lot longer. So you really do want to make sure they're protected doing what they're doing.
Peter Koch: [00:52:19] Recovery's a lot longer, and I think reaction time is a lot slower as well. So you just think about what a glove would do, even that simple passing lumber from point A to point B or even if you're a finished carpenter and you're moving sheet goods from point A to point B and it slips a little bit in your hand, your reaction time isn't good enough to keep it from moving enough to maybe drive a splinter in your finger so the glove would help. It would help prevent that potential for injury there. And there's so many different types of gloves to.
Al Brown: [00:52:54] Yeah, and Pete think of this, we're talking manual material handling, you know, grip protection. [00:53:00] But think about your world of ski resorts. Sure. You know, and thermal protection, you know, and that you got to have, you know, if you're protecting the hands. Because I tried to find the naval study that I wanted to look mid-shipment. They actually looked at mid-shipment and they said they wanted to see how temperature affected the hand dexterity. So they said, I want you to tie a knot. It was very simple knot I don't know what the knot is, but they said just tie as many of these you can in a minute. And they had their hands at 70 degrees. You know, it was just room temperature, 70 degrees. And that was the ambient temperature. And they could tie I think it was 42 knots in a minute. I mean, it was a symbol, bup bup bup bup bup bup. So they could go pretty quickly. Then they lowered the ambient temperature down to like fifty degrees and just really reduced. You know their hands were cold. And you know what happens when your hands get cold. They went down to six knots a minute. They couldn't they didn't have the dexterity to [00:54:00] complete that task. So when you look at oil delivery folks, when you look at the ski industry, when you look at anybody who's out in a cold environment, that might have to do fine motor activity know that, look at power workers up in bucket trucks up trying to do nuts and bolts during this, you know, winter storm, you know, and then they've got on double gloves for insulation. You know, their ability to generate force and be dexterous drops off considerably. So you have to keep that in mind when you're looking at the worker and what it is they're doing and how is that going to impact them?
Peter Koch: [00:54:40] I can tell you from personal experience, both myself having to tie knots in cold weather as a ski patroller and then as the patrol director going back in and, you know, looking at those really bone chillingly cold days where as a patroller, you're out doing something and then you're having to repair a fence or do something that requires [00:55:00] you to be dexterous with your fingers and your hands. And you look at the result and many times the knot won't be the same knot. It'll be something that's much easier to tie rather than trying to tie a more complex knot that would be the correct, not for that particular situation. Easier to untie later on when we have to, but it was the only knot that they could tie because their fingers just weren't functioning well enough. And that doesn't even need to be a hypothermic issue where you've got some brain function challenge. It's truly the dexterity of your fingers and the gelling of everything, just not making it work the way you want it to. And that goes it doesn't need to be an outside person. Many times in the wintertime, you might have a mechanic working in a shop, right. That the door's open and closed, open and close, open and close. And it might be warm in the office or the parts room, but you get out onto the floor where the guy is doing work and it's pretty chilly out there. And it might be in the, you know, low 60s, which could be comfortable for you. [00:56:00] But when you're there all day on a concrete floor, your hands could get pretty chilly and work production is going to go down and the potential for mistakes and injuries go up from there for sure.
Al Brown: [00:56:10] Well, that's you know, what happens in a situation like that is core temperature drops off your body, core temperature drops off. And what it will do is it'll pull the blood in from your extremities to kind of it's a survival mode and your core will try to stay warm. So what happens is your ability to do fine motor activity drops off exponentially. So I dealt with this once in the manufacturing environment where they had a cold mist blowing on, you know, to help them with the work. I'm not sure what the reason for the cold mist, but it really impacted. And they were putting together plugs, electric plugs. They just couldn't understand. And I said, you know, with the cold mist, it's very difficult. You'll change the temperature, the core temperature of the hand and their ability to manipulate goes down tremendously. [00:57:00] And that the example there's a sort of local example of how can we improve that and then the general example of you of opening the door to the whole bay and you're chilling the person, reduces their ability to produce fine motor activity. So you've got to keep those things in mind when you're when you're thinking about was my production down?
Peter Koch: [00:57:23] Yeah. There's so many different things that could go into that. That's a whole body challenge. Right. When we started thinking about core temperature drop and one of the first effects you're going to see are going to be your fingers getting chillier because blood is trying to come back into the core something. But, you know, knowing that there's different ways to prevent it, you could prevent it locally with gloves. But that's not going to change the overall core temperature of the person you might need to look at different opportunities to do it. Yeah, so lots of different ways to lots of different reasons that people might put their hands in the wrong spot. It could be because the dexterity [00:58:00] isn't there. It could be because they're moving a lot of physical things around, whether it be stone, rock or other product. And whenever you're doing it with your hands, you're putting your hands at risk. And they are. They are I mean, they are the things that really get us to interact with our world. You think about what you can't do if you don't have use of your hands like we started at the beginning of the podcast. It's phenomenal how many times you interact with the world, with your hands and even if you lose another sense. So you talk about someone who might have vision issues or hearing issues like that tactile sense that you have with your hand to be able to identify something in front of you or around you by touching it is just makes your world that much bigger. And without that, because of an injury, whether it be repetitive injury or because of a traumatic injury, you lose a whole part of your world. We talk about it like when we do when [00:59:00] I do hearing conservation training, we talk about your hearing and how it really broadens your world and that inability once you start to lose your hearing, to have great conversations with people or talk to them in a loud environment or when it gets really bad hear, the beauty of the world around you. And when you start to get hand injuries, those same things you're going to miss out on, it might not be something you hear, but to be able to shake someone's hand or to be able to pet your dog or something that you really enjoy, you're not going to be able to do that if you don't take care of your hands. And it's just a big part of it. We just take them for granted. Truly take them for granted.
Al Brown: [00:59:39] You know, a thought Pete just think about us as aging to, you know, we're an aging population, so, you know, we didn't touch on the thing about arthritis and those kinds of changes that occur on the hand or comorbidities. But as we age, what do we tend to do? But, you know, what's the leading cause of injury in the work environment that's slips, trips and falls? And what's the thing that we stick out [01:00:00] to kind of, you know, cushion that fall is usually the hand. And even in the ski world, you know, you're talking about skiing before. And when you fall down, you tend to put that hand out. And what's the thing that usually takes the hit is that, you know, there was a fracture or usually it's a broken wrist. And the function, all that, that had been taken for granted before, as you just mentioned, really comes you know, you realize, oh, my goodness, I really lost the function of my hand. And as a physical therapist, it takes months of rehab to regain just the majority of that range of motion and strength. But you'll never come back 100 percent. So, you know, it's one of those things to think about again as an employer or just around your everyday life. Think about, you know, yeah, I want to get the right tool and all this, but look at slip trip and fall hazards all around. You know, that that could lead to a broken wrist.
Peter Koch: [01:00:59] Sure. You [01:01:00] could do everything that you can to get, like you said, the right tool. I've set everything up ergonomically, but the box that I didn't pick up behind my workstation that I just tripped over and now I've done the same thing to my hand that I that I might have done if I didn't get the right tools. So it's a big picture of peace preventing injuries. No matter what it is. It's truly a big picture view that you've got to take, because even if you take care of one particular hazard, if you haven't identified and manage the others, you can still put yourself at significant risk there. So what else, did we miss anything about hand injuries, whether it be a traumatic injury from a hand to wrist, or an injury from awkward postures or prolonged postures? Is there something else that we want to touch on here before we kind of get towards the end of our podcast?
Al Brown: [01:01:45] Right. Yeah, I guess just the final thing, because I think we've handled this really well. I think we've covered most topics and, you know, think of contact stresses in the hand. You know, we [01:02:00] never talked about, you know, there's different things. De Quervain's tenosynovitis pain on the back side of the thumb, you know, that's created by we'll see with scissors, manual scissors, where you're constantly opening the scissors back up to create the cut, that lifting the thumb is not really made well to pull open, you know, abductor's pull the thumb back to open the scissors up and they make scissors now that have a spring-loaded that will self open. So you have to do is grip and close to your power grip. So that's where your most efficient ganglion cysts, where you get some pressure on a tendon or a trigger finger. To a certain extent, you know, you have sleeves those remember those long tendons. I talked about the go to the tip of your finger. They actually pass under sleeves, so they stay. So these tendons don't bow out away from your finger. It looks like your skin's blown away. These little sheets hold the tendon close to the finger. Well, if you inflame one of those tendons and now it's bigger and it's on one side of these this little loop, [01:03:00] and then when you close your finger, you kind of force it through, it'll click and then you notice that your finger is stuck down and you have to kind of grab it and pull it back up to move that thick intended. It's a lot of times you're getting a contact stressor or one of the tools in your hand by putting a lot of pressure on that tendon, which creates the enlarged, you know, the large tendons. So now it's bulbous and can't go through that sheet. So again, you look at padding proper grip size, shifting hands to kind of avoid some of those things, you know, cortisone injections, dental surgery, you know, those kinds of things you want to avoid if you can. But again, that's proper tooling. You know, looking at contact stressors, neutral posture, you know, efficiency of what you're doing reduces those risks.
Peter Koch: [01:03:48] I think you put your finger right on that last piece. Absolutely. No I think that's awesome. And I think a great thing to leave [01:04:00] us with is, you know, you don't want to get to the point where surgery is necessary. Like they talk about oh well I'm going to have carpal tunnel surgery I'm going to be fine. Well, you might have carpal tunnel surgery, but the rest of that sentence is false. You're not going to be fine, because if you haven't changed, what put you in that condition in the first place, you're going to go right back to it before. So, you know, looking at all those parts of the workplace that so what is neutral for me. Right. So when I work at this place, what is neutral? How do I keep how do I hold my body? And then how does the job put me outside of neutral? How much do I have to lift? How often do I have. To do that and then work backwards towards how do I reduce the stress on my body and there's multiple ways to do that, we talked about using gloves, utilizing the correct tool, supporting those tools properly in a way where I don't have to hold onto them all the time. I don't have to pick them up all the time. But there's other ways to manage that, too. If [01:05:00] the workplace can't be adjusted, maybe that's work rotation. So I'm not going to do the same job over and over and over and over and over and over and over again throughout the entire day. I can change the amount of times that I go through the cycle in the day and increase the amount of rest so that I can move more oxygenated blood and pulse, some of those byproducts of work away from the muscles and the tendons and I can stay more healthy.
Al Brown: [01:05:27] You know, you're talking about root cause to a certain extent, your sort of covering root cause or if you go back and try to figure out the root cause, that's probably the most important. You know, some of the most success we've had is to, you know, as a physical therapist, I can start treating a wrist, you know, with whatever my tools are. But if I never go back and address the root cause, I'll never change the problem, because once the person feels better, they're going to go back doing the job that probably created it. I think of a welder that I was dealing with once back many years ago, and they had to weld [01:06:00] around a corner and it was very hard for them to see. And actually our senior vice president in lost control. I worked with him in a different work environment, and he was able to create an offset welding device so the person didn't have to do that. And then we actually went back to a different department and they could weld this thing before. So the worker no longer had to put their hand in that awkward position. So there's an example of addressing the root cause. I also deal with office workers sometimes that we can look at all the ergonomics, correct them, and they're still having problems with tingling in their fingers. And I will always ask the question, when you go to bed at night, you know, where are your hands and do you curl them up and they'll go, Yeah, I do. And I go, you can't do that. Because when you when you make a fist and you curl it up like it's a fetal position, you actually are compressing the median nerve and you won't necessarily feel it until you move your hands. And then you go, oh, my hands are asleep. So, you know, there's an unconscious behavior that's not [01:07:00] even part of the work environment, but still contributing to the problem and ongoing cause. So until you address those root causes, the hand symptoms don't go away.
Peter Koch: [01:07:09] So let's talk about resources here. And you had mentioned it early on, but that we have a tool called E Ergo that employers can access. And so why don't you talk a little bit about how E Ergo works and how employers can use that tool to help search for a root cause and maybe look for solutions?
Al Brown: [01:07:27] Mm hmm. Sure. Pete E Ergo is a is a virtual tool. It is. It can be used in a variety of ways as our consultants get back out on the road post covid and on sites. They can either the employer or our consultant can take some video of a job where they see some awkward wrist hand postures or might be a go back to your loss runs where you know, where your losses are and go play with a lot of hand injuries in this area and you gather some photo or [01:08:00] video of that. Typically, video works the best of a job cycle and you try to get three or four job cycles so we can see what the unconscious behavior is. It's funny when you first have a camera and you set up, people are very understanding and neutral and you give them time five to ten minutes, then eventually that camera kind of disappears and they go back to their normal work behavior. But we get to see that and we can analyze it. You can send that in to us. We can analyze it and get you back some insight as to what might be causing some of the problems. And we look at it from a physiological standpoint, you know, human behavior standpoint, tooling and offer up suggestions or recommendations that have worked maybe in other locations, in other industries and kind of share those with you. And that's in the manufacturing environment. It's typically video in the office environment. It's more static. It can be photos. As a matter of fact, it's been a very valuable tool during this work from home time where [01:09:00] we can't go into a person's home to analyze the ergonomics. But we get folks that can take these five photos on us and then we can even have a virtual meeting like this. And, you know, we can look at their workstation in sort of a virtual way and make and oftentimes solve the problem. So this E Ergo tool has been great. If you if you have a safety consultant with us and you can certainly ask them about it, they can guide you through it. But it's a great way for us to try to help you solve some of your ergonomic issues.
Peter Koch: [01:09:38] Yeah, it has been a good tool. I know some of my policyholder's that I work with have used it before and they've used it in two ways. One, they've used it from a post pain standpoint, like an injury has occurred or someone is expressing discomfort and they're taking pictures or video. And then in other cases we're doing it from [01:10:00] a like a almost a new process set up, like we're setting up a new process. Here's the area. Here's where things are. We're going to do a move. So let's talk about what's not so good and good in these in these areas. So they'll send some of those photos that I know in the past years, your team has provided some recommendations that have been excellent in injury prevention on the forefront, not so much the not on the back end like the injury has prevented injury from. Happening in the first place, so it's another way, I think, to think about that E Ergo tool, not just from a post injury prevention, but a from a pre work injury prevention standpoint.
Al Brown: [01:10:37] We just we just did that. We actually looked at some video where a company is in Maine and they're going to be locating to another state, you know, keeping the company in Maine, but expanding to another state. And they said we want to not repeat the mistakes we may have made here or we'd like to improve operations, probably to improve upon the ergonomics. What do you see that we might incorporate in this location? And we went [01:11:00] through that process with them. So, yeah, that was that was a nice use of the tool because, again, it's trying to, you know, fit the work to the worker, eliminate those risks and exposures on the front side.
Peter Koch: [01:11:14] Yeah, that's great. Good. awesome. So anything else that we need to cover as we talk about hands and wrist injuries? I think we have we've grasped most of it today, I believe.
Al Brown: [01:11:26] And there it is again.
Peter Koch: [01:11:29] Had to.
Al Brown: [01:11:30] You put you put your finger on it buddy.
Peter Koch: [01:11:32] Right on. Well Al, I really appreciate you being here today and talking to us about hand and wrist injuries. So thanks for really sharing your expertise with us. Again, I appreciate that very much.
Al Brown: [01:11:42] Thanks. It's always a pleasure.
Peter Koch: [01:11:45] So thanks again for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there, thank you very much for joining us today. Today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, we've been speaking about ergonomics and hand and wrist injuries with Al Brown PT and director of ergonomics at [01:12:00] MEMIC. If you have any questions or I'd like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast, email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes that MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find additional resources, links to other podcasts with Al, as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a few minutes to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whatever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thanks, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member that you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
Workers today face many physical challenges, from a demanding pace to heavy loads and static postures. While the demands may not be at the same level as a professional athlete, a certain level of fitness and preparation is necessary for any worker to stay healthy or recover if an injury does occur.
Athletes at all levels benefit from functional movement training and proactive prevention that comes from the athletic training model. If work can be thought of as an athletic process and the worker as an industrial athlete, then workplace safety can benefit as well.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Al Brown, MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics and Clayton Cartwright, Safety Management Consultant about the Industrial Athlete and how the athletic training model can be used to maintain and improve worker health and safety.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. So in the world of workers, there has been a long history of people doing physical jobs, non-physical jobs and also injuries over time, we've seen people get` injured doing really anything. It could be sitting at a desk. It could be doing a lot of manual material handling. It could be working in a foundry. It can be working in a construction space. It could be working in the retail area or hospitality or health care. So injuries happen across the board. And also, as we're starting to look at our workers, they're doing a lot of physical things, but they're sometimes those physical things aren't so obvious. So when we look at physical things, we might look at our athletic areas and our sports teams, whether it be a high school sports team, a college sports team or a professional sports team. And we see injuries there as well. We almost [00:01:00] expect an injury once in a while from those athletes because of the work, quote unquote, that they're doing. But we want to connect those two things together, because if we can see our workers as an athlete, we may actually be able to help them manage not only the load that they have to deal with on a regular basis, but also if they do get injured, to look at them as an athlete and treat them as we might treat an athlete as well. Well, on the line with me today is Al Brown P.T and MEMIC’s director of ergonomics and Clayton Cartwright P.T and safety management consultant here with MEMIC Al and Clayton. Great to have you on the podcast today.
Al Brown: [00:01:39] It's great to be here, Pete, thanks.
Clayton Cartwright: [00:01:41] Thanks, Pete. Thanks for having me.
Peter Koch: [00:01:42] Fantastic. So it's great to have you both on today. And before we get started, let's get to know you a little bit better and tell our listeners a little bit about yourselves. So Al, you've been on the podcast before and let's start with you. Tell me about how you came to be interested in the worker as an industrial athlete.
Al Brown: [00:01:58] Thanks, Pete. Yeah, actually, [00:02:00] I started my life out as an athletic trainer. I was a graduate of Penn State University and got to interact with a lot of their athletes, the football team and the soccer team, and then went on to be an athletic trainer, junior out of college in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. And then from there was actually where I got to work with a professional team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, down in Vero Beach, and then from there on to physical therapy school and became a physical therapist and from that foundation of an athletic trainer and then becoming a physical therapist and working in the orthopedic world, working in worker's comp, began to make sense to me how I used to deal with the athletes in those settings and how I was dealing with injured workers in these new settings. So it made sense to me. It all kind of came together and it has been part of my philosophy since my beginnings [00:03:00] in this world.
Peter Koch: [00:03:01] I didn't realize that you had done some work as an athletic trainer with sports teams before. I've known most of your history, but that's a nugget that I really didn't know before today. So thanks for sharing that.
Al Brown: [00:03:14] I'm older than you think, Pete. You know, I'm older than dirt, so I've been doing a lot of things, but I only disclose dribbles of it every so often, you know,
Peter Koch: [00:03:24] Teases out with it. That's OK.
Al Brown: [00:03:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Peter Koch: [00:03:28] All right, Clayton. So this is your first time on the podcast, and you're somewhat new to MEMIC as well, but you've had a ton of experience working with athletes before you came to MEMIC. So tell us about your experience and how you came to see the worker as an industrial athlete.
Clayton Cartwright: [00:03:43] Sure. So, you know, very similar to Al is my undergraduate studies were in the athletic training world and I went to the University of Pittsburgh, where, again, we worked with a lot of the sports teams and just so happened that our [00:04:00] university had a contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers. And I was able to, you know, fortunately enough for me, was able to land that position and did a season long internship with them that year. Amazing experience. And, you know, from there, it was kind of the same path. I went to P.T school, took that information that I had gathered as an athletic trainer. And then when I graduated P.T school and got into the orthopedic world, similar to Al, you know, I started making those comparisons to the, you know, worker's comp patients that I was treating, what they were going through, what types of settings they were in, and really comparing that to the athletes that I was seeing or had seen, you know, as an athletic training student. So very similar to Al. And again, it just kind of all made sense and put the puzzle pieces together, so to speak.
Peter Koch: [00:04:54] Yeah, that's cool. And I think it's a really interesting path to take. And obviously, I've never [00:05:00] been an athletic trainer. I'm not a physical therapist. Played sports all my life and that that experience actually, as far as I got to look at injured workers before I came to MEMIC as a risk manager or as a patroller, as I would respond to injured workers at the ski area, it was interesting for me to bring in that experience as an athlete and look at some of those injuries, whether they be coming from the Hill as a ski instructor or maybe a lift mechanic or a lift operator, or I would see them in the office or someplace else in the hospitality. So let's break that open a little bit more about why we want to look at the worker as an industrial athlete. So let's talk a little bit about that. And why is it why is it good to be able to see them as it industrial athletes and make some connections to athletics and some of the work that gets done out [00:06:00] there in the field?
Clayton Cartwright: [00:06:01] Sure. So I think, you know, when we look at them separately, you tend to see a lot of similar movement patterns. You know, they're doing repetitive type motions. You know, the stresses that they put on their body can be very similar in that regard. So, again, it's that comparison between even though we look at it differently, I think it's a good comparison to make when you're looking at them together like that. And one of our conversations we had had where, you know, there's so many different sports, but there's also so many different careers and job paths. And so that's where we really can make a connection as well. You know, sports have their own unique injuries per sport, sort of sports specific, you know, and you kind of look at that as a job site, job specific or site specific injuries. So, you know, there's a lot of similarities between the workforce and that sports athletic [00:07:00] population.
Peter Koch: [00:07:01] That's cool. So can you maybe break it down a little bit more? Like is there an example that we can use maybe a factory worker or someone who is a package handler and maybe another sports analogy that we can make those two connections and see how those moving patterns might be similar, you know, and also how those moving patterns may create an injury as well.
Clayton Cartwright: [00:07:28] Yeah. So, you know, let's take, for example, maybe a swimmer, a swimmer is a lot of overhead movement patterns, you know, and then they have to do kick turns. And depending on how they've been coached, they may kick turn in the same direction the same time, or they maybe have the ability to switch. That's a different conversation. But, you know, then we can maybe take somebody that you wouldn't think would be an athlete, maybe like a mail delivery, you know, person who's driving. You know, they are maybe constantly reaching or turning to the left [00:08:00] to open a mailbox. So they're constantly pulling open a door. And it's just that repeated motion day in, day out for, you know, eight hours a day. So you're just seeing those repeated motions that are in a certain movement pattern. And that's where we get those repetitive stress sort of injuries that we tend to see with repeated motions like that.
Peter Koch: [00:08:22] Yeah, again, really interesting. And I like that analogy of the swimmer, because it is I mean, if you think about if I'm doing a five hundred or if I'm doing a one hundred or whatever that is and I'm doing the backstroke. Kraul Butterfly doesn't matter what it is, the repetitious nature of the shoulder circle that has to happen is just constant. And then the forces placed on that. But it's different, too, because as a professional swimmer or even as a college level swimmer or high school, you're going to have a coach that helps to work you through some of those processes. And they understand the warm up and they understand the stretching and they understand good movement [00:09:00] patterns. And they understand that when you start to do these things, that you could be on the cusp of an injury. So they're going to adjust for you, but the worker in industry doesn't have that. And so I think if we if we start to look at the worker a little more as an athlete. Maybe we can adjust how they will approach their own job and maybe how they or as a supervisor or a manager may be able to make that connection so that we can stem off an injury, whether it be by job change or by a behavior change. So one of those two things. So neat connection there, Clayton, neat connection. And I'm going to throw this out to both of you and maybe, Al, you have something in there as well. Can you, is there any statistics at all that are out there that that talk about companies that have done some studies around the work patterns that have happened and maybe things that they've [00:10:00] done to be successful in changing patterns, much like a coach would change if they're looking at their team or their athletes individually?
Al Brown: [00:10:10] It's interesting. I see three types of injury or three kinds of injuries. You see the trauma and we have trauma in the workforce. You know, the sprained ankle, sprained ankle. In sports, you have the overuse which you guys were talking about, which is a biomechanical repeated activity, which we will see that. And then you have sort of the fatigue kind of injuries, those things that occur, the, you know, the end of the day or at the end of the game or, you know, when someone's really starting to get tuckered out. So there is those parallels that you see. One of the downsides is with the athlete or one of the upsides to the athlete. It's sort of a natural selection process. And as those skill levels in those athletic levels continue to proceed towards professional, they bring [00:11:00] some genetics along with them and they also bring a team of people that keep them healthy. Unfortunately, in the workforce, we don't always have that and we certainly don't have that team that sort of follows them along. And I think industry's beginning to discover the value of that, that we need to look at those.
Al Brown: [00:11:20] And to your question about have industries looked at that, I think there was a study done by UPS and it was in Northern California. You can look it up online. It was around 2005. And they had one of their they have five or 50 districts. And there was one district there that was the worst in terms of injuries, injury rate, frequency, severity. And so they took it upon themselves to focus a sports medicine model in that region, which included stretching, strengthening, awareness, education. And [00:12:00] within two years, they went from being fiftieth in the region, the worst to number one. And it was simply by changing those behaviors and changing the focus of care to more of a sort of athletic training model. It's, you know, let's be right there. Let's look at the root cause. Let's try to figure out the biomechanics of some of the problems and solve those, but then also incorporate the stretching, the strengthening, the balance, the core strength, those kinds of things so that you made a better industrial athlete. Cool study.
Peter Koch: [00:12:38] Yeah, cool. And that's interesting. Just by utilizing that athletic training viewpoint in in how they're making changes or how they're viewing the worker and the tasks that they're doing, you can make a big change. And I think we're going to get into that. I know we're going to get into that a little bit more in the podcast as we start talking about some of the things that they did in and how [00:13:00] they actually implemented that athletic training model. But Clayton, maybe I can have you explore this a little bit more to about what that athletic training model kind of is. And talk a little bit about your experience with the sports teams and how you brought that into your PT career and what that athletic training treatment model might be when you're working with an athlete.
Clayton Cartwright: [00:13:24] Yes, so, you know, just based off of, again, my experiences as a clinician and going through the athletic training to the party, know then eventually into some fitness stuff that I really enjoy doing. You know, I kind of break it into sort of three parts. Right. So that athletic training model is really that observational piece where you're there on the sideline, you're watching games, you're watching practice. And if you see an athlete go down, you've observed that injury. And just through education, you know, you can start to put it together, you [00:14:00] know, of maybe some of the injuries that could have happened for that. You know, I you know, I'm a big football fan. So sitting on the couch watching football, you know, if I see something, I see a play or player go down. I've done it so many times with my wife, I'll say I bet you that's an actor. Next thing you know, ACL tear. So, you know, it's just that observational piece. You kind of learn it through observation and education. And then, you know, going to the PT side is more of that treatment aspect, getting into the treatment side of it. So back to your question. As far as the athletic training approach, it's really being able to identify it early and get that early intervention that is so, so crucial. You know, and there is a lot of research out there to support that early intervention helps with long term outcomes. And again, I think this is something that we're going to dive into a little bit more during the podcast. But, you [00:15:00] know, that's kind of where I see that athletic training model fitting in to that to the workforce. Early intervention, you know, address it as soon as you can.
Al Brown: [00:15:11] Yeah. You know, it was funny because I have to laugh. Funny little story. I love football, too, so it's great. Same thing. You sit there, you watch, you observe. You know what we were talking about different types of jobs. And one year at Penn State, it was my job to cover the state final cross-country meet on the golf course, which goes around the perimeter of the golf course. And they said, oh, so you're thinking what could happen here? I had more athletes go down during that event, couldn't observe them, but it was we need an athletic trainer over at mile two we have someone that's down. You know, we got someone down over one mile one. I probably put in as many miles that day, the cross-country athletes. But again, I had to speculate. It was more [00:16:00] hyperventilating. It was those types of things or was an Achilles injury. So I didn't get to observe. But again, in your mind, my first perception was not going to be much going on here. And then it was like, I have a whole new respect for that type of thing. So the athletic training model came in many different shapes, sizes and flavors, as do you know, industries. So you do have to understand your industry, understand what you might anticipate, but then you have to go and collect and see the data and understand it and then you can make an effective change. So, yeah, same thing. Same thing.
Peter Koch: [00:16:34] That's interesting. I have a similar experience as a ski patroller, so it's one of the mountains that I work at here. We have a big cross-country following and we actually had the Chevy Nationals happen from a cross-country standpoint. And when they come, there's hundreds and hundreds of elite college athletes that are coming and will have a similar piece as a patroller. We have to either respond [00:17:00] to the injury that occurs and it could be a traumatic injury from a fall or it could be a medical issue whether it's hyperventilating or it could be a frostbite piece. Some of the patrollers that I that I work with don't have a cross-country experience. So they're treating them from the perspective of, say, an alpine event or an alpine injury or an injury that might happen from downhill skiing instead of cross-country skiing, where as the cross-country athlete, I've done cross-country myself. I actually had one of the coaches there. And we're looking at the particular individual as we're coming in. They're being treated by another patroller. The patroller is on one tactic and thought process about what the injury is where because I know more and the coach knows a lot about what's happening with that particular athlete, they're able to weave that experience into to understand what's going on with that person a little more naturally and then be able to direct care [00:18:00] a little bit more accurately.
Peter Koch: [00:18:02] So the value of being either there to observe or to be able to observe prior to the injury happening. So not just watching the worker as they get injured or seeing it happen, but actually watching and gaining data about what's going on in the industry on the shop floor with your workers is a key part to really understanding what's happening, so that's a really connective piece that we want to we want to bring back into our model there. Let's take the injury that happens to the worker or let's actually bring it to the athletic side to start with and then we'll move it over to the worker. So when someone does get injured, they're going to experience some sort of pain and everybody experiences pain differently. But we've had conversations about this, too. And as the provider, whether you're the athletic trainer or the PT or you might even be the [00:19:00] coach at the time when the person gets there, how you approach or how you communicate with that worker or the athlete about pain is a pretty critical part in how the individual might experience their recovery over time. So could you talk a little bit about how that initial conversation and the ongoing conversation with the athlete about their pain levels can help or hinder the actual recovery?
Clayton Cartwright: [00:19:27] Yes, so an area that I really started to kind of gain some interest in was this whole concept of pain science, which is really a really fascinating topic. And so what I started to learn from that process is that communication piece. You know, when we approach somebody and start asking them about their pain and what they're feeling. There are so many variables that goes into that on an individual basis. It could be their prior experiences. I mean, there is just a wide variety of [00:20:00] things that have impacted their life that could amplify or decrease the amount of pain that they're experiencing. So one thing that that really kind of stands out is how I started to approach asking patients, athletes about their pain experiences, you know, instead of always asking them, you know, we hear the standard rate, your pain on a scale from zero to 10 like that was you know, you ask that pretty much on a daily basis over.
Peter Koch: [00:20:25] How much does it hurt? Right. Because that's the first question that happens, right? If someone comes to you and they're limping. How much does that hurt or are you in pain? And it starts the conversation. It's almost a conversation starter. So interesting. So keep going. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Clayton Cartwright: [00:20:38] No, no. I mean, that's exactly it is. But then what happens is, is that is our go to question every time. What's your pain, what's your pain, you know, so if you are continuingly to ask somebody what their pain level is, well, now what you've done is you started to make them just think about it more. And [00:21:00] so what we see and what we know is pain is processed in the brain. Right. So let's take, for example, touching a hot stove. Right. The stimulus is the hot stove. That information goes to the brain. Your brain says it's a threat. So I'm going to produce pain to let you know that you shouldn't do that again. And so what happens is when you start to constantly ask somebody about their pain levels, well, now their pain sort of increases because they're constantly thinking about it and they think that it should maybe hurt more than what they're telling you. And so pain is subjective to the person. Right. But you sort of see I've seen patterns when I was practicing as a therapist where pain levels would slowly kind of creep up for some people.
Clayton Cartwright: [00:21:51] So it was it was very interesting. So my approach then started to be more asking functional type questions or questions [00:22:00] that would maybe help build them up a little more. For example, I might say something like, hey, well, tell me what something that you could do this week that you weren't able to do last week. So I'm not really directly asking them about their pain. I'm asking them more about function. And so in their head, if they're if they hadn't been thinking about it that way and they can say, oh, well, hey, I was able to do my daily walk for two miles and, you know, a little bit of discomfort, but it was I could do it, you know, automatically that that sets them up for success. That's a victory for them. And so if you can kind of help point them in that direction versus always asking them about pain, you know, I just felt like it was a much better approach to their care. And it seemed to it seemed to really help with recovery process. So it's very interesting.
Al Brown: [00:22:50] Pain is one of those things that's kind of cool. I mean, it's cool. That's kind of weird sounding. But, you know, going back to the athletic training world, [00:23:00] when you'd have someone that went down and they're writhing in pain out on the field, my approach, the first thing was to just calm them down before I started to assess, just to get them to understand or get them let them explain to me what happened and then try to get them to realize all those other parts of your body aren't hurt. You can kind of let those relax a little bit. Let's just look at the knee, if that's what just got hurt. And once they realized there was a calming effect there, you could move forward. Sort of same thing in the PT world. You know, I'd have folks that would come in that might have an injured shoulder. They would have this fixed hand posture trying to move things around and they wouldn't move their hand. And I go, What's up with your hand? And they go, Why? And I go, you're moving it around like it's injured. And I said, just open and close your fingers. And I go, Oh, I said, Yeah, you can do that. It's kind of an illness posture. And part of that is subconscious. Part of it is unconscious. And [00:24:00] you can get into other problems because they stop moving that.
Al Brown: [00:24:03] And if we were to focus on pain all the time, you probably would go round and round just like Clayton said. You know, there's situations where it begins to escalate. So function. I'm a real fan of focusing on function in terms of looking at, you know, work related activities. It's great in the in the sports world, it's pretty easy to. Not easy, but there's a logical progression back towards the athletic event in the work world, sometimes we get into this light duty and, you know, on light duty, off light duty. What does that mean? Where I'd like to look at it more because words matter. I like to look at it more as transitional work. And when you take that functional model and you use that word transitional work, it works much better because you are transitioning the person back to that job task. But you do it by looking at function like it, Clayton said. What can you do today that you couldn't do [00:25:00] last week? Oh, I can. You know, it doesn't hurt to hold this tool anymore and. OK, good. Let's you know, and then progress accordingly. And for the employer that works a whole bunch better, too, because light duty on and off is like a light switch. Either you're on it or you're off it.
Al Brown: [00:25:16] And that can bring psychological issues that if you're about to say to someone, you're off light duty now, they're going to go, oh my God. But I still have you know, I still have issues where if you're transitioning, doesn't matter if you just kind of move along that timeline and back to function. And you might here's my ergo pitch. You might have to modify that job, but that modification might be a permanent improvement to the job, which will probably talk about a little bit later. But so that functional approach is huge and one that was ingrained in our the one thing we didn't I didn't mention earlier, but I worked on site in industry for a number of years, which was more the athletic training model. So I was at the playing field for the for the [00:26:00] workers. Not every company has that luxury, but that was huge to be able to walk out and actually see the job and make the modifications. So 100 percent pro functional approach because it really does address the pain but doesn't you don't get into a direct conversation about it because, you know, like I think I explained to you guys earlier, I could hit all our hands with a hammer. And Clayton might wince a little bit. You might not you go, is that the best you got? I'd probably
Peter Koch: [00:26:31] I might whine. All right.
Al Brown: [00:26:32] Yeah, I might cry for the next three days. And it was the same force, but we all perceive the pain differently. So, you know, it is it is truly it's all those past experiences that help determine our pain response.
Clayton Cartwright: [00:26:47] And I think that that was a great comment you made about the calming effect of what we think of that approach and the communication style. And so something that I saw a lot, too, is, you know, people [00:27:00] bringing imaging studies, x rays, MRIs, you know, and it might say on there you have mild, mild degeneration at X, Y, Z, a certain disk or whatever. And what they would see is, oh, I have degeneration in my back, but they don't see mild, you know, those key terms that, you know, that degenerative processes is a part of the aging process. You know, so sometimes you would just explaining that to them would help to take some of that tension off of them. Right. Because if they're thinking, oh, my gosh, degeneration in my back, oh, I'm going to need surgery and all of a sudden their head, you know, we've all done it with certain things. You know, you just start compounding the oh, my gosh, this is the end of the world kind of thing. But if you have somebody who can at least sort of talk you off the ledge, you know, for lack of a better term, you know, that calming effect of being able to approach somebody like that does, again, huge impact with how we communicate with and it's the same in the [00:28:00] workforce to the athletes. So I think that's a great point.
Al Brown: [00:28:04] I used to torture those folks sometimes because they come in and they go, I got this degenerate disc disease and, you know, it would be a 50 year old. And I go, well, if you didn't, you'd be a genetic freak, for God's sakes, I'd like to know how the heck you don't have any. I said, welcome to Gravity. We all live in gravity. Eventually things are going to wear out. That's why we end up back as dirt later on. So, of course, you've got some arthritic changes in your body. That's part of the aging process. So I try to diffuse it that way if I can.
Peter Koch: [00:28:35] I think it's always good to try that and thinking about it from the functional transition or transitioning to one function to another, function to another, or progressing in function is another. I guess a better way to look at that versus pain management is for lack of a better term, much more functional way of dealing with whether it be an injury on the athletic field or to an athlete [00:29:00] on the athletic field or the industrial athlete, because that's the whole intent of it. Right. We want to get people back to what they were doing. And if you're getting paid to play football, you're getting paid to play a particular sport. Doesn't matter what it is, you're going to want to get back to functions somehow and talking about function as what could you do versus what you can't do and what do you want to be able to do. And then moving someone towards that, I think is a is a great way to do it. Instead of saying, OK, we're just going to manage your pain through whatever process we want your pain to be an eight so that you can do this well, it might still be an eight. So we're going to look at how you actually move through that pain or in that pain, and we'll figure out a way for you to rest or work to the point where you can start recovering and getting better. Clayton, in some of our conversations, there were a couple of different things that you had brought up that said principal. [00:30:00] And can you talk a little bit about that and how maybe that works towards that pain management process in the transition back to function?
Clayton Cartwright: [00:30:08] The human body is pretty incredible, you know, and it is designed to heal itself, you know? So I think that's really important for people to hear and understand. And so what the SAID principle is or stands for really is specific adaptations to impose demands, fancy terminology. But really what that means is that the stresses that we put on our body, our body is going to adapt to that. So I think we had talked about an example of that would be, say, an ankle sprain. You know, what I might do with that person first is we might just have them walk and see if they can tolerate that. Do that for a little while. OK, let's try a little bit of light jogging so we get the jogging doing well right now. We're going to progress to running straight lines. They do well. All right. Now, maybe some cutting and pivoting work start to do well with that. Right now, we're going [00:31:00] to get back into sports specific training or work specific training again to allow that person to ask an athlete or a worker to see their successes and see that they are progressing in the right direction. So but it's important, though, that you understand you have to put stresses on the body. You always hear the RICE principle, right rest ice compression elevation, which to an extent. Can be good, but again, it's very early on in the process. At a very early stage. You need to start to put the body under some tension, you know, in order to make that progress back to the level that they're at. So a principle that I would think about often, you know, especially when I was in the clinic, you know, treating patients so and that you're treating patients from a work perspective. And my athletes, again, it's I looked at them pretty much the same.
Peter Koch: [00:31:55] Yeah. And that goes, I think Al, to your point before that, that the [00:32:00] idea of light duty as being that kind of that light switch. Right. So I'm on light duty. I'm off light duty doesn't actually provide for that principle to put stresses on the body in a measured time or at through measure time in order to generate healing. And you've talked about this Al in other podcasts before, kind of going towards what Clayton was talking about, about the RICE principle. If the treatment is rest, ice compression elevation and that's all you do, what happens to you? Right. So I'll throw that to you also, if that's what we do, what happens if all we ever do is rest the injury?
Al Brown: [00:32:39] Yeah, I can draw an analogy or comparison here between the sports world to let's just look at what an athlete goes and participates. They do some, they do different things. They elevate their tolerance level and they do that through strength training, endurance training, flexibility, you know, in the world of strength [00:33:00] training, just to understand the physiology, you go in and you do something to Claytons point that sort of the SAID principle you've got to create. You know, you go in and you lift a certain weight and it'll cause some tearing down of the tissue. And one of two things happens. You either get injured or you your body adapts, but it takes probably about 48 hours, 24 to 48 hours for your body to recover from that if you make an appropriate inroad in on the body physically. So you sort of tear the body down and then it gets stronger. So you need that recovery period. And then you come back maybe on a Monday, on a Wednesday, you come back again and do it again with a lot of workers. They don't do a lot of other things other than their work activities. So that is sort of their tolerance level. So unfortunately, tolerance and work activity are sort of the same line with the athlete. Usually there's a tolerance or a fitness level that's above where their exposure level is. So there is a buffer in there. [00:34:00] So the worker, it's a little trickier in that if they have they work overtime one day or they have extra packages or the poor U.P.S.
Al Brown: [00:34:09] folks that have been in FedEx have just been shipping more stuff than they ever have. They're going to bump above that activity line. So either if the industry's good and they sort of gradually progress them into that, they may adapt. And again, that fitness line and work line are going to follow each other. This company in Northern California took a more proactive approach and said, let's get that wellness line, fitness line way above the work line and see if that helps. And sure enough, it created a buffer to protect their workers. So it takes a lot of effort to do that. So you can see how if an industry just is sort of a rice type of person will just do first aid kind of and never do anything more than that. You will always have to be cognizant of those moments [00:35:00] where activity goes over and above the overtime that harder work. And it's even down to like accounting, like month ends. Someone sits and puts twelve hours into the day at a desk and all of a sudden there goes my arm first and arm hurt. Well, there it is again. You know, you've exceeded that tolerance level. So when you're looking at things and you're looking at said principle, sometimes if it's a fairly passive company, that line of wellness in that line of work are pretty much the same levels. So.
Peter Koch: [00:35:37] Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about our E Ergo resource that can be used to help solve ergonomic challenges at your workplace, sometimes contacting, contracting with and scheduling an ergonomics or occupational health nurse for an onsite evaluation doesn't really fit with our Just-In-Time workflows in a competitive economy. Fixing the problem right now is essential, [00:36:00] and improving worker comfort and efficiency are key components to ongoing success. So free to our policyholders. MEMICs E Ergo tool can help you overcome ergonomic challenges. With just five quick photos or a short 30 second video and a brief explanation of what is being shown. You can send us the critical demands and essential functions within the work tasks once received. Our ergonomics team can identify risks and exposures and provide reasonable suggestions for ergonomic improvement within just a few short days. Start the E Ergo process by logging into the MEMIC safety director at www.youtube.com/Workplace Safety. Now let's get back to today's episode.
And it becomes challenging then, especially if they're in that same level, like you said, to try to increase the stresses, to be able to have that buffer. And that is that's a tricky part. But I think recognizing [00:37:00] that and to the point of towards the athletic training model of being there on the shop floor, being there with the workers to see what's going on, have your finger on the pulse of the activity level or the business levels to see where that might lay, might be able to help stem off some of that stuff.
Peter Koch: [00:37:21] But even on the injury side, like post injury, like if you never if you never move the injured part, I mean, just think about it. If you've ever been injured in any of our listeners, if you've ever been injured before and you're just coming out of the cast from a broken whatever it is, you know, the first couple of days coming out of that cast is really super challenging. And all you really want to do is sit down and do nothing. But if you sit down and do nothing and just rest it, you're never going to get past the atrophy that has happened from being still in that cast for so long. And then to your point, before Clayton, your body will adapt. So in another [00:38:00] way, your body has adapted to that limb being stationary for a while and it's challenged other parts of your body. It might have challenged your gait. It might have challenged your hip posture. It might have challenged your shoulders. So all those things have to be looked at and adjusted and you can't do that unless you're moving. So I think movement in a in in a healing principle is pretty important. And that goes to looking at your providers that you're going to be engaging with as a workplace so that your occupational health providers need to understand that principle of bringing your individuals back to health through that transitional duty rather than just light duty on off switch like you had set out.
Al Brown: [00:38:43] And that's part of the vetting process. As an employer, you need to go out and know who your Occ. Med providers are, because the family doc is great for family doctor things. But a lot of times they're approached because they may not be intimate with the job tasks. [00:39:00] And the work test at the bed may be, you know, familiar with my er to the side of conservative and say, go back to rice. And when we rested for a couple of weeks and see how it goes and now we start to create that illness behavior, it's the athlete that doesn't get back into play. You know, we're waiting. We're waiting. It's the MASH Army unit, you know, the mobile army surgical hospital. They did they learned early on that we've got to move that very close to the front lines, get folks healed and back and return them back, you know, as sad as that is. But that's it. Psychologically, it worked much better than to have them go so far back from the line. And then there's a barrier of return. Same thing with work, same thing with athletics. So it's important to kind of take that, you know, very proactive approach. And by your vetting process of looking at your provider, getting to understand, are they functionally focused, do they understand their job tasks? Is their goal to get that person [00:40:00] back to work? You know, so you're right. You're exactly right about that.
Clayton Cartwright: [00:40:05] And that that communication piece is crucial. You know, I know we've talked and Al, you talked about your experiences about being actually on site, you know, within a company, but certainly understanding that not every business can certainly afford that on site provider to be there, you know, 24/7 or during hours of operation. So, look, you know, using your local community, there are PT clinics, a dime a dozen now, you know, I'm sure. And that's that vetting process. You know, you could even probably go out and find a provider that, you know, might possibly be able to come in and do some analysis with you or something along those lines. So it's important, I think, to also realize that there are providers out there and it is a little bit more of a proactive approach, but can certainly help you in the long run by identifying those key players, you know, that that you want to have on your side.
Peter Koch: [00:40:58] Yeah, and that's a great lead. [00:41:00] And I think to start talking about the athletic training model for injury prevention as well. So we're starting to kind of merge those two. We've talked quite a bit about when an injury happens, how you talk to the injured worker about their pain, about their function or function versus pain and how we communicate with our providers. And now we're looking at helping or getting our providers to help us assess our workplace, not just from an A maybe an improvement after an injury occurs, but it could even be assessing the workplace to prevent injury in the first place. And I think some of that happened. It's obviously post injury. But with the NorCal study there, Al, that that UPS did made some. Changes using that athletic training model to help reduce injuries overall, so they combined the or used injuries as a I'm missing the word here.
Al Brown: [00:41:57] So sort of a motivator. You know, kind [00:42:00] of the thing that affected change is they actually that was the motivator to effect change.
Peter Koch: [00:42:06] So good. Yeah, that's a great point that it is the motivator. So they looked at their losses. They understood that they're in a place where they need to have some change happen. And then they implemented the model and made some. Made some.
Al Brown: Adjustments
Peter Koch :to address things as they could, based on that, they said not just the information, but I'm sure they had people come in and assess the workplace. So let's talk some about how we can use that injury or the athletic training model to manage injury prevention, reduce injuries in the first place.
Al Brown: [00:42:40] I can tell you there's a couple industries that I've worked with that have done that there. You know, I'm sure they won't mind me using their name. L.L. Bean. It was, a very proactive, very much looking at design, talking to the industrial athlete about how can we best make the work environment fit them. As a matter of fact, thirty [00:43:00] eight years, 40 years ago, they actually created the first sit/ stand workstations, you know, which are very commonplace nowadays, probably popular over the last ten years. But they did it way ahead of time because they realized they were seeing more injuries in the phone center. So they actually created sit/stand workstations with the equipment they had at the time. Move fast forward. And you now see many of their checkout stations are fully adjustable. So if a different statured worker comes in, someone might be five one and there was a six two person there prior. They can adjust the workstation down electrically in the packing areas. They realize people are having wrist hand issues. So they actually started a strengthening program through gripping programs and they actually saw a reduction in their injuries. So that's that more said principle, like let's stimulate, but to do it proactively so we can increase that that fitness level or that wellness level above the work level.
Al Brown: [00:43:59] You go [00:44:00] to a place like the Jackson Labs up in Bar Harbor and they're also in Farmington, Connecticut, and out in Sacramento, they actually have a simulated workplace that if someone is having issues, they actually demonstrate what they do at the workplace to see if biomechanically they're doing something that we can modify just biomechanically and change, like the runner that's got, you know, plantar fasciitis. And we might, through an orthotic or some taping is an industrial athlete, is an athlete, help with the biomechanics. So they look at the biomechanics, but then they also look at the ergonomics that that designed the designs. Really not that good. We need to maybe modify the design, too. So I've worked with different industries that have had that luxury to be at the front lines and have taken different approaches. And again, to Claytons Point, not everybody can afford to have that on site presence. But I have worked with industry where we've gone as MEMIC [00:45:00] onsite to help them to understand some of those nuances and to look at it through that athletic training model.
Peter Koch: [00:45:08] Clayton, how about you? So how would you bring the athletic training model to bear on some of the maintenance? Maybe it's preventative maintenance or other tactics that the employer can use to help stem off injuries within the workplace?
Clayton Cartwright: [00:45:21] Yeah, so finding that person who sort of understands the industry and I kind of take it back to that example I gave earlier with sitting on the couch watching a football game, you watch and you watch something happy. You say, oh, I think that's a blunt ACL tear. Well, if you have somebody who understands the business and what types of tests you're doing, that that person can certainly help maybe identify and be proactive in identifying those things like LL Bean. Al, you were saying for, for example, identifying those things that could potentially lead to an injury. Right. Because if [00:46:00] you don't correct the source that injured worker could go get treatment, get all better, 100 percent, come back and they're back into the same positions that they were in before and now you're back to square one. So it's having that proactive approach to be able to identify it. But also there is, I think, some onus on the workforce and the employee, you know, with just even you know, we talk about preventative maintenance type stuff, you know, at the professional level, you know, I was with the Steelers. I mean, those guys would spend a lot of money, you know, to massages, acupuncture. I mean, they would do everything they had plus there to provide treatments and go through rehab protocols and those things. And that's not necessarily within the realm of the traditional workforce. But there are things that you can certainly do outside of work. You know, instead of going home and sitting at the end of the day, you know, maybe you're [00:47:00] doing a walk or you have some type of strength training program or program that that you like to do. So you're trying to do that a couple of days a week to keep your body sort of in shape and in tune with what you want to complete it as far as the workers concerned. So some lifestyle choices, I think, is also a big a big area to focus on.
Peter Koch: [00:47:25] Yeah. And I think the athletic training model can certainly help that. And as you're talking, what struck me was that we've been talking about the similarities between the worker and the athlete. I think a big difference, and especially when we start to look at injury prevention and what tools you can employ to protect the worker or the athlete. The biggest difference is from the athlete's standpoint, the sport's not going to change. You're not going to go into it thinking, all right, we're going to make football noncontact or we're going to make so you don't have to swing the tennis racket both ways or [00:48:00] you can only do something. The sport's not going to change. So the athlete has to adapt their body. Must adapt their body to the demands of the particular sport. As a worker, the job and we've seen this before in every industry, there are many aspects of the job that can change. And that goes to the maybe a discussion about the hierarchy of controls as we start to look at how do we manage the as you said before, Clayton, the threat to the particular industrial athlete. So the sports athlete, you're not going to change the sport. You've got to change the person or have to harden the athlete to the particular job as the worker. I think the place where we should start first is what you were alluding to before having someone come in. Or maybe you have the expertise right within your own your own business to assess the workspace, to see what changes we can [00:49:00] make. So can you maybe talk a little bit about that from the not so much the athletic training standpoint, but what's the benefit and where does that fit in with the hierarchy of controls and how does that manage injuries within the workplace?
Clayton Cartwright: [00:49:14] So, you know, I think when we look at that hierarchy of controls, right, we're looking at things like eliminating hazards or coming up with engineering controls. So we're trying to really reduce the stress that the employee is putting on their bodies. Right. Because, again, if we go and we look at the athlete who maybe they have the luxury of taking some rest days after competition, right. Where the workforce doesn't. So that's where it becomes sort of critical to be able to reduce some of that loading in that stress on their bodies, you know, to reduce the risk of developing some type of injury on site. So I [00:50:00] think that is where, you know, we as MEMIC I think, really thrive is being able to help with that process. So. That's kind of the way that I look at it.
Al Brown: [00:50:11] I'll give you some historical perspective, too. You know, I think I've been around a little longer than Clayton, you know, and that was just birth order. But I just had an interesting thought as he was talking. And it was about and let's just use football, think about the tools of football when football started. Think about did they wear helmets? They don't start with no, and then they said we're probably having some head injury, so we really need to. So then they created these leather things and put those on people's heads and then they said, boy, a lot of smashed noses. Maybe we ought to create a face mask, you know? And then it was the single bar and then it was the multiple bar. [00:51:00] And then people were get poked in the eyes. And now we've got plexiglass over the eyes and, you know, so and just think of just a helmet, not let alone I mean, just all the other pads have changed tremendously. And then you go to the industrial side and you go think of the first pick, something simple screwdriver, you know, and it was this linear thing that you put your hand on. You turned, you know, and you had to make sure you stayed in the slot and forearm pain, all kinds of discomfort. And then we had the inline electric screwdriver. And now we've got a pistol grip, you know. So again, I think function and form sort of change, but it's through reacting and looking at where are we seeing the injuries and how do we sort of prevent those from occurring. So humans have the same physiological limits they always have. You know, we haven't changed. I mean, we're changing a little bit, but actually I think we're getting a little weaker.
Al Brown: [00:51:58] But for the most part, that physiology [00:52:00] has pretty much stayed the same. And we have gotten smarter. And what we tolerate is much less to I mean, you think about what coal miners used to go through and go, oh, we lost one today, you know, call HR and that was brutal. And now we don't tolerate that kind of stuff. So the laws have kind of pushed us in that direction and the care of human beings. So, you know, our mantra at MEMIC is I want you to I want, you know, when you I want you to go home from work feeling just as good as when you came in. You know, I don't want you to go home feeling pain and discomfort. So, you know, part of that solution process sometimes with industry is to help folks look with a different set of eyes and take that proactive approach and try to find maybe a change to find the exposure and risk and then try to address it might be through education, but it might also be through modification of the job and reengineering in the long run. You know, [00:53:00] you get a person that feels better. They're going to work better, less exhaustion. And at the end of the day, that company's going to have a better product because you don't have a fatigue, sore, achy worker trying to put the last not on the trailer light and does a poor job. And next thing you know, the consumer buys that trailer and the trailer lights falling off and it's well because of the bad ergonomics of the design. So it's a win win win. When you look at that whole that whole system,
Peter Koch: [00:53:28] It's good to look at your history and look at the injuries and try to prevent it that way. But I think from again, looking at it from the athletic model, I want to be able to maintain my athlete in prime position or prime condition. So I'm going to do things with them and for them that are going to allow them to stay healthy. And I'm also going to then look at the workplace. From a functional design standpoint and [00:54:00] take into consideration the load, the frequency, the mechanics of the lift or the process that they have to go through in order to do that and think about it from a physical standpoint, how do I make this not so much easier, but how do I make this functional for them? Like we talked about function from a transition to function instead of looking at it from a pain standpoint. If I look at a job task from a how does the function of the job task fit in with the general function of a human being, I'm going to be much better suited to prevent injuries across the board than if I just look at it. From how many widgets do I get in the bucket at the end of the day or how many words can I type? I mean, you think about that from the perspective of typing. And when we went from an administrative assistant working, taking notes, handwritten notes to working on the typewriter, [00:55:00] which you had to take a break and move the carriage over to one side or the other, to an electric typewriter, to now a word processor. And we're seeing many, many, many more repetitive motion carpal tunnel type injuries from that perspective because technology changed. But we didn't look at how the function of the technology would affect the function of the human or interact with the function of the human. And I think that's a really key thing to consider as an employer. As I look at my business from an athletic training standpoint or look at my workers as athletes, if I have that perspective, it is like you said, it's a win going forward.
Al Brown: [00:55:41] When I had the typewriter at least I had to go find the White-Out occasionally, you know, occasionally have to leave the desk. Now you just hit delete, you know, or backspace, so less movement, so different, different sort of problems, you know, set of problems.
Clayton Cartwright: [00:55:56] And I think that's you know, I think that's a good thing to do, [00:56:00] to say it's a constant process. You know, like you said, as things change, there's going to be a new set of issues that pop up. So I guess the best way to say it would be, you know, you don't want people to think that they get to a spot where they say, yes, we've done it. You know, it's just when they fix one thing, the next issue's going to pop up. So it's that constant, you know, just awareness and observation and, you know, being aware of your injuries, to be able to make those corrections, you know, as they come up.
Peter Koch: [00:56:31] Now that's great. And again, that fits in with the athletic standpoint of the worker, too, because and you think about it from your PT standpoint or your athletic training experience if someone comes to you either with an injury or a goal. Right. Here's my goal. I want to get from where I am right now to better function where I want to be. They're going to at some point in time, plateau. They're going to reach a point where they're not going to get any better unless you change something in their treatment path. So [00:57:00] that's I see that as a the same way, just as what you said, in that you can't just rest on your laurels and think you've succeeded. You have to have a constant process of reevaluation to see if you're really meeting those goals, because those are some of those injuries, like repetitive motion injuries or overuse injuries will sneak right up on you, like something odd will change in the process. And it might even just be a personality on the line. Like someone within the line or someone within the process will understand the process in a certain way, which will affect people down the road a little bit further. And it will change how they interact with the product or how they interact with the process, which could put them at a greater risk of injury.
Peter Koch: [00:57:46] So if you don't have a continual analysis program to address issues or injuries or potential problems that come up in the workplace, you're going to miss it and you're going to rest on your laurels. And then you're going to look back some [00:58:00] day and go, wow, how did we get to where we are now? How do we get all these injuries? How did we get there? And so that I think looking at the worker as an athlete is a great way of helping prevent some of that, because it does it doesn't treat both the employer and the employee to have the best conditioned workplace as possible and to be the best worker as possible in order to achieve the goal that we want to have to be successful as an employer and to be successful as an employee. Excellent. All right, so we are getting that was a quick hour, we're we are getting right to the end of our podcast here, unbelievably so. Anything else you guys want to add about how looking at a worker as an industrial athlete can be beneficial to the employer?
Al Brown: [00:58:48] I might just add, you know, and when we look at athletics, sports have been vetted. You know, I've had people that said I can't believe he's out bowling. Here's an injured worker, [00:59:00] he's out bowling and I'm going bowling exists. And people have learned how to bowl and use good body technique and probably can tolerate bowling because they're using good body mechanics. And if you probably look back at their job, they probably use lousy body mechanics, and that's probably what got him into trouble. So don't you know diss among the fact that they might be out doing something physical, particularly a sport, because a lot of times sports. We have worked the process enough that we've learned, you know, good body technique, it's when we get out of position that we get hurt, it's when we twist and we get hurt. But like skiing, you know, if you're good at skiing, you stay in control. You know, the proper technique so you don't get hurt. Sometimes we don't do that at work. You know, we and if you understand some of the human limits, you know, some of the basics, for example, in manual material handling, don't put it on the floor and don't put it above shoulder, but keep it between your knees [01:00:00] and your shoulder over just below shoulder level and keep it at about 35 pounds. The human limit. Yeah, we can lift hundreds of pounds, 100 pounds. We can deadlift all but the you know, we look at the formulas in the world of ergonomics and math and human physiology. We go 50 pounds. That's everybody should be able to handle 50 pounds.
Al Brown: [01:00:16] Well, that's not true. It's probably more around thirty five pounds. And that's again, where you tend to put that thing. So, you know, when we look at human beings and we're looking for just general guidelines and we're looking at the you know, as an athlete, where do we kind of start looking and then and then from there design and create. Because again, if those things are exceeding the human limits, that's when we begin to create the injuries. Sports, we tend to know what the you know, the extremes are and what the limits are and what injuries we might anticipate. But in the work industry, we don't think of people as athletes or we don't sometimes think of their physiology [01:01:00] and we expose them to those risks and hazards. So we have to start thinking in more of a sports medicine model, how do we look at that job, make it fit specific capabilities of the human being that's actually there, and then help them with recovery and understanding or how to prepare for the day? Might be warm yourself up to stretch if it's going to be. I know we work with an oil company now in Maine and every one of their workers, when they get out of the truck, they step down and they do three sort of prep stretches to reset their body. Then they deliver the oil and every delivery, same thing, three stretches before they start. So that's forward thinking by an industry and taking those steps to kind of reduce those injuries, taking that sports medicine model.
Clayton Cartwright: [01:01:48] And, you know, I'll just kind of throw in there as well. You know, we tend to look at a sport, you know, say football. Every athlete, you know, is different. You [01:02:00] know, even though human bodies, you know, we're all very similar. But there are still some structural changes or differences. I would say changes, but there are structural differences that we all have. You know, a big one is in the hip. You know, the hip socket may be positioned a little different for somebody. So from a bending, you know, when they do need to do something, you know, that technique may be different. So it's, again, taking it from a broad perspective, you know, looking at a sport or an industry, but still trying to maintain focus on your work force and or as an athlete, as individuals. You know, you still have to tease out those individual differences. And so, you know that from that athletic training background and perspective, you know, I think that is a point to make. You still would want to make sure that you're looking at each person at their own level.
Al Brown: [01:02:56] And, you know, it's just real quick. I just thought of this a cool crossover that [01:03:00] I've seen recently, you know, talking about athletes and workers. I have a lot of you know, back when I was at iron works, they handed out only male large gloves no matter what your size. And so if you took someone who was a small person or a female worker, that might be fifth percentile and you give them a male large glove. They've already lost 20 percent of their grip just because of it's a glove. Now, you put on an excessively large glove and they probably lose half, if not three quarters of their ability to grip. And if you look at sports today, soccer, football with their hands, not so much basketball. What are they wearing? Gloves, and you see these gloves, you see these fantastic catches, now they can just grab one handed. Well, there's a lot of application of that with an industry where we're now taking those sports clubs and applying them to jobs in the industry where they need a good grip and [01:04:00] a comfortable grip. And we're finding that there's crossover, which is pretty cool. So you get to see that sort of connection that some of those tools that work for them also works for the industrial athlete.
Clayton Cartwright: [01:04:12] You know, I think this is a great conversation, too, is sometimes just the awareness piece of it, you know, just having this conversation today, is it? It might be a light bulb for that person, like, oh, I never thought about it that way, you know, but to bring up our experiences and what we have seen and those comparisons, you know, maybe it'll change the viewpoint out there for some of our listeners. So, you know, I just think that awareness piece is also is pretty huge.
Peter Koch: [01:04:39] Yeah, it is huge. And it really helps us to move. And I think to your point, Clayton, in the light bulb of not seeing the industry as just industry, but seeing that crossover between the person as an athlete and the person as a worker being combined, and some of the tools that you might find are functional [01:05:00] or at least concepts that you find are functional and sports can really be functional within the within the workplace. And going back to your point, Al, thinking about the oil company, they're stretching and warming up. Right. That's been part of athletics for just about ever, that you're going to have some sort of warm up process before physical activity and that's now or has moved into industry. But I think, you know, it waxes and wanes, but there is benefit to if you're going to do it right and if you're going to target correctly the functional parts of the body with the stretch, it's going to be going to be very beneficial. So there's a lot of learning that you could have from seeing your employee as an athlete and taking some learnings from the athletic world. Pretty cool.
Al Brown: [01:05:52] Yeah, we do a lot of with the stretching program, I sometimes feel get pushed back because they go there's no research that supports that. And I said a lot of [01:06:00] times the research is showing gains in flexibility. And I said a lot of times you're not going to get that because we can't do a really, you know, a really dedicated stretch program. But think of stretching and movement within industry as resetting the body in the world of gravity so that just that might be slightly bulging backwards. And you do some back extensions we’re actually resetting the body. We're not necessarily improving it, but we're trying to reset it back where it was or renourishment, you know, bring blood flow back into the neck and shoulders just to change and filter things out. So it's a reset. And once folks get that understanding, they go, oh, and then they can they'll see a reduction in injury simply because they're spending time resetting folks that need that resetting.
Clayton Cartwright: [01:06:53] And so something that kind of sticks out in my mind and one of my mentors would always tell me was [01:07:00] and I would say this all the time, motion is lotion. You know, the human the human body, the human body is designed to move. The body wants to move. And that's how, again, we nourish our joints and lubricate things and keep movement. So that is something that's always stuck with me. And that's something that I live by, you know, in my own personal life, you know, from a from a health and fitness perspective. So motion is lotion. I think it's that's a crucial thing to understand to in the workforce.
Peter Koch: [01:07:33] That's awesome. I like it. That has t shirt written all over it. I think that
Al Brown: [01:07:39] Motion is lotion.
Peter Koch: [01:07:46] So as we come to a close here, I just want to throw this out to you both and sort of in your in your history, as you as you reflect back on what you've done in your career or different careers and now where you are with MEMIC [01:08:00] and working specifically in an industry, helping workers stay safe and helping employers keep their employees from being injured. What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started out that might have had changed things for you on the way?
Clayton Cartwright: [01:08:17] So for me, I really think that communication piece, you know, the things that we say very early on, you know, can really help set us up for success or it can set us up for a little bit of a failure if we're not using our words in a manner that's going to help set somebody up. Right. So, you know, I think that piece of communication really stands out to me and something that I really try to focus on when I'm even now at MEMIC, you know, when I'm talking to our policyholders, how are we communicating with them and making helping them to understand just how important some [01:09:00] of these concepts are. So definitely for me, it's the communication piece.
Peter Koch: [01:09:05] And I definitely took that away today from our conversation that that was an aha moment for me going back. I can see where I could have used that innumerable times, talking with someone from a functional standpoint instead of a pain management standpoint that could really have changed the trajectory, early trajectory of an injury. So for me, I just learned that today. So that was pretty cool. Al, how about you?
Al Brown: [01:09:29] You know, I speculated about the proactive approach back when I was young and thought it was the right way, and I feel like that's been validated over my years, that, in fact, it was a system that was created probably from that athletic training world. And as I've gone into the physical therapy world, have always stayed on the proactive side, the functional approach, and have found it very valuable. And probably the most recent [01:10:00] lesson I have learned probably over the last 10 years is that I need to be I maybe wasn't as cognizant of it back then, only because I wasn't. But now that I am older, that physiologically we do change and we don't stay forever young. So, you know, in Maine, you know, we have an older workforce. We're actually the oldest workforce in the nation. And if you look at the demographics across the country, we have a shift towards an increase in those baby boomers reaching their 60s and up. And in the work world, workaday world, you know, we're not all we're not all Tom Brady's and can be, you know, at the peak performance at forty three. You know, we have a lot of workers that are in their 60s that we have to be aware of those comorbidities, those aches and pains that are, as Clayton had talked about, the degenerative disease. And as my response to people was, [01:11:00] if you didn't have any, you must be a genetic freak. And we have to be cognizant of that when we look at design. And so I probably was not as aware of that when I was younger simply because I thought, I don't hurt, I'm fine. But now that I've gotten to this age, I do what I feel are all the right things. But I still ache in the morning when I wake up. And that's just part of sort of the natural aging process. And you have to respect it, understand it and keep it in mind when you're dealing with a workforce.
Peter Koch: [01:11:32] Cool communication progression and motion is lotion, I think those are three key principles we need to take away from today, so that's awesome. All right. So thanks. Thanks for being here, guys. I really appreciate sharing your insight and your expertise with myself and our listeners today. So thanks for being here.
Clayton Cartwright: [01:11:50] Yeah, great. It was an awesome conversation. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on and talk with you today, both of you.
Peter Koch: [01:11:56] Right on Clayton. And we'll have you back for sure.
Al Brown: [01:11:58] He knows it was awesome. Great. [01:12:00] You know, and I and I didn't realize until today that looking at Clayton was like looking into a mirror, you know, but about 10 or 15 years younger. But I didn't realize he had so many common experiences that I've had. So it's pretty cool to kind of, you know, here we are colleagues now and learning those things. But you know what? Every day I hope to learn something. And today I did.
Peter Koch: [01:12:24] There you go. And it just goes to show like that communication, that shared experience. One last piece, like if you think about it from and you think about the worker as an athlete, the athlete doesn't stand alone. They have a lot of people that work with them in order to help them be successful. And as an industrial athlete, you look at your workers and who are the resources that you can tie into. So can you tie into can you tie into someone from the outside, whether that be MEMIC as your insurance carrier or a provider that you can help bring in to assess your workplace? Or maybe there's some expertise right within your own business, [01:13:00] some colleagues that you have that can bring some insight into a particular engineering challenge that you're having to address, an exposure that your employees are getting to. So great learning that we all had today. And communication progression. Motion is lotion. Love it. That's awesome. So Al and Clay in both. Well, I'll throw this to you, Al, because you might know better. So where can our listeners find out more about the industrial athlete at MEMIC?
Al Brown: [01:13:28] Yes, as a policyholder you certainly can hit the safety director and you just have to register because we have some references sort of behind the safety director web. And you can access a lot of the information that we've talked about today. If you're a policyholder and you work with a safety consultant. One of our safety consultants, you can reach out to them. You always have access to us. And I say us. It's the ergonomics department with that industrial sports medicine hat that we wear through [01:14:00] E Ergo and which can be a virtual assessment of workstations. So we have a lot of tools and resources that are available. The one thing about MEMIC is I think we really one thing I enjoy about my job, I can't speak for, you know, Clayton and you Pete, but we get to partner with industry all the time. And, you know, I like to think of us as partners when we walk into an industry so, you know, take advantage of those services that we have, because with these kinds of past experiences, a lot of times you can bring a different set of eyes. So look to the safety director, look to your safety consultants, look to us, and we might be able to help you out for sure.
Peter Koch: [01:14:42] And I can see Clayton shaking his head and I'm shaking my head to that. Yeah, the part of the part of the thing that I know I enjoy and in my conversations with Clayton is, is that partnership. So please, if you're a policyholder, reach out. And if you're not a policyholder and you're looking for some information, then MEMIC has some free resources that you can find [01:15:00] right at MEMIC.com that you can jump right in there under workplace safety and you can find some great resources that you might be able to pull in and use within your workplace. So thanks again, Al and Clayton, for joining us today. And to all of our listeners out there today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, we've been speaking about the industrial athlete with Al Brown and Clayton Cartwright. If you have any questions for Al or Clayton or. We'd like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. Email me at podcast@ MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources, links to other podcasts and our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. If you've already done that, thanks, because it really [01:16:00] helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
In 2019 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported there were 190,000 slip and fall events that resulted in time away from work. 60% of those were falls on the same surface. Any surface is the interface with our shoes and together they provide stability for our base of support while moving. The surface composition and condition are key to the efficiency of our movements. A stable surface compatible with the work being done is a good place to start when trying to prevent Slip and Fall events.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Patrick Dooley, CSP and Senior Environmental Health and Safety Specialist for LL Bean. We are going to get under the surface of slip and fall injuries and discuss how understanding your surfaces can help reduce slip and fall events.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. I expect many of you listening out there have had the chance to walk on the beach. Well right now I want you to think back. What was it like? Was it Rocky where the rocks big or the little pebbles? Was the sand hard or was it really loose the surface move underneath your feet when you walked when we expected a surface like soft beach sand or the gravel around where the surf breaks can be just what we want. But when that surface changes to something we aren't expecting, it can cause us to stumble or at the very least break stride. Think about it. So when our foot or shoe interacts unexpectedly with the surface, our base of support changes as our foot, knee or hip moves farther to the side or four and a half feet. So when we're walking or working, most of the time our base of support is our feet. So right now, if you can [00:01:00] safely do it, stop and put your feet about shoulder width or maybe just a little wider and then steady yourself and keeping both feet on the ground, shift your weight from one side to the other side and then back again should feel pretty stable, balanced. Even if you shift your weight pretty far to one side, you're still going to feel pretty balanced as long as your feet are going to be on the floor.
Peter Koch: [00:01:23] When you move side to side, I want you to think about how far your center of gravity and that's right around where your belly button or your belt buckle is, how far that moves from side to side before you might feel like you're going to tip over. So depending on how far apart your feet are, your center of gravity can move quite a bit from that center position. You can move it almost all the way to the outside of that foot, to the side that you're standing on now. And again, only if you can safely do it, move your feet closer together with your toes or your shoes touching or maybe almost touching. Now shift your weight from side [00:02:00] to side again. And do you feel the difference? You should even see the difference in how far your center of gravity moves before you feel unstable, because the closer your feet are, the smaller that base of support is. We fall when our center of gravity moves outside of our base of support. The larger or faster the movement and the smaller our base of support is, the more likely we are to fall. It's just physics. You really can't get around it. And we take for granted the surfaces that we walk on during the day. That's really neither good nor bad. It just is like you're going to walk across the tile floor in the bathroom or you're going to walk across the rug in your home, or you're going to walk across the concrete at work and you take it for granted.
Peter Koch: [00:02:45] However, the surface is an important piece. It's the interface with our shoes. And together that surface in our shoes provide a platform of stability for our base of support while we walk, move, lift, reach, roll or whatever [00:03:00] motion or ambulation that we're engaged in at the time. That surfaces composition and condition are key to the efficiency of our movement. So it's reasonable to think that a stable surface compatible with the work being done is a good place to start when you're trying to prevent slip and fall events. But how do you know what that surface is? How do you know how stable it is? How do you know how slip resistant it is? And unless you're fortunate enough to have built a custom facility, most of us have inherited the surface that came with the building. And even if you did build a new facility, some of the walking working surfaces may have been specked out by the architect and not the safety engineer. They may look good, but they're not compatible with the work, meaning that they don't have enough inherent friction to keep you from slipping or too much and may cause you to stumble. This is where a thorough surface or floor care and maintenance program really comes into play. So understanding all the components that go into [00:04:00] keeping us upright when we're walking and working around the business.
Peter Koch: [00:04:04] And there's a lot that goes into one of those programs. And I don't know if you're like me. When I first started out, I was thinking, I don't need one of those. Our floors are just fine. And then if you look back at some of your statistics, it might show a different story. And if you look at it nationally and the Bureau of Labor Statistics has some stats that should make you look down at the floor a little more closely, because in 2019, BLS reported that there were more than 190,000 slip trip fall events that involve days away from work, and 60 percent of those were events that were a fall to the same level. So not a fall from a height, like a ladder or a vehicle, but a slip and fall on the same surface. So gaining insights to where to start and the pitfalls that you might look out for are key no matter what you're doing, if you're just starting out to create your own slip and fall program or if you're really evaluating an existing program [00:05:00] for your company. So that said on the podcast. With me today is Patrick Dooley, CSP, and senior environmental health and safety specialist with L.L. Bean. And we're going to get under the surface of slip and fall events and what steps L.L. Bean has taken to manage the surfaces its staff work on at their facilities. So, Patrick, welcome to the podcast today.
Patrick Dooley: [00:05:21] Well, thank you very much, Peter. Happy to join.
Peter Koch: [00:05:24] That's great. And, you know, you and I and a couple of others from MEMIC, we ended up doing a podcast, not a podcast, but a webinar a few weeks back on Slip and Falls and talking a little bit about Libyan's experience managing slip and falls at their store. So I wanted to have you on and just maybe take a little deeper dive into some of the things that you did, what you learned from your experiences, some of the challenges that you ran into and what maybe some actions that you took. So I'm hoping that we can get into some of those conversations today as we move forward.
Patrick Dooley: [00:05:58] Absolutely.
Peter Koch: [00:06:00] Before [00:06:00] we jump into the bean’s plan or process, tell us a little bit about your background. So what got you started in safety and how long have you been in the field? And maybe how long have you been at L.L. Bean?
Patrick Dooley: [00:06:12] Well, thank you. So as of right now, I am lucky enough to be in the field of safety for the last 20 years, have a degree in safety studies from Keene State College. And I've been lucky enough to be with L.L. Bean the last 14 years.
Peter Koch: [00:06:29] That's pretty awesome. And Keene State's got a pretty long history of having of putting out quite a few really good safety professionals with their safety studies programs out there. So were you able to jump right from Keene State to beans, or did you have a couple of places that you stopped in between?
Patrick Dooley: [00:06:49] So in between the year 2001 and leading up to L.L. Bean, I was able to hold a couple of different positions within safety included lead in asbestos abatement [00:07:00] and consulting, as well as working for a temporary agency and doing safety for all of their temp hires and working with actually MEMIC to help with our lost control. And then I was fortunate enough to land a job with L.L. Bean, and I've been there ever since. And the best part about L.L. Bean is that it's not singularly focused into just the retail division. We have a manufacturing division, we have our fulfillment centers, we have our facilities. So it's a lot more expansive than what people might think of LLB.
Peter Koch: [00:07:37] Yeah, it's not just a store. And, you know, we were talking before the podcast. Neither you nor I are native to Maine. We're actually both native to Connecticut and then moved to Maine for our wives, which is kind of cool. And, you know, I had known of L.L. Bean while I was there in Connecticut and had come to Maine and actually shopped at the flagship store. But I had no [00:08:00] idea the extensive facilities that L.L. Bean has between, you know, research and design and manufacturing and then shipping storage besides the retail facilities. So that's pretty, interesting. You get but you get to see a lot of interesting things just within the L.L. Bean ecosystem.
Patrick Dooley: [00:08:21] So the L.L. Bean as a whole, when you look at it with all the different divisions that we have from a safety perspective, you're able to apply all the knowledge you've learned over the years and gain knowledge as you go along. It kind of opens the doors for a lot of folks. It's eye opening. Most folks in our profession get kind of siloed into manufacturing or transportation or construction. And, you know, here at the L.L. Bean, we've been afforded the opportunity as safety professionals to explore all of those avenues. And it's been great.
Peter Koch: [00:08:58] You even have I mean, even [00:09:00] at the retail store, you even have hospitality. So you have there's a little food outlet there, a restaurant that you have at the flagship store. People wouldn't think of that either. So when you explore L.L. Bean from a safety perspective, it's like almost working in a little city because you have all these different nooks and crannies that have different needs. And then you have the connection with the public. So it's not just workplace safety, as you might have in manufacturing or you might have in an office building or someplace else. But you have a pretty strong connection with the public that you're going to have guests and staff encountering different exposures together. Even so, you're planning on both sides, which from my perspective, I always think that there is a definite overlap between what you might do for guest safety and what you're going to do for workplace safety. There's a definite overlap there.
Patrick Dooley: [00:09:56] And I would even extend it even further to guests, to [00:10:00] the community, because majority of the. Places where we reside throughout the country right now. We expand our offerings into the community from our outdoors discovery programs, so things are available to folks and it's not just the branding thing, but we want people to be outside and be in the outdoors. They're not just our guests, we are actually the guests to the outdoors. Right. I mean, that's the whole point. But how we do it and how we make people be safe and do things is I mean, that's what we've been very successful in, even through this whole pandemic.
Peter Koch: [00:10:33] So that's pretty cool. And not just all of the different facilities that you have, that do different things. But you have locations across the country as well, which is something that didn't exist back in the 70s. Right. It's you've expanded across the United States. So you have 54 locations or something like that across the United States.
Patrick Dooley: [00:10:56] Now we're across 19 different states [00:11:00] and there is roughly 54 locations with soon to be a couple more opening this year. But within this past year, those 54 locations in 19 states offered up many different challenges throughout the pandemic, as anyone could imagine.
Peter Koch: [00:11:18] So I'm sure they have. And in all those different states, there are you know, there's different like you said before, there's different cultures that you have to work through and within there's different facilities, challenges. There's different perceptions from the public that you might have to manage as you go through there. All of these things kind of fit into that overall safety puzzle. And I would imagine, like one of the common things that you have for exposures across all of the different facilities and no matter what they do is slip and falls or slip and falls. So slip and fall exposures, how different are they across the different facilities and how different are they maybe [00:12:00] in different states or maybe in the different areas that you would have work going on, whether it be a public facing or outdoor center or manufacturing and warehousing?
Patrick Dooley: [00:12:13] Yeah, I mean, if you look at it from a retail standpoint, I'll start with that is we are in those 19 different states. So what is the environment that we're in? You know, where we're not in sunny Florida where we may get a little bit of rain. We're in Park City, Utah. We're going to go for the big end of town that's known people their ski and we're in the Adirondacks and in New York. Same thing. Hopefully it's snow season and the rain events and everything else that comes along with New England. So a lot of the things that go into planning and engineering and thinking about how we build out our stores, slips trips and falls have to be kind of in the forefront, not just from our customers, not for our employees. It's things [00:13:00] that we need to think about. And those are things that maybe when we're building out these stores 10 years ago, we didn't have so much forward thinking. But now as we're, you know, 10 years later, we're trying to figure it out and say, oh, you know, we need to look at more of what's the impact to not only the customer or the employee, but sustainability to floor care and maintenance programs. What does that all look like?
Peter Koch: [00:13:30] Yeah, it's all one big puzzle, really. And if you just, I remember in some of my past experiences or other working with clients at MEMIC or working outside of MEMIC before I came to MEMIC thinking about the flooring or the surfaces that you're going to have people walking and working around. It sometimes started with the idea of what's it going to look like? And we never really talked about how are we going to maintain it, what [00:14:00] type of footwear is going to be on it, how much traction is going to be there? Basically, they figured, well, we're going to put it in and then if we have to replace it, we’ll replace it in 10 years. But frankly and historically, those products, especially in those high traffic areas, never lasted the time that they expected to because of either increased traffic levels or, you know, I can tell you, you talked about Park City, Utah. I was the question that rolled through my head, when you're saying that was I wonder if you got anybody in ski boots walking through one of those stores. And I think from a slip trip and fall standpoint, ski boot on any surface is one of the most difficult things to try to figure out, because there isn't really anything that's going to be great, because you can find something that works for the ski boot, but then it's near impossible to keep it clean.
Patrick Dooley: [00:14:52] For sure and one of the things that architecturally what was looked at when stores are being built, not just L.L. Bean, but other places [00:15:00] is. Does it look how does it feel? Is it on Brand in what ended up happening from. And from our standpoint is we were having like four or five different floor textures within one building. So now your floor care and maintenance program becomes a little bit crazy and the costs are a little bit different because you're vacuuming one space, you're mopping in another and you're dry mopping in another. So it just adds to a lot of the confusion. And like you said, it's, you know, depending on the area your in, that may not be the way to go. So 2021, let's revisit that and see how we can make improvements on that. Not only impacts our employees, but the general public that comes in to visit L.L. Bean.
Peter Koch: [00:15:46] Sure. So we're going to talk about the refurbishment program that you guys went through and specifically about some of the flooring. But I think it's worthwhile talking a little bit about some of the challenges with slip and fall prevention and [00:16:00] kind of how they affect the big picture. I think some of the big ones are in and you alluded to this in our webinar, perception is one of those things. Visibility is another. And then surface traction. I think those three are pretty sizable. And we can address some of those as we go. So let's really start with surface traction and what it is. And why is low traction a problem?
Patrick Dooley: [00:16:26] I think it is an easy question to answer. But at the same token, it isn't because it's one of these things that people don't see. Right. It's invisible. So problems with these surfaces cause what the majority of the slip trips and falls for the most part, if we see a puddle on the floor or something that looks slick or, you know, gum or leaves or whatever, we can kind of focus on that. Right. But if we're not wearing proper footwear, you're not going to get the right amount of traction. [00:17:00] And the amount of traction depends on what kind of flooring you have. So if you go see not only attraction's really invisible, but it also isn't immediately obvious how to quantify and tell when to do something about it. So how much water makes it so slippery or, you know, is it the snow and ice on the sidewalk? It's slippery or, you know, is it snow melt or calcium chloride that we're putting outside and tracking? And that makes it slippery. So there's so many different environmental factors that can come in that can give you this low traction effect. But then there's this underlying thing of what's our perception of slippery? Your perception is going to be different than mine. You know, a perception of someone at a younger age, a toddler. Their perception is that we're going to be way different than someone who is probably a little bit older. So where [00:18:00] they may walk fast, someone may walk slower. So perception is kind of this undefined thing when it comes to slips trips and falls and how to figure out what it's not slippery and what is slippery.
Peter Koch: [00:18:12] And I think that's a really good point. And it's perception is one of those things that you really it's hard to control outside of yourself. Like one of the first things that people do to help prevent slip and fall injuries are to put signs up. We're going to put a sign up and help make people aware. You've all seen the yellow wet floor signs or maintenance in progress or something sign. And they're fairly ubiquitous. I can't tell you. Well, before all the travel restrictions happens, you know, you walk through the airport and guaranteed if you're walking through early in the morning, you're going to see a number of those along the walkways. And after a while, you don't even see him anymore. So, like, they're not even they don't even create additional perception. [00:19:00] You just see them as part of the background. You might not even process it. So that's one of the challenges with perception. But the other challenge, too, is like it's all it's different. You said what might be slippery to you or hazardous to you and your perception is going to be different for me, my perception of what the hazard is and then it changes what you do with it for sure.
Patrick Dooley: [00:19:20] Right? I mean, we all have unique gates. Our strides are all different. Our footwear choices are all different. Now, the type of shoe that you wear that we have an on our footwear all adds into what can be slippery and what isn't slippery because you and I could be wearing the same shoe. But your shoe could be six months older than mine. But I'm sticking to the floor and know you're falling on your behind. It's very different.
Peter Koch: [00:19:47] So and if I'm taken if I'm taking a six or eight inch longer stride than you are in our legs or the same length. So there's a different amount of force placed on the heel and the sole to generate [00:20:00] friction when it lands. So. It's a there's so many different things that go into that to drive perception, and they're all a lot of them are habits. I mean, we're many of us don't put on shoes in the morning in order to prevent a slip and fall unless, of course, you're going out into a hazardous environment. And then you might put, you know, ice cleats on or micro spikes or something. That is going to be a traction enhancer for a pair of shoes that you're going to have. But typically, when you get up in the morning, go to work, you put on the shoes that either match the outfit or they're going to be comfortable for what you're going to do or required for what you're going to do that day.
Patrick Dooley: [00:20:40] Right. And I think that from an employee standpoint, because you're in the same workspace day in and day out, you recognize those areas that can be slippery or not slippery. And so you can adjust the footwear that you're going to wear or you're recommended the footwear. So [00:21:00] if I'm a line cook in a restaurant, I know that it's going to be slippery back there. So I'm going to wear footwear that translates to that environment, similar to the fact that if I'm outside shoveling in the middle of winter in ice and snow, I'm going to wear footwear to that effect. But if I'm shopping inside of a store, for the most part, it's fair game. You don't know what people are going to wear and come in and come out from. So from a general liability standpoint, we can't anticipate what their perception is going to be of a floor and whatnot. We can coach our employees. We can do certain things to lower the risk, but the general public is open to us so they can come in and they're at the risk of the environment that they're in. Right.
Peter Koch: [00:21:46] Flip flops to steel toes, really, I'm sure you've seen it all come through the door.
Patrick Dooley: [00:21:52] Absolutely.
Peter Koch: [00:21:53] So perception exacerbates the problem of low friction. If you have a flooring or a surface, whether [00:22:00] it be inside or outside, that could be generally slippery. But your perception and how you see that surface can change how you interact with it. What other factors play into reducing the traction on a floor.
Patrick Dooley: [00:22:17] So let's think about the kind of the five biggest things that you see for a slip trip and fall events. Right. It's slip resistance on walking surfaces. So we've talked a little bit about that. The walking surface conditions, visibility is another one poor condition of either handrails or guardrails that are in the area. And the accessibility can be a major factor, too. So is it too crowded? There's too many things going on for us to be like fixtures? Let's think about having fixtures in aisles and you're offering up an area where people are aware of their surroundings and can slip trip or fall or something. So [00:23:00] I think those are probably the five biggest things that we would look at in order to kind of reduce the risk of a slip trip fall.
Peter Koch: [00:23:09] And when we start to look at those different factors, a lot of it's going to come down to what the flooring is at its base. Like what material, what's the composition of that particular floor that you're on? And then what? What are you going to do with it? And that's the fixtures. That's the maintenance. That's the way it's going to be used. The number of people that are going to be on it. All of those things contribute to it. But there's a base slip, resistance or traction that flooring is going to have when it comes from the manufacturer. So if we start there, because again, let's start at the base and let's really get down to the nitty gritty of this whole thing. How do you know how slippery a floor actually is even before [00:24:00] you start putting things on top of it and people on top of it?
Patrick Dooley: [00:24:03] Right. So fortunately, we're lucky enough, right. There's there is some sort of scientific method that we can apply to looking at the coefficient of friction, which is objective. Now, the standards on coefficient of friction are all over the place for flooring, but there is a threshold that people can use or benchmark against that says that is your floor more slippery or less slippery. So OSHA doesn't define it. The National Flooring Institute, they have their own standard, but you can benchmark it. So when you're buying something off the shelf from, let's say, Home Depot and you're buying tile and you're putting in your bathroom, there is a COF coefficient of friction label on it that says this meets blah blah blah. From our standpoint, we would bring in someone like MEMIC to sample the floor. So we do try Bomaderry. Right. So basically it is science of measuring friction. So we're going to use [00:25:00] a device. And in this particular one, we're using a binary tribometer or output tribometer that measures the coefficient of friction, the floor sideways, frontwards, backwards, wet, dry. And he gives us an idea of where we're at and what risk measures do we need to take to lower the risk of a slip and fall inside the workplace? Or is the flooring in to match the environment we're putting it in? So obviously, if we're putting flooring in Freeport, Maine may be different than what we put in Virginia. Virginia is not going to have snow and they're going to have snow melt. They're not going to have, I should say, that could knock on wood after this year. Anything can happen. But, you know, generally speaking, they're floor conditions. They look different than what we're going to have in Freeport. So let's define that and let's come to a conclusion of what's happening to the environment, basically is what it is.
Peter Koch: [00:25:56] Yeah. So how do you understand first understanding of the environment [00:26:00] and then getting some information about the floor and how those two things would match up and compare to each other? Because certainly, you know, like you talked about like in a food service standpoint, a hard, hard core tile with a real polished surface isn't going to be great if you're going to get grease on it from your fryolator. Not a great combination. And that same combination wouldn't be great to have, say, in Freeport, where you're going to have outside, where you're going to have snow and sand because it's going to wear really poorly and wet shoes. Wet slick shoes on that surface is going to be crazy slippery.
Patrick Dooley: [00:26:43] Absolutely. And also, what is the location? What do you where you're at? So it's easy for us because it's our campus. It's our store. But outside of Freeport, you know, we're leasing spaces inside of malls. And, you know, we may be just a pass through. [00:27:00] Into the mall. So, you know that the parking is convenient. So people are walking in and out. So what happens is that they're dragging stuff in and out of the store. So we need now what we didn't know then is to match the flooring to the traffic that's going to happen inside of the store,
Peter Koch: [00:27:19] Traffic patterns and volume are especially for your situation it was pretty critical as you started to look at what do we use when we start when we get into that refurbishment project? I also think that that's a pretty important thing to think about, no matter where you are. I mean, traffic patterns, whether you're in a doctor's office, hospitality situation, manufacturing, I don't think it really matters. Even a grocery store traffic patterns are a big deal because depending on where they're coming from, like you said, you think about a grocery store, if you're coming from the butcher area or you're coming from the back of the house space where we're [00:28:00] storing things or you're coming from front of the house as people are walking in through the entryway, how much what's the possibility of having a contaminant on the bottom of your shoe that you're dragging in? And how do you treat for that? How do you plan for that? How do you manage that? And there's some definitely some strategies there. Sure.
Patrick Dooley: [00:28:19] Right. And then the interrogation of the surface. So obviously the middle of your walkways inside of a store or a building or what have you are going to have less traffic than your main entrances. So do you have a specific plan for now resurfacing those?
Peter Koch: [00:28:37] So I guess this is a good time to sort of jump into the refurbishment project as you started to look at your facilities. It was time to replace some flooring and to refurbish some of those facilities that needed to have needed it. So when you started to do that, I know we had talked about before that you had used tribometry to learn [00:29:00] what the coefficient of friction was about some of those surfaces. Talk to me a little bit about the refurbishment project that you did and then what part sampling the surfaces, either before or after played to you making decisions about flooring.
Patrick Dooley: [00:29:16] So when we kicked this off, let's say, three years ago, the question came up from our store operations, the facilities, teams that we hate. We're thinking about getting rid of all this different floor textures and going with a singular floor texture inside of our stores. What impact would that have on not only the general public, but on our employees? And that posed a great question for us. How do we gauge that? How do we figure that out? Luckily enough for us, at the time we had this great big expansive space that was getting ready to be refurbished that allowed us to take some concrete and [00:30:00] create sample areas. So the goal was to come up with a concrete surface for the store the goal on top of that was to have our floor care and maintenance program. The cost reduce it would look clean it would be singular. But in order to get to that point, how do we know it's not just safe? Because I don't think safe's a good word to use. But I mean, is it slippery? Does it work? Can we drag fixtures across of it? Does it need to be mopped? Do we need to use a machine so we are able to create this space and use four different textures? And we partner with MEMIC and said, hey, bring your tribometer here, to L.L. Bean, let's do some testing. We're going to wear it on the floor. We're going to make it where we're going to make it dirty.
Patrick Dooley: [00:30:53] So that way it's not like you're getting a fresh floor when you come in and it gives us a little bit of wear patterns and such. Take the readings and then [00:31:00] from the readings, we will determine what would be the best option to replace in the flooring that we currently have in our stores. And with that, we came to the conclusion, let's use a flooring that has some texture in it, has a urethane finish. It'll look nice. It’ll look uniform and has a high coefficient of friction. Little did we know that the environment dictated kind of what would happen in the future for one of our stores. But for the most part, it was the right decision. And if you look at major retailers right now, you look at your Wal-Mart, you look at your Hannaford's, you look at Shaws, and they're all going to this rough surfaced concrete slab. And really, it's because your floor care and maintenance programs are really less than what they would have to be if you had tile. The agent deterioration factors kind of go down. You don't have to have as much floor care repairs than you have now. And aesthetically, it actually looks good, removed four textures from the floor. [00:32:00] You know, for us, you go from a wood floor to a carpet to a court floor to a carpet in our demographics for our customers. Unfortunately, that created more of a hazard than anything else.
Peter Koch: [00:32:16] Let's take a quick break. Safe for S.A.F.E is an acronym for many different things. But when talking about slip and fall events, Safe represents the four areas that you can focus on at your facility to prevent slips and falls, surface awareness, footwear and environment. Look at the surface as it relates to its composition, condition, changes and contamination. Evaluate how your facility layout and pace of work may affect the awareness of your staff to slip and trip hazards. What is your footwear policy and how is that compatible with the type of work and the surfaces at your facility? And last, how [00:33:00] does the lighting and weather in and around the work environment compound or create slip and trip hazards? If you're interested in learning more about how to prevent slip and fall events at your workplace, check out the resources at www.MEMIC.com/workplace safety. Or if you're a policy holder with MEMIC, you can sign into the MEMIC safety director and find more resources there. Now let's get back to today's episode.
Yeah, that kind of ticks into that whole perception and visibility, too, like if I'm on one type of surface and it has a lot of traction to it and I'm not really understanding what the next surface is going to bring, I might know that it's not there or it's going to be different, like going from carpet to cork because it's fairly easy to see that difference. But you have no idea how it's going to react under foot. So they might continue their gait the same way and [00:34:00] their feet might still be wet from tracking in from the outside. And all of a sudden it's a slightly different coefficient of friction and down they go at end. Lighting must play some difference in that to being able to see changes in elevation, changes in surface texture that might cause someone with a low gait, more of a shuffling gait to maybe even trip on some of those higher traction surfaces or maybe uneven like cobbled surfaces.
Patrick Dooley: [00:34:28] So the majority of our refreshes, not only do we look at the flooring, but all the lighting was changed and all of our fixtures were changed. So we eliminated not only a lot of heavy fixtures, but also our stores were a lot more adequately lit than they were in the past. I can't tell you what the foot candles were, but I can tell you that it made the product look a lot better.
Peter Koch: [00:34:57] It's kind of amazing how something small like that, you know, [00:35:00] you might even change something for a product, get the product to look better, increase the lighting so you can see better. But visibility makes a huge difference and slips and falls. When you can see the surface. It helps you with your perception. It helps you with understanding the exposure, especially in those crowded areas. Some of the things that we talk to our clients about, too, is as you go through your facility, some of the areas that you should pay a lot of attention to are those low-lit areas where your employees are going to be like your trash handling spaces, the back of the house spaces that typically aren't as well-lit as some of the front of the house spaces. Those are always areas. If you go back and look at what your trends are or your injury or your near miss trends, you're going to find that they're going to happen in those spaces just because you can't really see what's on the floor.
Patrick Dooley: [00:35:51] And those are the areas that we tend to lose focus on, right? They're not selling areas for us. So Backhouse is a good [00:36:00] example. Your employee entrance. No employees enter from the front door, right? It's always the back door. The back door has one little light, usually on top of it. You know, lighting is a is a big factor in what we do.
Peter Koch: [00:36:12] Yeah, yeah. And you have some complex needs because you are you're not only trying to develop flooring that's going to help you reduce the overall maintenance and replacement costs. But it had to look good. It had to match, I guess, the branding, you could say, for L.L. Bean and had had to draw people into the space and make them feel comfortable. And it needed to be functional not only for traffic walking, but also for moving your fixtures over the floor, too. And I think it's something that we forget. And when you're talking about moving a fixture, what do you, I think I understand what you're talking about. You're moving racks and carts and things across the floor. What else would be considered a fixture [00:37:00] that you might have to plan for
Patrick Dooley: [00:37:02] Going from back of the house to the front of house or using dollies are used in pallet jacks or, you know, you're moving over stuff, Xerox, anything that would be product movement. And not just that. There's stuff that we sell that, you know, you have one person that needs that kind of move it along in a customer needs to pick it up or do it. So how can we make it easier for them? One is it is the flooring work for them? Is it going to damage the product as they’re dragging it across? Is it going to damage the texture as they're dragging it across? So is it going to be agent deterioration factor on that? So I think there's a lot of different things to think about. And you could probably go way down a rabbit hole on that. But, you know, in general, what's going to work best for that environment and how do you how do you figure it out? And I think we've only done a really good spot, because if I look at my employee injuries that have occurred over the last ten years, you [00:38:00] know, there was a significant push pull was a big one.
Patrick Dooley: [00:38:05] You know, they're moving fixtures around. We did floor set changes monthly, which is crazy, right? I mean, did you force that change? It's massive. So now we've gone to quarterly and that has made a significant difference in how we handle product, how we move product, you know, tag product change, all of it. It just has a little trickledown effect. Our store injuries have. Gone from pretty significant to pretty insignificant over the last. So if we look at I did 13 years, my 14 years over the last three, we've seen a dramatic dip in retail store injuries. And a lot of it has come from our process changes our front of house changes, flooring, fixtures, lighting mannequins, handling mannequins, you know, bringing them upstairs, downstairs, dragging them across floors, [00:39:00] all that stuff. So it's had a huge impact. So people think I'm making a floor change or I'm making a fixture change. It may seem very insignificant, but if you look in the long, broader lens to it, it really does have a huge impact. It has a huge impact on how people play with the landscape of what their store looks like or what their environment is.
Peter Koch: [00:39:23] And those changes prevent exposures. But it also allows you to do more like when you when you have good flooring, good lighting, good changes, good processes in place. It allows you from a retail perspective to have your associates interacting with your guests, which is going to be a huge part of the experience when they come to L.L. Bean or they come to any retail establishment like you don't want your staff always focused on how am I moving all this stuff around and what's going to happen if it's a complex process or a big deal. You want them interacting and then when they're not interacting, then they can start to move different things. It's just part [00:40:00] of that. So some of these changes can, like you said, have far, far reaching effects. But there is a lot that goes into it. Did you have a team of people that worked together to make these floor changes or decide on the floor changes? Or was it kind of just you and your notebook?
Patrick Dooley: [00:40:18] No, absolutely no. We had we had to definitely have a team. So in the past, it was more of a facility planning and operations lens on what the store is going to look like and how we're going to interact. And aesthetically, was the approach right. Let's make the store beautiful and have that environment. When you walk in, you're like, oh, wow, this is L.L. Bean. Now, 20 years later, like no we want it to be shoppable. We want it to be yes, we do want it to look nice, but we want our customers to interact. We want our employees to be able to interact. We want to do in a safe manner. And, you know, is it functional? Is it flooring? [00:41:00] Does the fixtures, is it all meet what we're trying to do here and is it on Brand? And I think we have achieved that. And I will say, you know, we're having a store opening here in May and it's probably going to be one of the probably one of the nicest stores that I've seen. And it's going to have all these different components that we're talking about today wrapped up into it, which is going to be great to see.
Peter Koch: [00:41:23] Yeah, that's really cool to kind of see it all happen in one particular space and then start from scratch and see how they kind of move going forward. That's pretty cool. So when you when you were making these changes going through and I know it's a process of understanding, installing, observing, making some more changes. Was there anything unexpected that you found when you were when you were testing flooring or after you installed some flooring that you hadn't expected?
Patrick Dooley: [00:41:59] Yeah, [00:42:00] I think, you know, there are unknowns. I mean, you try to do as best you can to replicate situations and environments when you do sample areas inside of what we tried to do. But then when you get it into the actual environment, they're going to be putting it in. There are certain unknowns. They're going to happen. There's obviously external environmental factors that are out of control. A good example is, you know, one of our stores in upstate New York, they're using a different type of snowmelt. So we typically use salt and sand mixtures. They were using a calcium chloride based product that was being trapped in through the store. And this store was a pass through into a mall. So, you know, a lot of our traffic isn't even shopping. They're going into the mall. They're dragging the calcium chloride in. So the further and further they're bringing it in to more slip trips and falls that we were having from not only customers, but from employees. Because now remember, back to the perception thing, employees [00:43:00] already knew where the hot spots were. Right. But as these as this calcium chloride is being tracked to the store, those hotspots changed. And so this particular store, which usually only has a handful of slips trips and falls a year, we had upwards of 50 within two months. And it was something that we didn't plan for. Now, we had the same flooring in some in two other stores earlier in the year, but. You know, winter came and we found out that maybe this flooring wasn't the best, so we had to go back and kind of think about, all right, why is this happening? Do we know what some of the root causes are of it? And what do we do to kind of fix it? And luckily for us, within a short time frame, we're able to come to a lot of big conclusions and pivot to, [00:44:00] you know, getting a new floor care and maintenance program in place because we knew that the machine that was there wasn't working properly.
Patrick Dooley: [00:44:07] We knew that the landlord was using a different product on the sidewalks that was being tracked into the store. So, you know, we worked with the landlord to change that product. So that way the calcium chloride was, you know, the problem with calcium chloride that sticks to these surfaces. And it's a it's a real pain to clean. And actually, it broke the machine that was supposed to clean the floor. So we asked the landlord to go to a different product for the store. We also found our floor mats are terrible in this particular store. So a water hog mat, which is something that we sell, is wonderful from a household standpoint. But from a commercial standpoint, maybe not the best product to use in a store that has a very large traffic volume. So we changed out our floor mats. This particular store, you would walk in and you would see the yellow floor. What signs up and down the aisles. [00:45:00] Now you walk in the store and you don't see them anymore because we did make those changes.
Patrick Dooley: [00:45:04] The floor care maintenance program is way more robust. The matting program is now included in that floor maintenance program, which it wasn't in the past. The changes were made to the salting and sanding and calcium chloride outside the stratification inside of the vestibule was turned up. So that way and you're getting it was drying as you're walking in instead of staying white all the time. So those are things that you don't really necessarily think about when you're sitting inside of a box sampling flooring. Right. You have all these wonderful ideas of what you want that's going to be and how you're going to work with it. But then, you know, you don't know what someone's bringing in. You don't know if, you know, that site had recently been paved. So if it had been recently paved and it's wet, you're dragging all those oils into the store, which would cause a similar effect to what calcium chloride had done. So while it may be temporary, you're still going to scratch your head and figure out why am I having all these trips [00:46:00] and falls? So there's a lot of unknowns that happen with this. You can only focus on the things that you can focus on when you're trying to make a decision like this. But, you know, I think is always going to be that little level of uncertainty that you have to have. And that's the risk that you need to be either willing to accept or not accept.
Peter Koch: [00:46:25] Yeah, I don't think there's any perfect solution for slips, trips and falls, except, you know, maybe carting people everywhere they go, pushing them around. But that, you know, creates other hazards, other places that you bring up some interesting problems that you wouldn't find unless you're doing one or two things, one, paying attention to your injury trends or near miss trends. Right. So what are people reporting? What's going on? And are you seeing clustering happening in a particular location, whether you have one [00:47:00] facility or multiple facilities? And then the other part would be paying attention to the surface in the maintenance process itself? Because, you know, how did you find out that the floor care machine was gummed up and not working as well? How long had it been there in that condition or how long had someone been using it in that condition thinking that they were cleaning the floor when it really wasn't working as well as it should have? Well, it starts smoking on you and blows up in one spot. They're typically gradual, like they're going to work really well. And then over time, it's going to be a reduction in the quality that for the surface that the machine leaves afterwards. And unless you're really paying attention, you're not going to see it. So I think there's a value in checklists and like, what are you paying attention to locally? And then your position kind of globally, overseeing safety for multiple areas is checking in on those spaces and seeing what's really happening [00:48:00] on the ground. And those are always going to be great indications that something's either working or something might not be working for you.
Patrick Dooley: [00:48:08] Yeah, the biggest thing is really, you know, from an employer standpoint is to really encourage employees to report stuff. So the earlier that you report something, you know, the more data you're going to have. So we talk about what leading and lagging indicators, right. So lagging indicator. Someone's already fallen. Someone's gotten hurt. But the leading indicator as well, someone slipped there yesterday, but they got hurt today, but it wasn't reported yesterday, so we couldn't we didn't have the opportunity to take a look at that and fix it, you know, or what's the trend look like inside of a different store or stores that have similar flooring, similar fixtures. You know, what's the trend look like? How can we match those apples and apples and apples to oranges and figure out, you know, do [00:49:00] we need to pivot and make a change in how each fixture or the flooring in a different store? So, yeah, I think data is just absolutely necessary. Stuff doesn't get lost in data. If you're tracking the right things, you're going to be able to get ahead of a lot of different risks then you would have if you've didn’t, because you I think we've all heard it and especially with some of your policyholders and I've seen it in some of our buildings. Well, that spots been slippery for 10, 15 years. Right. Well, why don't you tell me for 10, 15 years ago, I would have fixed it and want to be slippery anymore. But yet over those 10, 15 years, how many different people have crossed that spot and had a little bit of a slip without a fall? But all it takes is that one person to have a catastrophic incident. And everyone says, well, I knew about it 15 years ago so.
Peter Koch: [00:49:57] And then you scratch your head and why didn’t you tell me, why don't you tell [00:50:00] me? And I think that's a whole other podcast. Like, why don't people say something? That's a whole other topic. But it's really important. And that culture of employees being able to have a conversation with the safety guy or gal or the supervisor or the manager about some of those things is really important. Like you said, it's critical and then not forgoing that information, like following up on that information, because I would expect that this is my experience, because I've had that same thing happen to me where you go to someplace, you're investigating a big slip trip and fall injury that happened and you talk to the employees and they say the same thing. Oh, yeah, it's been like that forever. Well, how come you didn't say anything?
Patrick Dooley: [00:50:45] Absolutely. And the thing is, like as a safety professional, I think one of the biggest misconceptions that people have, especially if you look at people from an employee perspective, a safety professional isn't just a [00:51:00] pocket protector and a clipboard. You know, we're there to really help and do things and have the conversations and learn about your job. And we're excited to learn about your job. Right. So if there's challenges in flooring, if there's challenges in your how you do your work, well, we just want to know about that so that it's not nothing that's negative. It's all positive. And that's kind of the environment we live in now. But 10, 15 years ago, I don't think the safety professionals kind of looked like they were clipboards and pocket protector people and telling people no, whereas now we're like, no, but the risk of doing it is this. And the risk of not doing it is that. So there's a nice conversation that happens. And that's kind of how we landed on, you know, some of the different things that we've done inside of our store reverbs. It was a conversation that just didn't happen. So now those conversations do happen. And I think we all land [00:52:00] in a great spot and we have less things to do. And in the end run,
Peter Koch: [00:52:03] That's pretty cool. So we're coming towards the end of the podcast here. Do you have any recommendations for companies or maybe a safety person at a company that's looking to do some refurbishment, that's looking to do some floor replacement or maybe even creating their own floor care and maintenance plan? Any recommendations?
Patrick Dooley: [00:52:26] Yeah, I have a few. I mean, if we're looking at specifically with flooring, so know your environment. Right. So select flooring materials that that match that environment. So when you build and expand remodel facilities, make sure this little resistance meets that environment, know what the out of box stuff is. So if you're purchasing something at a Home Depot, it may not be the best thing you may have to really look at the literature that comes along with it specifications and say, is this the best flooring? Make sure your floor care and maintenance programs are up to speed. Make sure whatever you're using matches [00:53:00] the flooring material that is laid. So even mopping is great, but some flooring and says don't mop with detergents and cleaning products. It could just be water and rinse off and or people think floor care machinery you're cleaning, it's meant to clean. It doesn't need that. Machinery does not need to be cleaned. Right. So there is a preventative maintenance program for that piece of machinery. So make sure that's up to speed. Yeah. You use a dirty old mop, you put in dirty old water back on the dirty old floor, right?
Peter Koch: [00:53:35] And you know, that's a topic we didn't even get into today and which has its own nuances. The cleaning the floor itself. And you alluded to a little bit with the calcium chloride, but the product that you choose, how you apply the product, how it interacts with the floor, there are some subtleties there that not everybody knows. And, you know that old rule of thumb, that more is better is not always where [00:54:00] you want to go when you're trying to clean your floor.
Patrick Dooley: [00:54:02] Yeah, right. I mean, a bottle of old English is not going to work on a tile floor, right?
Peter Koch: [00:54:06] No, not at all.
Patrick Dooley: [00:54:08] I mean, you really have to match the cleaning product to the flooring and what's coming in. So, you know, the calcium chloride. It's a tough thing to clean. So you want to make sure you're matching the cleaning product to what the environment is, as long as it matches, as long as the manufacturer's recommendations are match as well. The other couple of things would be like make sure your MAP program is part of your floor care maintenance program. So that would include like any of your runners. And I would also expand even further to like if you have rugs in the facility, you take a look at your rugs. Is the age of deterioration of certain areas of your rugs pretty sorry? So do they need to be replaced? Do they need to be repaired? Those are things to think about. And maybe is that the right product for that type of area when you go to replace it? And then, you know, I think we just touched upon it regularly [00:55:00] review your incident reports, you know, what is happening, what are the trends? Are there things that are happening that you can't anticipate? Encourage near miss reporting? Get that leading indicator in there. Make your employees report those near misses. It may seem laborious at first because I think what ends up happening is we encourage all this leading indicator stuff and you get a ton of reports. But they're significant. They're significant to the person reporting it. So let's pay attention to it and chart it and map it and put the data to it. And then finally, from a floor care maintenance program and an employee thing, make sure folks are trained in just cleaning up spills like a from our standpoint, we have a retail store. We don't have a janitorial staff on site all the time. So they're trained in how to clean up spills, make sure that if you do have [00:56:00] a custodial staff that they're trained and respond to spills appropriately. I think those probably would hit the big beats.
Peter Koch: [00:56:09] Yeah, I think so, too. And that last point is very interesting. You know, you would think that cleaning up a spill is a skill set that everyone should have. I mean, all of us here. And if you're not raising your hand, you're lying. All of us here have spilled something. Doesn't matter if it's a glass of milk, glass of water, whatever, that something has spilled and you've cleaned it up at home. Great. But in the workplace, you might not be dealing with it. Like how many of us have actually spilled something, maybe off the stove that's a little greasy and you're using an off the shelf cleaner to clean that up? And how many of us have gone back to that spot? And it's still a little greasy. It's not as clean as it should be because we might not have used the right cleaner. We hadn't had the skill set or the training. [00:57:00] So making sure that your staff, who aren't your custodial staff, have some understanding of what they should be using to clean up the potential things that they're going to encounter when they're in their workplace. And then your custodial staff needs to have another whole level of training so that they can deal with anything that comes in and understanding the products and understanding the process, understanding the potential risks of using this the wrong way. Understanding limitations, I think is huge.
Patrick Dooley: [00:57:28] Right. And use and use things like the yellow, floors wet signs everywhere. Right. But if they're not used appropriately, it can actually create a hazard. Right. Because now you have people that are anticipating perceive a slip, trip or fall and there isn't. So they've changed their gait, they change their stride and now they're actually tripping. Because they're their perception is changed. So, you know, making sure that things that you do [00:58:00] are in line with the environment, what they need to be doing it use them appropriately. And I guess that's the key.
Peter Koch: [00:58:07] One last thing I kind of want to end on here, and you said it as the second to last thing of the recommendations, reporting those near misses and especially for slips and falls. That's huge. So, you know, you've got the ability to map things. Everyone has it. If you're working in a space, you have a facility. And even if you can't draw, you can still draw a box with a couple of places where things are in your facility, so you think about all that data that you have, sorry, do you encourage people to talk about their near misses? And in a month, out of the 10 employees that you have, you have 50 near misses, one that should tell you that there's a problem inherent there. But two, what are you going to do with all that data? Well, you might not have to respond to everyone individually at first, but maybe take that data and at least put those near misses on the map and then see where they cluster. And that can open your eyes [00:59:00] to, hey, maybe we need to look more in that area, because out of those fifty twenty-seven of those reports were in this particular area. So then you can look at what's your floor care process there? What's the flooring there, what does it look like, what's the condition, what's the kind, what are the changes all of those parts for then you as the owner of the business, if you're a small company or if you have a safety person, maybe they can be the person that goes to do a little more investigating so that that mapping process as a hugely powerful tool with those lagging indicators and in even the leading indicators. So you flip it around and start looking at the hazards that are out there in your facilities, inspection and mapping those.
Patrick Dooley: [00:59:41] And just communicating back to the person that did report it. So you have to because you want to make sure that you encourage the effort to put that in and you want them to do it again. Even if it's insignificant. But that's just a data point that you have and you could utilize [01:00:00] in the future. And, you know, I tell folks all the time, I encourage them to report anything. You know, I'd rather see my email flooded. Then no have one email at all.
Peter Koch: [01:00:13] Because, you know, if you get one email, it's going to be that email.
Patrick Dooley: [01:00:18] Right. And, you know, and if someone took the time to report it, it's an important it's important enough to them that I should respond and make sure that they know that we're going to work on we're going to take a look at it, that it's not just a data point. That is something that we encourage. And, you know, it leads into other things in the long run.
Peter Koch: [01:00:39] Yeah, encouraging that communication,
Patrick Dooley: [01:00:42] Leading indicators are just huge. And I think, you know, majority of safety professionals and in the environments we work in that we don't see enough of them. They're hard to judge. They're hard to go by. But they play a huge role in how you determine how [01:01:00] we lower risk in certain different areas and different areas of our business. So, yeah,
Peter Koch: [01:01:05] And it's that one cool thing. You know, if you think about all the rest of the measurements that we have in business and most of the measurements we have in business are lagging indicators. It's the measurement of your income versus outflow for the monetary side of your business. How many employees do you have this month versus last month? Most of those are lagging because you're looking at a report of something that happened historically where the leading indicators are its information right now. It's that dashboard of real time information that it's enormously helpful from a safety standpoint because there's a human factor about it. Like to be able to respond in kind in time with something that's coming from another person is huge for your culture.
Patrick Dooley: [01:01:56] Yeah. I mean, literally, the lagging indicators are the last thing that a safety person [01:02:00] wants to talk about. The Debbie Downer of a meeting. Right. I mean, you're going into a meeting and you're talking about things that have already happened, the cost to the company. You know, the things that happened to me, G.L standpoint, comp standpoint. I don't want to talk about it. I want to talk about. No, here's the things that we've done that we reported ahead of time. And these are the things that we fixed. So that way we're not injuring someone or we're not having an incident with a vehicle or PPT like this is what's happening because we're able to have these leading indicators. And I'm not standing here and talking about, you know, someone being injured because someone didn’t, you know, take the grease off the floor.
Peter Koch: [01:02:37] So that's cool. And all about kind of understanding the surface. I mean, that's what we started with today is, you know, talking about slips and falls. And there's lots of things that go into the puzzle of preventing slip and fall events. But really, where to start is understanding your service, how people interact with it, what goes on it, how it's cleaned, your maintenance program, all that stuff. Understanding the surface really gives you the best [01:03:00] idea of how to manage the other things that go towards preventing slips and falls. So that's pretty cool. And really, we've now hit the end of the podcast here today. And I really appreciate you spending some time with us, Patrick, and sharing your expertise and your experience with us. So thank you for that.
Patrick Dooley: [01:03:19] I thank you for having me. And this has been great. And now I look forward to working with MEMIC and some of your policyholder's in the future.
Peter Koch: [01:03:28] Yeah, I hope so. That'll be great. We will have you on again, and there's you know, like we talked about at the beginning, L.L. Bean is multifaceted when it comes to the different industries or the different safety aspects that are involved with L.L. Bean. So I'm sure we'll have you on again. Maybe we can talk fall protection or we can talk personal protective equipment or something else would be kind of cool to have a chat about.
Patrick Dooley: [01:03:50] Awesome. I look forward to it, Peter.
Peter Koch: [01:03:52] Very good. Well, thanks again for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there, appreciate your listening today. Today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, [01:04:00] we've been speaking about slip and fall prevention with Patrick Dooley, CSP and senior environmental health and safety specialist with L.L. Bean. If you have any questions or I'd like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, e-mail me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources, links to other podcasts, as well as the entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on and subscribe. And if you've already done that, well, thanks, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening [01:05:00] to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good but using what you learned here is even better.
Falls in the workplace are one of the leading causes of serious injuries and fatalities. Citations around the OSHA standards for fall protection have made the top 10 most frequently cited OSHA standards for the last decade.
Fall hazard exposures exist in almost every industry and finding the right fall protection solution for your situation is not always easy. There are many factors that should go into making the right choice.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with David Kozlowsky, President and Owner of Safe Approach in Poland, Maine about his company and the approach they take with fall protection and prevention.
Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch, five thousand four hundred and twenty four. According to a February twenty sixth article in Safety and Health, that's the number of violations or citations in 2020 alone for the OSHA Fall Protection General Requirement standard for construction. And that standard sits at the top of the OSHA top 10 most frequently cited standards for the last 10 years, believe it or not. And if you looked at all the other fall protection related citations listed on the OSHA top 10 like scaffolding ladders and the fall protection training citations, you would get nearly 12000 citations related to fall protection alone for the year 2020. And if we look at beyond citations and look at injuries and how they affect people. Falls, even if you exclude falls on [00:01:00] the same level and just falls from one level to another, so falls from a height. That's one of the leading causes for serious injury and fatalities in the workplace. There are fall hazards in almost every industry or business. And personally, whether it's scaffolding, ladders, anchors, personal fall arrest systems, rope access or rescue. Fall protection training and education make up a huge part of what I do with the businesses that I work with. Well, we wanted to bring on an expert in fall protection to the podcast. So on the line with me today is David Kozlowsky, president and owner of Safe Approach in Poland, Maine. So led by David Safe Approache's team designs and builds a fall protection equipment and harnesses, anchors and lifelines, everything from that to safety netting and custom fall protection, worksite solutions. So, David, welcome to the podcast today.
David Kozlowsky: [00:01:52] Thanks, Peter. Glad to be here.
Peter Koch: [00:01:54] Yeah, it's fantastic to have you. You know, I've had the pleasure of working with Safe Approach during my time [00:02:00] here at MEMIC. And the team there has always been able to offer some sage advice, as well as design some custom solutions for a number of the policyholders that I've been working with. I think it's an important part of the story to get a little to know, get to know you a little bit more and about the company, because instead of jumping right into, again, right into the fall protection side of things and why it's important, I think it's important to know what your history is. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and the company's background and how you got to where you are today?
David Kozlowsky: [00:02:30] Sure. Thanks, Peter. So the company was founded or conceived anyway? I would say right around 1988 ish, the previous owner, Roger, owned a business called Mobile Maintenance, which was kind of like a mobile mill writing maintenance type thing where he would go around to mills or various places and do work on site things that were difficult, either too large or too difficult to actually send out to be repaired. He would go [00:03:00] and had a truck with a lot of machine type tools and stuff and would just go around. And he was actually at a repair job in the town of Lisbon back around 1988ish. And while they were working around an open wet well either he or one of the guys there almost fell in. And so someone made the comment like, oh man, you know, somebody should put a net in this thing or something because it's 30 feet to the, you know, to the pump. And we all know what's at the bottom of a sewage pump station. So to add insult to injury, I guess so here they're like somebody should make a net for this thing or something. And so that's kind of how it was conceived. Incorporated in 1992, brought on some distributors and kind of launched the company from there. So from its very inception, the whole premise of the company was on innovation [00:04:00] and finding ways to help people work safer. As our logo says, sometimes something off the shelf or out of the box just doesn't cut it. And it's easy to have a catalog of, hey, here's my repertoire of harnesses and lanyards or whatever else I sell. But, you know, there's countless different situations that you run into in business where just something out of the box just doesn't cut it. It's not there. And so the company was conceived on that that principle and that concept. And so we've kind of gone from there since 1992. I came on to the company in 1998. I was young. I was twenty five years old. I really didn't know anything about fall protection or anything else, but spent the last 22 years kind of learning my way through it. And I really feel like I'm kind of a [00:05:00]example that the American Dream is still alive. I started at twenty five, I didn't know anything, but I was willing to learn and willing to work and started out in the shop basically getting dirty, working with my hands, learning how to make stuff, and then kind of from there graduated to turning some wrenches in the field and into sales. And then, you know, ultimately at one point basically being the general manager and kind of running the company. And now here I am. Twenty two years later and I own the business. So it's kind of a neat little story. You know, it's still can happen. People say the American dream isn't alive, but it's there. If you're willing to work hard and you're willing to learn and you're willing to pay your dues. And I think a lot of people don't know the term paying your dues anymore. If you're willing to do it, it's still there. You can do it. So here we are.
Peter Koch: [00:05:57] Yeah, that's pretty cool because it's a great story when I [00:06:00] kind of think about it, because you back in 88, there weren't a lot of guidelines. I mean, the fall protection standard was there for OSHA and they told you a bunch of stuff. But I think there's a really great connection there where you said not every out-of-the-box solution is going to work every place. And that's a key part that I talked to policyholders all the time about, well, you know, here you're not following the standards for fall protection like you've got a fall protection exposure right there. How come you're not putting something into that? He said, well, the typical harness solution gets in the way or the horizontal lifeline solution that we could get from the Amazon catalog isn't going to work within this particular space or area. And being innovative around those fall protection solutions, I think is a key part. And it's a great way because you really had to understand what your what the exposures were and then what the company [00:07:00] needed. Not safe approach, but the company you're working with, what they needed in order to make the job not only safe but productive. And I mean,
David Kozlowsky: [00:07:09] I think you're right, Peter. You have to really understand No. One, what OSHA's just telling you about, what are the regulations, No. One that you have to follow. And coming up with solutions within those regulations can still be out of the box without, you know, going through some of the traditional methods. You know, one of the things that we've worked on a lot is safety netting and safety netting is just one of those things that there's not a lot of stuff written on it. And you can be very creative and still follow the standards and the guidelines in the spirit of the law that they're giving you. That's where the original product came from. The Hatch ness, that was the first thing. I mean, it was taking something that was not traditionally considered a fall item and turning it into something, [00:08:00] testing it and certifying it and turning it into something. And that was in its infancy. I mean, harnessess weren't even body belts weren't outlawed until nineteen ninety six. I mean so back in, you know when I started it's like it was still kind of in its infancy regulatory wise. And so we carried that, you know, that desire to to be innovative and creative and help people find solutions to stuff, you know, all the way through to today.
Peter Koch: [00:08:29] And it is funny how you still find some I don't call it older or maybe it's a traditional understanding about fall protection. Like you said, like body belts weren't outlawed until 1996. But you still find him someplace. You'll go different places and you'll still find people that have that particular tool in their toolbox of solutions that they'll put in place somewhere. And it doesn't really fit. So there's a lack of knowledge in some cases out there. I think OSHA has done a great job at educating [00:09:00] the businesses out there about what is appropriate. But it's a passive type of education that people need to want to get it. And in your case, too, I think I find that when someone approaches you, at least when I've worked with safe approach in the past, there's been an exchange of education. Like you're you're looking for information about what the exposures are, what the workplace looks like, where I'm willing to go. And then you're also taking that and educating me about, well, you know, the solution that you might think is going to work isn't going to work for these reasons. And here is how it fits within the standard. So that education about what's good, what's out there, what's functional, and then why is a big part about what makes safe approach pretty special and then how some of their solutions or some of your solutions work well within the workplace?
David Kozlowsky: [00:09:55] Well, there's many different levels of education that takes [00:10:00] place when we go on a site visit. You know, as you mentioned, it's not always just, you know, what are the standards and how do I apply them to this situation? You know, and even in today's day and age, there's still a certain amount of education that takes place to get people convinced that they actually need it, that they actually should have it. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I tell people fall protection is like purchasing an insurance policy. It's one of those things that you hope you never need. And you might come to me and say, well, I've worked around this open hatch for 30 years and I've never fallen in. And I would say, well, if I was an auto insurer, you'd be a bad risk because they the numbers show you're going to probably get in an accident at some point. And if you've been here for 30 years and you haven't yet, there's a good chance you're going to. So just educating [00:11:00] people that, you know, you're not necessarily protecting for the everyday mundane tasks you're protecting for that one in a million shot, that one. And, you know, that thing that never could have happened. It just seems like, oh, this was a one in a million chance. But if that's that one time you're around an open hole and you know it's slippery and you get tangled up in a cord and you turn to look at somebody and you're doing three things at once. And next thing you know, you lose your balance and fall in. And you've done it eight thousand times and every time was perfect and you really don't think you need it. But that one time you need it, you want it to be there and educating people that just because you've done it a million times doesn't mean that there's not some value to protecting yourself.
Peter Koch: [00:11:50] And that is a really hard lesson for some folks to swallow without having the experience of having been the victim of that particular [00:12:00] scenario. It happens both ways on my end. So I'll go into a company initially and I'll identify uncontrolled fall hazards that companies have and then on the other hand, I'll go in post accidents and do an accident analysis and help them figure out why it occurred, because someone fell because an unidentified fall hazard, something that they didn't actually take care of. If I compare those two experiences and I have the one company that hasn't had an incident occur, whether it's an injury or just a near miss, they're the ones that are typically harder to convince that you need to put a solution in place. But the ones that have had it happen and especially the ones where it's been, unfortunately, a tragedy, they're the ones that really desire a solution. But it's truly unfortunate that that is the impetus behind people being gung ho about putting a force protection solution in. And you [00:13:00] I think you describe it very well. It's like an insurance policy. So if you put it in place and you maintain it and you install it and you educate around it, then that exposure that exists because of the job and there's no other way to manage that risk. You put those fall protection tools in place. Now you're helping to prevent the tragedy from happening and that's that insurance policy. So that's a cool way of thinking about it, really is.
David Kozlowsky: [00:13:27] That's exactly right. I mean, that's what we're trying to educate people, is that don't be the guy that calls me because you had somebody fall off something and you already have an injury. It's like let's , you know, work with this ahead of time. But we've had enough. And you can tell when that happens. I mean, there's been multiple times where in the past during our history, you can tell when you've gotten a call from somebody and you know that they had somebody fall there's an you know, an incident and now they're kind of in a panic [00:14:00] to come and, you know, put something in place. And so we just try to educate people to show them that they need it and in some cases show them that just because you opened up, you know, a catalogue and you see someone's, you know, list of harnesses and whatever, that just because you don't see that doesn't mean that there isn't a solution, that there's sometimes creative ways to come in and fix problems.
Peter Koch: [00:14:29] Yeah, let's diverge a little bit, I think this would be an interesting time to talk about this particular topic. And let's talk a little bit about the hierarchy of controls and how it can be used to address fall protection, because I think a lot of people and maybe not some of the folks who are listening to this podcast, because, you know, if you're a safety person, if you were in charge of safety for your company, you don't always or you're not going to start at personal protective equipment as the end all be all for your fall [00:15:00] protection solution. But a lot of folks, that's what they jump to. I want a harness. I want a lanyard and I want an anchor. And when I put that in place, I'm good to go. Boom, I've checked the box. I'm safe. And that's not really where we want to start. So let's can you talk a little bit about maybe the hierarchy, like from elimination to engineering and administrative controls to fall protection and how that fits in with your process of coming up with a solution?
David Kozlowsky: [00:15:27] Sure. I mean, when we go to a facility or go to look at a situation, you know, the hierarchy is to No. One to try to engineer out the fall to begin with. If you have a situation where there is a fall hazard, you want to try to look for solutions that engineer that out. So maybe it's a guardrail or something of that nature to take a situation where there is not an opportunity for a person to fall. So that would be at the most preferred [00:16:00] level. And you go down from there to kind of what is in the middle we call kind of a restraint type model where, OK, we can't really engineer out the fall. This isn't an application where we can, you know, put up a bunch of guardrails or put something to prevent people. But we could set up maybe some type of restraint system where you could use fall protection or PPE type equipment to prevent somebody from being able to get to the edge. And then finally, the honestly, what should be the last on the list. As you mentioned, a lot of people jump to first, but which should be last on the list, should be actual fall arrest. But then within that, once you've gone to a facility where, OK, we've ruled out the other opportunities. So we can't engineer out the fall. We can't prevent somebody from getting to the edge. We've determined that we actually do need [00:17:00] some type of fall arrest system. I would say we spend the most amount of time working within this kind of subcategory and that's educating people, the limitations of fall arrest and what you can and can't do with it and when it's appropriate to have something or not, you know, it happens all the time. I'll give you one example without naming any company names or anything. But a number of years ago, I was asked to come in and look at a situation where they had some concrete tanks that they were working on, those precast concrete tanks. And so the tanks were not overly large. They were only about seven or eight feet tall and they had to get on the top of these tanks to work on them. And they called us in and said, hey, listen, we've got this building and we want to put a cable up here so we can, you know, tie off while we're on these tanks. And after a rather long discussion, I basically [00:18:00] tried to educate them, say, listen, this isn't the right application. No. One, this building is extremely old. It's barely engineered to the snow load. I'm surprised it hasn't collapsed yet, much less attaching fall protection to the roof. But you're lucky to be maintaining the snow load in this region with this old prefab building. And you want to string a cable between them and you're only going to be eight feet off the floor. And by the time somebody falls off and the cable stretches out in the lanyard stretches out and all this happens, the person is going to hit the floor long before my system even catches you or arrest the fall. This isn't the right application. You need to do this. But that wasn't the cheapest alternative. And, you know, it was it was sad to see them go and purchase a couple of beam clamps and a cable and put it up there so that if anybody walked through, they could look up and say, [00:19:00] oh, see, we have our fall protection it's in place. We're doing what I supposed to be. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's working. And I would say, you know, going through the hierarchy is one thing, but spending time on helping people find something that's proper and works like it's supposed to is where I would definitely say we spend the majority of our time.
Peter Koch: [00:19:25] This is one of the reasons why I liked working with you guys in the past, because. You will spend the time to do the education about a particular propered solution or proffered solution and whether or not the company decides to go with you to purchase the solution that you're recommending for them to put in place, you're still going through the process of educating them and why this is a good spot and not just, hey, here it is. This is this is what's going to work for you. Put it in place or don't put it in place. Whatever you want. You really want to see people succeed. And I think [00:20:00] just from having some conversations with you and knowing the team is there's a real desire within safe approach to not have people hit the ground. I mean, you go back to 1988 and Roger and putting that net in place, I mean, the mentality around many places would have been, well, don't get so close to the edge and you won't fall. Right. Not to think about putting a net in place and and building on that. I think that is a philosophy that kind of flows through safe approach that you really you don't want to see anybody hit the deck. So education's part of that. And determining the right solution is part of that.
David Kozlowsky: [00:20:39] It's a tough thing to do to walk into a place and not sell somebody something because what they're wanting to do isn't going to work. It's easy to walk in and say, OK, well, I'll take your money. And here, here's a system. And meanwhile, you know, 10 years down the road, somebody [00:21:00] falls and it fails or doesn't work like it's supposed to. I mean, it's a tough thing to do to sometimes go in there and have to tell people that. But the other side of that is that we've been really successful and really good at coming in and helping people find what would work and helping people, you know, come up with solutions that sometimes are a little bit out of the ordinary or out of the box, to use a cliche. But that's you know, we've been really good at that over the years. And I think that's what's helped us succeed, is working with people to come up with those solutions.
Peter Koch: [00:21:39] Yeah, for sure. Can you talk a little bit about some of the fall protection challenges that you've seen over the years that you talked about the one with the concrete tanks? I'm sure that there are plenty of other examples that you might be able to share with us. But I think it's important for people to see that, you know, some of the fall protection needs [00:22:00] aren't just on the construction site or aren't just in a heavy industry like oil or mills, but it exists in many different places. It could be hospitality, it could be hotels, it could be office buildings, depending on what you're doing. So could you share some of them? Maybe the fall protection challenges that people have come to you with and maybe some of the solutions that you've been able to offer?
David Kozlowsky: [00:22:25] Sure. That's one of the unique things. You're right, Peter, about fall protection is that it really touches so many different industries. I think a lot of times people associate it with construction. So they you know, they just think, oh, here's an iron worker, you know, erecting steel. Well, obviously, he needs fall protection, but it really touches almost every industry. We have customers that range from semiconductor facilities, that make machines that make semiconductors and people think, oh, electronics, [00:23:00]why do you need full protection for that? But, you know, these are big machines, similar to what the concrete tanks were, seven, eight feet tall. They're up there on the top of them. They're building them and they're constructing them. And they're in a room, a clean room maybe where there's limited opportunities for tie off. Where can you connect to, you know, limited space. And so, you know, that's a unique situation where somebody might not expect that there would be a fall situation. But there there was there was a really unique challenge. You had a very low ceiling, very high machines, a clean room, very tight tolerances for space. These machines were packed in here. It's not like you could just be rolling guardrails around the room and, you know, put them up. So on those type of things, the stuff that we we look at, we did a job a couple of years ago for actually the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. They did a dome rehabilitation project and we put in a custom safety [00:24:00] net that was a safety slash work platform that actually that would suspend inside the interstitial space at the dome and allow workers to actually clean the dome. They would actually climb in it and and clean it. So, I mean, there's another example of kind of a unique situation where not many people would think of. Then there was the usual stuff. I mean, even what, you know, maybe we would consider a run of the mill, but not so run of the mill is, you know, even in construction, there's countless times that we run into where we'll have let's take the stanchion, for example, our bridge stanchions sell hundreds of them all over the country with a couple of common dials. One clamps to a steel IBM, one can bolt to concrete. Those are the two most common types of bridge girders, right? Steel and concrete. But, you know, there's we came [00:25:00] up with a solution a number of years ago for we had a contractor that has some kind of oddly shaped box beams that had no flanges on them. They weren't concrete, they were steel, and they had no way to tie off. And honestly, the solution was really something as simple as taking the stanchion that we already had the to connect Lifeline's to, and engineering and building a new kind of base that would have, you know, there would be able to adapt to this type of beam. So it could be anything from a, you know, a unique work situation to even just something as mundane as, hey, we have a different type of connection here. And everything that we've seen on the market doesn't work. And you adapt something that you have to work with this. So those are you know, those are the most common types of things that we run into,
Peter Koch: [00:25:53] Again, thinking outside the box, but sort of inside the box. Like, you don't have to design something from scratch, but you can look [00:26:00] at a particular situation, modify what you have in order to fit the application, but still managed to fit it within the standards that you have to meet in order for it to be certified for fall protection.
David Kozlowsky: [00:26:15] Sure. Yeah, right. Exactly.
Peter Koch: [00:26:18] So that kind of leads to another question here. Like if someone has a fall protection problem like there, listen to this podcast and going, hey, you know, I we've been really lucky over here. And I'll give you an example. We had working with a hospitality organization that had a fairly sizable flat roof space that they had to get up there and shovel all the time here in New England when we when we have snow. So up in northern New England, we still have snow somewhere through the wintertime. And even like this year, snow has been throughout the country. Even Texas had snow this particular year. So the flat roof, they you [00:27:00] know, they didn't really see it as a fall protection hazard because for the most of the time, they were not anywhere near the edge. But the maintenance guys or the people that they hired to help with maintenance were there shoveling the roof off. So they had to be close to that particular edge all the time. And if the company sees an issue like that, they could come to you and say, hey, we need a solution. But I imagine that in your initial conversation with those guys that you need some information that would help you point in a direction for a solution. So if they're listening like, hey, you know, we've got this pretty unique challenge or maybe it's a mundane challenge, we just haven't been able to figure it out. What are some things that you need to know as the solution provider about a situation that would help you get an idea of where you might need to go
David Kozlowsky: [00:27:56] There's a short answer and a long answer to that question. And, [00:28:00] we'll stick to somewhat the short answer for the purposes of this show. But the short answer to that is, is there when you when you start to get into this, you find that there really is no set of standard questions that you run into because each situation is is different. And, you know, I would take your example of a rooftop situation and then coming up with a solution to that, we would need to know things like, well, how big is the area that we're trying to cover? Probably the most importantly, how, you know, how many people do you want to put on the roof at one time? Because the solution for well, I want to send one guy up there to shovel off this. You know, this little hippogriff or something is different than, you know, here we have a warehouse facility and I need 30 guys up there shoveling the roof. The solutions are different for those two applications. [00:29:00] So, you know, you would want to know how many people you would have working up there. Unfortunately, you need to know how much those people weigh. That's a question nobody likes to ask. But I'm going to tell you, this comes up more often than anything these days is OSHA's limitations of, you know, the three hundred and ten pounds fall protection. And while we do have gear that's ANSI rated for higher than that, that is an important question that on. Unfortunately, we ask a lot how many people how much do they weigh and then what are they doing, how close to the edge or how close to the fall hazard are they getting? What functions are they performing while they're there? Those are types of generic questions that I think apply to most any situation. And we would do we would start there.
Peter Koch: [00:29:52] Yeah, that's a I think it's a good list because it really does hit on all the hits on all the cylinders to getting you thinking about. All right. [00:30:00] So where what potential solution is there? Is it a restraint device? Is it truly a fall arrest system or is it an engineering solution where you can do all those will tend to lead you to one way or the other. And if you don't ask those questions and you just kind of look at through the catalog and like as the business owner going, well, it looks like this might be the solution you might put a solution in that actually adds more hazards than an appropriate solution would.
David Kozlowsky: [00:30:32] Yeah, because those questions would lead into other questions once you've established the duties that they're performing and how many people and what they're trying to accomplish, depending on the situation, those questions lead into other questions like, well, how far we've established that, you know, we need some fall protection here. Well, how far could the person fall, you know, talking about the tank situation, if you're [00:31:00] only six feet up, off of a lower level, you know, a horizontal lifeline with a shock absorber lanyard attached to it is probably not the right solution. It might not be the right solution, even if you're 20 feet above a lower level, depending on how you're tying off and what you're doing. So those questions lead into other questions like how far is the fall distance? Are there any hazards below the fall area that we should take into consideration? And then ultimately that leads into which, again, this is way deeper than we probably have time for today. But OK, so they we've engineered a solution and a person fell off. How do we get them down? You have the fall clearance, you have all the gear you need and everything is lined up, except that there's no conceivable way of getting the person down in the amount of time that you have. So you end up saying, OK, we for that reason, we actually [00:32:00] need to engineer out the fall. You can't have someone fall here because you're never going to be able to get them down or get them out, especially in the case of, say, like a confined space entry where there's only one way in and one way out and you don't have the ability for a couple of firefighters to come in with a stretcher and put you on it and carry you out. And so the rescue and retrieval aspect of it is another important thing that we usually would hit on. Again, leading into the basic questions would lead into those depending on the situation.
Peter Koch: [00:32:38] Let's take a quick break. In 2018, 320 of the 1008 construction related fatalities were attributed to falls. If you're listening to this podcast before May 3rd, of 2021, then you still have a chance to participate. The eighth annual national safety stand down to prevent falls and construction [00:33:00] is happening from May 3rd through the 7th of this year. If you're listening to it after you still have an opportunity, a safety stand down is a voluntary event asking employers to take a break and talk directly with their teams specifically about safety. The stand down around fall protection asks employers to talk specifically about fall hazards their team is exposed to because fall hazards exist in almost every industry. Think about ladders or roof maintenance and scaffolding. MEMIC is asking that all employers take advantage of the resources offered at www.OSHA.gov/stopfallsStanddown and talk to your team about fall hazards. Even if you're not in the construction business. If you're looking for more fall protection resources to help you educate your staff or inspect your workplace, check out the MEMIC safety director at www.MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety. Now [00:34:00] let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:34:04] It's a really, really good point about rescue, and it's I think it's something that does not get discussed enough when we talk about fall protection. I had a client a number of years ago where I went to go to his construction client building residential homes, and they were building a house somewhere like, you know, township six, row 11. So, you know, you don't have emergency facilities really close. Like it's going to be an hour before someone can get to you if you call nine one one, if you have reception on that day, like if you're on the wrong side of the house, you're not going to get reception. So we're looking at like three and a half stories on the Walk-In basement side. And they're planning the roof process. And it's like, well, what do you have for full protection of all? We have the typical you know, they've got a rope grab and a vertical lifeline and a temporary roof anchor and which would work fine for most cases. But if he fell working by [00:35:00] himself and he fell and there was any injury at all, he's not coming down until his wife decides that. Well, it's been a little longer than normal. Maybe I should call the bar first and then I should try to find if he's still at the work site. And so from then, like a fall arrest solution was not the solution that we discussed. It was like, you really should get a piece of machinery in here to do the work that you need to do because, you know, you can get a lift up there. Of course, it's going to probably cost you a little bit more. But if you do fall, the result can be tragic and it's not really where you want to be. So that's a it's a great point. I think people miss that that rescue process because they never think that they're going to fall. They just think most of the time that the fall protection solution is there to check the box. And I'm never going to use it.
David Kozlowsky: [00:35:48] Yes. This goes back to the insurance thing that we were talking about. Exactly. It's I'm going to check the box. It's here. Yep. I did it. So I'm protected. But you never expect that you're actually going to use it, convincing [00:36:00] people to stop thinking in terms of money, which unfortunately in private industry that I mean, that is a very important topic. You just can't get around that. There's not unlimited budgets for everything. But sometimes the consequences of a fall or a serious injury could be life and death when, you know, maybe spending just a few extra dollars on the right solution or maybe a different solution would possibly prevent that. So you're right.
Peter Koch: [00:36:29] Yeah. And I think another part to consider, and I'm not sure if this sort of falls within your wheelhouse within Safe Approach, but training for those people who are going to be using the solution, whether it is an engineered solution and understanding the limitations or a restraint solution or a personal fall arrest solution. So training of those people that are using it is pretty key. I know I've had conversations when I go to companies that are using a fall protection solution, regardless of what it is. [00:37:00] And you talk to the employees and there's a certain level of training that OSHA requires. And I like to think that there should be a certain level of understanding for that individual who is using that so that they understand what box they have to work in
David Kozlowsky: [00:37:15] And they should be. And that's one of the things that we that we talk about quite a bit. So part of the survey process is discussing that very thing. And this comes up very often in rooftop safety, as you were talking about earlier. So sure, we spend we spend a very high percentage of our time these days working on rooftop safety. And the certainly the two most common solutions would be some type of guardrail or some type of roof anchor or lifeline or fall arrest type apparatus. And part of the discussion we invariably have is, OK, so there's two different costs to this project. There's [00:38:00] the upfront costs, the initial costs, the capital expenditure of X amount of dollars for a full guardrail system or a roof anchor or a lifeline system. And quite often, you know, the guardrails get overlooked because it's more costly. The capital expenditure is, you know, just more expensive upfront. And people immediately want to go to. Let me just throw a couple of cans up there and cable and call it good. And part of the discussion invariably has to be the training that you were just talking about and telling the customers, say, listen, if you put the guardrails up there on the roof, they're set and forget you go up, you put them up there. You can have unlimited people. You can move around as much as you wish, and you don't have to inspect them and certify them. And there's really no training involved. Whereas if we put fall arrest up there, you're limited to a certain number of people that however many people are allowed to be on the [00:39:00] engineered into that system. You're limited to the weight of the person, because part of the engineering is the weight and the dynamic forces of the fall, you're looking at training for every person that goes up there, because we wouldn't recommend that you allow people to use an active fall arrest system without, you know, having some training and understand what you're doing. You're looking at an annual inspection every year. You're looking at recertification every five years because we don't want to just leave these up there and then hope they're going to work 10 years down the road every five years. You need some type of recertification. So there's all these things that come after the fact that may or may not make it your best solution, even though the cost may be less upfront and the training that's involved in it may be one of those things that might be a limiting factor for you, training all your users and having roof sign off sheets and just covering [00:40:00] yourself and coming up with a rescue plan.
Peter Koch: [00:40:03] Yeah, there's a lot more to it, depending on what solution that you have. And you're right, I always look at safety being kind of one of three things that have to get managed within any company. People who have heard this podcast before have heard me talk about it. And it's not nothing new. It's safety, quality and productivity. So you have all three of those things which have to be in balance in order to be a successful company. And I joke all the time. I can make you as safe as you'll never have an injury. You'll never get anything done. Right. So I can put safety first all the time and you'll never have anything else happen because there's you're preventing that person from engaging anywhere near that particular exposure. And the exposure happens to be the job that they need to do. Like, you can't be a sewage technician without going into the hole you can't be a roofer without going up on the roof. So you [00:41:00] have to have a balance in there so that it fits. So you've got to find the solution that fits within that safety, quality and productivity triangle. I think from a different view standpoint is not putting safety at the top of the triangle, like in productivity and quality or at the base. You flip it around and you put that point at the bottom. So safety is the thing that balances productivity and quality. And if you have a good, robust safety program and think about that from the the perspective of the scenario that you just proffered there with the choice of guardrails versus a horizontal lifeline solution that you have for people. Well, the horizontal lifeline solution is good as long as you stay within your productivity demands for what it's designed for, guaranteed you will have productivity, demands that will exceed the design of that system, ike you will need more people up there or you'll have [00:42:00] to have a heavier person that gets up there. Something will exceed the design of it. So if you think about safety as as the base right, the guardrail on that particular piece will balance productivity and quality much better than that horizontal lifeline would. So having that robust safety program really fits within puts you in a better position to have a safe and healthy and productive workplace so.
David Kozlowsky: [00:42:25] Well, trying to trying to balance risk with productivity and with investment. I keep talking about the money aspect because it seems like it comes up so often is that, you know, people want to spend money on their businesses that do one of things. They either save them time or save the money in productivity and safety. Let just be honest. Very rarely does either of those things very rarely saves you time on your project or labor. And it certainly doesn't save you money unless, you know, there was a potential [00:43:00] incident down the road. We could talk about opportunity cost for a potential accident. We talk about that all day long. But, you know, up front at least, you know, going back to the whole insurance analogy, you're spending money on something that you hope you never use. And if you're creative and use the term you just did robust with your safety program and you spend, you know, time managing it properly, it really doesn't have to have always that big of an impact on what you do. If you're being creative in spending the time to actually analyse the problem and come up with a creative solution, it doesn't always have to cost a ton of money and it doesn't always have to be so obstructive that it's limiting the job that you do and you're not. There's certain times where it does. I mean, you know, there's times where you just can't get around that. [00:44:00] But that doesn't have to be the norm. And that's partly what. We do we try to come in and listen to customers concerns, listen to the, you know, the task that they're doing, as I mentioned before, and find out who's doing what and where and see what we can do to be as seamless as possible to make it so that with as little impact on productivity and bottom line cost, come in and try to make that person safe. I mean, there is a hierarchy. I mean, let's get back to that briefly. I mean, you know, OSHA never says that there is never allowed to be any risk in a job. Certain jobs have risks. And so it's not practical to take every job that's ever out there and say, oh, there's absolutely zero risk of an injury or zero risk of anything. Even OSHA doesn't realize that otherwise there would be no such thing as fall arrest. Because, you know, quite honestly, sometimes the act of falling and getting caught can injure [00:45:00] you. I mean, there's a possibility that you can get hurt during a fall. So I think if you just manage it effectively, try to engineer out the fall whenever you can and then when you can't spend some time to manage it effectively. And I think you would find that not always does it really affect your productivity and your bottom line as much as you maybe think it does.
Peter Koch: [00:45:24] And I think that's a good place to sort of come to a close here, because that is something that is hugely beneficial to going to an expert like yourself to talk through the different solutions and have an idea or get an idea about how a particular solution might actually affect you positively or possibly negatively, instead of just looking through the file protection catalogue and finding the, you know, fall compliance and a bucket in buying that and putting it out there, it might not be the best solution. But sometimes that's [00:46:00] the only resource that someone thinks they have. But there are other resources out there. And I think safe approach brings a good philosophy to understanding the problem and also to developing a solution. So I want to throw this question at you here as we come to a close. And this kind of goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning in your history of just coming into it cold into the fall protection process and learning and taking chances and understanding and then finally getting to the point where now you're the president and an owner of Safe Approach. So if you go back to when you started, like, what do you know now that you wish you had known when you started out from a fall protection standpoint?
David Kozlowsky: [00:46:46] That's a really tough question. No one's ever asked me that before. I mean, my brain immediately goes to all of the knowledge that I've gleaned over the years. And I [00:47:00] don't know if I have an immediate answer to that. I would maybe have to think about it some more. But when I first started out, you know, as I went through the learning process, I know I put a lot of pressure on myself to think that I had to be the be all end all to everybody for everything, or they weren't going to call me or they weren't going to trust me with anything. And maybe I guess to answer your question, I think probably one of the biggest things I've learned is that sometimes it's OK to tell somebody, you know, I don't have a solution for that, or at least I don't have the right solution for that. Or maybe I need to go think about it for a while and come back. And just to be honest with people, not that I was ever dishonest, but it was really hard in the beginning to be OK with not knowing everything. And 22 years later, I don't know everything. [00:48:00] And every day I learn something. And it's you know, I think if you ever get to the point where you think you know everything, that you don't know anything. And so it's really just a matter of kind of I wish I could have gone back and told myself, it's OK. It's OK to learn. Yes, fall protection is important. Yes, people's lives are on the line. And yes, you definitely need to take it seriously. But it's OK to not know everything and it's OK to tell people when you don't know. And I feel like people will trust you more if you tell them that you don't know, rather than trying to pretend like you do know everything.
Peter Koch: [00:48:37] I think that's actually great advice. And especially in the fall protection realm, you know, if you're just starting out in your own business as a contractor or you come into a safety position and you're looking at a particular situation to look at it and be OK with not knowing, but also understanding that there are experts out there that you can rely on or you can go to the help find [00:49:00] the best solution. And it might not just be one expert. It might be. A combination of maybe it's your insurance carrier and they have a safety expert with expertise around the situation that you're looking at, and maybe it's someone like yourself, David, who works for a specialized company that deals with that particular piece. So knowing where your resources are and being comfortable in that tension of yeah, I think I should know, but I don't know. And that's OK as long as I seek out the best solution that's out there.
David Kozlowsky: [00:49:30] Smart people surround themselves with other smart people because they realize they don't know everything. They can't possibly know everything. So you try to surround yourself with people that fill in the blanks and fill in the gaps of what your skill set is. And even myself, I know my skill sets. I know what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. And I try to surround myself with people that are good at things that I'm not good at. And so, you know, if you're out there and you have a unique [00:50:00] situation or you have, you know, a tough spot that you haven't tackled because you just don't know what to do and maybe you do like I do and procrastinate rather than tackle it, then you know what? Maybe, you know, maybe just reach out to somebody for some help and say, hey, let's I need to tackle this and I don't know what to do and let somebody come in and give you a hand. And we can do that. We can give you a hand. We work with you, too. We're not we're not pushy. And we don't we don't come in and try to sell you a bunch of stuff you don't need. We just try to come in and help. We really do.
Peter Koch: [00:50:34] That's awesome. And you set me up for this question. So where can our listeners find out more about safe approach if they do have that question?
David Kozlowsky: [00:50:42] Sure. You can find us on the Web, www.safeapproach.com, but certainly the phone I'm old school. I like to get phone calls. So 800-471-1157. You can give us a call. You're going to go to the website. And if you're listening [00:51:00] to this podcast and you felt compelled to call me, it's probably because you need something that's not on our Web site. So it's a great resource. But if you go there and you look at the same harnesses that you see in everybody else's catalog, certainly pick up the phone, give us a call. You can email me Davidk@safeapproach.com and we don't charge anything for we're not consultants. So I don't, you know, charge people to come out and do site surveys. Everything's related to solutions. So, you know, we don't want to come out and, you know, charge you for, you know, a site survey and give you reports and all that stuff. But if you have a genuine solution that you need help with, we don't charge anything. We come out, we'll give you give you an honest look. And if we can come up with a solution, we will present one.
Peter Koch: [00:51:54] Perfect, thanks. That's awesome. David, I appreciate that. And I imagine you'll get a couple of calls about [00:52:00] that.
David Kozlowsky: [00:52:01] Thanks for having me.
Peter Koch: [00:52:01] Yeah, no problem. So that about wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast. And David, again, I wanted to thank you for sharing your expertise with us. And I'd like to have you back at some point in time, because we've only really scratched the surface over the different types of fall protection and the requirements that are out there. And we haven't even really touched the standards that are out there either. So if you're willing, I'd love to have you back on.
David Kozlowsky: [00:52:23] I would love to. This is a lot of fun and yes, definitely any time.
Peter Koch: [00:52:27] Fantastic. So thanks again for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there, thank you. To today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking about fall protection basics with David Kozlowsky, president and owner of Safe Approach in Poland, Maine. And if you have any questions about fall protection or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources and links to other podcasts, as well as our [00:53:00] entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thanks, because that really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
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Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. There are a lot of joints in the body. Some are small like your fingers, and some are complex, like the shoulder or the wrist, but some are built to sustain heavy loads like the hip. And then there's the knee. We have two of them and the knee may seem like a fairly simple joint, after all, it just hinges back and forth. It doesn't even rotate or twist like other joints do, or at least they're not designed to do that specifically. But think about what it has to do. It really has to stabilize us when we're moving, when we're standing, when we're sitting. It has a lot to do with our ability to balance. And even though the joints below it, like the ankle joint in the bones that are in the foot and the hip, have a lot to do with how our knee works and functions. It really does connect the two parts of the body together. From a sports standpoint, knees have a pretty high percentage of injury, especially those that require surgery [00:01:00] in activities like a weighted pivot, sort of like soccer, football, tennis and basketball or sports that have a tendency for lateral posterior loading like skiing. There's a fairly significant proportion of injuries in those sporting activities have to do with the knee. There are tons of different ways that you can injure the knee. And in my work history, prior to me coming to MEMIC, I spent some time as a paid ski patroller about 10 years or so, and I still do that off and on. And I can recall plenty of knee injuries to both the staff and the guests. Some were impact related where you're going to fall down or hit something or strike something. But many were from a slow, backward, twisting fall and still others were from overuse walking down the mountain as a snow maker or even that weighted pivot as a lift operator trying to bump a chair. Knees I think overall we're one of the most frequently injured joints that I saw. And then never mind injuries. My knees, as I get older seem to be the thing that slow me down [00:02:00] after having been in a static position for a while. I just want to think about this for a minute. Can you feel it if you're sitting in a car listening to this or maybe you're sitting in a chair or have been seated for a while? When you start to get up, though, your knees might be the thing that are a little bit creaky or a little bit slow. And you can't move as fast maybe as you once could. Well, to talk about this a little more, I have Al Brown on the line with me today. And Al is MEMIC's director of ergonomics, Al has been on the podcast before and brings a unique insight into how our bodies deal with the stresses placed on them during work and play. So on today's episode, we're going to look at the knees specifically how they work and how we can keep them healthy and from being injured. Al welcome back to the podcast.
Al Brown: [00:02:47] Thank you. Be happy to be here.
Peter Koch: [00:02:49] Psyched to have you back. Hey, so you've been on the podcast before. Why don't you take a couple of moments here and give folks who might be listening for the first time a little background about what your history is and what you do for MEMIC [00:03:00] in your position?
Al Brown: [00:03:01] Sure. Pete, appreciate that. I've been around for a while. I'm a baby boomer, but I'd like to try to keep the body young as much as I can. Started life out as a went to Penn State University for my undergrad degree and athletic training, then went on to Howard University in Washington, DC for my physical therapy training, then ended up moving to Maine. About forty years ago, I worked in an orthopedic clinic and then started my own practice with a partner and we worked on site industry, which is was a spectacular experience for me simply because that was where I got my interest in ergonomics and looking at people coming into the clinic that were injured and asking myself, well, why? What's the root cause of this? So we would actually walk back out to the job and take a look at the job tasks and realize there would be specific things that would create the risk [00:04:00] and exposure and then made our abilities to treat them much easier. So it was a natural flow to transition to work injury management, which is where we are today. I been with MEMIC for probably 18 years, fifteen of those as an employee. And essentially that's what we do, is we go out and we're partnering with industry and we look at the risks and exposures and we try to figure out what might be the cause and what they can do from an ergonomic standpoint to reengineer the job and make the change so we can lower the risk. So it's a win for all of us. So and that brings me to here today and what we do and from doing podcast to webinars to live trainings. Looking forward to those you're back to live trainings. But that's how I got here today. Have done some supplemental education at the University of Michigan, working with Armstrong and chafing up there in the engineering department and also at Harvard at the School of Public Health. So, [00:05:00] you know, you have to stay fresh. Things change, it's like medicine. A lot of what we do in the world of medicine is based on research and a lot of the other stuff is just fairy dust. So we like to kind of dust out that fairy dust when we can and get real data and statistics and follow the science. So and with ergonomics, it does change. So we're always having to stay on top of the research.
Peter Koch: [00:05:23] That's one of the reasons that you bring so much depth to these conversations, is you have a great history and you've not only seen it from a physical therapy side, but you've looked at it from an industry side and you've looked at it from the research side. So I think kind of trying to build on that in our discussion today about the knee joint itself. I think it's important for us to start with the basics. Right. So we want to move out that fairy dust and we want to make sure people understand that the joint isn't actually as simplistic as folks might seem or might think. So why don't we start with some anatomy? So why don't you take us through how [00:06:00] the knee is designed, what makes it work and maybe what some of its limitations are?
Al Brown: [00:06:07] Sure we can go way back Pete, but we'll try to keep it. But it's funny. You look at arms and legs and those are pretty non-functional and a human being when you're first born because we're all trying to develop core stability and that core is your butt your gut, your whole axial skeleton. And once you get some strength and control in those areas, you then can start using the extremities and that upper extremities seem to be first. And then eventually we get down to where we wobble over to the you know, we kind of pull ourselves up on the sofa or on the coffee table and we learn to stand up because we're controlling our hip muscles and then our legs and knees and then we're able to get very mobile. And that's where we are now. Sadly enough, as we age, we begin to wobble again and then we regress. When you look at the knee joint, we often sometimes [00:07:00] just refer to as the hinge joint. But it's not really true. It does hinge. But it also translates to so that there's two big bones, actually the two biggest bones in the body, the femur, which is your thigh bone, and then the tibia, which is the second largest bone, is the lower leg bone, which bears about 80 percent of the force of the weight created by the body. There's the fibula, which is the smaller bone down the side, which you can actually fracture of the fibula and still keep on going just simply because it doesn't bear much of the weight. The largest, sesamoid bone. That'll be on a test later.
Peter Koch: [00:07:36] OK, thank you.
Al Brown: [00:07:37] Sesamoid bones are the ones that just kind of free floating and it's kind of. And it's your kneecap or your patella, as they call it. So those four bones kind of come together. They're held together by ligaments and tendons and muscles. We look at the alignment because you have both the anatomy and the strengthening of the developmental sequence. That's what a baby goes through to where we [00:08:00] are now. But you also have the genetics that you were handed by mom and dad. So, you know, when we look down at our feet, they may impact the knee. You know, a quick thing everybody can do to see how well they're aligned is if you take your little hipbones, that little bump on the front, not your side down where your pockets are, but on the front side when you lay down and you know, you can feel those two little bumps out in the front, there's a fairly large muscle that goes through the kneecap that attaches there. And if you drew a line from there and then go all the way down to the bump right below your kneecap on your shin, there's a big bump there. And then you look at so you draw a line straight down or, you know, take a chalk line and snap a chalk line on that bad boy and see where your kneecap falls, it should almost be divided, split in half by that line. But the way people are built, if some have knock knees, are going to find that the kneecap will fall inside the line or valgus knees [00:09:00] as the term you would hear medically or if they had various knees or Bow-Legged, that kneecaps are going to fall outside that line. So that's going to impact how that kneecap moves up and down. So if you look at the underside of the kneecap, it's sort of V shaped and that V shape, it's convex. So that's you know, it's a V the projects out covered by cartilage and it fits in a complementary v shaped concave cavity in the femur. So they sort of what they call track. It's kind of like tracking in there. So you want that thing to sit right in the middle. But unfortunately, with genetics, with postural habits, with aging, with, you know, we're more sedentary lifestyle. We begin to change muscle length, muscle strength alignments and we begin to start messing around with where that kneecap, you know, tracks. So, you know, we could go on our whole podcast just on the anatomy, but it's a fairly complex [00:10:00] joint. Think of it this way, too. It functions as a close kinetic chain. Most of the time. That's a fancy term. But let me see if I can. It works, it's the thing that connects us to the Earth. So every time we put that foot on the ground, it's a kinetic chain. It's closed. We put the distance and the foot on the ground. So now all the loading comes up through the body for us to function, you know, give you an example of an open kinetic chain. Your arm is more of an open kinetic change. So when I reach out to get something, I'm not sure of a push up. But what I'm reaching out to grab something this end is not connected. It's allowing me to do stuff, to bring things to me. But your lower extremity is a closed kinetic chain, so it has to control and then move us forward. And just gate is real complex thing that we will see how it impacts us as we go through this podcast. We'll talk a little bit about, you know, what happens to us when certain things happen for example, sitting you [00:11:00] know, when you sit down Pete what happens to those giant muscles in your hips and pelvic area? What are they doing?
Peter Koch: [00:11:06] Depends on what side they're on. Right. So by sitting down, everything on the front is relaxed. If I'm sitting in the back, I've got some tightness going on because it might be stretching the bottom. My glute, right. Is that how it works?
Al Brown: [00:11:17] Yes. Yeah. So they're passive. So you have some that are shortening some of the lengthening. But think about activity. Is there any activity going on in.
Peter Koch: [00:11:24] There's nothing going on there. Just relaxing.
Al Brown: [00:11:27] Yeah. So what happens is they begin to atrophy, so now those get weaker. So what happens is those muscles get weaker. It begins to impact what goes on down below because remember that developmental sequence as a child, we have to strengthen our core and then we can start to use our big muscles on our hips and legs and our extremities. And we can function to be mobile. But if we lose some of that core strength, we begin to impact what goes on down below.
Peter Koch: [00:11:53] And all that progression as the infant grows relies on activity. If the infant is [00:12:00] not able to be active, they don't, you know, strengthen their core and then they can't build the musculature, the movement patterns in the muscle groups in order to make everything, function. I do want to take you back a little bit into the anatomy part. So we talked about the bones. We talked about some about the muscles. We talked quite a bit about the kneecap. And I like that that conversation about how the kneecap tracks and the visual line and where does that fall, because it could give you some indications on what might be in your future. And then we'll talk later about what might we be able to do to compensate for some of that. But you didn't talk a whole lot about the tendons in the ligaments in there, which are some of the things that do get injured, especially in activities. So whether it be a sport activity or even a slip and fall, those are the things that are going to get damaged. What are the tendons and ligaments make up the knee joint and what do they do?
Al Brown: [00:12:51] Sure, yeah. There's quite a few. There's four major ligaments that we look at. There's a whole bunch of ligaments. But if we look at the four that typically are highlighted [00:13:00] and take the hit and again, you know, when you look at athletes today, you know, there's a lot of let's take football, for example. You see a lot of the interior linemen just with all these things on their knees. And part of that is just to protect them because there's such big bodies moving around. And if one falls in the wrong position and whacks the knee, you can impact those ligaments or tendons or cartilage. But the four there's a medial collateral in the lateral collateral ligament and basically they're there. You know, the medial side is to prevent your news from getting. Inward, sort of like in a knock kneed position, the lateral one does the opposite, it prevents you from getting shifted outward and then inside there's two that are fairly large. There's the anterior cruciate ligament and then the posterior cruciate ligament, the anterior cruciate prevents sort of that shifting forward of your [00:14:00] that tibia. Remember that big bone in the lower leg from shifting forward and it does control some of the rotation. Posterior ligament does the opposite. So you had referenced skiing, skiing as an example of where there's a lot of torque and forces created by skis and skis today are actually you know, they're different. Back in the day when I used to lace mine up and clipped down the wire binding, we saw more just boot top fractures. And just because that's where the hit would be. But today's world, you know, it's reengineered and the boots halfway up your leg and it's clipped on. Fortunately, that tends to translate the forces up into that knee. For an example, what's it called? You're more familiar with the skiing industry than I where the back of the ski hits and it creates an interior translation of the knee forward. So it forces the knee forward quickly and you get to enter cruciate ligament injury.
Peter Koch: [00:14:56] Sure. That's part of what they call the phantom foot injury. So that [00:15:00] that phantom foot motion, when the ski accelerates forward and, you know, more of your mass is above your knee than below your knee. So the thing that moves faster is the tibia and what's below the tibia with the boot that accelerates forward things above that don't move quite so fast. So you put a significant stress there on the ligaments, ACL, PCL or ACL specifically.
Al Brown: [00:15:25] So that, you know, there's an example of, you know, two sports where you have traumatic injuries. You know, we also see that in industry to where somebody might be driving a truck and they've gotten to their location. And instead of climbing down like we encourage workers to do, they may step out onto those saddle tanks, look down and jump down, and all of a sudden they get a rotational force. And now we've got a torn ligament, medial collateral ligament, maybe, you know, the inter cruciate ligament with that sort of rotational torsion force, you might throw in the medial meniscus [00:16:00] and the terrible triad, as they would call it. And so you've started the process of sort of degeneration of the knee. And we've all had those little oh boy, my knee aches a little bit. What was that or what did I do? Or I jumped out of a tree or I, you know, was running around the backyard and I torqued on something and where I'm skiing down the hill and I twisted all those things kind of contribute to the general breakdown of the knee as we age. But there's those four ligaments. There's a bunch of different cartilage. There's fibro cartilage, and then there's hyaline, cartilage, fiber. Cartilage is more fibrous, just like the name implies in the hyaline, cartilage is more smooth. So that's more on joint surfaces like the top of the tibia, the bottom of the femur. It's almost like taking those bones and dipping them in a can of paint. That's where you find your hyaline cartilages, you know, sort of puts a coating over them, the meniscus or more the fibrous cartilage. So those look like donuts and they sit on top of that lower bone, the tibia, and there's like two of them side by side because the femur has that big rounded double [00:17:00]end there that actually sits down in those cartilage. So, again, it's kind of a stabilizer for them to a certain extent when we're upright.
Peter Koch: [00:17:07] So it kind of gives them a pocket, that fibrous cartilage for the femur to sit in. And then the hyaline cartilage gives those surfaces the ability to glide instead of grind.
Al Brown: [00:17:18] Right. Yeah. And a key component of all that then is just moisture or snow. You know, it's called synovial fluid, joint capsule fluid. That stuff is there to lubricate the joint. And, you know, needless to say, as we get older, yeah, there's less lubrication. So, you know, things get a little stickier. It's called it you know, sometimes it's referred to as the gel factory. I think you referenced it in the beginning when you said, you know, when you go to get up in your little stiff and achy.
Peter Koch: [00:17:49] That's exactly it.
Al Brown: [00:17:50] Yeah. Movement promotes a reduction in that gel factor because it's like taking anything mechanical. And if you haven't moved it for [00:18:00] a while, it things get sticky. You know, there's not lubrication that grease and oil moving around the thing and we're no different. So when you're static sitting for an extended period of time, you're sort of draining out the fluids and then you start to get sort of a I'm going to call it a dryness, but no fluid between, say, the kneecap and the femur. So when you start the movement, get up to walk, get out of the truck. You have to get through that. Oh, that ache is that dryness. But then you eventually lubricate and then you're good to go.
Peter Koch: [00:18:35] We talked a little bit about your body being like a car, too. And so if you think about that car that's been sitting. Idle all night, cold, cold evening, and you go to start it up in the morning, if you don't give it at the opportunity to warm up at Low Rev's and you push it down the road at moderate to fast speed, you haven't allowed the engine oil to warm up and to start to lubricate the pistons and all the internal workings. And we're [00:19:00] very much like that. The longer we sit idle, like you said, the less lubrication we're going to have and those places. And really, unlike a car, we have some advantages the younger we are. But as we get older, we have some disadvantages. Like the younger we are, the better our bar, the easier our body will have, the easier time our body will have to move fluid through those joints. The older we are, the less fluid we have and the harder it is for our body to move fluid into those joints so that we aren't quite as creaky. But like you said, movement is a great thing, right?
Al Brown: [00:19:34] Oh, yeah. Pete, I am a 56 Chevy, you know. And let me tell you, it takes a while before I don't just pop out of bed anymore. It's kind of a let's give it a moment. Let's sit on the edge. Let's stretch the hamstrings. Let me stretch my arms above my head. Let me just make sure I can see. And where are my glasses, by the way? And then I wait or I make sure that I slide my hand over to the bedrail. So [00:20:00] as I walk, I does everything work. You're sort of testing it first so that chill factors a little.
Peter Koch: [00:20:06] Yeah. And you're not a broken guy. I mean you're, you're a fairly you're a fit individual. You do work out all the time or as often as you can to because you recognize that. So you're not you aren't in the place where you have to do those things because you're broken. But what you're doing is you're warming yourself up to give your body less opportunity to be broken through that movement because moving something that's not ready to be moved is not good for anything. So that's really that's a I want to make that distinction that this does not like the warm up phase, the things that we do before movements. All of those things are important to prevent injury. It can be done because you're injured, but they should be done in order to prevent it from happening in the first place. And we'll get into quite a bit of that when we start talking about strategies to lower the risk. And what do you do after you get hurt? So we'll talk about some of those things as we move through the podcast. [00:21:00]
Al Brown: [00:21:00] Sure. Sure.
Peter Koch: [00:21:02] So we've talked about a number of things that might make the knees hurt, but let's delve into that a little bit more. What are some things that we talked about? Sports and certainly activities that weighted pivot when I stand on one foot and then I go to turn in one direction or the other, I might be putting my cartilage at risk. I could be putting one of the ligaments at risk depending on the lateral forces, or an impact might make my knees hurt or injured. But what else can really make our knees hurt? What are some of the things that happen in today's society or are in our workplaces that make our knees ache and hurt and be sore and maybe even injured over time?
Al Brown: [00:21:39] Sure. The yeah, the ones we sort of just covered and talked about are more trauma. And we do see those in the workplace, you know, those come along probably less often than we used to see because you know, know this, I don't know you realize. But back in the 60s, 1960, do you remember the 1960?
Peter Koch: [00:21:59] I remember [00:22:00] at least one year of the 1960,
Al Brown: [00:22:04] About half of our jobs were physical and half were sedentary. So it was about a 50/50 split as technology has crept into our lives and as we move forward in time about 80 to 85 percent of our jobs now are sedentary, and that 17, 18, 15, somewhere in that 15 percent range are now, you know, heavier work. So because you've seen that switch, we see less of the traumatic injuries. Does that mean that the injuries have gone away? No. Your question is what else? So when we look at sedentary work, which means I think if you go into Social Security definition of sudden sedentary work, it's handling 10 pounds or less occasionally throughout the day. So in the way they referenced it was carrying a file here or walking over [00:23:00] here doing this. So but you think about most of the jobs a lot of us do nowadays. That's what we do. But what comes coupled with that is we tend to sit more. So when we sit more, we change the biomechanics of the leg in the lower extremity, in that we lose muscle mass in the buttock, we begin to tighten muscles. So now when we get up to move, we begin to see changes in the lower extremity that then begin to create knee pain. But it's from being inactive. So we see those types of injuries. Then we see the truck driver who is sedentary, the logging industry. They're up driving trucks, you know, the forwarders going in, the forwarder is coming out, and they don't even have to get up. The seat now rotates in the forward or so they can don't have to get up, but then they have to get out of the truck. Occasionally when they jump down, there's that that sedentary precursor that set them up for an injury and then they might jump down or just even stepping down. They twist wrong and then they've got the problem. And then you just have medical [00:24:00] conditions that might predispose, you know, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, as you know, from previous trauma. So comorbidities, those aches and pains, you know, trauma that you may have occurred before in your life are now beginning to raise their ugly head if you haven't done things where you stand to lose strength. We have a sedentary job now that mal alignment of the foot, you know, if you genetically were handed over some coronating feet and coronating feet, again, fancy term for, you know, like a flat arch, you know, that's going to take that little bump we talked about earlier right below the kneecap. And it's going to shift that and it's going to shift that sort of in a position that's going to make that kneecap align and properly. So what do you do to fix some of those things? So, you know, you look at trauma, you look at sedentary activity, and then you look at disease processes and those all kind of contribute to the problem. It's hard in our world sometimes to parse out what's related to the work and [00:25:00] what's not related to the work. I think I told you earlier I was going through looking at, you know, looking at research articles on the knee and I typed in knee work injury in the first seven pages of the search were law offices. So that sort of gives you an indicator of, you know,
Peter Koch: [00:25:20] It's hard to parse it out like So if one person has a concern and one person has an argument against that, it's natural to look to somebody else to help make that decision. I really do think that discussion is kind of interesting. You talk about the I guess we'll start with genetics a little bit about that. I know one of my daughters has flat arches and she's the only one in our family that has flat arches. And that translated into her when she played sports to have trouble when she ran. And now this time of year with covid and everything, sports aren't really happening. But where she's finding a difficulty [00:26:00] is actually standing for long periods of time. So if she doesn't wear her insoles to help support that arch, then what hurts on her one? It's her arch. But then her knees are sore as well because her job requires her to stand if she's going to work a seven, six, seven hour shifts, sometimes she'll be on her feet the entire time. And just that because of the arch will cause a little mal alignment. And since there's misalignment in places, it's going to cause things to become sore. That might not be sore with someone else who doesn't have that genetic challenge. Or maybe it's a challenge from an injury, like you said before, that comorbidity.
Al Brown: [00:26:42] If you look at people, I mean an example of your daughter, you know, when that foot goes, you know, rotates in into a flap, you lose your arch. What it does is we can all make our foot go flat if we sort of push our knee inward, you know, like a knock kneed position. And that's kind of what [00:27:00] happens with a flat foot is that you get that lower tibia rotates outward, the knee tends to come inward. And then if you couple that with the one anatomy piece we didn't talk about early on was there is a difference between the hip with female hip width tends to be a little wider because of child bearing in the way they're built as opposed to males, tend to be a little more narrow. So you couple a pronated foot, you know, the flat foot, the female hip, which in fact she has a wider hip, and then that knee going inward and you get almost a bowstring effect. Where that that giant muscle tendon complex that goes from the hip down below the knee and incorporates the kneecap, the kneecaps getting pulled way in. And those two lines are almost on the outside of the kneecap. So it wants to take that kneecap and fire it out to the outside so she could end up with foot ankle pain, but she could also end up with knee pain just because of that mechanical [00:28:00] alignment down below. So the foot orthotic actually kind of lifts that foot. So when she's standing there, the knee comes back into position, the tibia comes back into position and that kneecap gets realigned.
Peter Koch: [00:28:13] Yeah. And actually, that's what happens if you watch if I watch her walk and stand insoles versus no insoles. That's exactly what you're describing. So there is a slight knock knee when she is or her knees coming inward when she's standing and you put the insoles in. And it's not magic, it's not incredibly noticeable. But if you're paying attention, you can see the difference in the alignment and you can totally feel or hear the difference in when she comes back from work or comes back from doing something that when she's on her feet all day, the thing that she'll complain about is the her arch will be sore because she's got the insole and it's just stretching the muscles in the tendons and the ligaments in there because it's forcing the arch into a position that the body was designed to. But genetically, we didn't give it to her. So we've got to do it mechanically. She's [00:29:00] going to love me for years, I can tell you. But I think that's an interesting place because I think if you understand more about how you're structured that like we started with anatomy and physiology. So if we understand the makeup of the knee and what makes it up and what its limitations are, what it's supposed to do, and then you understand your own genetic makeup and how your knee actually functions and what affects it from your postural and your habits, then you can start making some better decisions about what you do and how you do it. I know we were talking before the podcast a little bit about teaching kids how to run in sports, which, you know, it's something that you really don't think you need to do. But I know for me specifically, coaching, coaching girls soccer at the high school level, a couple of years ago, the head coach and I made a decision to [00:30:00]work on stride and foot placement and knee angle and explosive force in our pre-season instead of really pushing fitness. So we did a lot of fitness work, but it was more from a plyometric standpoint and really working more on movement patterns. And whereas we didn't see a huge increase in fitness, what we did see is a decrease in sort of overuse injuries that we might normally get kind of a third of the way through the season as the workloads were starting to pick up pretty heavy as you got into our gameplay season and a sequence of practice, practice, game, practice, game, practice, rest and working that through the season. So I do think that understanding where you are and then doing some things to help with your habits can help set you up for some success to not hurt overall.
Al Brown: [00:30:57] If you look, we mentioned this phenomena [00:31:00] in our past podcast and that's that unconscious behavior or subconscious behavior. Most of our motor patterns, most of our movement patterns in our body are pre-programmed or they are things we've done over and over and over again. And they become we get muscle memory, we get body position, memory, and we repeat those. And then they get to the point where they're pretty much automatic. So we don't have to think about them. They can be good motor patterns and they can be bad motor patterns. And you take a guy like LeBron James, he's probably got a pretty good motor pattern with putting the basket in the hoop. But that's all automatic. That's not something he has to think about. It's actually become sort of a subconscious. You take someone like a young athlete you're talking about and for the first time or go back to that baby. They're just trying to create motor patterns to create mobility. And then when you get to a level of becoming good at a sport activity or [00:32:00] work activity, whatever it is, you have to develop motor patterns and you typically don't see what you do. You're just doing it because it's getting you from point A to point B, but a second set of eyes, like a coach or manager or whatever, can see sometimes those poor behaviors and try to modify them and create active. Is that will allow you to practice we take folks that are delayed in the world of muscle activity and one of the things I remember back when I was a physical therapist, we would say, hey, do you guys have a play set in the backyard? You might want to think about investing you want because kids will, you know, climb whatever, and they're creating different motor patterns to do different things. And through play, they actually improve their ability to stand in the world of gravity and move around because of those motor patterns. You know, you put them in front of, you know, something like a computer or a book or sit them down and it's not going to do it. You know, you need to kind of create those good motor patterns. So that's what you did, which [00:33:00] was great in the working world, the workaday world, we have to do the same thing because the workaday world is, you know, eight hours a day. I go in there and some people have good patterns and some people have not so good patterns and some have a blend. So we try to be the eyes and ears so they can understand that because you don't look at yourself. That was the other thing that, you know, we never look at ourselves. We see parts of us or in today's world. I mean, you know, you are on a virtual looking at ourselves right now and each other. But typically we don't get that opportunity. So you don't get to see what your shoulders are doing, what your hips are doing, what your legs are doing, unless someone shows you a video of it. So it's important that we help develop those motor patterns, particularly if we see that are not so good.
Peter Koch: [00:33:43] Yeah, and you talk about video. I just and we're going to move on here in just a moment, but I wanted to bring the video piece up. That's one of the tools that you use when you're trying to diagnose manual material handling challenges in the workplace, photos from an office ergonomic standpoint [00:34:00] so that you're able to see certainly in an office ergonomic standpoint, you can look at the setup, but from a manual lateral handling, looking at the cycle of what's happening, because it's hard for the person to describe what they're doing. If you were to talk to them, you're going to walk into the workplace or talk to them on the phone and say, what do you do? What do you do that's causing you pain? Oh I lift stuff? Well, that's really not enough. You've got to know not just where they lift to, but what do they look like when they're lifting? And is the environment what's causing them to lift in that particular way? Or is it actually their postural habits that are keying them into doing those particular pieces? Because you could have something set up very ergonomically well, right within that power zone for someone to lift. And they may still bend over at the waist because that's what they're habit is. So habits play a huge part in how we manage things.
Al Brown: [00:34:56] Well, hey, Pete, you know, you talk about habits and we're [00:35:00] talking about motor patterns and we're talking about muscle memory. Here's a classic that we've all encountered. And it's in the work environment sometimes can be an issue. And that's steps bear with me first. I think about the most steps are, you know, six inches or seven inches, you know, or somewhere around there in that range. That seems to be a feasible height that most of us can encounter. But you go up a staircase and it's and there six and a half inches, six and a half inch, six and a half inch. And then you hit that seven or eight inch step because someone miscalculated the step when the rise and run, when they built the steps, how many people go up and they stumble over that last step because they're depending on their body calculating and then going, OK, these are six and a half inch steps. I'm going to bring my foot up, you know, six inch, six and five eighths inches, you know, so I have clearance. But all of a sudden they get to that last step that's just a half inch higher. And they [00:36:00] trip over it. You know, I mean, there's an example of, you know, that repeated behavior and how we incorporate it and where we can get into trouble.
Peter Koch: [00:36:08] Yeah, that and in those habits that we build over time, age changes our ability to rely on those habits as our kinesthetic sense and our proprioception changes as well. So the that electrical feedback, if you go back to think about the knee, right. If I'm walking and I'm stepping up into something, my normal habit is to bring my leg up, bending at the hip, bending at the knee that six and five eighths inch. But as I age those receptors, those electrical signals that fire to tell me how high my leg is actually lifted, they aren’t working quite as well. And there could be a dementia in there. There could be an illness in there that's causing even more of a lag. So now I don't lift my leg up. I think it's six and five eighths, but it's really four inches. And so now I just don't stumble a little bit. I catch my [00:37:00] entire foot on that step and I go right on my face onto the landing. We totally build those habits over time and age. There's lots of different things that can change how effective those habits can be, both externally and internally, it seems.
Al Brown: [00:37:15] Yeah, and with a sedentary shift, you know, again, we do have that aging workforce, you know, you look at Maine in particular, we are the oldest workforce in the nation, but in general, there's a real demographic shift in the workforce out there. So those kinds of things occur. And then you've got the perfect storm with not only the aging workforce, but now much of our work is much more sedentary. So we don't get up and like that child out there running around, jumping up on the swing set. If you take the adult version now, we're not out there sort of plowing the field, pulling the weeds, walking around and exercising those muscles and sort of re-cueing all those motor patterns. We're sitting at the computer. So then when we go and do something like climb [00:38:00] those stairs, we've lost, you know, if you don't use it, you lose it. It starts to fade. And, you know, the cues aren't correct. So how do we fix that? Sometimes we go, I'm going to get rid of those stairs. I might get our house on one floor and I'm going, start digging the hole. You know, you're going in. Come on. We live in a world of gravity. You can't avoid it.
Peter Koch: [00:38:20] Yeah. You got to keep moving.
Peter Koch: [00:38:23] Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about our E-Ergo resource that can be used to help solve ergonomic challenges at your workplace, sometimes contacting, contracting with and scheduling an ergonomist or occupational health nurse for an onsite evaluation doesn't fit with our Just-In-Time workflow. In a competitive economy, fixing the problem right now is essential, and improving worker comfort and efficiency are key components to ongoing success. Free to our policyholders. MEMIC's E-Ergo tool can help you overcome ergonomic challenges. With just five quick photos or [00:39:00] a short 30 second video and a brief description of what's being shown, you can send us the critical demands and essential functions within the work tasks. Once received, our ergonomics team can identify risks and exposures and provide reasonable suggestions for ergonomic improvement within just a few short days. Start the E-Ergo process by logging into the MEMIC safety director at www.MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety. Now let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: [00:39:34] That statistic that you quoted before about our work, our sedentary work versus active work was about 50 50. If you go back into the 40s, 50s, 60s. And as we've moved into the 80s, 90s, 2000s and to current day, we have gone into a mostly sedentary work style. So even if you had an active [00:40:00] lifestyle back in the 50s and 60s, so you actually got out and you did stuff, if you had a sedentary lifestyle, you may be like, I remember my grandmother. Right. So many, many years ago. She might be fairly sedentary in the house. But once my grandfather came home, she would be out in the garden. She spend four or five hours out in the garden, weeding, planting, harvesting, and then coming back in and doing all that active work inside the house. So even if she did do some sedentary work inside, there is still active work that she did outside. If you have a sedentary job and now a lot of our recreational opportunities have been truncated as well, so we're not maybe as active as we once were outside, we have that double effect of having a sedentary job and also maybe a sedentary outside of work life, too. So it's a double [00:41:00] whammy almost, if you think about it. So let's talk more about how that sedentary life affects our knees specifically.
Al Brown: [00:41:09] Yep, let's take sitting because that that we see sitting everywhere, it's, you know, again, you take something that is heavy duty as the logging industry all the way down to someone that works kind of in our environment like an office environment. And we see Uber, you know, and anything you name a lot of us sit. So when we look at that and we look at what happens to the anatomy of the lower extremity, you know, we can talk all about the back and the shoulder and all that stuff. But if we stay down just in the from the hip down, we're taking there's a bunch of muscles are two muscles that we look at called the iliopsoas there's the hip flexor, so if you were to bring your knee up in front of the muscles, sort of initiated, that's this giant hip flexor. Well, that muscle [00:42:00] is it sort of starts in the front of your thigh. And if you could stick your fingers through your pelvis and out the back side to your back, it attaches to the inside of your pelvis bones and then it attaches also to the spine on the back. So you shorten that muscle up. And then if you look at your knee, your knee is flexed or bent and the muscle on the back side of your thighs called your hamstring so that muscles actually shortened up. And so just looking at those two muscles, if you spend quite a bit of time at a desk and a lot of us do or sitting, it could be driving, could be it doesn't matter you seven to eight, nine hours, you begin to change the length of those muscles. So now let's try to stand up with the muscle that won't let that thigh fully engage and go fully vertical. So you have to slightly forward flex pelvis and then the knee can't fully extend since you got a slightly bent knee. [00:43:00] So now you watch people and it changes the balance and the gate when we walk. And this is when, you know, we start to see trouble because you can tell if someone's been a sitter for a long period of time because they'll start their head when they walk, will wobble back and forth side to side, side to side. And that tells me that their hip flex or their hip muscles have gotten so weak they can't stabilize the body over one leg. So when the person steps on that one leg on your right leg, the right hip has to pick up the left side, the left hip so your leg can swing through and you don't stumble. And then you wait there on the left side and the left hip kicks up and brings you through. The problem is, is that muscle gets weak when you weight bear on the right, right is weak. It drops the left. So now for you to block without stumbling, you have to throw your body back [00:44:00] over the right leg and you get this wobbling walk that you see, folks. It's actually a Trendelenburg gait. There's actually a name to it. And that tells me there's trouble ahead because we've got weakness starting. But all that translates down into that kinetic chain that attaches to the earth. So when that foot touches, we've got all those tightness going on in the muscles we de-lubricated the kneecap, the underside of the kneecap. Why wouldn't you have trouble? You know, it's a storm.
Peter Koch: [00:44:29] Sure. And it all starts with sitting. Yes. And sitting for a long time. And I think it's an interesting if you're listen to this podcast and you have the opportunity to watch other people do things in the workplace. So watch somebody sit at a desk for a while, watch what their legs do. And so, you know, we talk about good ergonomic position, a desk or in a chair. And you want sure. That you want a 90 degree or close to 90 at the between the femur and the lower leg or the tibia there [00:45:00] and their feet firmly planted on the ground. We'll watch some people sit at the desk and they'll shift from that position as they get closer and closer to the screen, as their stress level goes up and up, their legs will kick underneath them, kind of curl around the legs of the chair, or I'll watch people actually sit on one leg. And you're shortening things a lot more. You're stretching things a lot more on the top side, forcing really all that lubrication out of the joint. Watch that behavior, watch those patterns, see what people do. And it's a wonder that when you sit up or stand up after being focused for a while on a conference call or focused for a while on a project at your desk or at a problem that you're trying to figure out, those habits just sort of kick in and they put you at a disadvantage. And then all of a sudden we want to move like the phone rings in the other room, or we have somebody else that comes in and we want to turn around quickly or stand up quickly. We're not ready and we've put ourselves in that odd position. Then we're going to, [00:46:00] we're not going to do our body any good that one time. And if we continue to do that, it's just going to wear parts down over time until it breaks.
Al Brown: [00:46:10] Exactly right. And the one thing we, you know, the one we haven't touched on, but probably not so much again for today, but, you know, if you go back, I think in May 2019, the Harvard Health Publishing from the Harvard Medical School put out a newsletter that said the dangers of sitting and what we haven't talked about is, you know, as you approach 11 hours of sitting a day, there's 35 medical conditions and diseases that go up exponentially. You know, that's the type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease. What we don't, what we forget about is, you know, we're talking about all the mechanics today, but in the physiology of life or the physiology of these muscles, these giant muscles really help to kind of use some of that blood glucose. And if they're not, [00:47:00] and they take up a good chunk of it because they're so big so that your grandmother, when she was out doing her thing in the garden, she was using up that blood glucose. So she was you know, she was keeping her body in balance. But with the new normal of we're more sedentary. Those muscles are quiet. So not only are they getting weaker and tighter, but now we're not consuming the blood glucose. So now that begins to have physiological impacts on us. Type two diabetes, the heart disease and all those kinds of good things, right, bad things. So there's, you know, there's research around it. So we understand it. And here we are.
Peter Koch: [00:47:39] Right. So it really does go to that point where the information's out there. It's not rocket science. And I don't want to belittle any of the information out there, because some of it is fairly complex. But the simplistic form of some of that research is movement is good for you. So move. And the less you move, the [00:48:00] harder it is to move later on. And so it's this downward spiral where all of a sudden you get to the point where you can't functionally move anymore, or at least you can't do it without a lot of preparation or a lot of help, and therefore you don't want to do it as much anymore. So that downward spiral of no movement is pretty challenging. So let's take that into our knees again. And what if our knees sore, like we are sore at the end of the day, our knees are kind of achy. Maybe this is the first time we really looked at it as something that we can solve. What are some things beyond general movement that we can do to help when our knees are sore after a day of being sedentary or a day of work?
Al Brown: [00:48:46] Mm hmm. Well, if we go back, I mean, just looking at work, if we were to look at I'm looking at a job now or an ergonomic assessment of a foundry and right now in this particular job, they're allowing the worker to kind of move up [00:49:00] and down the line and glue castings and assemble these casting molds. And they're looking to minimize that movement. And I actually encouraged him not to take that movement away, to allow them to move. So within the work environment, sometimes we look at can we create more work pods if it's a manufacturing environment? So instead of someone standing in one place for an extended period of time, manufacturing something and assembling things, they can actually move within a pod. So it allows them to kind of move around. So that's sort of an engineering thing that you can do, that you create you broaden the job task. In that particular case, in an office setting, you know, you've seen the introduction of dynamic desks where folks consider stand now, realize because everybody thought that was the solution, not everybody. But, you know, you hear the press and the narrative was like, well, that's going to solve the problem. And then the research came out. That doesn't solve the problem. And that's right, [00:50:00] because I want you to know that standing is just as static is sitting. The value of something like a dynamic desk is to be able to take a knee joint that's been maybe in a bent position and a hip flexor that’s been in a bent position and allows you to change to a different posture and get yourself up. And when you're standing, just like, you know, when I stand on my desk, I don't stand still, you know, I wobble back and forth. I bend my knees. So I'm actually lubricating and adding value. Now, if we take an administrative change, you get construction sites, construction workers, even manufacturing that now have incorporated let's kind of like an athlete warm up before we start the day so they might have a morning session of discussion of how the day will go. But during that time, they're actually stretching their body. I have a granite installation company that does that every morning at seven o'clock, they have a circle, they do their stretches, but they also go over what's going to go on for the day. And then at the second half [00:51:00] of the day after lunch, they do it again. We have an oil delivery company fairly large in the state of Maine that when they get out of the truck, first, they step down, they climb down. They do three movements to reset their body and gravity before they initiate the pulling of the hose and yanking and filling tanks and so on and so forth, so you can take those kind of active pieces and look at it from broaden the work task or, you know, encourage change of body posture throughout the day with the office worker. We encourage we change the stretch a little bit of the movement, but we do it more midday in mid-afternoon because when you get there, you know, you're not going to do heavy activities like work. So when you sit down, it's that sedentary activity you want to break up. So getting out and moving with truck drivers, with long haul folks, you'll see now signs that say, hey, take a stretch, break it out, move around. So we try to encourage folks to kind of break up those static [00:52:00] postures, either through engineering changes by broadening the task or by just, you know, general stretch rate movements and finding opportunities to move.
Peter Koch: [00:52:10] That's a really good, great point there. And I bet you folks listening to the podcast right now are in agreements with you that, yes, changing body posture throughout the day is beneficial for you. They feel it themselves. When they shift, they move, they sit, they stand. They don't stay static in one posture for too long during the day or even if they exercise before work, after work, at lunch, whatever happens that they're going to feel better at the end of the workday. But why do we have to keep repeating the message? I mean, I think that's a it's an interesting human thing to consider and it goes back to the habits. Right. So a habit is difficult to build, but easy to break. So if you've built that habit of stretching before work or doing something to [00:53:00] encourage posture, change, sit, stand desk. But if you've built that habit up over six, eight, 10, 12 weeks and now you have a different project or you get a job change or something shifts or the busyness at work, you're not finding the time or you are thinking that you can't build that time in anymore. It doesn't take that long to remove that habit. And you're right back to where you were before. So the constant repetition, that's why like a company led program, whether it be for stretching or whether it be just a check in to make sure that people are actually doing that on their own, like your delivery driver that you talked about there or I don't know, I see like your flaggers on the side of the road,
Al Brown: [00:53:45] Brutal job, brutal job.
Peter Koch: [00:53:47] And people think, oh, no, it's an easy job. It's not an easy job, man. Stand on your feet all day long and have a couple of breaks where you can sit by the time you get to sit during the day, if you're just standing there and if you've ever been at a [00:54:00] stop for a while, waiting for the flagger to let you go. And you've been there for one minute to minute, five minutes. Sometimes it's ten minutes depending on what's happening in the construction zone. And watch the person who's there, the person who's there, who knows their body is doing what you're saying. They're moving back and forth or stepping out. They're stepping back. They're not, not paying attention, but they're moving their body around some of those guys and gals that aren't paying attention as much. They're in that one position. They're just standing there kind of leaning on their stop sign. And they are going to be very sore at the end of the day, whether they know it or not.
Al Brown: [00:54:37] Yeah, well, and it goes it's a kinetic change. So the more static you are, the more you constantly load one part of your body. I mean, that's and discomfort breeds change. So some of us have a better feedback loop than others so that if you start to act a little bit, you go, I'm going to move. And it's called you know, it's fidgeting and fidgeting as I was trying to find comfort. And if you're not a fidgeter, you're more you're more [00:55:00] just a plopper. like you just sit down, you don't move. You're going to be more prone to those things like osteoarthritis, the diabetes, all those kinds of things, because you don't get the cues to do it. So it is hard. It is a very hard thing because with aging, you have a decline in the quality of your joints faces as much as you try to. You know, let's go back to that 56 Chevy analogy. You know, even though you try to take care of it, you take care of the rust spots, you make sure the tires are aligned to keep the carburetor tuned. You know, it still probably leaves a little oil on the floor and it doesn't corner like it used to or it corners like it used to, but it's nothing compared to the newer stuff. And things break. It's not as smooth as it used to be, and it's just the aging process. So we are fighting that declining battle. But you can slow that down. I think if you look back [00:56:00] physiologically, you know, we look at what is a 78, 79 years is sort of what life expectancy is now. But you can physiologically be. 20 to 30 years younger than that chronological age. If that makes sense, you know, so you can and again, that's genetics, how you take care of yourself. And when we look at knees, it's really important because that's what connects us to the Earth to a certain extent. Your feet all the way up to the knees and then the hips and gives us the mobility we want. So if you take care of those through, you know, just healthy activities of getting out and walking, getting out and moving during the workday work because again, you don't want to just jam it all into, like, you know, a half hour or 45 minutes of exercise because we call those active couch potatoes. I think they coined that phrase in Australia. But there they have the same health risks as those folks or pretty close to the same health risk as those folks that sit all day long and don't do that because what they do after [00:57:00] they do their 45 minutes, hours of exercise, what do they do?
Peter Koch: [00:57:03] Nothing.
Al Brown: [00:57:03] They go sit down. They go, thank God.
Peter Koch: [00:57:06] Check that box.
Al Brown: [00:57:08] The collective number of hours you spend sitting are the problem. You are better off just being a mail person, walking around and delivering mail. You're like a diesel. You just keep moving around, keep moving, keep moving. And you're burning a lot of energy, but your body is much healthier. And again, just to go back to your grandmother and grandfather back in those days, there's a lot of people that were physical, I think, of like a coal miner and those jobs to live in just today. But back in the day I lived in north eastern Pennsylvania, coal mining was very physical and so physical. It was traumatic, traumatic to the body and destroy the body so you can overdo the physical stuff, you know, that doesn't keep you healthy. You know, there's a balance. There's a sweet spot in there where one needs to take care of the human physiology and body, but not over abuse. But you can't be sedentary because [00:58:00] that's going to sort of deteriorate all those things that make up your body. So there's that you have to find that sweet spot in between.
Peter Koch: [00:58:08] It brings up a thought to me that the body always seeks balance. It seeks stasis, whether it's temperature, fluid, blood pressure or whatever that is, it always seeks to be in balance somehow. And when we're out of balance, then something goes haywire. And that goes just from a structural imbalance, too. So when you're the physical demands are greater than your body can deal with, like those incredibly harsh physical jobs like coal mining, salt mining. And even today we think about some of those harsh physical jobs. Driving a truck is a pretty harsh physical job overall because it might not be as physically engaging all parts of your body in an active way, driving a truck, a long haul trucker, the forces that get placed on their back and their knees and their shoulders and their neck and everything [00:59:00] else, it's just as damaging because there's no balance. There's no stasis there. So you've got to know, like, almost know thyself, know how much is too much, whether it be a sedentary activity or it is an actually active thing that you're engaged in. You've got to know how much is too much and where to back off and how to find that balance. And like you said, I think that's a great term. Find that sweet spot for you between activity and stasis because we all like to relax. I mean, there's nothing wrong with sitting down and enjoying a breath every once in a while. But when that gets continued out too far, it certainly has some detrimental short term and long term effects on our physiology, our morbidity and our abilities to engage in the world effectively.
Al Brown: [00:59:50] You know, we deal with employers and, you know, employers are dealing with an aging workforce. And so, you know, collectively they've got to think about that from an ergonomic standpoint. That's one [01:00:00] of the challenges we're faced with. And you look at its funny stairs an example. You know, some of these sort of industrial locations might have that three stairs to get by on up into change, something in a paper machine or whatever the case may be. Then there's other places that might have a whole flight of stairs. And if you're an employer and you're requiring employees to carry something and go up and down the stairs, all of a sudden if it's a two handed carry, you have to totally rely on those old knees to support you to go up or down. It's easier to go up than it is to go down. And anybody who's hike knows that it's a lot. Most people it's easier to go up the mountain than it is to go down the mountain simply because it's always a double transfer. You are putting one foot up ahead of you and you push off with the leg that's behind you to help to accelerate up over that other one that's going to help lift get your other foot up. So you always have sort of a general propeller, a double propulsion to get you [01:01:00] up. So when you climb, it works pretty well. When you come down, you are decelerating with one leg to lower yourself down. There's no you're just going. I hope that left knee holds and lowers me down to the right knee. And that's where people have problems because the mechanics change stairs, you'll see folks modify their behavior. And again, this is one of those things you think you're doing a safe thing, but they sort of turn their foot sideways on the step to come down the step. We've all done it thinking, well, if I just turn sideways, I won't. You know, it's not as bad.
Peter Koch: [01:01:35] Just not as scary
Al Brown: [01:01:35] Yes, it's just not as scary. But the problem is they've taken that. If we go back to your analogy of a hinge joint right now, again, it's not a simple hinge joint, but now you've taken that hinge joint, you've turned it sideways, and then you've asked it to bend in a direction that doesn't go. And you put all kinds of stress on the inside of, you know, the knee when [01:02:00] you're coming down the stairs. So you're going to talk all kinds of arthritic changes. So I guess my when you're looking at the work environments, really look at stairs as can I avoid those, is that part of the essential function of this job? If a person has to go up and down it, are they big enough? Are they all equal in height? Can we get the tools up there without them having to carry them? Never have them to hand carry something up or down stairs because they always need that extra hand to support the legs, to go up and down, get in and out of a truck. There's always got to be a three point touch to come in and out of vehicles.
Peter Koch: [01:02:33] Those are great points from a workplace standpoint. And really, when we think about it, we want to make sure that we have some strategies in place to help prevent knee injuries. And those are some great pieces. Where can you limit those areas where you're going to have people put stress on their knee either through balance, through carrying stairs, ramps, uneven surfaces, all of those places. We want to make sure that there's nothing unexpected [01:03:00] in the workplace that someone's going to encounter. Maybe it's the lighting changes. Those things can certainly put you in an unbalanced position and put your knee back shoulder, whatever happens at risk, depending on what you're doing. But certainly those places where you have stairs and ramps, check them out, see if there's something that you can do to reduce the potential for a knee related injury because of what we're asking the employee to do. That's great. Great advice Al great advice.
Al Brown: [01:03:29] It's you know, there's one body part. You know, everybody can go realize what aging has done to them. And there's one muscle that you can check out right away, and you can do it one or two ways, whatever works for you. But if you lie down on your back and you keep one leg down on the floor and you bring the other leg up straight to the leg, then knee is straight and you bring it up and you try to bring it up to a position so that it's 90 degrees from your body.
Peter Koch: [01:03:58] That's really funny Al.
Peter Koch: [01:03:59] You're not going [01:04:00] to get there. You're going to. But if that's not a gauge of life, you know, if you can only get it 20 to 30 degrees off the off earth, you know, you've got some really tight muscles. If you can get closer to that 90 degree range, you actually are doing really well. But it is one of the muscles that really impacts back pain, knee pain, not the only. And, you know, that's my qualifier here. My disclaimer. But it's one that you can go easily test for those that have good, stable cardiac conditions and also don't have a back issue. They can also just slowly walk themselves down, keep the legs straight and slowly walk themselves down and do a stretch on the back of their hamstrings, and if they feel a lot of tightness, that's a great place to start to work on, just lengthening that muscle. And the nice thing about lengthening muscles as they come along pretty quickly and there's great results and you'll begin to find a freedom in that lower extremity because tight muscles think [01:05:00] of this. If you wear size large pants, we're going to say large, you know, whatever that might be, go home and put on a pair of small pants and or medium pants that are super tight and try to do the same things. And you'll be exhausted by the end of the day because of the resistance those pants create. Tight muscles do the same exact thing. They resist the movement of your body and it's exhausting as well as throwing off your body mechanics. So when you lengthen, you get this newfound freedom.
Peter Koch: [01:05:32] Now, that's awesome. Let's talk a little bit about that then, because this kind of leads into the discussion about, all right, so my knees are sore. What do I do? We've talked about changes, engineering, changes in the workplace or even at home. You can look at those the same things you look at in the workplace. You can take those personally and look in your home for those same pieces and same strategies. But what are some things that we can do from a maybe it's a stretching standpoint or it's an exercise standpoint [01:06:00] that might help reduce pain or prevent pain?
Al Brown: [01:06:06] Sure. Hey, Pete, we forgot one major thing.
Peter Koch: [01:06:10] What's that, Al?
Al Brown: [01:06:11] Kneeling. Oh, my gosh.
Peter Koch: [01:06:15] I hate kneeling.
Al Brown: [01:06:16] Oh,
Peter Koch: [01:06:17] Yeah. Let's talk about that, because we all do it. We all do it. Right. So, no, just the other day. Yeah. Yeah.
Al Brown: [01:06:25] And that's probably one of the big bigger causes of knee pain. You know, you see jobs where folks will go, oh, I'm just installing tiles. I'm just going to kneel here and or I saw bricks being laid in the city of Portland the other day and no knee pads and they're just kneeling on a hard surface. And it was one of these oh, I'm not here long. No problem. And I'm going any kneeling on any hard surface is not your friend, you know, because you're taking your kneecap, which is curved. There's one point on that kneecap touching the hard surface underneath, and it's transferring that force [01:07:00] directly through that little smooth cartilage on the backside. And so that force is being transferred in one spot and that begins to create breakdown. And then when you go downstairs, walk, you feel like your knee is going to give out because you get to that spot and your body tends to shut that muscle off because it says, oh, I don't want the pain and you feel like your knees buckling. So housekeeping, same thing. We see that. And, you know, people just kneel down to clean the, you know, the tub. So knee pads, knee pads, knee pads, knee pads. And a lot of people are reluctant to do that simply because, you know, it chaffs the back of their leg, like the strap hurts. I don't like it. But in today's world, you know, we've got some great knee pads out there for those like floor people that lay floors. There's actually a company in Maine I can't think of the name right now that creates a high end. I mean, there are a hundred twenty five dollars a pair, but fabulous in terms of protecting the knee for folks themselves. So if you have the high end kneelers, you really need to look at good PPE. [01:08:00] If you are low end, like you're, you know, maybe housekeeping, you know, if you don't have knee pads, just throw a towel down on the ground and you can kneel on the towel and just to distribute the force around the knee. But we're all guilty of it. We're all guilty of it. You know, I. I always tell the story of going to the recycling center. And, you know, I used to have to climb in my pickup because the stuff would slide forward and be like, oh, my knees are killing me. And then I bought myself a little hook so I can just reach in and pull anything that slid forward back to me. And I can't tell you how many folks have walked by me going, oh, that is the coolest thing. Where did you get that? Because I hate the way my knees feel when I climb in. So, you know, pain breeds change and discomfort. So I'm sorry, but I didn't mean to digress back to kneeling, but a huge one that can be avoided.
Peter Koch: [01:08:50] I think it is. And even those who are going to say no, yeah, you're right, Al, but I'm only going to be there for a minute and there's no way I'm paying one hundred twenty five dollars for a pair of knee pads. And there's [01:09:00] a lot of other solutions. But something else to consider, too. You don't just typically kneel down in that one spot. If you watch that person who is kneeling, they are going to kneel. And that contact point maybe go from the center of the knee and they might shift to the side a little bit, which not only puts that contact stressor there, but it shifts the kneecap to one side or the other of that channel that's there, too. So it creates more friction. It creates more challenges. And yeah, you might be active and great, but the more time you spend on the knee, the. You're reducing the amount of life that your knees have and we were talking before this, you had quoted a statistic about knee and hip replacements over the last three years and how much they increased. And I can't for the life of me, remember what that stat was. Do you have it at your fingertips?
Al Brown: [01:09:51] Actually, I think it was an older study, but it was the 2001, 1993, up to 2011 or 14. [01:10:00] And hip and knee surgeries have tripled.
Peter Koch: [01:10:04] Wow.
Al Brown: [01:10:05] Which that's an incredible you know, and you have to ask yourself why. And again, we look at that aging workforce. You're looking at, you know, more sedentary lifestyle. So is it those things that have led us? We do know that you can feel better being more active with osteoarthritis again in that sweet spot. But, you know, is that the true cause?
Peter Koch: [01:10:26] Yeah, I think it's just one indicator that we've seen a tripling. And I wonder if we continued that study forward to today, if we would have seen a leveling out or a decrease in the trend. But I imagine it probably would have leveled out. But that's still a ton of knee and hip surgeries that that are occurring and knee replacement surgeries. You know, having a knee replaced might fix the pain that you're in right now, but it's certainly not going to bring you back to where you were before the knee pain happened [01:11:00] in the first place. So it is a potential solution. And, you know, one of the things that comes to mind about why we've seen so many technology gotten much better. So the process for a knee replacement or knee surgery has gotten and the recovery has gotten much shorter. The technology for has gotten a lot better. So it's easier to do. But it is really it's not the solution. Like if you're going to go and spend a lot of time abusing your knee, whether it be at work or outside of work or a combination of both and think, well, I can have my knee replaced. It'll be fine. It's not the fix all, you know, talk to somebody who's had their knee replaced and ask him. Really? So, yeah, it was worth it because the pain's not gone, but you're still not able to do everything that you used to do before the knee pain happened in the first place. So prevention, I think is a big key, whether you're kneeling, whether you're sedentary, whether it's a motor movement or a genetic deficiency, that you have to do something to change.
Al Brown: [01:11:56] I just found that it's actually was from the American Academy [01:12:00] of Orthopedics and it was actually a hip surgeries had doubled knee surgeries had tripled in that time period. So, you know, Blue Cross Blue Shield was kind of putting that data together in one of their newsletters. And just as a quick aside, we were talking about it was interesting. I used to work at Bath Iron Works and it was talk about unconscious behavior and what gets us there. But you would see a worker walk towards you with a problem with a knee and you would see the wear pattern on the jeans or the Carhart's, and you could tell which knee was their knee of choice. And not only was it the wear pattern on the on the pants because you would see it would be lighter in color, but the toe on that boot, on the steel toed boot the leather would be gone and they would be down because again that toe was always pointing down where that side is kneeling. If you saw both boots and both knees worn, you knew they were double kneeler, but you always saw that they had a knee of choice by the wear patterns on the clothes [01:13:00] as they were coming toward you.
Peter Koch: [01:13:02] That's pretty interesting. And again, know thyself. So there's plenty of indications if you pay attention to your own body and what you're doing during the day that you can foresee a problem and you might even be able to make a change. So cycling back through and looking at that. So what do we do? Our knees hurt. Our knees are challenged. Aside from movements, maybe what specific movements are good for us to keep our knees healthy first?
Al Brown: [01:13:29] Always understand that we're not giving medical advice here. And if you do have an issue, you know, you definitely need to there are conditions that nothing that ergonomics or exercise is over there is going to fix. So it might be that you do need to see your doc and there's anti inflammatory and all that kind of good stuff. But a huge part of getting better is looking at behavior and your body mechanics to understand it and see if there are things that are contributing. You [01:14:00] know, kind of what we talked about today. But you as an individual, you know, as we age again when we get up in the morning to take time to get yourself through the gel factor when you go to work and they're creating a stretch program, get involved. It's one of those things that you look at the Tom Brady's of the world and Ben Roethlisberger, they haven't gotten that far in life by not stretching and preparing for the event. So if you're in a physical environment, you need to prepare yourself for the day's activities. Actually, we probably need to do it more so because we're less fit than those folks are. And they have professionals that help them, you know, eat and exercise, all kind of stuff, so take advantage of that if your company doesn't have that kind of thing, stretch yourself. Take a moment to stretch yourself out. At the end of the day, take time to lengthen yourself back out. Hard day, different work. You would mention different activity. You can come home and it's usually a day or two later that your body says, oh, I'm pretty sore give you something benign, building a sandcastle [01:15:00] with your kids at the beach. What do you do? You take your legs, just splay them out real. Why do you bend over at the waist? You want to work on the castle in front of you and have fun with the kids and you think, oh, that was cool. And then a day or two later you're like, oh, I got hamstring cramps and my back hurts. What makes it better? Lengthening it back out because you did something very different than you normally do. I think you referred to it as changing job tasks that, you know, it's going to impact our bodies. So as we get older, we feel that impact. So, you know, being cognizant of the day of what you're doing and you go, that was very different. I need to sort of lengthen out my body, kind of open it back up and some good general stretches. You can go online now and look at what's a good way to stretch my whole body. What's a good way to stretch this? My knees and hamstrings, you know, you can find those things, but it's then just making it part of your routine and your day that makes the difference. You will never fit it in. You don't fit things in. It needs to become a habit and you'll wax and wane. [01:16:00] You know, it's just like stretching programs in industry. They'll do it, then they'll forget. And then just, you know, good nutrition, hydration, you know, water's important. 70 percent of our body is water. And that's, you know, 70 percent of muscle is pretty much water. So you have to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, make sure that that homeostasis you were talking about, that balance is there. And then certainly nutrition, you know, making sure that the sodium, potassium, all those, can you get into the physiology of it. But that's just good nutrition. So I know it sounds pretty basic, but it's like anything else, those little things can make your 56 Chevy look pretty darn good and function OK in this world, even though it's aging.
Peter Koch: [01:16:42] Sure can. And I think what you laid out there, I think it's better than listing out. Here's ten stretches that you can do because everybody's different. So when what you started with know, know thyself, know your body, know what challenges you're going [01:17:00] to have, you know what challenges you've had, and then try to do something that counteracts that. So that's going to be different for you than it is for me, because my habits one are different. My job tasks are going to be slightly different. My flexibility is different. My tolerance is different. My balance is different. My nutrition is all those things are different. So I'm going to do something. If I do what you do, it's not going to be as effective for me as it is for you. So that suggestion of do a little research and maybe even start with your doc, like if you're finding yourself that you've got some knee pain, like you get up every morning and like, holy cow, my knees are killing me and it really doesn't go away until I get all the way down stairs. I get four cups of coffee in me and I'm an hour into work and now I feel OK, something's not going right. So go see your provider, go see your personal care provider and find out what's going on because you don't want to start an exercise regime or a stretching regime or a nutrition regime that's going to be counter [01:18:00] to what your body actually needs. And even though we might know what we need, sometimes a little professional guidance is really good to be able to tune that so that you get the most out of it. Because the crappiest thing, and I don't know if you've experienced this before, but you start an exercise regime or you start a health diet regime or you start something and it doesn't have the effect that you expect, like you get a week or two into it and you're like, man, I've been really pushing hard at this and I don't feel any better than I did at the beginning. Matter of fact, I feel not so great. So maybe we're not targeting the right things like you talked about before, the psoas muscle. Right. So I wrote this down. I said so as I sit, it gets shorter. Right. That's what happens. That's bad. Bad.
Al Brown: [01:16:42] It hurt me
Peter Koch: [01:18:51] But you know, which muscle group is it that's really affecting your posture? Which muscle group is it that's affecting the knee? Is it genetics [01:19:00] or is it truly a shortening of a particular muscle group because of the work or the activities? It doesn't always have to be work. Matter of fact, we talked about this earlier. It's typically a combination of the work activities and the off work activities. So one or the other is going to compound what's happening in your body.
Al Brown: [01:19:21] Yeah, it's a logical physics problem. There's no magic to it. Again, remember, I reference fairy dust back there and sometimes we look to go to professions for the fairy dust. And a lot of times the problem rests right there with us with our behaviors, what we do or an environment and a movement pattern that we've created, that's not helping us. So it's not fair. You're not going to get a magical solution to fix it. You know, we live in this world of gravity. And I'm going to tell you, as I've told you before, you know, gravity's undefeated. In the end, it's going to win. It'll take you. But it is our job to minimize, [01:20:00] you know, keep these things called antigravity muscles, of which your quad muscles, your hamstrings, your buttock are. These are muscles that keep us upright and battling gravity all day long. And you can't give in to them. And unfortunately, job tasks that we do now are more sedentary. So it does promote inactivity. So you need to find movements that you can do throughout the day on the weekend, walk the dog any opportunity you get to keep all those structures nice and healthy and strong.
Peter Koch: [01:20:31] I think that's a great place to end on Al. We've covered a lot of ground today just talking about knees, but we've expanded into a bunch of other areas. But I think you've provided us with some great suggestions, some good feedback and an outline really for, what do we do to help keep our knees healthy? And if to summarize, we think about it, we want to look at our environment. Right. So what are some changes that we can make in our environment to make things happier [01:21:00] and healthier for us? And then we need to move during the day. We need to change up our posture. We need to change up our activities. So we encourage fluid and we encourage blood flow within those body parts. So those two things right there are a huge chunk of keeping our bodies healthy and specifically our knees healthy as we end up here. Is there anything else? Is there maybe one tip, one piece that you really want our listeners to leave with about knee safety and health?
Al Brown: [01:21:34] Typically, most of us start out with two of them and hopefully you end with two of them. They are the things as you referenced and metaphorically, we have covered a lot of ground. And the only way you can cover that ground in a realistic sense is to have two healthy knees that allows you to move about the onus falls upon us, even though we try to find, you know, [01:22:00] external reasons. Oftentimes it's mechanical internally, the tightening the muscles, a traumatic event that oftentimes will, you know, create the injury but think logical. Don't think something strange is happening. There are some disease processes that will creep in there that that might be mysteries, but for the most part, it's usually mechanical, logical thing. And, you know, don't, you know, try to minimize that sedentary behavior as much as you can because it is creeping into our lives. Even as we have this podcast today, you find that we move less and less and less. You know, I always laugh and I tell folks, I said, think about this. Back in the 60s when you backed up your car, if you had a car, would you have to do it to turn your head around to see where you were going? So you just increased blood flow, you know, lubrication of the neck muscles. What do you do today? You just take your eyes and you glance down and you look at the back of [01:23:00] the camera. So that technology is wonderful in our lives and it's very helpful. But it also can collectively be harmful because it takes away some valuable movements. And I'll leave it there.
Peter Koch: [01:23:15] That's perfect Al. I really appreciate you being here and sharing your expertise with us, so thanks for that.
Al Brown: [01:23:20] Thank you.
Peter Koch: [01:23:21] I appreciate you joining us. And then to all of our listeners out there, this is the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. And we've been speaking about knees healthy knees, knee injuries, how to prevent them with Al Brown, MEMIC's director of ergonomics. If you have any questions for Al or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. Email me at podcast@MEMIC.com and also check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources, links to other podcasts with Al and also our entire podcast archive. While you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss another one of our [01:24:00] safety articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. If you've already done that, then I really appreciate it because it helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
"There are no bad teams only bad leaders.” This is a quote from Leif Babin in chapter 2 of the book, “Extreme Ownership, How Navy Seals Lead and Win”. This gets to the heart of Ownership as a leader. Success for a team, no matter how large or small, will rise and fall on how well a leader own’s the mission, decisions, and outcome for their team. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Randy Klatt, Director of Region 1 Loss Control for MEMIC and I talk about how a leader can incorporate safety into any business using the concepts outlined in the book, “Extreme Ownership, How Navy Seals Lead and Win” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.
Festivities during the holiday time tend to increase the number of hazards we are exposed to. We set up decorations, hang lights, bake, depending on the industry, put in more hours at work, and overall burn the candle at both ends just to get it all done so we can relax and ring in the new year. Couple that with cold weather, the season of getting new toys for the holidays or sales between Thanksgiving and the New Year, and there is a natural uptick in the number of wholly preventable, sometimes embarrassing injuries. Today, I am going to look at some of those possible events, and link them up with some sage advice from our Safety Net Blog.
There are multiple risk factors associated with shoulder injury including repetitive work, elevated arm posture, and constrained work spaces. If you don’t think it’s a problem, think again. According to a new study published in Human Factors, shoulder injuries cost industry in western countries $29 Billion dollars a year. Not only is shoulder injury prevention a smart safety practice, but it’s a quality of life issue as well. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Al Brown, MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics about shoulder health and what can be done to prevent shoulder injury.
Ever been right in your head, but wrong out loud because everyone else seemed to think it wasn't a good idea? In 1977, Jerry B. Harvey, professor of management science at George Washington University, outlines the Abilene Paradox which describes how the inability to properly manage agreement can be an indication of dysfunction within an organization. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Randy Klatt, Director of Region 1 Loss Control for MEMIC and I talk about how managing agreement and how a leader comes to their decisions might just be the next step in moving your safety culture forward.
Slip and fall injuries always increase in the fall and the winter months. Especially during those weather days when there are rapid or significant temperature changes. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, we have another installment of our Fractional Safety Series where we take a quick, but detailed look at a narrow topic. The focus today is on how temperature affects surface conditions, looking at the 37 degree warning, dew point temperature, and a few tips to help predict less obvious slip and fall hazards. Check it out at memic.com/podcast
Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. And today we're going to do another installment of our fractional safety series. Like many topics, safety casts a broad net. So in the fractional safety series, I take a more focused look at a single aspect of a topic, just a fraction of the holes, so to speak. These are typically shorter episodes, but will be packed with information and hopefully some nuggets that you can take back with you. In today's installment of our fractional safety series, we continue with a fraction on friction, slip and fall prevention, and we look specifically at how temperature affects the surface conditions. So let's dive right in. Why does your car, if you have one with an external temperature sensor and we all agree that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit most of the time, why does your car warn you that at 37 degrees roads may be icy? Well, [00:01:00] is it because that carmakers want a margin of error? Or maybe the programmers felt they needed a harbinger of 32 degrees? Well, if we look at it more closely, we can discover that, though either could be true. Neither are actually the reason. It's all about location and it has to do where the thermometer is located on your car. Most car thermistors or temperature sensors are located somewhere on the front of the car, maybe behind the grill or in one of the side mirrors, and they can be affected by the radiant heat of the walkway. It's a tough engineering decision. You put it too close to the engine compartment and the sensor will be affected by the engine temperature. Burry it too deeply in the vehicle and it won't register the outside ambient temperature at all. It needs to be somewhere far enough away from the engine, but close enough to the outside of the car. Then it can be in the airflow around the car. Accurate readings from these sensors will come after the car has been traveling [00:02:00] at speed and the airflow has normalized for the radiant heat of the roadway. However, in the winter location is also the reason for the warning. At 37 degrees. In the winter, temperatures taken above ground level will be slightly warmer than at the road surface, especially at night after the roadway has cooled. So when the temperature sensor is located in the grill or side mirror, it doesn't reflect the temperature at ground level. Thus, the car manufacturers will give you fair warning that icy conditions are possible at 37 degrees. Well, how does this translate then into slips and falls? Well, similarly, you may have experienced checking the temperature, finding that it's in the mid 30s, and then your first step on the pavement is like stepping on to a skating rink, not even realizing that there's going to be ice there on the ground because, again, water freezes at 32 degrees and the temperature you just checked was maybe 35 or 36 or 38. Think [00:03:00] about where the thermometer that you just checked, whether it's at work or at home, is located. If you have a backyard thermometer or maybe even a window thermometer, those are located well, somewhere that you can see them from a window. And even if you don't have a local thermometer and like many of us, we use a weather app on our phone or computer that might not give you accurate surface temperature reading either, according to weather.gov, when temperatures are officially recorded for hourly weather observations and climate reports, they're measured at a height of between one and a quarter and two meters above the ground. That's between four and six and a half feet. The instruments are housed in special shelters called Stevenson Screens. They are named after the father of writer Robert Louis Stevenson. And meteorologists call this temperature the surface temperature, and that's the temperature that gets reported out to the public. Again, these provide readings of the ambient temperature where the sensor is located, or an average [00:04:00] of many sensors, but not at ground level. During clear and calm nights, the temperature at the ground or some surface near the ground can become much cooler than the reported temperature. The radiation of heat away from the ground is the cause in this drop, in these conditions, the coldest air forms near the ground and being heavier than the air above it remains there. So even when the temperature is in the mid to upper 30s, frost or ice can still form. Just because it's cold, though, doesn't always mean that it's icy. There are other environmental conditions that will factor into the formation of frost or ice on a walkway or road. Let's take a quick break.
Peter Koch: Seasons change and with cooler temperatures come slip and fall hazards, sometimes we get complacent and think we've got it covered. But statistics show that slip and fall injuries always increase in the fall and the winter. Did you know that MEMIC has a page on their website about winter safety resources that anyone [00:05:00] can access? It has reminders, tips and checklists that you can use for your home or your business to help you prepare for winter hazards. Check it out at MEMIC.com And search for winter safety. If you are a policyholder with MEMIC, then check out the winter safety resources at MEMIC.com/workplacesafety and log in to safety director. Now let's get back to the Fraction on Friction episode.
Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about dewpoint. Dew point is the temperature or point at which the air is saturated with water vapor or water in its gaseous state, well all air has some water vapor in it and the amount of water vapor the air can hold varies with temperature. The warmer the air, the greater its ability to hold water vapor. And if the air cools down enough, it won't be able to hold the moisture that it started with and the water vapor will condense into water droplets. Or if the temperatures fall, enough [00:06:00] ice crystals. When the sun is out, the air temperature near the surface is usually above the dew point and water in the atmosphere remains as vapor. However, as the sun sets and the earth radiates heat into space, the air near the surface can cool to the dew point temperature. On cold, clear nights if the surface temperature and dew point temperatures are below freezing, then frost will form. And this can make for some slippery travel. But it tends to form fairly slowly and can be easily managed if we anticipate it. On the other hand, fog can be more challenging, especially when it's colder. Fog often forms on cold or clear nights as the temperatures drop to the dew point in areas where there is abundant moisture, such as around unfrozen rivers, lakes or soil that is still damp or wet. Fog contains large amounts of liquid water. And if a fog bank passes over a walkway, parking lot or roadway that has cooled to a temperature below freezing, icing can [00:07:00] be rapid and take a toll on travelers with a thick coat of ice being deposited in mere minutes. Temperature affects surface conditions in multiple ways, and the media or Internet based sources we normally rely on to influence our decisions for travel may not be enough to keep us safe and upright in some circumstances. Understanding the relationship between air temperature, surface temperature and dew point temperature can help you identify problems and make decisions for future actions. Here are some practical tips for predicting less obvious outdoor slip and fall potentials. So first, clearing skies with low or no wind can indicate rapid radiational cooling potential. This can have an impact on any walkway moisture and raise a red flag for your morning commute or walk to the mailbox when the temperatures start to drop next, the sun helps to melt frosty surfaces. However, surfaces and shaded areas can hold ice well into the day, even when [00:08:00] reported temperatures are above freezing. Next, know your locations, know where you work, live and commute. Are they near water or open fields? Do you normally see fog in those areas on cold or cool mornings when the temperatures start to drop and get into those mid 30s and you expect fog in those areas? Be sure to use caution. And finally, remember, officially reported temperatures are warmer than surface temperatures, especially on cold, clear nights. If air temperatures drop below the thirty seven degree mark, freezing conditions may already exist at the surface. There's a ton more that we can talk about regarding how temperature affects surface conditions. We didn't even get to freezing rain or wind. However, you can check out some additional reading at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find more resources on this topic and our entire podcast archive.
Peter Koch: That about wraps up this weeks, safety expert podcast. Today, we've been exploring how temperatures, even [00:09:00] those above freezing, can indicate freezing conditions and affect surface friction. Thanks again for joining us. If you have any questions on this topic or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, or you have ideas of other episodes related to safety, email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. And if you haven't already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you listen to us on. And if you've already done that, well, thank you, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for your continued support. Until next time. This is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learn here is even better.
The road to becoming a safety professional can take many directions. Certifications like CSP, ASP, or OHST, experience in a particular field, or assumed responsibilities on a job can all lead to a career as a safety professional. Knowing that you have a group to help you sort our choices can be a powerful boost. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Alexis Flink, outgoing President of the Maine Chapter of ASSP, Deborah Roy, Current president of ASSP and I talk about the how the American Society of Safety Professionals can help no matter where you may be in your safety career.
The overall health of a person can have a significant effect on their ability to work safely and produce a quality product in a timely manner. Many of our migrant and seasonal farm workers bring with them similar baseline health issues as their local counterparts. Combine this with language, cultural, and transportation barriers you have a particularly challenging problem. Enter the Maine Mobile Health program. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Lisa Tapert, CEO of Maine Mobile Health and I talk about America’s Seasonal and Migrant Farm Workers, the safety and health challenges they face, and what Maine Mobile Health has been doing to support both the growers and workers.
Opioid addiction and use in the workplace have been on the rise in the US. Employers should have a solid opioid prevention and response plan in place if their circumstances warrants. On this Episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I talk with Shelby Pedersen, Licensed Athletic Trainer, ASP, and Safety Management Consultant with the MEMIC Group about the effects of opioids in the workplace and how to build an effective response plan.
According to a 2018 research paper published in Sage Journal’s Workplace Health and Safety, citing numbers from NIOSH, the number of individuals aged 65 and older is projected to double by 2030, hitting 20% of the total US population. And the US Census Bureau projects that older adults (65 and older) will out-number children (18 and younger) by 2034.
Americans are staying at work longer than in any other time in our industrial history. This brings numerous benefits as well as unique challenges to employers across the country.
On this Episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I talk with Al Brown, MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics. Together we are going to dig into America’s Aging workforce then talk about some strategies for injury prevention, and how employers can continue to enhance workplace safety.
Indoor air quality can make or break a workplace. Understanding some basic concepts around air movement, ventilation system, off gassing, and fresh air vs re-circulation can help you identify potential problem areas in your facility.
On this Episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I talk with Luis Pieretti, phD and Manager of Industrial Hygiene here at MEMIC. Together we will dig into indoor air quality challenges, the effects of indoor air quality on the worker, and strategies for change.
Commercial Kitchen, Kitchens, Restaurant, hospitality, safety, HACCP, Hazards Analysis Critical Control Points, equipment safety, burns, cuts, material handling, Fryer, Slicer, Mixers, Slicers, and Fryers!! Oh My!! Inside the commercial kitchen lurks a myriad of hazards that workers can be exposed to. Trouble is, some aren’t always a hazard, some aren’t always visible, and many are so common we don’t consider them a danger.
The numbers show, while most of the injuries that happen in a restaurant are minor like small cuts or burns, or strains and sprains, major life changing injuries can and do occur. Head injuries from a slip and fall, blindness from a hot grease splash, 3rd degree burns from a steam kettle, or an amputation from an unguarded mixer or knife slip.
Add to that some stats like 1 in 3 employed teens work in the restaurant industry or 6 out of every 10 American’s first job was in food service, and you get a challenging recipe for consistent safety and injury prevention.
For the episode, Safety in the Commercial Kitchen, Peter speaks with Dave Darnley, Safety Management Consultant at MEMIC about hazards in the kitchen and strategies to integrate safety into the fast paced workflow of the restaurant business. They swap stories about assignments gone wrong and how to prevent little things from becoming big problems. Want to know more? Check it out at the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast.
Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch, and work as a safety management consultant with MEMIC. So let me frame today's topic for you. Mixer's Slicers and Fryer's. Oh, my. We're talking about commercial kitchen safety hazards in the kitchen can take many forms. Some, like knives, meat slicers, fryers and grills are obvious. Others like curled up mats, spills, reaching heavy stock on high shelves and rushing aren't quite as obvious until the injury occurs. So today I'm speaking with Dave Darnley, safety management consultant with MEMIC, about commercial kitchen safety. Dave is part of our Northeast Loss Control team and is based in the Buffalo, New York area. Dave. Welcome to the podcast.
Dave Darnley: Peter, thanks so much. Really appreciate you having me today.
Peter Koch: Right on. So great to have you on the line here and talking to us about kitchen safety. One of the very actually, [00:01:00] it's a big part of what you do, but it's a small part of your experience overall. So really, before we dig into that topic I want to talk a little bit about that extensive background that you have in safety management. So you've got a master's in safety management from West Virginia University. You've got your CHSP and CPHA. So you're a certified health care safety professional and you're certified safe patient handling associate designations, as well as being certified in New York State as a workplace safety and loss prevention program consultant. Tons of education, but having talked to you over the years. We both know that education doesn't always bring practical solutions to the workplace safety problems. So tell me a little bit about your experience working with different companies and their safety programs in the field.
Dave Darnley: Absolutely. Thanks, Pete. And thank you for mentioning some of the background and experience I do have. It's kind of funny. And looking at that. I might [00:02:00] have more designations that have expired than I have current ones actively. But it happens when you spend 30 plus years in the field. It's been it's been a fun ride, learned a lot and definitely worked with a lot of different types of companies, a lot of different kinds of businesses and industries that we get in and out of. So from that standpoint, I would say I'm very much a generalist, if you will. I interact with people in all different levels of the organization. So I may be talking with the line workers and folks in the kitchen that are doing the work. But it's probably middle management that's taking me around and showing me the establishment. But at the end of the day, we meet with the C Suite people and the owners and talk about what they have. So communication really becomes a really big key to what we do, being able to talk to folks at every level of an organization [00:03:00] and being able to come up with reasons that ring true to them as to why safety is so important.
Peter Koch: Yeah, sure. And especially when we're talking about like hospitality, safety or safety within the restaurant and hospitality industry, there's a ton of frequency. So a lot of small minor injuries within the restaurant industry. Not a lot of huge ones, although there are some. So sometimes getting the organization to understand the impact that increasing safety or focusing on safety or integrating safety can be challenging. And you might you might convince the worker when in your walk around, but getting that, getting the rest of the organization to support the efforts of the worker or middle management really has to be integrated all the way through. So, yeah, that's a really, communication is a huge part of making safety functional, especially in the hospitality and restaurant industries. [00:04:00]
Dave Darnley: Absolutely. Absolutely. And in doing so, I try to take a consultative approach to it.
Peter Koch: Right.
Dave Darnley: You know, I'm not going to come in as the safety cop. I'm not coming in as the health inspector. I'm not the OSHA inspector. You know, we want to try to get people to build really safety into their operations, much the same as they build in food safety, food quality. You know, safety should be an integrated, integral part of everything that they're doing.
Peter Koch: Right. Shouldn't be that extra thing. It should be just part of their every day, their every shift function of what happens. And we're going to get into some of those parts and pieces as we dig into the meat of the topic today. But let's just talk about the pervasiveness. So there's some interesting stats out there about the restaurant association. So there's a group called the National Restaurant Association, and they have a fact [00:05:00] book that they put out every year. And they talk about the statistics and demographics of the restaurant industry itself and really some interesting statistics and I thought these would be interesting to talk a little bit about as we start to get into our topic. So they state that the 2019 fact book reports that nearly six in ten adults have worked in the restaurant industry. So let's just take us, for example. So I don't know about you, but I've worked in the restaurant industry. I've worked in multiple different parts of the restaurant and commercial kitchen industry side. How about how about you?
Dave Darnley: I did. I did my first I'll call it real job after my paper route was working in a smorgasbord restaurant.
Peter Koch: Oh no kidding.
Dave Darnley: Yeah. Yeah. I started in the dish room. Worked my way up to I think you started with colds so you did the salads and things [00:06:00] of that nature and then desserts and then hot and then I went to the banquet side and whatnot. So I spent a couple of years doing that as a teenager, junior and senior year of high school.
Peter Koch: Yeah, right on. right on. Interesting. So similar. I didn't do the smorgasbord thing but part of part time work as where I worked for an amusement park. So as I was looking for extra hours, I was a lifeguard in high school so I was looking for extra hours and I got to work in one of the concession areas making sandwiches. So when I didn't have lifeguard duty, when the pool wasn't open or the waterfront wasn't open, I was slinging sandwiches and cold cuts. So right , so and you talk about it's like your first job after your paper route. The other statistic there is one in three Americans got their first job experience in a restaurant. So that's pretty, pretty close to you and I as well. And I imagine that there's some listeners that have had that same [00:07:00] experience. The other interesting statistic is that one in three employed teens from the study work in the restaurant industry. So if you think about this, I mean, goes back to that first job that people have, it's a great opportunity. But the restaurant industry employs young people. It employs older people. It employs people across the generational spectrum, across the cultural spectrum. And so there's quite a few challenges just on the employment side when we start to think about how we integrate safety into the restaurant industry or the commercial kitchen, because there's a ton of different hazards that folks are exposed to. So think about your own experience, Dave, and just take me through some of the hazards in the commercial kitchens that you've either walked through or worked in.
Dave Darnley: Sure, absolutely. [00:08:00] There's some that are obvious, I guess. Right. And we've already alluded to it a little bit, but certainly cuts folks that are using knives quite a bit, typically have slicers, can also have broken glass. So one of the things that we always look for when we go through a kitchen is do they have a procedure or a process for if a plate or a glass, something breaks in the kitchen. And basically that simply is to have typically a plastic bucket that's marked glass on it so that you can sweep it up and take care of getting rid of that, separate from putting it in, say, the general garbage, where there's going to be the plastic liner. And when you go to pull that out, you're going to make a mess and potentially have some other hazards as well.
Peter Koch: Sure. You think about that for just a second, though, that's an interesting part, because you talked about broken glass and you can actually create a hazard, like you said, by taking that glass and putting it into the [00:09:00] wrong container. And how many times have you actually watched someone pick up shards or broken glass, broken container, whether it be on the floor? They dropped it on the floor in front of the House or back of the House or it's in the dish room. And something's been broken actually in the dish area and they pick it up with their hands.
Dave Darnley: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
Peter Koch: They might have a procedure, but it might not even. It might not be functional or working.
Dave Darnley: Right. And that's definitely where and I know one of our colleagues who has been on before, Randy Klatt, always talks about when something like that happens. Where is the supervisor in this? You know, where's the accountability? And absolutely, that's a piece of it. You know, the employee is getting trained. The employee has a procedure to follow. Sometimes they choose not to. And that's where supervision has to come in and remind them of the right way to do it.
Peter Koch: Yeah, a key part of that. Sure. So I interrupted [00:10:00] you there. So talk about some of the other hazards that you see.
Dave Darnley: Oh, sure. Well, so slip trip and fall. That is definitely one that we see. You know wet floors you can have spills. Certainly you can either, you know, drop as you're making the sandwich, the sliced tomato goes down on the ground. And then, of course, if you step on that, that's going to be slippery. There's waters and soups and liquids, things of that nature. Oftentimes, there's an ice machine that might be in the back of the kitchen, not in the cooking area, per say, but off kind of to the side of it a little bit. There may also be some coffee machines, things of that nature. So and then you've got the cooler, the freezer getting in and out of the cooler and freezer, the metal ramps. This is one that I see, I guess not often, but it's one that I will catch where you have a metal ramp coming in and out of a freezer. Typically [00:11:00] that will have a grit strip on there to help, you know, folks. But you've got the dollies of the food going in and out, the people going in and out, those wear down. And what's more is you may get some moisture on there. You might get some wetness, some condensation. If it's in the freezer, that might freeze and turn into ice. And in looking at that, we have often found that one of the culprits could be just simply that the seal on the door, the integrity of the seal has somehow been broken. You know, maybe it's been damaged, maybe it's worn out, et cetera, and taken care of that. So, you know, when you talk about I guess it almost goes into safety from a near miss standpoint or maybe from an inspection standpoint. As you catch these things, then you have to take a look at it. You have to figure out what the real root cause of why that [00:12:00] moisture, why that ice is there and then come up with a corrective action and take care of it.
Peter Koch: So, yeah, it's a great example of kind of integrating the process that a improperly maintained piece of equipment, whether that's the ice machine or the seal on the cooler, the walk in cooler, the walk in freezer door, allowing moisture or condensation to accumulate in different areas, just not inspecting it, not maintaining it, that creates a hazard. And if we really think about safety as an integrated process, all the way through the kitchen, back of the house to front of the house, to maintenance, to purchasing, to supervision, then that if it's caught ahead of time, we can remove or eliminate that particular hazard, which is right on the right, on the top. If we can remove the hazard, the injury can't happen. The challenge with a lot of our stuff is you can't remove the hazard, right. You can't not have a fryer. You can't not have a grill. You can't not have [00:13:00] some of the preparation tools that are traditionally used within the kitchen, depending on what you're producing. There certainly are some options, but there's not always options. What about other equipment hazards that might be in the kitchen? That might not be quite as obvious. I mean, we talked about fryolators and there are certainly commercials out there about how fryolators can be dangerous. And we've talked a little bit about meat slicers. And I just I had an example just a couple of months ago where I had a client using the meat slicer and they cut their thumb on the meat slicer. Yeah. Yeah. Which was my first. I'll tell you a little story for me. One of my first experiences was working for another company, again, looking for some extra hours. There is a small mom and pop restaurant down the road. I applied, got the job. I was a dishwasher at first and then I helped with some food prep. And one evening we were really busy and someone had to clean the meat [00:14:00] slicer at the end of the day and the person was me. I had experience in the kitchen. I might have been, you know, nineteen years old at the time. Twenty years old, never had cleaned the meat slicer before, had to use them before and I was cleaning it, I had taken the guard off it. And of course you know traditionally you're not supposed to but if it's running. And if the blades running it's easier to clean because I just have to keep that rag on it. So I was cleaning it. Great. Someone called my name. I turned around, moved the rag and it caught the side of my pinkie. And I actually still have a scar there from where they had to stitch the flap of skin back on. So it really taught me a lesson that it's not just the machine, but it's how I pay attention to the machine and follow procedures. And it wasn't until a lot later till I really realized that I didn't really have any training to do that particular task anyway. So what other tools or what other equipment do you see in [00:15:00] the industrial kitchen that can be a hazard to the workers around it or the other users?
Peter Koch: Well, as you mentioned, with the stoves, ovens, broilers, fryers and steam tables is one. And all of these can result in burns, you know, your pots and pans, grills. So let me just back up a second to steam tables. This is something that I am seeing a lot of in terms of and thankfully, they're fairly minor injuries. But you can you know, you can get a pretty good burn from a steam table if you're going in without using the gloves. And if you're not following the procedure of maybe lifting it out from the back toward the front, if you will, so that it's further away from your body and that but we're seeing these oftentimes now in the new nursing homes. some of your continuum care facilities in that, you know. So in these facilities, there are the big, large commercial kitchens that, you know, where we're really [00:16:00] kind of focusing and talking about today. However, many of them now are doing these little small. They look like a small domestic type of the kitchen in different wings of the facility so that it gives a little bit more homey approach to the residents. And, you know, six, eight, 10 at a time can kind of come down with the neighbors that you live next to in the hall and whatnot. You sit at the table and then the folks serve you the food. So the food's made in the big commercial kitchen and then it's transported to these steam tables. So steam tables is definitely one. And as I say, there's some PPE and some procedure to follow with that will typically help you not get burned. But we have we've seen that pop on us. Another one that's and it's just a little bit unusual. And I've got a few of these in my geography in the Buffalo area. These are charcoal fueled grills.
Peter Koch: Sure. [00:17:00]
Dave Darnley: They are indoor with the hood. So that even though you're indoor, you can make, say, the typical fair the hot dog, the hamburger, the grilled chicken breasts, that type of the thing. So this is not unique to our area. I take it, Peter, these are things that you've seen up in Maine and elsewhere, too.
Peter Koch: In a couple of places I've seen them. They're certainly not common. And I've only seen once at one of the resorts that I was at, one of their particular restaurant establishments, and I didn't really get into a lot about it. But charcoal, how do they start the charcoal? Is it traditionally started or do they start it with like a propane fire?
Dave Darnley: It's a great question. And one of my sadder moments, actually, and in consulting with, you know, going around and taking a look, sometimes we do a lot of things ahead of the loss for safety [00:18:00] and for prevention. But every once in a while, we get pulled in after the loss to take a look at from an incident, accident investigation standpoint what happened. And so I went out to a facility that had one of these charcoal type grills and they run probably 18, I would say close to 18 hours a day where that charcoal is on. So oftentimes what they would do is they would come in the next day and that might still be warm. Oh, sure, there might still be an ember or something down there and they would build the charcoal. Off the top of that. They would typically use a charcoal, lighter fluid, small amount of it.
Peter Koch: So traditionally, starting at like you would outside almost. Right?
Dave Darnley: Exactly. Exactly. The facility had run out of the charcoal lighter fluid and [00:19:00] they had let the manager know that they were out of fluid. It actually got put up on a board that they needed it. And a couple of days went by and they still didn't have the new charcoal fluid. So the cook came in that day and he was supposed to start, let's just say at. 10:00 in the morning. To get things ready, so that opening would be at 11:00. Well, he was running over a half an hour late, got to work late. He comes in. He's now got to get this fire going and he's behind. He goes to look for the charcoal lighter fluid that still hasn't gotten replaced. They still don't have it.
Peter Koch: Oh, no.
Dave Darnley: So now he's trying to think, what can I do? What can I use? You know what? I'm going to put gasoline on it. That'll start. It's the same as it's the same as charcoal.
Peter Koch: That’s the same thing right.
Dave Darnley: Well, this this poor young man did not realize that that's not, in fact, true.
Peter Koch: Very true.
Dave Darnley: So [00:20:00] he went out he went out to the shed where they, you know, keep the gasoline for the lawn mowing equipment, things like that, because this was kind of like a hot dog hamburger stand.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Dave Darnley: Kind of a place. This is a smaller place. So they go actually, pardon me, there was another gentleman there, only two young kids on, and he sent the other kid out. He said, here, take this cup. And he handed him a Styrofoam cup and he said, go get me just a little bit of gasoline. I'm going to get the charcoal, I'll put the charcoal on here. You get the gas. So the kid goes out and he pours the gasoline into the Styrofoam cup. And guess what happens? The Styrofoam cup dissolves from the gasoline. And so he runs back in and he says, hey, that didn't work. The cup dissolved. So the kid goes, oh, no problem. Here, put it in this metal one. So he puts it in the metal. And so it's not clicking to anybody yet. You know, just how volatile the gasoline [00:21:00] is.
Peter Koch: Right? They had a chance.
Dave Darnley: Puts it in the metal cup and the kid comes in and the guy that was putting the charcoal on the stove who was running late to begin with, he says to him, he goes, go ahead, pour that on and we'll get it going like this. Like, I'm not pour it on, you know, and he hands the cup to this kid. So sadly, the kid, you know, not knowing any better, he poured it on and he didn't realize that there was still some ember underneath. There was still there was still a heat source. So when he poured this gasoline onto the charcoal to try to get the fire going, as you can imagine, you know, it lit and it came right up into the cup and it almost exploded, if you will. The gasoline was just all over him. And I ended up sitting, you know, with the manager watching a video of this kid literally running around the kitchen on fire until [00:22:00] the other kid grabbed a hose from the dish area and squirted him. So very sad, you know, infinitely preventable on so many levels.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Dave Darnley: And when we talk about, you know, kitchen safety, you know, safety, safety. Right. So, you know, why didn't this, you know, employee know the hazards of gasoline? Let's take a look at your sds book. What sort of training have you provided? Well low and behold, we don't even have an sds in the book for gasoline. Sure.
Peter Koch: Because it's not in the kitchen.
Dave Darnley: Exactly. It wasn't in the kitchen. It was in the shed outside the kitchen. But that was still part of their operations and what they did. So there was no sds, there was no training provided. How about we back up to just the fact that, you know, we knew that we needed this supply. Why did it take multiple days for somebody to, you know, [00:23:00] pay attention to knowing we needed it, going out and getting it, replacing it, etc.? So there were, you know, could we have another alternative? Could we have a backup? I have a charcoal grill at home that I use and I use one of those chimneys.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Dave Darnley: If you're familiar with it. Where I remember I was a Boy Scout back in the day and they used to sell three pound coffee and metal cans, we used to take the cans and make our own chimneys back then. So. Well, now, of course, you know, we've got little companies. But it works great. One piece of paper underneath you light it up. Chimney effect there is you know, there's no explosion hazard whatsoever. And so we talked with them obviously after the fact about a lot of these things and, you know, the several improvements that could be made to try to make that operation safer [00:24:00] for him. But, yeah, that was a sad one.
Peter Koch: It is. But it highlights a lot of why we're talking about kitchen safety in the first place. And so you think about the people that were involved young and then you think about the tools that they were using. None of the tools are you're not talking about. A big hundred pound Hobart three phase mixer that just looks like it could kill you. You're talking about a charcoal grill. You're talking about something that they probably cooked on or something similar to what they cook on, on the weekends. Or they might have had experience with family and friends with that thing. And, you know, they've. Why do they need training? Well, you need training because it's not the same as at home and it's a different environment. And there are hazards that you may or may not be familiar with, like your comment about gasoline. Right. So gasoline, it's everywhere. People [00:25:00] put it in their cars, they put it in their lawnmowers, they put in their snow blowers, they put it in their weed whackers, gasolines everywhere. How dangerous is gasoline? It's a lot more dangerous than people think. But because it's all over the place, we think that it has similar properties to other stuff that we might use to ignite a recreational fire. Regardless of all the YouTube videos that you can see out there about people blowing themselves up, throwing gasoline on a campfire or something else. So it really does highlight that story. As tragic as it is and as sad as it is, it highlights the real need to do that hazard assessment. What's in your facility that poses a hazard and your employees are exposed to it? How do we control that hazard? What's the hierarchy that we're going to use to control the hazard? And how do we make sure that all of our employees are aware of it? So, you know, thank you for sharing that story. I think [00:26:00] probably I know I can relate to it for sure. And I know many of our listeners can probably relate to maybe not the same situation, but a particular set of circumstances that allowed that event to occur.
Dave Darnley: Well, let me just piggyback a little bit off of that, Peter, too, from the standpoint that, you know, sometimes doing the assessment, right. Sometimes look at, say, hood cleaning as an example, you know, in the commercial kitchens where you get the large, you know, grease, ventilation hoods that it's over the grease producing cooking materials. Oftentimes there's a fixed extinguishing system integrated into that and whatnot just to give people a visual of what we're talking about. So those need to be cleaned from time to time, right? I know it. This is money. But, you know, if I were in that person's shoes, if at all possible for my [00:27:00] money, I'm going to have I'm going to pay to have an outside contractor clean the inside hoods and equipment if I can, because that in and of itself can be dangerous.
Peter Koch: Sure not only not having a well functioning hood, but the cleaning itself is dangerous.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I had a young person again who, you know, was given the task to go up and do that cleaning. And, you know, again. Right. The domino theory of how many different things have to actually go wrong until you get all the way to that last domino where we have the loss. But, you know, the short story on this one was he decided to climb up onto the cooking equipment to be able to reach the grates and bring those down his and he did it during the middle of the shift. [00:28:00] So, of course, everything is live, if you will. Everything's functioning and operating and hot. And his foot slipped off of the flat grill surface into the Fryer Grill and he literally fried his foot. You know, again, that's a life changing injury for somebody. And you know, at first blush, they're trying to do the right thing. But there's so many different bad choices that got made. And then, you know, there's Randy Klatt in the background again, going, where's the supervisor? Because, you know, where is that supervision to guide this person? Somebody told this person to do that task but must have told them to do it without any guidance or training or supervision.
Peter Koch: Just get it done.
Dave Darnley: For it to go that wrong. And so, you [00:29:00] know, when it comes to things like hood cleaning and potentially grease traps as well, that's another unique kind of to the industry. Exposure and some of those grease traps are fairly small and fairly easy to deal with. And if you do it regularly and pull the grease out and get it into the drum, you know it can be done without too much difficulty or just the odor, sometimes it comes off of those grease traps can be bad. But again, if you do it frequently, it's not too bad. But if you have one of the larger commercial grease traps that I mean, some of these are large enough that, you know, people can almost get in them you may want to consider for the money that it costs is to have an outside firm come in. And some of the same firms that do the hood cleaning will do the grease trap, cleaning and removal as well.
Peter Koch: Yeah, sure. You'd think about that on that hierarchy of control is I'm going to substitute. [00:30:00] I'm going to eliminate. I'm going to get another company who is more qualified, better skilled and has all the equipment to do that dangerous task because I bet.
Dave Darnley: Transfer that risk to them and eliminate the risk for your employees.
Peter Koch: Absolutely right. So if you kind of go back and before that accident happened, before that person stepped onto the active equipment and slipped into the fryer, if you were there ahead of time and you posed that scenario like, so what if like, would this ever happen here? And you described that scenario, the answer from the supervisor? Well, that would never happen. That would never happen. No one would ever do that. How could someone be so silly or so mistaken as to do that? But it happens. And I you know, as you're telling that story, I had an account with a very similar incident instead of he didn't do it during [00:31:00] the workday when all the stuff was active. He did it after the shift and after they had closed up, he actually stood on a large sheet pan that had been placed over the fryolator itself. And was standing on that when it shifted. And he stepped basically into the probably two hundred and fifty degree oil at that point in time. So certainly, you know, could have been life changing like the individual, but certainly life changing for a short time while the burns healed for that individual.
Dave Darnley: Absolutely.
Peter Koch: And again, I went back and asked, so did you think this would ever happen? No, I never thought anything like this could happen. Well, why like, why do you think it won't happen? Is it because you're prepared for it or is it because you don't believe that anybody could be that ingenious to do something like that? And really, if you think about it from a supervision standpoint like that, supervisor really doesn't think [00:32:00] that someone could be that ingenious to put themselves in that precarious of a situation. They're not prepared. They're just they just don't think it would happen. So if they don't think it's going to happen, I don't have to prepare for it.
Dave Darnley: Right.
Peter Koch: Right. Right.
Dave Darnley: And I think that particularly happens in your smaller establishments.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Peter Koch: Your one off family owned single location, you know, as opposed to some of your larger facilities, whether it be, you know, they're individually small, but they're you know, it's fast food. It's a chain restaurant or than your larger hotel restaurants. Yeah. You know, and the like. Because I think those facilities, those types of places are more likely because of their size, because of the amount of people, because of what's going on, they're more likely to have formality in their procedures. And when you have the formality in the procedure, then you do foresee some of these types [00:33:00] of potential exposures.
Peter Koch: For sure. So let's talk about that for just a minute. So you've got a lot of policies and procedures in place, like I've made the point to make safety important. We've done stuff to make safety important, and I've got policies and procedures that will drive, that will drive behavior within the kitchen. How come then we still see injuries. We still see people not following those policies, procedures, what gets in the way of people following the policy and procedure and doing something that puts them at risk?
Dave Darnley: I think a lot of times, Peter, it is the heat of the moment, if you will, from a production standpoint. Right. I think we see this sometimes in manufacturing when there's a peak period of production, when, you know, all the machines are on deck, everybody is running at full speed because we got, you know, several [00:34:00] big orders and we're backlogged and we've got to we got to get that product out the door. Right. Well, it can be very much similar in the food industry. If you're running a restaurant that typically does dinners, you know, you're going to start to see a few of your early birds show up. Around four o'clock or so, but probably between, you know, say five and seven peak hours. You know, all the tables are full. There's a line at the door or at the bar sitting, waiting for the next open available. And you're cranking out meals.
Peter Koch: Your staff, your staff steps in to get everything done and to put the quality where they want and they want to make sure they can make production happen. And they want to make sure that people have a qualitative meal or a quality and qualitative quality meal. Yeah.
Dave Darnley: Yeah, absolutely.
Peter Koch: So productivity [00:35:00] gets in the way sometimes. And if we put that into the context of the statistics that we started this podcast that with where you've got one in three teens or employed teens work in the restaurant industry and many Americans, one in three Americans get their start. Their first job is within the restaurant industry. So you take younger workers or even inexperienced workers. They don't have to be young. They just might be very inexperienced within the restaurant business. It's their first job or their first job inside the restaurant business. And they get thrown into the job where, hey, this is pretty easy. People just come in every once in a while, it's pretty slow. And then all of a sudden, like you said, five o'clock happens, six o'clock happens depending on where you are, what type of food you're serving and how it works. But the rush time when people come in, the world changes. It's not a quiet, slow [00:36:00] paced kitchen. It is things are happening really fast and people are moving around. You, people are moving behind you. Food is moving all over the place. People are moving all over the place. And we tend not to always follow the procedures or we sometimes we don't follow the procedures that we are asked to follow because of productivity.
Dave Darnley: Absolutely we see that all the time. And I think to your earlier point, whether we're talking kitchens or we could be talking about so many different types of businesses, because that's such a human nature piece of it. That's something that we see across the board. One of the things that I like to look for and, you know, sometimes I will come across in some of the typically the larger hotel restaurants, maybe the big casino restaurants, our resorts, things of that is the kitchens and the facilities [00:37:00] that have a formalized process and program in place. And what I found is that in these cases, there are sometimes following something called HACCP,
Peter Koch: OK,
Dave Darnley: H A C C P, that's actually a food safety and quality management system. HACCP itself is hazard analysis and critical control point. That's what the H A C C P stands for. And this is a very formal food safety food quality management system. But even though it's covering food production and it really covers food production and storage and distribution, and this is not just a restaurant food safety program. This actually covers the entire supply chain for food, kind [00:38:00] of from cradle to grave, if you will, for food production. Passive programs are and can be implemented into restaurants and they follow a fairly defined seven step process, where they're looking to do like a hazard analysis, if you will.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Dave Darnley: And they identify these critical control points. And as they find those they'll set limits, they'll establish monitoring for it, if need be, there's corrective actions implemented and then they just, you know, look overall to see that the program is working as they intended to. And there's a record keeping element to it like there is for most formal quality programs. So it would remind you in some ways for those with the manufacturing background of like, you know, maybe a Six Sigma, you know, one of those defined quality programs, if you will, where, you know, you take a look at and define [00:39:00] the process and, you know, you measure it and analyze it and improve it and control it, et cetera. So it really is, I think, a very it's very formal and it's definitely not for everybody. It would probably be a lot for some of your smaller places to follow. But for those that. Are larger and do do it, you know, you reap a lot of benefit out of it. And the thing that I like to see is to take and integrate the employees safety into the food quality and the safety programs, you know, make that employee safety piece of it kind of seamless to what you're doing just from a productivity and quality standpoint. Build it right into the process. That way, it's not stand alone. It doesn't become too expensive. It doesn't get cut. It doesn't go away. Hopefully it doesn't get ignored. Hopefully it is trained into the people [00:40:00] to such a degree that they know, you know, I've got to take a look at refrigeration temps or the food storage or handling. And, you know, I'm monitoring things like cool down periods and stuff and then doing line checks and looking at food rotation. But if we integrate into all of that, you know, while you're doing the lying and the temp checks to also be looking for, say, the spills or the housekeeping or the slip, trip fall hazards and things of that nature, I think it just it absolutely elevates your program overall.
Peter Koch: Oh, sure.
Dave Darnley: I'm a proponent of that.
Peter Koch: That's a great idea. And really being able to take that takes something that you already do from a food safety standpoint and then integrate the practice of identifying some safety challenges, whether it's good or bad. So as like you said, I'm going through the line. I'm checking temps on [00:41:00] my steam table and making sure hot foods, hot, cold foods, cold taking temperatures. But I'm also looking are the mats there for the person to stand on is the person actually utilizing the right tool to serve whatever they're serving off the steam table. So they're not going to spill hot chili or hot soup on their hand when they deliver it. They're looking for employees having the right food safety equipment on. So do they have a cap or a hairnet if they're serving food or if they're in the back of the house? You know, are the not cross contaminating when they're preparing food? But on the same token, do they have the right, say, personal protective equipment on to keep themselves safe, whether that's a cut glove or an oven mitt or another tool to help them stay safe or stay farther away from the particular hazard that they're engaging in? Great idea. And I'm sort of those principles. Again, I just go back. I want to review the [00:42:00] HACCP principles again as we think about this. So the first one is to analyze your hazards.
Dave Darnley: Correct conducting that hazard analysis. Yeah.
Peter Koch: So then after that you do the hazard analysis and you identify what all the hazards are. Let's pull us out of the food safety standpoint. But we're looking at now personal safety, people safety, how to keep my people safe, the employees. What are the areas that that they could get hurt? How are they exposed to those hazards? Now they talk about critical control point, like what would a critical control point be if you're looking at it?
Dave Darnley: Right. Identifying a critical control point. So I think it really goes back to some of what we talked about earlier with in the case of employee safety. Right. That potential for the burns, the cuts, the material handling type injury, you know, that that that point where you're doing the actual cutting or the [00:43:00] lifting.
Peter Koch: So that's the exposure when we're talking about that that would be the actual exposure of the employee to the hazard that had been previously identified.
Dave Darnley: Correct.
Peter Koch: Awesome. So now they're exposed and now we're looking for how do we limit their exposure?
Dave Darnley: Correct, talk about setting limits and then the monitoring piece follows that. Yeah, so for the setting limits, let's see how. I'm trying to come up with a scenario for you that I could describe.
Peter KocH: Let's talk about, let's go back to fryer Safety. Right. So let's talk about cleaning the fryer at the end of the day. So I've got to change the oil out at the end of the day. And we know that that's a particular that's a particular hazard. So we've identified the hazard of the fryer. One of the control points for [00:44:00] exposure is when they are when they could be exposed to the hot oil at the end of the day, when they're cleaning it out, changing the oil. So then from there establishing limits. Right. So some of the limits that you might.
Dave Darnley: Well, you could have a cool down period for the oil so that you wouldn't do it when it's, you know, at maximum temperature, you wait until it gets down to a certain point and that can be, you know, monitored by temperature and or time.
Peter Koch: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I've seen a couple of places where I had one company that was just they were taken. They would let it cool down to a point and then they were just opening up the valve at the bottom and emptying it into a five gallon pail, which when it, got full enough then they would shut the valve off and then take that pail and dump it into something else. And then they would just keep doing [00:45:00] this. And there were so many touch points where that employee could be exposed to hot oil or than the other potentials for slip and fall from a hazard, a spill or something else.
Dave Darnley: Splash. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Peter Koch: So those limits are again, that goes back to your hierarchy of controls. Can I eliminate it? And if I can't eliminate it, then can I substitute it? If I can't substitute it then do I, can I engineer it. I can't engineer it. What are the administrative controls and personal protective equipment that are required to be followed or used when I'm engaging in that particular hazard and then the monitoring? I think that's a critical part of this. And from a food safety standpoint, you have to do the monitoring. But I go back to your comment about, you know, listening to Randy Klatt in the background, going, where is the supervisor?
Dave Darnley: Exactly.
Peter Koch: So that's the monitoring piece. Right. So how do you monitor that the procedures and practices are being followed?
Dave Darnley: Well, and I [00:46:00] think from the supervisory standpoint, you know, the number one thing is that the person has to be, you know, not in the office, not doing paperwork, not taking inventory, you know, being on the floor when processes and tasks are actually working and happening. So, you know, the supervisor needs to be, you know, an active part of the process. And even if it's not from doing it per say, again, this is the monitoring piece. This is just ensuring and making sure that, you know, all of the processes and procedures that they have and that they've trained on and written up and posted and whatnot, that they're actually being implemented properly and followed by the employees. If they're not, then it's you know, it's a coaching opportunity. And, you know, every once in a while I've gone through and I've seen where a supervisor will, you know, let somebody kind of go through a process, sort [00:47:00] of make the mistake, finish it up and then, you know, approach them. There may be times when you have to do that, but if there's any possible way that you can have that intervention be, you know, a little bit more immediate to ensure that the employee doesn't get hurt and does stay safe, because obviously you're noting that they're not doing something in the way that they're supposed to properly, if you will. I think you need to really get in there and, you know, take that coaching opportunity and make it immediate.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it's a great idea. It's always more powerful to talk to the person about the event that's occurring than talking to them about the event or something that has already occurred in the past. And, you know, if you take if like, that old the old adage, if you see it, say it great. So if you see something that needs to be addressed, address it right then and there, if it's possible, because like you [00:48:00] identified, you can possibly prevent an injury from happening. I mean, how would it feel to stand there as the supervisor and watch with the intent to talk to the person after they're all done to make the point?
Dave Darnley: Exactly.
Peter Koch: And then they cut themselves right there in front of you because you didn't stop to have them put the cut glove on or didn't stop to have them put the guard on or something else.
Dave Darnley: Exactly, and, you know, it comes down to style sometimes with management, but, you know, I mean, from my standpoint, it's you know, I would absolutely start with just the coaching piece and that the continuing education and the learning. And if, you know, it comes to the third time today, I walk by and you know, the gloves and gloves off, gloves and gloves off. And every time I walk by, you know, I got to tell you that we need to get the cut glove back. And then, you know, we need to have further conversation. You know, maybe there's actually a problem with it. It doesn't fit or it hurts or, you know, something else is [00:49:00] going on. But at some point, they're done? You know, there needs to be that enforcement. And another program that's, you know, kind of the part of the typical safety 101, if you will.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And you highlighted something really interesting there, too, which doesn't happen, especially in some of your smaller establishments and even in some of the larger establishments that have a lot of turnover with their staff. Like how do you become a supervisor in a food service establishment? Typically you're really good at whatever task you've been given and then you're looking for more hours, more pay, more something. So you get to be moved into a supervisory role, but you don't really have a lot of training about how to be a supervisor. You might be really good at the task which you're supervising people to do, but you're not all that good at talking to someone about how they aren't doing the task correctly. So supervisor training actually would be another part of integrating safety [00:50:00] into that safety quality productivity triangle to make sure that it's part of your workflow. So how do you talk to how do you in the HACCP principles there when you establish corrective actions through your monitoring, how do you approach the individual and what are some tactics to do that so that you get the right result instead of making more mayhem in your kitchen?
Dave Darnley: That's a great point. And again, it's funny, you know, a lot of this that we're talking about today and it's under the guise of the kitchen safety, but it applies, you know, almost universally.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting how safety is not unique to a particular industry. The hazards might be unique to a particular industry, but some of the solutions, the how you get to the solution are fairly similar across the majority of the industry, that we interact with for sure.
Dave Darnley: Absolutely, yeah, the [00:51:00] old adage, you know, safety is safety, it's there's tenants and principals and whatnot of what makes up good safety. But, you know, right as you go and equipment's different terminologies, different processes, different. But the basic principles of safety are, you know, they remain the same.
Peter Koch: Right. And you could have that the same supervisory interaction can be the same to, you know, having worked in heavy industry, worked in construction, worked in food service, worked in the resort industry. I have numerous examples where I've had a supervisor or a manager come out of their office to something not going well. And the where the way they're approaching it is they're screaming and yelling and they're hollering and they're doing it right in the middle of everything. And you can see that like the head chef coming out or the restaurant manager coming out and hollering at the sous chef or the prep cook or whoever because it's not working the way it's supposed to go. Hollering directions, going back to their task and assuming that everything [00:52:00] is going to be hunky dory when they go back. And that's not the way to address the challenges. And there are going to be challenges. I mean, we talked about all the different hazards we could have spent the first 30 minutes of the podcast. You're just listing all of the different hazards that are in the kitchen. And we listed a bunch of them. But there are a bunch more that we haven't even addressed. But the solutions. Are similar, figure out what the hazard is, figure out how the individual is exposed to the hazard. How do we control their exposure so that they aren't going to be harmed by the hazard? How do we make sure that they're going to use it? The monitoring piece? What happens if we find them not using it? The corrective actions piece. And then it's documentation and discussion. So that process, they really like that has a piece that you talked about it does provide a good roadmap for [00:53:00] a restaurant manager or a business owner or even just a supervisor. So you can just you can same thing. You can take that as a supervisor and run your shift even if your business isn't doing it that way, you can run your shift the HACCP way. You can look at where the hazards are, how do we control it? How do we manage the exposures within that shift that you have and the team that you have to work with?
Dave Darnley: Absolutely, absolutely.
Peter Koch: And so we're getting here towards the end are there a couple more items that you wanted to that you want to leave our listeners with before we close?
Dave Darnley: I guess one would be and it just kind of follows and builds on the HACCP idea, the formality and whatnot. Having been doing this for a little while, you know, I will sometimes be posed with the question [00:54:00] of what's the silver bullet? You know, what's the one thing that we can do to, you know, to be safe? Right. You know. And everybody wants everybody wants to, you know, just, you know, give me that one easy answer for how I make all of this work. You know, there's got to be and I usually, you know, start by letting people know that, in my opinion, there is, you know, no magic silver bullet per say. But probably the closest thing that I've come to experiencing that is that if the owner. Or the very top management person at an organization buys into safety, believes in safety and makes safety their top priority, if they insist that they are going [00:55:00] to not have injuries and not have losses, then guess what happens? That message trickles down to the next layer of management, which trickles down to supervision and depending on how top heavy the organization but you get the idea in trickles down to the individual workers. And I think that that is something that is important for everybody to grasp. You know, certainly if there's anybody listening to this that is in one of those types of positions and they know we don't have to tell them. They know how powerful their position is and they know how much their word and their wants and needs mean to the rest of the organization. If they want something done. It's going to find its way to get done. If it's important to the boss, it's going to be important [00:56:00] to the subordinates.
Peter Koch: So I think that that is you know, that is what I would encourage is for those people that are in that position to take that to heart, because there's so many good reasons from both a human and a financial standpoint for safety to be that top priority. And if you can integrate it into the other aspects of what you're already doing, integrated into your existing quality program, integrated into production, then it becomes much more seamless, much more painless and much more effective.
Peter Koch: Yeah,
Dave Darnley: And for those folks that aren't in that position but, you know, you're listening. You say, well, I'm just one of the worker bees. You know, if you have a safety committee, these are the kinds of things that you can talk about relative to, you know, can we make an argument as a committee to upper management, to ownership as to what the return [00:57:00] on, you know, investment for a really good safety program would be and try to sell it from the grassroots up, if you will?
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a great idea.
Dave DaRnley: Harder to do but, you know, it is a noble task.
Peter Koch: And sometimes it is. Sometimes that safety committee can have great influence because as a business owner who you know, one of the other stats that comes out of that, the Restaurant Industry Factbook, there is the majority of restaurant owners started as like a dishwasher or started at the lowliest position. And they worked their way up. So they see productivity and quality because they might not have ever worked in a kitchen where safety is important. So their background and history and training might not have that. So the safety committee might actually be able to provide some information that could help guide upper management really well. So don't think you never have [00:58:00] influence. And on the other side, just that single supervisor who might be listening to this or that, just the individual who's listening to this, who might just work in the kitchen, your performance, your behavior, your focus on safety can have an effect on the people around you, and below you. So even if your manager might not have that focus, you still may be able to make choices that can keep you safe. Go back to that. That kid who was told to clean the hood, get it done. All right. I'm getting it done. I guarantee you, even if the supervisor wasn't there, somebody else, somebody else in that kitchen watched him climb up on the grill, guaranteed.
Dave Darnley: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah. And somebody has to do the right thing. Somebody has to, you know, recognize the fact that that just is an absolute you know, [00:59:00]a literal accident waiting to happen.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So at the end of this day, as we think about kitchen safety overall, a couple of points I think that we touched on here are you need to be able to know where the hazards are. And you can't do that without actually being on the ground and looking at your facility and even sometimes outside of your facility, like the charcoal story that you talked about. And the sds sheet for gasoline didn't exist because no one looked at the storage shed where they kept the maintenance equipment. So not just within the kitchen itself, but go a little bit broader. Where do your staff interact? So understand the hazards, develop good procedures for that, and then think about how you communicate those procedures to your staff. What how does how [01:00:00] does a new person who walks into your kitchen for the first time as an employee that just got hired, they're coming on for the first time and you're handing them their apron or you're handing him their uniform. How do they know what those procedures are? How do they get trained and then from your existing staff or your returning staff? If it's a seasonal establishment, how do you do ongoing training to make sure that people continue to follow and understand all of the policies and procedures and practices that you have in place? So and you've said it so many times, David. You said a very eloquently that you have to integrate safety into what you're already doing in order for it to be successful. So how do you integrate that into training if you're training your cashier to cash out? What part of, what safety stuff do they have to worry about when you're doing food safety? How are you identifying some other personal [01:01:00] safety stuff that might be going on? How do you integrate safety into what you're already doing? It's a I think it's a great point to leave our listeners with. It's excellent. So that about wraps it up here for this week's Safety Expert Podcast. I really appreciate you being here, Dave, and sharing your expertise with us. So thanks very much for that.
Dave Darnley: It's been a pleasure and I've enjoyed the podcast programs myself, I've listened to most of them, and I think you're doing a fantastic job and I really appreciate you having me today.
Peter Koch: Well, thanks, David. Appreciate it. It really wouldn't be anything without having experts like you on the podcast to share their experience with us, because that's really what it's all about. So thanks again for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there, thank you very much. Today, we've been speaking with Dave Darnley, safety management consultant at MEMIC about safety in the commercial kitchen on the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. [01:02:00] If you have any questions for Dave or I'd like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast, e-mail me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find links to resources. For a deeper dive into this topic, check out our web site www.MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find the entire archive of our podcast episodes. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. If you haven't done so, I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thanks for the review in the subscription, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you will think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding [01:03:00] you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast is good, but using what you learned is even better.
Chainsaw safety is more than just a pair of chaps and safety glasses. The PPE is only there to help reduce the effect of the mistake you make. To be a competent sawyer or to consistently use a chainsaw safely takes knowledge of the tool, the tree, and the environment. These combined with good body position, control of the saw, and saw maintenance can delver quality and productivity when you are working in the woods or in your yard.
In this episode, I speak with Andy Wood, manager of Forest Products here at MEMIC about history of chainsaw and logging safety in the North East, how the industry has changed and different best practices that should be in place for any business, not just logging, that has someone running a chainsaw.
Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. And today, again, we're recording from the studios of Portland Pod. They've got a full-service podcast, recording and production studio right here in South Portland, Maine. And if this podcast sounds good to you. Get a hold of Tanner down at Portland Pod. You might think that while chainsaw safety is important, it really doesn't apply to you or the company that you work for because you're not a logger or an arborist or in another forest products industry where folks use chainsaws every day. Well, don't skip this episode because chain saws are everywhere. If you have green space on your property and a maintenance group, chances are that there's a chainsaw in the shop or under your workbench. And even if you don't officially have one, someone on your team probably does. And it might have come out to expedite a project or to clean up after a storm at your workplace. So to address some [00:01:00] of those things, I'm with in the studio today with Andy Wood, safety management consultant for the forest products industry here at MEMIC. And we're going to lay out the reasoning for why chainsaw safety isn't just for loggers, arborist or property management teams. And in this episode, we'll talk about how chain saws have entered the workplace, steps that you or your team can take to assess the chainsaw uses at your company and how we help chainsaw users at any level maintain safe work practices in the field. So, Andy, welcome to the podcast today.
Andy Wood: Well, thanks, Pete. It's great to be here. I think we both have a lot of experience we can share with our listeners that hope that they can learn the lessons the easy way rather than the hard way that we have in the forest products industry.
Peter Koch: Yeah, totally. Like we've had many conversations over the years between the businesses that I work with in hospitality and the recreation field and certainly all the work that you've done in the forest products industry here at MEMIC. But even prior to you coming to MEMIC, you've had a lot of experience within the [00:02:00] forest products industry. So before we really get into it, tell me a little bit about your background and your history.
Andy Wood: Sure. Right out of college, it came out of college with a degree in forest management and went right into the Maine Northwoods to work as a production woodcutter, really liked being on the production side of forestry and lived up, you know, up north, lived in the logging camps up along the Canadian border for 11 years, worked up there as a production woodcutter, started my own logging company towards the end, and then got involved with training when our first logger state training program, certified logging professional program started. And then when MEMIC was formed in 1993, I was asked to come and work with their book of business in the logging industry.
Peter Koch: Right on. So you've got history not on the insurance side, but you came like a lot of us here at MEMIC. You've actually come from the industry that you serve now on the insurance side. So you bring a lot of practical experience and have seen a lot of changes within the industry itself. So before we get into some of [00:03:00] that, let's talk about the real reason why we're here to talk about chainsaw safety. And let's think about the hazards that the chainsaw poses and some of the things that happen when you're in the field using a chainsaw and injuries occur. So what are some of the things that we need to worry about from an injury standpoint? What are the common injuries that come out from chainsaw use?
Andy Wood: Sure. Well, one of the first breakdowns, you know, as a safety consultant we do on injuries is frequency and severity. And the injuries that we see the most are not really specific to the chainsaw. They're really across the board that a lot of different industries will see. So slips, trips and falls and overexertion. So that would be your back shoulder arms, muscles, soft tissue injuries. Those are really the two most common injuries we see and then eye injuries right after that and when we move. So those injuries are happening all the time, not usually life threatening, not usually as severe. We move into the severity side of those. What we see the big injuries are from. And those are a little [00:04:00] more specific to the chainsaw. Those are struck by falling objects, that stuff coming out of the trees, limbs coming out of the trees, being struck by the tree or dead wood falling in the work area or being struck by the chainsaw itself or chainsaw cuts. So those are the severe ones that we have the most serious of.
Peter Koch: Sure. And there's a there's fewer of the severe ones, but certainly they're out there. You can see him all the time and then on the news. And then the thing that you might not think a lot about is those frequent injuries, the slip and fall injuries, the overexertion injuries. In our experience, you and I talking about this, you can tie it a lot of those right back to the chainsaw use itself. And it could be fatigue. It could be a tension. It could be a result of improper maintenance, improper skill set, improper training that's causing or contributing to the slip trips and fall or the overexertion. And we'll chat about some of those pieces, too.
Andy Wood: Sure. I think, you know, having been a production woodcutter, I don't think the most physically [00:05:00] challenging job that I've ever done, particularly in the summer when it's hot or in the winter when the snow is deep and you're in an environment that's there's a lot of variables out there, you know, ground conditions and the forest, it's ever changing. So, yeah, just having the chainsaw out there is going to drive some of those, whether it's overexertion or slip strips and falls. Yeah, sure.
Peter Koch: So let's talk about some of those severe injuries and. By the chain or struck by a falling object, and those can range from cuts and lacerations to fatal injuries, and some of those were actually happened pretty recently here in Maine. Did you want to you said you did a little bit of research on some of those, the severe chainsaw injuries prior to coming here today. So can you talk a little bit about that?
Andy Wood: Sure. I'll go back historically for the logging production loggers are our most fatal situation there was struck by during the felling process. So as soon as the trees started to move, something was coming out of the canopy. You were struck by falling limbs, falling dead wood. You might be struck by the [00:06:00] tree itself or struck by the tree after it bounces off the ground. So that was our number one cause of a fatality. And while we've moved away from that pretty substantially with the logging population, we did have actually three fatalities this past year in Maine, all during chainsaw tree removal process. And the limited knowledge that we have, we didn't get to do really detailed background investigations. But based on what the state troopers put out in the media; they are very similar. They are all people. All three of these folks were struck by the tree that they were cutting and died as a result of it. So we're still having some of those big injuries.
Peter Koch: And where were those fatalities? They happened to people that were actually working in the logging industry or these sort of ancillary tasks that they were doing from a different industry.
Andy Wood: So they were production woodcutters. They were kind of, I would say, on the fringe. They were people who did use the chainsaw regularly and they were being paid to cut wood, [00:07:00] but you wouldn't call them production woodcutters. And that's really where we see chainsaw operation today. Not so much with the production chainsaw operator, but, you know, one was an excavator, so and he was doing site prep, you know, house lots. So he cuts a little bit of wood and then does the excavation for that. So he's in a chainsaw off and on regularly. One was a homeowner, the other two were kind of part time woodcutters. And so that's really the trend. We see a lot of the big injuries we've had and these recent fatalities were for people on the fringe of the industry.
Peter Koch: Right. So we're not actually seeing the same type of severity coming out of the logging industry. And we'll talk a little bit about why that happened. But we're seeing some of the more serious injuries coming out of, like you said, those the fringe industries. So it's people that will be using a chainsaw on an ancillary basis. Might be once a week. It could be once a day. But it's not day in, day out every day, every week, throughout the entire season, like you would if you were a production woodcutter or working in the forest products [00:08:00] industry all the time.
Andy Wood: Oh, that's exactly right. You know, in the early days with my time at MEMIC, if an injury involved chainsaws in trees, that would usually come my way. And they were all production woodcutters. You know, later in the 90s, I started to see kind of a transition injuries, wood, chainsaw, tree and type injuries would come across my desk and they wouldn't be loggers, they would be campground people or ski people that are all using chainsaws, as these people were, but not full time production woodcutters. Yeah.
Peter Koch: So what caused that that shift? What caused the shift from seeing the injuries moving from your full-time production logging staff or your logging companies to the businesses that aren't typically considered chainsaw users?
Andy Wood: Well, there's kind of a few things that happened in tandem throughout the 90s. We did see substantial mechanization of the forest products industry. So production logging. We had people running chainsaws on the ground and extracting [00:09:00] the wood with cable skaters. Everyone was out on the ground. Everyone was exposed. We've pretty much mechanized probably to, you know, maybe 95 percent of the wood in the state of Maine today is cut with machines, heavy equipment. So our loggers are all heavy equipment operators. So their exposures still some exposures in the cabs of the machine, but not the traumatic injuries that we saw with chainsaw operators. So in the forest products industry, a lot of those have transitioned into equipment. So those injuries are down. At the same time, we've seen a lot of things that have created, I think, a greater chainsaw use for all the ancillary while the other job descriptions out there, all the other people who were running chainsaws, I was just part of their job description.
Peter Koch: Before we move off that and talk about the ancillary stuff, what's another what would you say is another contributor, not just the mechanization to the reduction of chainsaw injuries in the logging industry.
Andy Wood: So we back in the late 80s, early 90s, the industry realized that it couldn't continue going [00:10:00] the way it was, you know, wasn't acceptable to have people in the hospital anymore. We couldn't get replacement workers. The cost of doing that, the cost of comp rose substantially. It was being it was cost prohibitive to run a legitimate business. So the industry had got together and created the certified logging professional program and rolled out a lot of training, a lot of formalized training for loggers and. I think we'll talk about that a little bit more, but that definitely that formalized training definitely drove the injury rates down. So we had a drop in the total number of injuries that we saw because we had fewer people out there. That doesn't mean people are any safer. If we look at different ways. You could look at this and some of the ratios or workers comp, for example, you know, it's based on per man hour worked. That would give you a better idea of the fact that the people after the training for the number of people that are out there, they're actually working quite a bit safer. So we had a worker’s comp rate that was pushing 50 cents on a dollar. And now the worker's comp rate for [00:11:00] chainsaw operators for logger's is in the teens. And it's been in the teens for probably 12 or 15 years. So that's a pretty substantial reduction for the guys that are still out there.
Peter Koch: Yeah, and that's a like you said, it's a combination of fewer man hours. But still, with the training people actually changing the methods that they were using to manually fell a tree. So you get the mechanization that's helped to reduce the overall fatalities that are there, but also the training that's there and really the training, as we've discussed in the past, the training wasn't always designed from a safety standpoint, although it's been used that way. But really it was originally brought into play from a production standpoint. Is that some of the history around the training as well?
Andy Wood: Well, yeah, the methods that we use really kind of interesting. You know, our tools have changed. We started out with a crosscut and an ax.
Peter Koch: You are old, Andy, I tell you.
Andy Wood: And when we got power saws, we just kept doing the same thing we did with the crosscut an axe.
Peter Koch: That's true.
Andy Wood: And there's really [00:12:00] a lot of better techniques we could have today. We didn't really stop to think that through until we got some formal training and some guys tried some different things and they worked better. And then they started with the formal training. They started spreading that around so we could all learn from that. Yeah, it's quite a difference. And before I think one thing that the training has given our industry is we're a little more cohesive and we talk a lot more communication within the industry is better. So we know what works and we know what works well and we know how that how the mechanics of the stunt work. We never stop to think about that before.
Peter Koch: No, it's a great way for what I've learned, especially from taking classes with you and then going on and doing some of my own training with my own accounts is that you can look at an injury, you can go into the field and you get the injury report, go back into the field and you could talk to the operator, talk to the people that were working with them, look at the stump and pretty much figure out what went wrong, what skill or what process wasn't followed all the way through to make [00:13:00] the situation occur that caused the injury. So it's a pretty neat way from an accident analysis standpoint. And then going forward, being able to address the specifics of the cause, whether it's on maintenance or whether it's information before felling or separation of operation, any of those parts and pieces can be looked at to determine whether or not or what we have to work on in order to prevent this from happening again.
Andy Wood: Really kind of interesting. A lot of variables in the woods, you know, the weather and the tree conditions and the time of year that you're cutting. And I used to think there was a lot of things that were beyond your control and some days what things would work well and some days things wouldn't. You know, after I took the training myself and really committed to adopting it, I was amazed how much more control I had over my work environment. Now, there's still a few variables out there, but very, very much more predictable than I thought it was in the beginning. And one of the interesting things I worked with the labor consultant out of Sweden, Soren Ericsson. He [00:14:00] was big on being able to predict everything that would happen. He would take all kinds of information. And he said when someone starts doing something, I can tell you exactly how it's going to turn out. And it was amazing how accurately he could predict things that were going to have both good and bad. And as we go through the training, you know, we have a certain protocol that we go through. You mentioned doing follow up on injuries, accident investigations. It is you can go back to the training and look at the protocol, the steps that we go through, and you can usually tell exactly why that injury happened and probably even predict that it was going to.
Peter Koch: Yeah, so it's really interesting, all this training is happening around the logging side to help them with production and then to help them with safety, but it really didn't trickle down to the other industries that end up using the chainsaw. And that's really why we're here today, though not so much talk about why loggers need this process to be safe, but really it's all the other people. So let's talk a little bit more about what's driving chainsaw use into the other the other [00:15:00] industries. So, like you said, we're logging is becoming more mechanized. We have hand crews out there, but we're still finding chainsaw injuries. We talked about those different fatalities. There was really one individual there that was really working in the forest products industry. The other two, one was a homeowner, one was a construction worker. And those types of industries were finding chainsaw use happening all the time. And I know you and I have had this conversation that you would end up going to another company, not a logging company, but you would go to a camp or I would go to a ski area or you'd go to a property management company or anybody that has a maintenance group or even a hotel. And you would find that someone there was using a chainsaw, someone had a chainsaw under a bench someplace that was their own. Or maybe the company bought it a long time ago. And it gets pulled out every fall or every spring to do storm cleanup or winter cleanup. Or maybe they're creating [00:16:00] they're creating trail access around their property for guests when they come because they want to have a more deeper connection with nature. So we're finding a lot of these happening, like there's more chainsaw use than we know in industries that were never really thought of to use a chainsaw.
Andy Wood: Going back to the early days when we were doing training, of course, our focus was on production loggers. One of the more interesting trainings we had a yacht company here on the coast of Maine request chainsaw training. And What are those guys doing with a chainsaw. Well, you know, they pull all the boats out of the water in the fall and they put them up on eight by eight cribbing. So, yeah, they weren't cutting trees down, but they're using their chainsaws to cut these cribbing into these eight by eight timbers into certain lengths to keep all the blocks up for summer for winter storage and maintenance. So they had chainsaws and they were using them regularly in the fall when they're hauling the boats. So that was kind of an odd application. But yeah, that chainsaws are really show up everywhere. The first shot over the [00:17:00] bow that we knew something was changing was the ice storm of 1998 after the ice storm of 98. There were a lot of injuries doing storm cleanup. Everybody was a chainsaw operator for several months after that. You could not in the state of Maine for a period of time. You cannot buy a chainsaw because they couldn't ship them here fast enough. So everybody that had property, every, you know, everybody that had a tree in the front yard of the backyard, they were getting their chainsaw out to do storm damage cleanup. And that's one of the most hazardous applications, because not only do you have the tree and the chainsaw, but you have all that energy that's been twisted into that tree, by the weight of the ice and snow or the wind that brought it down. So, yeah. And then so that was the first time we saw people actually outside of the logging industry calling us and requesting chainsaw training. We did have a lot of injuries around the state and a couple of fatalities doing storm damage cleanup after that first big ice storm. And then since then, we've had a lot of you know, for the Northeast. We actually had a couple of hurricanes, Hurricane [00:18:00] Irene and Hurricane Sandy. You know, we didn't see a lot of hurricanes in the past, but the weather patterns have gotten a lot more severe, whether it's wind or ice floating or flooding. And those cleanups always bring out chainsaws. So that's just the changes in weather has been one of the driving factors to get more chainsaw operation out there in non logging industries.
Peter Koch: Sure. And you're not always bringing an operator, a chainsaw operator, someone who's come from the logging industry to do your storm cleanup or to do your trail construction or to do any of the chainsaw tasks that you have. And, you know, frankly, if you grew up in New England or if you grew up any place where you had property, you maybe your father, your grandfather or someone in your family would have a chainsaw and you would learn to use the chainsaw from them. Not really formal training. So you tend to bring those skills that you've had from experience or maybe your first experience [00:19:00] was at the workplace and someone said, hey, you look like you can handle a chainsaw here, go ahead and cut that firewood in the pile. And interestingly, whether the trees standing up or the trees cut in a pile someplace, the dynamics of the saw are the same. You might not have the same energy that you have with a standing tree or storm damage tree, but the dynamics are the same. So understanding a lot of that and how it functions can help keep you safe. Whether you're cutting firewood in the pile, you're just cutting a few pieces of wood, you're cutting a couple limbs off a tree, or you're dealing with twisted, gnarly storm damaged trees from a hurricane or a tornado or an ice storm.
Andy Wood: Absolutely. And I have to just take one step back and offer a warning to our listeners. The whole thing about experience, depending on where you got that experience, you can have two types of experience. You can have good and you can have bad experience. And if [00:20:00] you're not involved with an industry who talks about that all the time, you might not recognize right up front whether you're having good experiences or bad experiences. So sometimes people who when at a particular company, someone needs to do a task with a chainsaw and you have someone I'm comfortable with, a chainsaw, they may be comfortable, but their skill set may not be they may have experiences that were successful but are going to turn south pretty quick.
Peter Koch: Sure. I'm right in there. I mean, I was never formally trained. I've never worked in the forest products industry like yourself, but I've had a lot of experience with a chainsaw, some of it coming from property management on my own side at my own house and others coming from work. Actually in the recreation industry having to use a chainsaw to do cleanup and given some training, but not real formal training. And when my eyes got opened after taking my first training with you, looking at yeah, I was comfortable [00:21:00] with the saw, I could accomplish the task. But only for luck did I not get injured with the chainsaw many of the times that I was cutting in the woods or cutting on the pile, and I never realized that because my experience, while successful, wasn't actually good. So I didn't have great experience. I had successful experience, but didn't have good experience because I wasn't using the saw actually in the way it was truly designed and not working with it in ways that help keep me safe.
Andy Wood: Yeah, and I think in the forest products industry, you know, for production loggers, we really learned a lot. We learned the same way. You know, I had cut wood for a lot of years before I had formal training. And they sat down and explained to us exactly how that stump works. What are the mechanics of the stump? How does that hinge control the direction of the stump, a direction of the tree or filing? No one ever. I mean, I know you put the file across the tooth and it got better after you'd filed it than before [00:22:00] it was filed, after you doubled it. But I really didn't know what was going on until someone sat me down and said, this is the way the tooth works. This is the way it works to create a chip and this is the way you need to maintain it. You know, my life got so much easier, even though I thought I was a good production worker, my life got so much easier. When someone explains some of those basic things to me, I'll never forget a time. This was after I was doing training myself for MEMIC and I had a group of woodcutters up in northern Maine and there was a couple of brothers there and in a small community of production logging community. And these guys were looked up to as being one of the biggest production crew, you know, in the area. And they did. They worked hard and they put out a lot of wood. And we're in the training and we were introducing the Borca, something that we really had never done until someone in formal training showed us how it worked and the benefits of it. And when I cut into that tree, the guys stood there, you know, their jaws dropped down and they just stared. And [00:23:00] I'll never forget, one brother walked over and he whacked his brother and he said, How come we never thought of that? We've been cutting, what, for 30 years? That makes so much sense. How come we never thought of that? You know, and it was interesting to think that these guys were production woodcutters and, you know, they were well respected. And it's just something until someone explains that to you, you're not going to figure it out on your own.
Peter Koch: Right. And it overall, it's a pretty complicated tool when you actually understand how it works. And there's a lot to how that saw tooth creates a chip in the relationship to that and the mechanics of the stump. And that was one of the aha moments that I had with training with you, as well as the not just the need for PPE, but the need for planning your cut and all of the other parts that go with it. And when all those pieces are in place, the there's still an opportunity for injury and failure there, but it's a lot more controllable and you can be more successful that way. So there's a lot of aha moments when we start talking about training and how when [00:24:00] people's eyes are opened through explanation, it really helps connect some dots for them.
Andy Wood: Yeah, the chainsaw is a very unforgiving tool and there are a lot of variables out there. If you look at all the other tools that you have, you know, you have your skill saws, you know, they have electric breaks on and they have guards that come over that spring back over the saw your table saws guarded. You have got the saw stop. There's a if you look at the chain side, something you pick up and walk around with in your hand and the bars expose the whole time, it is kind of a hazardous tool. So we want to have as much control over our work environment as we can because it is the hazard. You know, it's never going to go away when you're running a chainsaw or.
Peter Koch: Let's take a quick break so I can share a brief story about the safety experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch, and one of MEMIC's team of more than 40 safety professionals who spend our days doing what MEMIC was created to do, helping to make the places we all work safer and better. We do this by working alongside employers to improve their safety culture [00:25:00] without compromising and in most cases, even improving. Quality and productivity is one thing that makes us good at what we do is our team here, our policyholders don't work with just one safety consultant because each of us has the rest of the team there for support. So what happens when you get a team of safety experts together who are passionate about what they do? They share their expert information, their unique perspectives and their industry experience. And it all works together to help grow a solution for a problem. Sometimes we totally geek out about safety and the content and all those safety experts brains, but we realize that it's not just the information that makes the difference in the real world. It was the conversation, connection and shared experience that makes the difference. And that brings us to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. The Safety Experts podcast helps to bring that expert conversation right to. You need some guidance with topics like confined spaces, driving, fall protection office ergonomics or even safety [00:26:00] leadership. Then listen to our podcast we've got. Dedicated it to discussing describing and even debating workplace safety across all industries and applications with industry leaders, top executives and safety experts here at MEMIC. If you're interested in hearing more discussion, interesting solutions and personal stories on workplace safety. Then check out more episodes of the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast that MEMIC.com/podcast. Or check us out on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe. Now let's get back to today's conversation.
Peter Koch: So let's talk about how the challenges or how the hazards and exposures for using a chainsaw are controlled. And let's start a little bit about we'll start at the bottom of our hour control hierarchy and we'll talk about PPE, for example. So when you're using a chainsaw, what are the different ways [00:27:00] or what are the different PPE pieces that you need and what goes into making sure you have the right PPE for a chainsaw use?
Andy Wood: Right. So, you know, in the training, we start out with our initial training, our intro with PPE. The big thing to keep in mind is PPE does not eliminate a hazard. It's going to help mitigate the hazard if something goes wrong. But it's not going to eliminate a hazard. It's important that, you know, we look at no matter what type of PPE we're looking at, we need to know that it met the industry standard. So everything you have out there is rated by somebody, your microwave, your chainsaw, the seat belt in your car. Somebody does testing on those. So we want to know that the PPE that you have meets the industry standards. We need to know that it's in serviceable condition. Is it still in good enough condition to work the way it was designed to? And then we need to know that you are using it consistently and properly in the field all the time.
Peter Koch: So that makes total sense. So those are the three conditional parts is when it's certified to it's in serviceable condition [00:28:00] and three, that it's being used. And part of that is making sure that it fits correctly. So those are the three things that are common across any piece of personal protective equipment that you're required to use. So let's talk about the different PPE or just list the different PPE that's required for chainsaw use.
Andy Wood: Right. So if we start right down at your feet, of course, safety boots, the logging standard would say that they are steel toe and they're actually have cut resistance, leg protection. You can wear the chaps or you can wear the pants. Either way, there's a certain performance standard that they have to meet. Protection for the head hardhats, the eye protection hearing, protection and use of gloves and high viz is not specifically in the logging standard, but it's situational. So a lot of times, depending on what other hazards we might have around us with other pieces of equipment or other people, we need to be seen so high. This is kind of becoming a standard piece of PPE for chainsaw operation as well.
Peter Koch: And so you're talking about the high vis vests or whoever's clothing so that [00:29:00] you're able to be seen better by from a distance, whether it be with the crew that you're working with, which I think is pretty key, too, so that they can recognize you. But certainly if you're working in a public space, which a lot of ancillary chainsaw use happens in that the public can notice that there's something going on there as well so that whoever's clothing makes you more visible for sure.
Andy Wood: Some of the injuries that we see are someone working with a chainsaw or another tool and creating a hazard for someone else who wanders into their work area. So it's important that at least all the people that are working with you, you can look up and identify them easily before, for example, if you're dropping a tree, when you get ready to release that tree, you need to be able to glance out real quick and see that there is nobody in the drop zone.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it's pretty funny. You mentioned that you and I have done some trainings before with different resorts and we're off in the woods in a place that's relatively unpopulated, but the resorts open to the public and it's in the spring or summer time where people are wandering around and you had a bunch of people around with chainsaws, were dropping trees, and then all of a sudden [00:30:00] out of the corner of your eye, as we're preparing to drop the tree, you see someone with a dog that just hiked up the trail and they're curious to see what's going on in there right in your work zone. If you are in high viz and your team is in high viz, you can easily see the people that are working with you, but you don't always see the folks that are coming up to see what's happening in your area. When we talk about personal protective equipment, making sure that what you use indoors is in serviceable condition is pretty key in making sure it meets the standard is is pretty critical. But where we find a lot of failure on PPE is after it's been purchased and been used for a while and for a number of years, that it doesn't stay in good condition, not in serviceable condition. What's the problem with that? Why shouldn't you use a piece of PPE that's not in serviceable condition?
Andy Wood: Right. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. Nothing lasts forever as much as we would like it to. One of the things I do is I talk people out of gear that they're wearing that I assume is no longer in serviceable condition. And [00:31:00] sometimes I'll test it myself. And sometimes, you know, I've taken a pair of chaps off, someone put it on a log and just sort it right into pieces. You know, it didn't slow the chainsaw down at all. And when the group sits there and watches that and they realize, wow, that looked like those are chaps and those were designed to be run with a chainsaw. But there we didn't stop to think that they're no longer in serviceable condition. They're just too old. They're matted down with grease and oil or pitch or they've been cut into. So we want to know that the gear that we have can be expected to perform the way it was intended to. So there's a lot of things, whether it's hard hat or chaps are going to take it out. Serviceable condition if it's below that standard. And you continue to use it, you're not going to get the level of protection that you're expecting and realize that nothing is going to stop all the injuries anyways. And if you're starting with something that, you know is compromised, you're just kind of starting with the, you know, one foot in the hole already.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a really good point. So the industry standards the ANSI standard or, you know, listing [00:32:00] for your equipment states that this piece of PPE meets a minimum standard, whether it's a cut through standard for your resistance or it's a penetration standard for your helmet or your eyeglasses. So there's a minimum there. And like you said, no piece of PPE will protect you from everything. So when you start with a piece of personal protective equipment, that's meets a minimum standard and now you've brought it below the minimum standard through poor maintenance or poor storage or it's been damaged and has protected you once before and now you're putting it back into use again. It's not going to protect you in the same method or same manner. So there's a higher chance that your mistake or your engagement in the hazard is going to cause a bigger injury for you later on if your PPE not in good shape.
Andy Wood: And most of the PPE that we have is designed for, you know, it can take one hit, whether it's a hard hat or are leg protection. You know, it's only designed [00:33:00]fall protection. You know, once you put that to the ultimate test, it really needs to come out of service or needs to be inspected by someone who's qualified to determine whether it's in service condition, the condition of those your PPE changes every day. So it's important that you start every day with an evaluation of the gear that you have your PPE or chainsaw or any of your equipment to make sure it's going to perform as expected.
Peter Koch: Perfect. So if you find that it's not in serviceable condition, doesn't meet the standards that the manufacturer sets out for you, which is right on those instructions, pull it out of service and get a new set, even though it might take you a little bit more time to get going in the morning or in the afternoon or get your project going. It's beneficial for you to have a proper piece of PPE.
Andy Wood: And I would say just good inspection process can usually predict, you know, the life of a piece of equipment so you can get some spare chaps so you can get a new screen for your hard hat ahead of time. So when you look at that in the morning and finally says, OK, it's not in serviceable condition anymore, you've got some replacement gear ready to ready to roll.
Peter Koch: That's a really [00:34:00] good point, to have some spares with you so that inevitably the PPE just won't be in shape. So let's talk a little bit about chain saws. So we've moved in the control hierarchy where we're going from PPE, but we need to consider the condition of the saw itself before we go and put that saw in a piece of wood. So what are some of the things that we need to look for in a saw to make sure that it's appropriate to run that day?
Andy Wood: So, of course, the manufacturer in the owner's manual is going to set out standards. The specifics that you need to look for every day, you know, the chainsaw should be in good condition for all the different parts. There are three particularly that are kind of unique to a chainsaw that we look at. These are in the OSHA standard that we're going to look at every day. And that would be the chain break, the chain catch, which is if the chain is broken or thrown off the bar, it's going to minimize the travel distance, hopefully to prevent that chain from being shot off to injure someone else or hitting you. And then the throttle lock, the way the throttle lock works, it just prevents the [00:35:00]saw from being accelerated unless you have a full grip on the saw. Before we had the throttle lock person walking through the woods with a chainsaw walking through heavy brush, the brush could hit the throttle and it could accelerate it and people would be cut in the legs. Now we have the throttle interlock, so it's a lot safer to use. So those need to be confirmed every day. And again, in your owner's manual, it tells you how to test them. Some of them it's breezy, some of them you have to know a little bit about how they work to test them. So those three need to be confirmed every day because they are wear items and they don't last forever. In addition to the those three, you know, obviously the you know, the on off switch and the guarding, you know, that covers the flywheel and the chain sprocket, those should all be intact. The other big one, and this is probably the most challenging for everybody, because it's hard to figure out. There's only a handful of people that are naturals that can manage it well and it changes every cut you make. This could change. And that is the condition of the chain. Yeah, the sharpness of the chain you've all heard over and over again. [00:36:00] It doesn't matter if it's an axe or, you know, any cutting tool. If it's not sharp, it's dangerous to be with. And the chainsaw can get dull very quickly if it comes in contact with even, you know, just wood that's got a little dirt on it. Or heaven forbid, you know, you hit a rock, hit it in the ground, what you're going to do or occasionally hit a piece of steel that's going to take the saw out of serviceable condition. And you need to have the skill, you know, to get that back first to recognize that it should not go out of the, you know, leave the shop in the morning because it's just going to frustrate you when you get into the field with it. That's an art in itself, sharpening whether you decide to handle yourself or use a guide or just take the train back to the shop and have them do it. Or if you're a bigger facility, maybe someone in-house can manage sharpening just to recognize that it's not in serviceable condition. And stop right there, get another chain sharpen that chain get another sore or go to plan B, because taking a tool that's not in serviceable condition into the field is not going to work well. [00:37:00]
Peter Koch: So that's interesting. The three safety features of the saw the throttle lock, the chain break and the chain catch itself were features that I realize were there. And then I learned that they're actually required from the OSHA standard to have on the saws. So that made sense. The big aha moment for me was sharpening and how sharpening affects not just the productivity, but it effects the cut itself, the quality of the cut. It affects your ability as a as a sawyer to maintain good posture all day and less have less fatigue as you go through.
Andy Wood: I like to say that, you know, a dull chain will make you hot in the summer and cold in the winter. You know, it's a game you just can't win. And you're absolutely right. Looking at that before you leave the shop, that's your best chance to have good falling conditions. You know, I think filing there's only a handful of people that I've ever run into that were just naturals for that. You know, it's kind of like being an artist. You know, I can barely make a stick figure that people [00:38:00] could recognize. Same thing. There's some people that are naturals at filing and the rest of us all are going to struggle with that. So having as much in our favor as we can in a shop, you've got a to hold the all. You've got good lighting. If you're on a ski area and you take that saw, you go to the far corners of the property and it turns out to be dull. You're going to be frustrated. You're going to have to sit down and sharpen their you know cold wind is blowing down your neck. In the summer the black flies are chewing on your ears. It's just not a good chance to really have good results sharpening. So if you look at it in the morning, you can use the you can either you might have a sharp chain or a new chain in the shop, but you have conditions that, you know, facilitate quality sharpening.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it's a really good point. So chainsaw condition overall, making sure that the three safety features are there. Other parts of the saw are actually in shape and working appropriately. And then a good sharp chain are all things that should be checked prior to going out and will help manage the hazards that you have. Because like you said, a dull chain or a [00:39:00] dull saw or an improperly running saw is just going to cause you problems down the road.
Andy Wood: And in fact, we encourage people to take sharp chains, spare sharp chains with them depending on the conditions. It's easy to go dull during the day. And if you know, if it just goes a little bit dull, maybe you can touch it up in the field. But if you hit anything, if you hit the dirt, hit a rock or pieces steel further ahead from a production standpoint and a safety standpoint to swap on a sharp chain and get right back into a production mode and take that back to the garage, some rainy afternoon and work on it back there.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it's a good point. And sometimes you don't know it for all your experience. I remember one time we were doing a training at a ski area. We actually just felled the tree and we were going to take the stump down. And when we cut into that stump, we actually cut into a rock that the tree had grown around. So it's not even something that you could possibly predict. But in that case, if you didn't have a spare change, you'd spend a half an hour, an hour sharpening that chain because [00:40:00] of all the damage that got done to it just by a second or two touch as you came into that tree. Remember that pretty specific and that. But you weren't happy about that day
Andy Wood: In that specific case I'm not sure that chain ever got sharpened again because there's a limitation, you know, what you can do and some chains are actually going to get completely destroyed. That might have been one that never got sharpened again.
Peter Koch: Probably did. It might show up in one of our trainings again at some point in time. Hey, so let's move on a little bit. We've talked about PPE. We've talked about chain saws. Both are. Things like the PPE will help you in the event of a mistake, when you engage the hazard, a good saw will help reduce the possibility of being exposed or getting injured if you have a well maintained saw. But let's talk a little bit about what else can be done to help prevent an injury. So like we discussed work zones a little bit. Can you elaborate a little bit more about what a work zone is and why it's important to set those up at the beginning of your cut?
Andy Wood: Managing your work zone is really critical. I think we've seen [00:41:00] more injuries with our non-loggers, a little different environment. They're working and they tend to work with other people. You mentioned the ski areas. There's a lot going on there in areas where there's a lot of other people in logging your work zone. If you're felling a tree, usually a logger is often in the woods by himself or he's with one other person who's driving the skitter. So it's easier to manage that work zone. In that case, the work zone is two tree lengths. So you need to manage everybody who could be within two tree lengths and back in the woods, there's usually nobody in the woods, so you don't have to worry about it quite as much except for when you're skitter operator comes back, you'll have to look out for him. But at the ski areas or the campgrounds, there's a lot of people around or the you know, the power companies, when there's storm damage, there's a lot of people around. It's important that you manage every, you know, anybody that could be impacted by what you're doing. So we've seen with the occasional users a lot more situations where there's going to be groups of people working together and maybe one will have a chainsaw or sometimes two. And, you know, we've [00:42:00] seen the same thing with brush saws. People get too close to each other. You need to look at your work zone for tree felling. OSHA Standards is defined. It's two tree lengths for everything else. The OSHA standard has a paragraph that says, basically, you need to consider if the worst case scenario happens, you need to consider how big of an area could you impact. And you need to manage everybody in that area or preferably just get them out in. The best option is always to get them out. Now, some jobs, there might be someone in your work zone, but they need to be paying attention to what you're doing. You can't have two people in the same work zone doing two different things. So look at what the hazard might be if you're cutting a tree, obviously, the tree could fall. And the reason for the two tree lengths is and we've actually had a fatality with this, a tree could hit a dead tree out at three quarters of its length and then the dead tree falls over. And so you're getting to tree lengths away from where you start. If you're cutting wood and someone puts a pile of [00:43:00] tree like firewood in your front yard or you're bucking it up for the condos at the ski area, you know, the hazard might be you start to buck up that firewood and you get to a certain balanced point on the log pile and the log rolls down the pile as the center of gravity shifts. So who else is around that pile? Does the log fall down the front of the pile towards you or does it fall down the back of the pile where there may be someone else also running a chainsaw? So you need to look at that storm damage wood. There's a lot of energy in those trees that come down with storms. So and sometimes they're being supported by other trees or power lines are still in the play. Even if the power's gone, there's a lot of energy in there. So when you make those cuts, what's going to happen to that? Wood is going to get thrown up or down and look what can happen sometimes for a chainsaw. Other people have been hit with kickback, right? So sometimes if you're just cutting a piece of wood on the ground, the only thing that's going to happen is an 18 inch block of wood is going to fall to the ground. You're thinking, well, there's not much of a hazard there. And I would agree with you as far as the [00:44:00] piece that you're cutting. But if you have a kickback, a chainsaw can be, you know, thrown out of your hands, back behind you. That may be the best case scenario. If it doesn't hit you, it can go, you know, 15, you know, 20 feet away from you. So even then and we've had people cut with brush saws as well, same thing. Kick back of a brush, saw, you know, cuts in into someone who was working right next to that person.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And those work zones can be changing. You talked about brush saws. So if you if you got two or three people working in a particular area, mowing or basically weeding down through a particular space, if you don't maintain the same distance of your work zone from when you start to when you finish, especially if there's a funneling effect of the property that you're on, when you get down towards the bottom, you may be within that circular space of the brush saw swing as you go back and forth. And if you're not paying attention to that, you could easily swing in to the guy or gal that you're working next to. And the same thing even with working with your [00:45:00] chainsaw wood on the pile. As the pile gets bigger, you're adding wood to it as you go or the pile gets smaller. That work zone might actually change. Or if there's more people that are going to come into that particular space.
Andy Wood: And it is a changing environment and you have to keep track again who's in your work zone. This happened a couple of years ago. We had a person was living and they got their saw pinched. OK, so that that'll happen to you occasionally. Sometimes you can go and pull on the limb a little bit. This was a big hardwood top. Sometimes you can go and pull on the limb. It'll take the pressure off the bar, the saw, so it'll come out of the same curve. So one person was pulling on the saw to try and get it out of the saw curve and his buddy saw what was happening and thought, well, I can go and pull on the top a little bit and it'll relieve the pressure on the, on the bar and he can get it out. So he comes walking right into the work zone unbeknownst to the person who's pulling on the saw. Just as this person walks by him, the saw comes out of the saw curve, he's got a death grip on the hand. So it accelerates [00:46:00] to full throttle. And the force of him pulling it back causes the sort to swing by and hit his buddy in the leg. That's coming to help him. Kind of a different scenario, but you need to keep track of, you know, before anyone comes in that war zone, the side needs to be shut off. So, you know, nothing's going to happen. I had one last year on a arborists site person was running a chainsaw. Again, arborists tend to work, you know, in the front yard where there's multiple people in a small area person turned around with his chainsaw still turning and sawed the person next to him right in the buttocks. So, yeah, you got to manage who's going to be around you and how big of an area you could have an impact in.
Peter Koch: And I think that's an important lesson to learn. That knowledge of the work zone isn't just it's not established by just the sawyer or the person working the saw, but the people around you who are working with you need to understand that work zone, too, so that when you come into that space, if this is the no go space that you need to have eye contact with the operator and that [00:47:00]saw needs to be in a safe position before you come in to engage in that space. Otherwise, the person using the saw doesn't know where you are or might not know where you are as they start to make a particular maneuver. Not you're not always going to pay attention to the people around you if you get focused completely on the work that you're doing. And it's unfortunate, but that's really human nature. We're going to forget sometimes some of the things that occur, especially if the saw gets stuck and you're feeling a little anxious about getting the work done or whatever is going to happen. So for sure, you need to make sure everybody knows what that work zone is. And the people working with you need to understand that too.
Andy Wood: Right so much of what we do in these non production situations. It is a team activity. Someone's cutting brush, someone's lugging the brush off into a brush pile. They're lugging it to a chipper. You're cutting firewood and somebody's taking the blocks over to, you know, cutting the and pile. So, yeah, there's going to be people all around you. So just a little bit of a game plan before you start to [00:48:00] figure out how that's going to proceed.
Peter Koch: Perfect. So then before we talk about training, which is really the last piece of this, let's talk briefly about what happens if an injury occurs. So you talk about EMS first aid, so talk a little bit about that. What's required for the saw operator from a first aid standpoint? And then what are some other considerations that if you're going to be working in the field with the chainsaw, you should have about injury management and EMS contact?
Andy Wood: I guess the first thing I'd say is we look at first aid is it's not safety, you know, it's after you have an injury. It doesn't improve work behaviors and eliminate hazards, but it does help manage the injury afterwards. Important to have. So most of the standards out there require basic first aid and CPR, the OSHA logging standard. If you want to follow that one, all employees are going to have basic first aid and CPR. If you want to follow the arborists standard, if you're working, removing trees and developed areas. Same thing there. People have to have a knowledge [00:49:00] based on the hazards type of injuries you have, which are going to be big because they're going to be chainsaw cuts and struck by falling objects. So the standard lays out they have a very specific curriculum that has to be followed for those traumatic injuries. So your basic 8 hour first aid, CPR programs are going to cover that. The one thing I find interesting about the first aid is I don't think a lot of the certification cycles are two years. So I have to take that every couple of years. I have yet to go to one of those first aid trainings as a researcher and not have someone in the class tell a story about when they used the first aid training that they've got. Usually it's with their family and their kids, but it's once you get that knowledge, it's not heavy to carry around. You know, it stays in your head. And hopefully when you need that, it'll come back and help you quite a bit. So basic first aid training is part of the equation.
Peter Koch: What about a first aid kit?
Andy Wood: Yeah, I think the thing about first aid is you have to realize that a lot of places you're going to use it, you know, some of the first aid training, you're based on being three to five minutes from [00:50:00] advanced medical services. But most places you're using a chainsaw, a ski area, you're back on the back corner of the ski area or even a big college campus. You're for the first five minutes, you're on your own or you and your buddy. So important that someone right there, you know, or even prepared,
Peter Koch: Even in rural spaces. Look at some of the communities around where I live in. You know, EMS is not five minutes away. You're talking 10, 15, sometimes 20 minutes, depending on where they're coming from. And the first response is going to be a volunteer response. And then the second response is going to be your EMS with the truck. I had story. My wife was driving home one day on our road and our neighbor, like a mile away from us, was laying in his driveway just and that's not a normal thing for him. And what had happened was he had been cutting wood in the fire, in the woodpile across the street in his woodlot, and he had cut himself in the arm with the chainsaw. And [00:51:00] he had managed to stumble all the way across the street, knock on the door to get his wife's attention. And then he passed out in the driveway. And my wife so his wife was actually on the phone with the EMS while my wife drove past to provide some first aid. And without the two together, he wouldn't have survived. So it just goes to show you that even though you think first aid might be that 911 call away, we're so used to that instantaneous response where you are, that might not be the reality. So you have to be able to provide for yourself with people that have good first aid training to start with, but then they have to have the right supplies with them in order for that to happen. So what's required for a first aid kit?
Peter Koch: Sure. Again, if you look at the OSHA logging standard, there's a specific list. The Appendix B is going to tell you exactly what you have to have in there. The arborist standard has a similar thing. I don't care if you had a ski area or a campground. I'd suggest you look at, you know, look at those lists and see what's on them. And the biggest thing and [00:52:00] again, it has to be in serviceable condition anything that's medicated, you know, the expiration date as stay dry and clean with a chainsaw. The big thing that you need that is not going to be in any of your standard first aide kits is large trauma pads. So you need some blood, something blood stopping. The kind of wound that you get from a chainsaw is not a small cut that's going to be put back together with band aids and four by four gauze and some, you know, butterfly bandages. It's going to leave a gaping wound. So you need something that's really large, really large trauma pads, something to put pressure on there with. So roll or gauze or ace bandage and definitely a tourniquet. So for years we didn't talk about Tunicates. You know, they're back on the table. And I think they're a lifesaver. If you look at the type of injuries you're going to see about the only injury that you're going to treat yourself on the spot or you're going to die is blood loss. Most of the rest of the injuries, you know, you're not going to splint a leg in the field very often. Usually you're going to call the EMS [00:53:00] and they're going to look at it. A lot of the injuries, there's not much you're going to do other than package and comfort a person. Blood loss is something if you don't deal with that right on the spot, a person could be dead in two or three minutes. So having, you know, the training, but also having in the first aid kit some large trauma beds that are not left on the four wheeler or in the pickup as you continue to walk two or three or four hundred yards away from where you left your vehicle. The trauma pads need to go with you in the field. I say they should. No further than your fuel can, I'm assuming that you're fueling up multiple times and you don't get too far from it and a lot of them are made to be worn right on a belt. I have a tool belt that has a space for one blood stopper are right on it.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And that might be the difference between saving your life, even if you can do your own first aid or the person working with you can do first aid on if you have it on you or have it right with you, that's the best option. Because if you're two or three minutes away and it's only going to take you two, three minutes to bleed out, you're three minutes from providing that [00:54:00] proper first aid to the person who actually needs it. So great advice to have the right training, have the right kit and then have that kit with you. And then the last part of this is access to EMS and making sure that your communication device is going to work no matter where you are. So if your plan is to be way out in the woods somewhere and your plan to access nine one, one is to use your buddy cell phone, make sure you got enough bars to get out to nine one.
Andy Wood: Yeah, we have a lot of places still in Maine that don't have 911 one, you know, ski areas. You just get behind a mountain somewhere and you could you could lose that option. So, yeah, a little bit of plan, whether you have cell service or whether you have radios, who's going to help you who own property. If you're on a big property, who can you call in immediately to help with evacuation? And then as far as the EMS, you have two scenarios. We generally look at there. One, where you're going to stabilize the person and take them to a trauma center. So where's the nearest emergency room you would take them to? And the other is where you have an injury, [00:55:00] you know, suspected head neck spine where you don't want to move them. You're going to leave them on site and have the help come to them. So you need to kind of look at that in both ways. Are you going to take a person to a trauma center or are you going to stabilize the person and have EMS come to you?
Peter Koch: Yeah, perfect. OK, so we've talked about PPE, we've talked about chainsaw use, we talked about work zones. We've talked about the aftermath. Not so much a safety piece, but a survival piece from an EMS standpoint. So let's finally talk about before we close here, let's talk about training and what might be you know, why is training important and what do people need to actually be competent with a saw?
Andy Wood: Yeah. So there's no question training is the biggest piece of this. You know, I had a colleague, a fellow trainer who used to say, if you have good felling skills and you manage your hazards, you could cut wood in a Speedo and be safe. Not that I would encourage that.
Peter Koch: I don't want to see that
Andy Wood: it's a scary thought. But if you think about it, most of the injuries that we see are the result of workplace practices. And [00:56:00] you know what cutting method they were using decisions the person is making through the process. Not so much always a gear failure or something like that. So the training we adapted early on a formal training program. It was an international training program. It became known as game of Logging. It's probably the most recognized training program, you know, nationwide. It's got standardization of courses, instructor certification. And there's really only a couple that are recognized nationwide that in the one the Forest Service, the government uses for their woodland firefighters. And then there's a lot of spinoffs from that. So I would suggest, you know, you do a little research and find out who's offering the training. You know, that they've got some experience doing the training, but have a good program that works well and the training that we use game of logging. It was a Swedish labor consultant, actually a production woodcutter in his younger days, Soren Ericsson developed the training. He developed [00:57:00] the training not to be safe. The goal was to put more wood in the pile at the end of the day with less effort. And over time, people realized that the people who are cutting the most wood also were the people who weren't going to the hospital very often. So eventually it got misinterpreted as safety training, although it was really solely in the early days production training. And what we found out, as we pretty much found in most safety issues, you know, job quality, personal safety and productivity really can't be separated. They all three go together.
Peter Koch: So with the training part where we have a training, if we're looking at if I'm looking to provide some training to my staff, I want to make sure that it's going to be recognized that it's going to cover personal protective equipment, that there's going to be some you're going to have some hands on part two because you can't learn how to use the chainsaw from a PowerPoint presentation in a classroom someplace. So it'll give you some basics. But you really have to translate that information back to a [00:58:00] return demonstration of skills so that the instructor can see what you're doing. And that's one of the benefits, I think, of the training that we do is that it combines both it has some didactic back and forth, some classroom to talk about the parts of the tooth and the mechanics of the stump and why it works. But then we take them out to the field to show how those things actually work together. And those were the real aha moments when I can think about what you talked about in the classroom from the mechanics of the stump and how every cut that happens first, the next cut is referenced off the cut prior to that. And if you make a mistake right in the beginning, whether it's information that you took that you took that was incorrect or you were off in your angles, then everything from that is going to be off a little bit unless you stop to correct it and you only have so many opportunities to correct it before you possibly have a catastrophic failure from the mistake. So looking at all those are important. One thing that you say frequently [00:59:00] is that no matter what training we do and how many days that we spend training is that training is not going to make you a chainsaw operator or it's not going to make you even a better chainsaw operator to change the training by itself. What has to happen in order for that training to translate into good work practices?
Andy Wood: Right so when I'm having a conversation about training with people in industry and you know what training they want to do and what their goals are, I say if you look at the training on a scale of zero to 10 zero being where you're at and 10 being, you know, full compliance, exactly where you'd like to be training alone will get you to one, you know, maybe one and a half really good training. You might get to two, really. It's all about follow up and commitment to practicing those things that you learn to develop that into kind of a subconscious behavior for yourself. So the training in itself, it's kind of like learning how to read or, you know, you're going to start with the alphabet, but [01:00:00] that's really not going to get you anywhere in itself. You got to put that all together and get all the pieces together, the training that we do. You mentioned the hands on nature. The training that we do is all in the woods. It's in small groups. You know, there's a discussion, there's a demonstration explanation of how things work and then there's a return. Everyone will take a turn at that and they'll do explain whether it's how the Sawtooth works or what their plan is for failing. Then they'll partake and you'll do an evaluation. So it's something that while there's a lot of good information, you know, on the Internet, we use that as review for the training, the training, really, we like to put out there and a hands Hands-On format in small groups right in the field to begin with.
Peter Koch: That's awesome. So we've reached about the end of today's podcast. And I think we're going to have you on again, Andy, to talk about some more of those specifics about the saw and maybe even some more about the training and what people can do to make their chainsaw safety process more robust. But I really wanted to thank you for sharing your expertise with us today. [01:01:00] So I appreciate that having you on today.
Andy Wood: Sure it's been great. Hopefully the listeners will get something out of it.
Peter Koch: I imagine they will. So, again, thanks again for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there for spending some time with us today. If you've got a chainsaw project or you've got a property clearing project, it's best if you start with looking at not internally, but look outside and contract, because there are professionals out there that have the training, that have the tools, that have the expertise to be much more efficient at managing some of those property cleanup projects that you have. So that's always a good place to start, even though we've talked about a lot of controls here on the podcast today, looking outside to a professional to come in might be your best bet. So today, we've been talking with Andy Wood safety management consultant here at MEMIC. And if you would like more information on chainsaw safety or would like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast, e-mail me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, [01:02:00] where you can find links to resources. For a deeper dive into this topic, check out our Web site at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find our podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whatever podcast service that you've found us on. If you've already done that, well, thanks, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
From slips and falls and musculoskeletal injuries to quality of care issues, safe patient handling and mobility poses challenges to caregivers across the world. According to OSHA, in 2017, nursing assistants had the second highest number of recordable musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) cases with more than five times the average for all industries. OSHA attributes these trends to repeated manual patient handling activities. Just having a program on the books is not enough.
In this episode, Laurette Wright and Rob Sylvester, both Safe Patient Handling and mobility experts here at MEMIC, join me to explore a SPHM program’s components and what makes them succeed or fail.
Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC's Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. Back in June of 2020, we dropped the first of three episodes dedicated to exploring the safe patient handling dilemma. And then episode I spoke with Lauren Caulfield, director of the Atlantic Region Loss Control for the group. And we unpacked the safe patient handling problem focusing on costs for patients and providers, as well as the history behind MEMIC Safe Patient Handling Program. You can check it out at MEMIC.com/podcast#HealthCare in today's episode. We're going to explore the dilemma from a slightly different angle. Looking at it from the outside in or a consultant's view, as the adage goes, sometimes it's hard to see the forest through the trees. And when you're close to a problem, it can be difficult to see its whole shape with the challenging topic, like patient handling and mobility. You just can't look at it from the middle. You have to see all the edges. So working with someone who has a deep understanding of the benefits and challenges of safe [00:01:00] patient handling can be invaluable when setting up or evaluating your program. So that said, on the line with me today to help us further define the patient handling problem and look at what makes a program succeed or fail, are Laurette Wright. And Rob Sylvester two safety management consultants here at MEMIC and both experts in safe patient handling. Laurette is a recognized practice leader within the Safe Patient Handling and Mobility Community. She's presented safe patient handling strategies internationally, across the country and at the state and local levels. She's a contributing author of the book The Illustrated Guide to Safe Patient Handling and Movement, and has penned numerous articles published in trade journals, including the International Journal of Safe Patient Handling and Mobility. Laurette is a registered nurse and holds a Bachelor of Science in nursing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, as well as a Masters of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has credentialed as a certified occupational health nurse and [00:02:00] certified safe patient handling professional Laurette came to MEMIC in 2016 to be part of MEMIC's health care team in our Atlantic region, focusing on safe patient handling. Laurette , welcome to the podcast today.
Laurette Wright: Hi, good morning. Thank you for having me.
Peter Koch: Right on. And then, Rob, Rob Sylvester has a wide range of experience in the health and safety field from military, manufacturing and emergency management to health care teams and special needs populations. He works with company leadership to provide tools necessary for workplace safety success. Rob retired in 2017 after twenty five years of active duty service in the Navy. His last assignment was Command Master Chief of the Navy Operational Health Support Unit in Portsmouth, Virginia. He is responsible for all enlisted matters and provided guidance to the commanding officer for the nearly 600 sailors at 14 detachments in six states. Rob has an associate's degree in occupational environmental [00:03:00] health science and a bachelor's of science degree in health sciences. He is a certified environmental health technician by the National Environmental Health Association and a certified safe patient handling associate. Rob came to MEMIC in 2013 and is a leader with our health care team and our northeast region. Hey, Rob, welcome to the podcast today.
Rob Sylvester: Good morning, Peter and Laura, thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to today and sharing some great keys to success and where we can help clients make some improvements.
Peter Koch: Yeah, right on. So I'm really happy to have you both on here. And like I started, we talked about this particular problem with Lauren back in June. And then we were looking at this in a three part podcast series, really looking at it from the perspective of what's the problem? And then now having you on looking at it from the perspective of a consultant looking from the outside to the inside, like, what are the edges of this problem look like? And how does that compare with what maybe [00:04:00] the hospital leadership sees? And then what are some success stories? So let's start with this. So, Rob, let's start with you first. What was your experience with patient handling prior to coming to MEMIC both personally and professionally?
Rob Sylvester: Hey, Pete, thanks for the opportunity. Prior to coming to MEMIC. As you said earlier, I had a varied experiences out there, different industries, but really with patient handling. It started with a special needs population, cerebral palsy type population, where, you know, prior to calling it and formalizing safe patient handling, you know, we called it patient care. I had an amazing team of therapists that I worked with, direct care staff. You know, I was the risk management specialist there. And I'll tell you, I learned so much from them and, you know, putting the client or the resident first and realizing that it was making a safer environment for not only the resident but the employee and vice versa. So back then, [00:05:00] you know, it wasn't you know, this is a safe place handling program. It was how we did day to day care for the population. So that was kind of my opening to it. And the challenges that came with it of the behaviors, the acting out at the times when you're trying to transfer or assist with mobility and things like that. And then after that, it was actually interesting story, because years later I ended up working for a very large acute care or actually a health care network, which is actually when I met Laurette. Laurette was working for another company and assisting as a consultant to help us roll out a patient handling program. So I was responsible for patient handling, leading a team that was responsible for patient handling, for acute care, for ancillary services, for a long term care facility. And it was an amazing process that truly solidified. I'll call it my love or passion for helping clients improve their programs, because, as you said, I've walked the walk, the very difficult walk, the difficult walk of starting a program [00:06:00] and trying to get people on board. And through that process, as I said, that's where I actually met Laurette. And we started working together back then. And now, almost seven years later, I'm here at MEMIC and just loving life.
Peter Koch: Right on. That's a great story and it really kind of shows how, you know, sometimes pardon the pun you might stumble on a passion for a particular safety solution. And in this particular case, you know, back in your history, you had some significant experience with developing programs and are bringing that expertise to us here at MEMIC, which is great. So let's throw this to you. So the same question to you. So what was your experience with patient handling before you came to MEMIC? We talked about some of it in the intro there, but let's talk a little bit more about that. So what's your experience with that, both personally and then professionally?
Laurette Wright: Wow. It's been an amazing journey regarding safe patient handling for myself, one particularly as a nurse. So back in the day, [00:07:00] I, you know, managed and handled my patients manually. And I worked third shift. And for those out there who work third shift in nursing, you know, staffing levels aren't always the highest. So when I would have particularly a deceased patient, I would often have to try to manage and handle that person by myself and doing the post-mortem care. And I can remember even today, the brute force I had to use and how sometimes I felt really bad about the handling of that person, even though they were deceased. I didn't always feel like it was in the most dignified manner. But, you know, going forward years later, starting to experience some back difficulty and some back aches and also knowing then that it came with the job, it was the implied philosophy that that's what us as nurses [00:08:00] did. And so therefore, back in the day, I didn't really see it as an incident at the time. I just felt like that's how it was supposed to go.
Peter Koch: Part of the job.
Laurette Wright: Part of the job, and then moving years forward. And around 2000 back up a little bit. I evolved into occupational health and safety, focusing my efforts in internally to considerations keeping people safe and healthy said in 2000, I was contacted by a medical device manufacturer who specialized in patient handling to help design a consultative division or a unit to partner with their customers and helping them implement safe patient handling practices, but to do it as a process driven approach and not an event. And so that took me on the journey of seeing hundreds of acute care, long term care facilities. It took me on the journey of being [00:09:00] with national task force groups, as well as speaking in different countries. And the thing that's common across the nation is that manual handling of patients is manual handling of patients that nobody, there's no sweet spot or magic for how we do that unless we have some tools to help us. On a personal note. Patient handling was an integral part of elder parents who one was a mother who was in a car accident and she had many fractures. She was in her 70's and staff in the hospital who had patient handling equipment, didn't use it, handled her manually in the extreme pain coming from her, her voice on that. And my father, again, was in a hospital that had patient handling equipment. [00:10:00] Staff, again, didn't consistently use it. And he became deconditioned and he went in, mobilized and he was discharged, not having the ability to walk anymore because he had become so deconditioned, so patient handling, safe, patient handling equipment for me is I like to frame it as mobilization tools and not really as equipment it's tools that can help safely mobilize our patients and residents to their highest abilities to the best that they can be. So I'm quite passionate on the front lines for my colleagues, but as well as our family members and friends who need that little bit of help.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's an interesting story. And you brought some interesting perspectives there and a couple that I haven't thought of as when you talked about your dad going in mobile, [00:11:00] and that had mobility and then coming out without it, thinking about the tools that you have for patient handling, being not just a tool to be able to help that person move and help prevent an injury and better care for the person that's being moved, but also helping them maintain mobility when they can across the long run. And I think that might be missed by different professionals within the industry. I know for a fact personally, my daughter is just graduated from nursing school and has been working as a nurse before. She sits for her boards and we talk about patient handling all the time. And her perspective or some of the information that she's been taught is more about injury prevention and instead of being a mobility tool to help maintain mobility and help with patient care overall. So that's an interesting perspective that you bring. And I will try to unpack some of that later on as we go. And [00:12:00] then, Rob, one of the things that I was thinking about when you were talking through it, too, is you've had some experience on the emergency side of things, the pre-hospital side of things, too. And I think even there you can talk about patient handling where there really aren't a lot of tools that can be used to be able to move somebody in an emergency situation from place to place. But there are certainly things that can do that can not only help prevent injury to the caregiver, but maintain good patient care and reduce pain in motion when you are trying to move that person from place to place.
Rob Sylvester: Great point, Pete. You know, there are opportunities, you know, whether we're dealing with EMS or, you know, the pre-hospital side of things or arrival at emergency departments, you know, there are devices, whether it's battery powered stretchers or gurneys, into things like, you know, some call them non mechanical. I prefer to call them non [00:13:00] powered, you know, non battery operated devices that can get into vehicles for vehicle extraction or vehicle removal. Somebody arrives at an emergency department again, you know, somebody that's been in those situations, a lot of emergency departments are resistant to that. You know, Laurette could talk more about that later, but we get so many that are resistant to the fact that, hey, we're an emergency department. This is an emergency. Well, if you were to actually sit down and qualify to quantify the number of patient interactions you have, how many, when it comes to patient handling and mobility, are truly emergent. So I try to remind our clients of that, you know, it might be an opportunity. Are we saying there's a hundred percent of the situations where they need to do that? No, let's face it, there are times where it's an emergency situation, but there's so many where they should and could be using a piece of equipment because again, yes, it's about your safety as an employee, as a caregiver, as you continuously tax your body. But at the same time, it [00:14:00] is the safety of that person coming in. You know, I've been in situations where people have been dropped, whether it's because they felt they wanted to get out of bed or out of a chair or because caregivers didn't use pieces of equipment. And they went from, as Laurette said about her, her father going from being mobile to, you know, going a decline of their mobility status. So there are opportunities to be looked at. And, you know, whether it's working with vendors, working with your safety management consultants, you're partnering with your broker and looking at those opportunities. So there are opportunities in, quote unquote, emergent and pre-hospital situations that can be discussed and really evaluated. Again, you know, emergency departments deal with a lot of things that are not emergent and there's opportunities for improvement there.
Peter Koch: So, again, really great points there, Rob. And I hadn't, again, thought about that. There are opportunities where if you change your thinking, you'll be able to implement a safe patient handling process, whether [00:15:00] it be a mechanical device or a non mechanical device or even a process where if it is emergent, you actually have to be in there and physically be with the patient. But what are some of the things that can be done and then manage the thought process of is it truly emergent? How many times do we actually have to fall back to those emergency processes? And can we use the tools provided for mobility and patient handling to not make it emergent? I mean, if you step back and someone many times well, I won't say many times, but I guess in my perspective, sometimes patient handling will result in a fall because we didn't use the right tools in the first place. And then that becomes emergent and that puts not only the patient but the caregiver at risk. And Laura, you talked about it being a process driven approach, not an event. [00:16:00] Can you can you expand on that a little bit, thinking about patient handling as a process driven approach, not just as an event? And does that fit in with what we were just talking about, about the opportunities to utilize tools?
Laurette Wright: Absolutely. You know, the key word is altering or change our thinking paradigm shift. Some of that thinking, again, when we hear the word, especially if your a health care provider like myself, if you hear the word emergent, the first thing that pops into my head is there bleeding out or is literally life or death. And I think we use that word outside that context so much that when we do use it, we again just think it's everything is life or death. And it isn't. So as a user and user for patient handling, I was taught when I was in practice, here's your lift and we need to use the lift. And [00:17:00] that was all I really got. I you know, however, what I have found that when we institute the use of patient handling in that manner, we're missing opportunities of process approach to it. Because when we talk about other things in health care, whether it's using the code cart, giving out medicine, those kind of protocols, we do that from a process. We don't just say you're going to give this medicine out. And so we're missing an opportunity if we look at this program or safe patient handling as a one time thing and it's an event versus the process because we have to embrace it, change our thinking behind it, and therefore change the behavior. Behavior changes our processes. You know, when I think about dieting or smoking, quit smoking, dieting, all those things, that's a process. And so patient, [00:18:00] safe patient handling in the context of that is important to be looked at upon that manner right away. Because other than that, it becomes a piece of hardware or metal that I have to use. And the likelihood is I won't because I really haven't changed my paradigm thinking.
Peter Koch: So expand a little bit more, and either of you can jump into this one, so why don't people see patient handling as a process? Why don't either nurses see it as a process, caregivers see it as a process, or even hospital administration see it as a process. Why do we start with here's a tool. You have to use it and then we might teach you how to use the tool, but we don't really give you a process to use it. Why don't we start there?
Laurette Wright: It's just never been a part of our culture. It's not been a part of nursing culture. You know, if you look at books and images, which I [00:19:00] have from back in the day of Florence Nightingale, they're showing nurses wrapping people in sheets, what we call log rolling and then carrying the sheet like three of us across horizontal to carry the patient. It's just never been ingrained in our practice and we don't know to do any different. And so there's opportunities where the best approach to do that is to start in the nursing schools and groom new nursing students to evolve into that. So for me, my perspective is we just didn't know and no one really looked at it this way until now. When we're seeing the injuries and the number of dollars that employers are spending to comp towards this now obviously it's hitting our bottom line and it's becoming more visible.
Peter Koch: Do you think that there's a connection between not seeing [00:20:00] it as a as a process and nurses, caregivers seeing the tool as impersonal? And the care that I'm trying to give this person needs to be personal. You talked about dignity before Laurette, when you had to deal with even a deceased patient and trying to treat them with human dignity and maybe using a tool to help this person isn't seen as personal. Is that a barrier? Is that a perspective that needs to be changed?
Laurette Wright: Absolutely. One of the barriers that I always have said to my colleagues is the only profession, the only profession that thinks one hundred pounds is like is nursing.
Peter Koch: That's true.
Laurette Wright: I have said many times to colleagues, how many of you see the person carrying a big box to your house with no tools? We don't see that. [00:21:00] And because we think one hundred pounds is light, that drives our behavior. And even today, with larger size patients and residents, I've asked staff what they think is light. And now most staff will reply to me like one eighty, one eighty-five. And if that's what we see is light, then we're going to probably try to counter it by ourselves. So again, there's a lot of myths out there that has driven our behaviors and it's just a matter of, again, reframing it. If we you know, if I said using equipment to mobilize and I don't see it as a piece of hardware, but it's a mobilization tool for my dad to keep him as active as possible. The likelihood is dad may not have had deconditioning.
Peter Koch: Yeah, great point, Rob. How about you? Do you want to you have anything to add to that?
Rob Sylvester: I do. Excellent points, Laurette. [00:22:00] You know, when we look at things, a lot of people, you know, especially in the world of safety, whether it's physical plant safety, whether it's health care, safety, many don't look at the overall approach and process like you were saying. And like Laurette was talking about. A lot of time safety is unfortunately, they attempt too often to drive safety through compliance. You know, OSHA says thou shalt do this. To your point earlier, Peter, you said, you know, we have these tools, you're going to use them. And too often we see that especially in health care. Hey, we have this new piece of equipment. Yes, we did training on it. You know, let's face it, in my opinion, it's really a I don't like calling it competencies, even though that's the word that's used throughout the industry, because let's face it, are you really competent? When you just saw a piece of equipment 10 minutes ago for the first time, you're really, truly not competent. So a lot of times your point, I see facilities driving it via compliance. Our policy says so. We've spent the money on the equipment. We did the training. So thou shalt use this piece of equipment. [00:23:00]So a lot of times I think that's the big struggle is they try to drive things from a compliance perspective versus reminding people. And to me it's a continuous it's a daily whether it's a peer unit leader, whether it's the nurse managers or others, it is a daily reminder at huddles of why we truly need to use pieces of equipment. And it's a journey. It takes a while to get to that point. We can't expect overnight for people to make that change. You know, as Laurette talks about, you know, going back to the days of Florence Nightingale, you know, using your body to provide that care and going through the process myself, working in legal and risk management and health care and being that team leader for patient handling that champion. You know, we would go around the facility and we would talk to people in different units. You know, med search may say, you know, I consider light one fifty, but then I'd go to the ICU and sometimes some of those nurses were like, yeah, we don't worry until they're about three hundred. We get four patients in here and we use a sheet [00:24:00] and we log, roll them. Well there's better not only devices, but there's better ways, there are safer ways to do things. So the process truly is to start at the beginning and look at your challenges. Find, and I always like to say find a program where you were successful in the past. You know, whether it's that implementation program of, you know, a just right culture from a human resources and people perspective or more of a clinical approach, you had a new infection prevention process or a better handwashing program. You know, that was a big push in the past and of course, should be always continuously at the forefront of what we do in preventing infections in health care. But I always ask about that. You know, when they start seeing the hurdles and the struggles, you may have as well name a program that you were successful with, whether it's a new program or improving. And a lot of times, you know, infection prevention or just a handwashing audit will come up. Well, we were only at 50 percent when we started. Now we're at ninety five percent. Well, [00:25:00] how are you so successful in getting that? How can we help you apply that to your safe patient handling program? So that's usually a lot of times how, you know, we look at that, you know, when it comes to patient handling. You know, we talked a lot about, you know, my experience prior to MEMIC I can tell you what really solidified that for me was my mom was an acute care facility two years ago. And of course, me being a loss control guy, I did a lot of research on the facility and found out that, you know, they had a patient handling program or an award winning program. And I can tell you, being bedside with my mother, the patient handling equipment they used was a slide board. And my mother was not a small woman, God rest her soul, but it was a slide board. And I said, excuse me, you know, and the nurse manager was there, excuse me, you know. Shouldn't you be using patient handling equipment? Their answer was, we are there's six of us, we're using a slide board. And I said in the alcove down, there is a full body lift. Why don't you use that? And when the nurse manager responds to me, this is quicker. Don't worry. [00:26:00] We do this safely. We do it every day. And I'm like, you know what? This is not acceptable. You know, this is not good practice and this is my mom. So can we do something different? And I will tell you, I failed because unfortunately, they never used a piece of equipment other than a slide board. So, again, was that safe for them? No. Was that safe for my mom? No. Luckily there wasn't a situation she was not injured due to that poor practice, but, you know, not ideal
Peter Koch: Really solidifying experience with your mom there. I can only imagine that was incredibly, knowing you, I can imagine that was incredibly frustrating for you to see that happen and trying to fix it and getting that answer. But I guess let me ask you both that question. How do people get there? I mean, you could see it from the outside. And, you know, Rob, you said you did your research and Laurette, you've seen, I'm sure you've seen similar things happen either as a consultant or [00:27:00] as in your professional life prior to becoming a consultant. How do caregivers get to that point where quicker is better and they see that manual movement being better than using the tool that's down the hall or the tool that they've been asked to use? How do they get there? What's the barrier to them moving beyond that?
Laurette Wright: I think it goes to organizations who work from a culture of optionality, to those who work from a culture of accountability. And I often have people say, well, you know, we can't get Sally to use that lift and we can't get Jon to use you know sheets and I often have a strong belief that there's other things in that system [00:28:00] that they're having challenges with because it becomes a culture of optionality. When it becomes a culture of accountability, you really don't have to remind people because it's the expectation, you know, when people say, well, what is culture of optionality mean for me? It's when I don't do something you asked me to do and nothing happens.
Peter Koch: Right?
Laurette Wright: Right. Nothing happens because I don't really have to because you're not going to really do anything about it versus looking at changing my clinical practice as it being a critical, essential task. And there aren't any options to that. Like, I don't get an option to miss a drug. So when we raise the bar and look at expectations [00:29:00] from that level, I think that really helps those weed out those who are very successful versus those who have some challenges.
Peter Koch: Right on. So almost it's not about the tools as much as it is about the leadership and the culture within that organization that would really help drive a more successful program or move people beyond the desire for speed or the habit of convenience to actually using the tool as part of the process.
Laurette Wright: Correct.
Peter Koch: Right on. So if we're lacking some education. Right. We talked about that before. Here's a tool. You need to use it, but we really haven't entered it into a process. We might have cultural challenges to utilizing those tools because it's a culture of optionality. I think I'm going to steal that from you. Right. I like that. I don't think I've used that before. I heard that before. So I like [00:30:00] that culture of optionality instead of a culture of accountability. And so we have some cultural issues, some leadership issues. We have some educational issues. We know that these are problems. So if those have been identified or any of those have been identified, I think probably if folks are honest that a part of each of those three pieces. So culture, leadership and education, some of those will be part of each organization's challenge to move forward with a patient handling program. If those three things are the challenges, then where do you start to build a successful patient handling program? And Rob, I'm going to throw that to you first.
Rob Sylvester: Well, that, you know, if we could solve that, that's one of those world problems.
Laurette Wright: Right +
Rob Sylvester: I think where I see And I think maybe I'm just getting ahead of myself when we talk about, you know, where programs start to, I hate to use the word fail, but let's face [00:31:00] it they fail.
Peter Koch: Stumble,
Rob Sylvester: They stumble that's a great one. The culture of optionality, you know, that that truly goes to so many aspects of an organization, you know, similar to that coming from health care. When we used to do annual mandatory training, I used to ask my senior leadership team, which was the CEO, CFO, COO, et cetera, VP of H.R. I would say what does mandatory mean?? And they would look at me like, well, that means you must do it. And I go, well, why do we have 10 percent of the people are passed the deadline and they're still not completing things. So to me, it goes back to yes, we always talk about that senior leadership support. We always talk about that mid-level management support and things like that. But really, it can be quite difficult because when let's face it, one of the number one struggles we have out there with any health care facility is staffing levels. So when you have the staffing levels, they may not have the time to [00:32:00] allow the patient handling peer unit leaders to be on the floor doing mentorship, doing audits, doing just in time training. So to me, that's a big part. We say, yes, mid level, we have senior and mid-level management support. Truly, my follow up question is, what does that really mean to you as an organization? And have you gone back and looked at the process and seen. Is this, you know have you identified your hurdles or your struggles, because I can tell you, you know, the vast majority of time, you know Laurette I'm sure you face the same thing. We go to a safety or safe patient handling committee. And who do we see sitting around the table? It's generally management. And part of that process that we've talked about is getting that front line engagement. So when we say we have the engagement, we have the management support, what does that truly mean? Are they making time for those peer unit leaders? You know, does mid-level management. Understand? [00:33:00] This is when I see a lot that, hey, we've had no injuries. So we're going to forego this month's meeting. But do we really know of why there were no injuries? I would love to celebrate with them and say we've come all this way and looked at our process. We've improved our process, our program, our policy. We have leadership support. We have better staffing. And that's why we don't have any injuries or claims this month from a patient handling perspective. But is that truly the case? You know, just because you don't have injuries, I tell people it doesn't mean that you have a great program in place. It may mean that, I hate to say it, but you were lucky that month. It may mean people weren't reporting. It could mean a whole slew of things, which is where when Laurette talks about we need to look at the process, it doesn't just include that training. It doesn't just include that assessment of the patient. It doesn't include that just that assessment of the equipment. And are we using it the right time? It's a whole program aspect of [00:34:00] looking at their injuries. It's looking at their claims, again, being depending on how things are reported. They could be two different things, you know, looking at everything from the OSHA log to the H.R. tracking to getting onto the units and performing an assessment and talking to people and asking that question. Have you been injured when handling a patient? Yes, I have. Did you report that? No, I didn't. Well, there goes that culture of optionality again. Well, why didn't you report it now? It's you know, it's the third time I've been injured this month. It's just we have this difficult patient. If I'm not here, they don't have a caregiver. And you know what? Let's face it. I'm in aide I'm a PCT I'm a nurse. I'm a HHA whatever. So it's part of my job. I'm sorry, but in my opinion, it shouldn't be part of your job. Does it happen? Yes, it does. Does it happen more often than other industries? Yes, it does, but it doesn't need to. So we really need to look at that from I hate to [00:35:00] use the word holistic, but an overall approach looking at the process and truly use tools that are out there, whether it's OSHA, whether it's MEMIC, whether it's A and A there's so many different tools out there to evaluate programs, you know, and then look at the intersecting data points of falls. You know, a lot of times when we're looking at patient handling, we ask about falls, you know, and correlate that data. We look at behaviors at something Laurette and I are working on now is type two behaviors, you know, clients to caregivers. So patients lashing out and injuring your caregivers. And that's something in the next few months we'll be pushing out products programs. And I'm sure there will be another podcast on that. But when we look at that, that's all part of your program. That's all part of your assessment. And looking at making improvement, it's not that narrow approach of OK equipment. What comes with equipment. We must do training. We must do a competency evaluation and then get it to the floor and use it. There are so many other aspects to look at. So hopefully that answered [00:36:00] your question Pete.
Peter Koch: There's a lot of great information in there talking about understanding your current process, identifying those problem areas, using different assessments, checking out behaviors, looking at lagging indicators, all good ways to get a start, to understand what may need to change. And you hit on a really good part, which is, you know, if you are successful or at least you think you're successful because the number that you're looking at, the injury number, that lagging indicator shows that you didn't have any that I think a very relevant question is, well, were you lucky or can you prove that these were the things that truly caused you to not have injuries? And that's a really hard question for any company to answer. But I think it's even more difficult for health care because of the reliance on the human factor all the time. It's not like manufacturing where you can say, well, we didn't have injuries. We [00:37:00] can look at all the equipment that got used in order to put that in place. You still have the human factor, but you don't have the patient interaction with the caregiver. That makes it even more challenging. So you talked a little bit about peer groups, peer mentor-ship, peer unit leaders, Laurette, can you describe some of what those are? And if you were going to if you're going to have. Goes on in your facility, what they are, what they do and why do they help?
Laurette Wright: Those people or those individuals are our cheerleaders. You know, I call them our silent partners. They're the ones that can be given some authority and formal authority and encouraged to support the practices in real time. So when someone can't find a sling or someone can't find a battery for a lift, [00:38:00] those are my cheerleaders that help support me in real time on the day to day to find those gaps and help me get what I need. So those programs, again, have been quite successful, but it also has a lot to do with engagement and giving voice. So if I'm a peer leader and I truly have a voice to let you know, it's challenging us on our units and then you support those, those programs have been very, very, very successful. And it's a model that happens in lots of organizations. Right. Just, you know, we at health care got used to doing it, whether it's from fall committees or pressure ulcer prevention committees. We often have those what we call unit champions, unit peer leaders to help us with the day to day.
Peter Koch: Those identified [00:39:00] people as a peer unit leader or a mentor leader. Those aren't foreign to the health care groups or health care industry. They've been used in other areas. So, again, I think, Rob, you said this. Look at where you've been successful in the past and then try to draw from that program. What made that program successful? And can you use that as a model to help implement your patient healing program? And then so what made those peer group leaders in some of those other groups be successful and then try to model it after that? That's I hadn't realized that before that those existed prior to the patient handling movement.
Rob Sylvester: Definitely. And sometimes we'll have, you know, high performing organizations, organizations getting to great as we hear. You know, they'll have preceptors mentors. They'll call them senior aides maybe. And some are able to pay them extra, which I always love to see. There's an incentive there. Some do [00:40:00] not. But again, it's a selection process and it's another program that MEMIC currently putting together. And we'll publish before the end of the year of a peer review unit, training, you know, peer unit leader training. You know, how do we select the right person? You know, sometimes we say, well, you know, Tammy's always got something to say. Well, maybe with a little coaching, Tammy would be that cheerleader that is out there doing what we need them to do. So, again, it all depends on the organization. Every organization cultures different, every I mean, within, let's face it, different departments, different units have different cultures. And the organizations, they're the subject matter experts. A lot of times the MEMIC safety management consultant, I consider the catalyst will come in there with ideas. What works in another facility. And our let's face it, we all know is safety management consultants. Our clients will generally say, hey, you know what? Slow your roll, because that's not going to work here. OK, well, what does work here? Let's talk more about that. So a lot of times they have it in place. It just may [00:41:00] need to be tweaked. So they're already set up for success. They just may not see that. So that's where we try to come in and help them with that process.
Peter Koch: Nice. Yeah, it's always good to have that outside eye. We started the podcast talking about, you know, can't see the forest through the trees when you're really close to the problem. You might not even see it as a problem until someone helps you understand that it truly is a problem. So utilizing that consultant to help guide you and where to start or how to continue is a really key parts of reaching out for some of those external resources and then identifying the internal resources that can be the cheerleader. You did touch on this, Rob, that you training for that particular individual. It's not always, it's not always prudent to expect that someone that you rely on often to be able to take something that could be foreign to them and then become that cheerleader without some support or training. And [00:42:00] it's great to hear that MEMICs got some programs out for that peer unit leader training. But before that comes out, what are some key points that you might use or that you might train that person on in order to get them to be effective as a peer unit leader without a formal training program? What are some things that you need to help them with?
Rob Sylvester: Great question. I think a lot of it comes down to starting with just like any process is having the discussion with people that want to be a part of that solution. And a lot of times they may not know because they don't understand the program, so, you know, you start with expectations, what is the end state? I like you know, it's always military planning. We start with the end and work our way backwards. And to me, it's a great concept, you know, to say, OK, well, here is where we need to go and let people be a part of the Creating Solutions identifier. It should start with identifying challenges and then creating those solutions, you know, getting volunteers [00:43:00] to talk about, you know, what their concerns are, you know, and it doesn't have to be the formal group setting of a committee process. It can be, you know, whether it's a lunch and learn and say, hey, we're going to start rolling out a new program and we want input, you know, whether it's starting with survey monkey or another survey process and seeing where who wants to be involved. But again, you have to start off with clear expectations of where this thing's going to go. And again, that's going to morph over time. You know, they talk about crucial conversations and teaching people, because I can tell you one of the hardest things, it's a soft skill. And helping people through those challenges is a great opportunity for, again, current preceptor training program, mentor program. You know, Human Resources has some great experience with that and getting those volunteers to understand and, you know, as Laurette said that informal authority, because let's face it, there's a lot of times you may be assigned as a project lead and you're leading your peers. Everybody on this call and [00:44:00] many of our listeners have done that in the past, you know? Well, that's my peer. Well, when you have that senior level management support saying, well, Peter's in charge of this program, you may not have that title as a manager, but he's in charge of this program. So getting them to that point and identifying getting people to understand your peer unit leader is that leader. They may be on the floor doing Just-In-Time training. They may be doing your competencies with the support of that unit nurse manager, but really getting those people that training, which can start in an informal way and doing I love role play, which I know Laurette does, too. And we're talking about, you know, here's a scenario, you know, Laurette and Rob are equals well Now Laurette's in charge of where she's been identified as that peer unit leader. You know, how does Laurette go about not just saying? Because I said so. Because our policy says so. Because as I said earlier, you know, safety too often is driven by compliance or attempted to be driven by compliance. And I'm sorry, [00:45:00] but that doesn't work. So getting people to understand how to convince people of this is why we do it. You know, it's about quality, patient care. It's about safety of ourselves, safety of our residents, patients, clients, family members, caregivers, et cetera. So, again, it's, you know, getting those people to not only identify, but then helping them through those crucial conversations. And I think without a formal program being pushed out yet by MEMIC, I think the opportunity is there for human resources or other identified staff to help with those conversations. And truly, I think starting with role play, you know, people understanding how to approach their peers because, again, peer unit leader is a lot harder, in my opinion, than being identified as a manager because informal versus formal authority, Laurette anything on that.
Laurette Wright: No, I agree, particularly if we go back to cultures again. Right. So there is a hierarchy of [00:46:00] control in health care and it's been challenging for a CNA or PCA to feel they could be empowered to direct and encourage a different way of thinking or practice to an RA. Let alone someone who may have a master's degree and or a Ph.D., so in addition to everything else we're trying to navigate around, we're having to also navigate around the cultural issues of hierarchy and how we encourage to break down some of those barriers so that people are just seen as people and with no specific title, but with all of us having the same goal in mind, which is the safe practices of movement and mobility of our [00:47:00] patients and residents.
Peter Koch: Right on a lot of great stuff. They're talking crucial conversations, culture, again, coming up to be those successful touch points for any organization to have a successful safe patient handling program. So, Laurette, if you were going to advise a health care organization to evaluate their current program, what are some things that you would ask them to look at first? So they're going to look at a safe patient handling program. They might have one or they might just they might not have a formal program. But every health care organization has patient handling in their process because that's just what we do. So where would you ask them to? What were some things that you would ask them to evaluate if they've never evaluated the success or effectiveness of their program before?
Laurette Wright: You know, Peter, there are a lot of tools because, again, this has come to the forefront of health care and is not as foreign [00:48:00] as it could have been or would have been 20 years ago. There's just a lot of survey tools that's already in existence that teams can take into play and go through their system and answer the yes or no's and then identify where those gaps are and prioritize it from there. You know, again, when I take a look at things and I say it's systemic or process approach above all else, I need to identify the needs. Right. And do a needs assessment. And the very first step in doing something like that would be to evaluate what do I have currently? Because I think, Rob brought a great point in the play, which I know I'm very passionate about, is aligning anything that I do with patient handling, with existing systems, existing processes, so [00:49:00] that we are not duplicating services because we understand how precious time is, particularly in the health care environment. So take a look, you know, evaluate, develop a scorecard, make consultants, help a lot with that and then go from there. Once I have the outcomes from that, then decide the pieces that we're going to tackle one time, one bit at a time. It's a big elephant in the room and we often want to jump in with both feet and just gobble it all at once. But really it's pulling back and taking a little bits at a time is again one of those key factors in ensuring some successful outcomes.
Peter Koch: So it's not going to be an instantaneous result. You might want it to be. But to embark on the journey to implement a successful safe handling patient handling [00:50:00] program might take years in order to have it implemented well and then be able to self maintain as you go forward with changes in administration, changes in staffing to make sure it can outlast those changes.
Laurette Wright: Yes, because it has to outlast staff turnover, changes in director level positions. It just has to be ingrained. And that takes time. And, you know, it's about having patience, patience for everybody involved. It's an all encompassing program. It touches many touch points and in the health care community. So, yeah, but the very, very, very first thing is to say, here's what I currently do. Let's take an assessment, take a temperature check and then see where we have some gaps and then how do [00:51:00] I want to prioritize that.
Peter Koch: Right on. Right on. So is there a resource? You said there's a lot of tools out there and I know MEMIC has some specific ones, but are there national resources that our listeners could reach out to and like online and find an assessment? Or find something that would help guide them in evaluation.
Laurette Wright: OSHA has actually rallied around this effort for the last couple of years and have some really nice self-administered tools online on their site under patient handling and health care and the American Nurses Association. This is also become one of their huge platforms as an organization. There's a lot of tools out there. Those would be a couple of places I would try. I don't want to give, like, too many because [00:52:00] I don't want, again, it be so overwhelming for people. But I would say those are the two places. Just a keynote on OSHA, there are no federal OSHA standards on patient handling. Some states have some standards and they vary in complexity. But OSHA does not have anything. However, they do look at that exposure and if they were to have some concerns, may consider a citation under the general duty clause. And in a nutshell, that's, you know, employers are required to provide a healthful working place for employees. So while I mentioned OSHA and they have some tools out there, again, as of today, there is no particular standard under OSHA for patient handling.
Peter Koch: But it is such a recognized hazard because it's prevalent across all health care industry, though, the patient handling [00:53:00] or injuries that are caused by handling a patient, because since it is a recognized hazard, you're very true. It might fall under that general duty clause where it becomes a problem if OSHA looks at it in that perspective.
Laurette Wright: Absolutely.
Peter Koch: Right on.
Laurette Wright: Rob may have some other things. Rob, anything comes to mind for you one or two resources.
Rob Sylvester: No, I think you know, I think it's a good time to tell them, you know, getting us involved, like Laurette said, and making sure we're able to help and provide some of the simple tools, because I'm a big one on keeping it simple.
Peter Koch: Yeah, right on it. And if you are a MEMIC, insured MEMIC has a safe patient handling program. And we have specialists like yourselves that can come in and assist with the initial assessment and an entire program to put it in place to help get your process off the ground and then become successful with it.
Rob Sylvester: Yes, definitely. And [00:54:00]we don't really tend to look you know, we look at the program, let's put it that way. We look at the program. We like to look at processes and help guide them on that versus, you know, a vendor may come in and a lot of times we'll do it with assistance from a vendor or they'll have them say they'll have a vendor looking specifically at the equipment and things like that. Whereas we like to look at that whole program approach and then bring in the all day the six hour safe patient handling and mobility workshop. And again, as Laurette said earlier, you know, it's about the mobility. And I don't want to lose focus on the mobility because I can't tell you the number of times where, you know, we don't celebrate the aha moments of the increased mobility of our patients or residents. We truly need to concentrate on the fact that we are early. We are mobilizing patients earlier than they have in the past, maybe earlier than other organizations. And truly, those [00:55:00] moments are what need to be celebrated, you know, whether it's length of stay or other aspects of it, meeting milestones early from a physical therapy aspect. But again, when we're looking at this, it's not just about safety. This is quality of care. This is skin sharing issues. This is, you know, skin integrity. This is wound care. So when we started looking at these things, truly, this has such a positive effect. They say patient mobility program has a positive effect on so many different aspects. Falls, skin integrity, safety of the resident or patient safety of the individual. Improved quality care. How about their mental health aspect that they're not just laying in bed all the time? There are so many different aspects of a safe patient handling a mobility program that come to mind. And I want to make sure we don't lose sight of that, because I can tell you when it came to why did I become passionate about this, about patient handling? Truly, when those caregivers get that aha moment [00:56:00] of this is why I should be using it. You know, this is why I shouldn't be making excuses or reasons to say, well, this takes longer. Well, actually, there are studies that show it doesn't take longer when you have a team approach to patient handling, when you have the knowledge, skills, education and equipment up front and staged properly, it really doesn't take longer when you know somebody care plan and what it involves, what type of equipment is needed, how many people that takes and getting it to the bedside and utilizing it, it doesn't take longer. And again, you know, when you say, well, this takes longer. Well, when you counter with and if you are injured or you injure that patient, doesn't that take longer? Doesn't that negate what we're supposed to be doing as a health care organization? So I definitely don't want to lose sight of that mobility aspect.
Peter Koch: Now, that's a huge point there. And, you know, we've we floated that through the conversation, this conversation. And I know Laura and I talked about it, and it just brings [00:57:00] to mind that, you know, especially when you look at it from the perspective of if the processes in place and the tools are there and you've staged things up front, there is a much greater possibility that the patient will have success. And I think about it from this perspective, like my mom had had her knee replaced earlier, she had both knees replaced. And the second one has just been about a year now. And I remember them, because I was there when she was out of surgery and in recovery, getting up and moving for the first time. And the first knee replacement that she had did not go very well for whatever reason. The second knee replacement. There was a lot of trepidation and the smile on her face when they got her up and had her weight bear the first time. And it was different because they used some tools. They just didn't, you know, yank her up out of the chair and help her physically walk across the room. They [00:58:00] use some tools to get her to stand up, to get her to start to weight bear. So they took in mind, they bore in mind her concerns and they use some tools to allow her to be successful. So she I think about that. And I think, wow, that was an aha moment for me right now, thinking that there is more than just using the lift or using the belt or using whatever other tool you have. There's the success of the patient to keep in mind, too, not just the safety aspect and the compliance aspect of it. Really neat. I want to ask you both this question. This kind of will bring you back to your early days. So what do you know now that you wish you had known when you started out? What do you know now about patient handling that you wish you had known when you first started out in the process?
Laurette Wright: I wish I had been taught. That is an integral part of my practice [00:59:00] and techniques as a nurse.
Peter Koch: And not just an extra.
Laurette Wright: And not just there's some hardware in the corner and they quote unquote, no one ever could really tell me who they were, but they said we have to use it. And again, not being told that it's just good quality patient care and that if I manually lift or move or transfer someone that negates the type of care that I want to give. That's one of my biggest things I wish I had known then now that what I know today.
Peter Koch: Those are great points there. And it really would have maybe changed some of those decisions early on. It might not have put you, you know, at physical risk for potentially early on. Yeah. Hey, Rob, how about you? Same question. What do you [01:00:00] know now that you wish you had known when you started out?
Rob Sylvester: Well, definitely the advantages of such a program, because we just talked about it's not just about money, but at the same time, I'll talk about return on investment or that cost avoidance, both direct and indirect, what a program has or contributes to. And as I stated earlier, you know, it's not just about the money, but let's face it, if we had an extra hundred thousand dollars, we weren't spending on injuries, what could we use it for? You know, in an ideal world, in my opinion, we would be giving it to those frontline workers when a lot of times frontline workers like, well, no, we wouldn't. OK, fine. Would you be able to fix that flooring issue? You do that? Would you be able to? I've seen renovations to break rooms would be able to buy more equipment to support the staff, would be able to do things. And then again, it goes back to, you know, skin integrity, wound care and things like that. There's such an amazing opportunity for we always use [01:01:00] that return on investment phrase ROI But really it's cost avoidance, you know, cost avoidance. But when I say cost, not just money, but what does that cost? What is the improvement in mobility level? To me, those are all cost avoidances. When you're improving one, it's not just about that money. So to me, I think knowing what I know now and knowing that it's not just like Laurette says, that it's a piece of equipment in the corner, we must use it because it's in their care plan. But truly, why? So if I had seen the advantages of using that, I think that's what I wish I knew back then. Maybe I could have helped more people.
Peter Koch: Well certainly both of you are certainly helping people now with that, with the whole process of championing safe patient handling and mobility programs across all of our insureds and even those that you get to speak with outside of our insured group, when you talk at conferences and other group forums, we're getting right towards the end of the podcast here. So last question. Is there anything [01:02:00] that I should have asked you? But I didn't anything that you want to point out and let our listeners know about that we really didn't touch on during the podcast today?
Laurette Wright: For me, Peter, I think we hit hard on the process approach. In addition, I'd like just to remind all our listeners that it's a program that can't be done in a silo. So while it's nurse driven and I use that word to include my aides and in anyone that clinically has to touch a patient, whether it's emergency technicians, whomever, to get them to move or reposition, we can't do that alone. So this program has a lot of tentacles to it, like maintenance and laundry and education and people [01:03:00] who oversee compliance and pressure ulcers and fall communities. So, yeah, that would be the one thing I'd leave people with. In addition to everything we've talked about, this is a program that can't be done in isolation.
Peter Koch: That's a great point. Really, really good point. And it shouldn't be lost with our listeners that if you're starting this, if you're evaluating your program, maybe you've had a program for a while. Maybe one of those things to look at is who are you involving across your company in order to make this successful? Because there might be some departments that you need to pull in. Maybe it is maintenance, maybe it is laundry, maybe it is somebody else in order to help support the safe patient handling and mobility process. Awesome points, Laurette. Rob, how about you? Anything that we should that I should ask, but I didn't.
Rob Sylvester: Well, Peter, that's a hard one to follow up with. Laurette's always a hard one to follow up. You know, I think the one and most important thing [01:04:00] is the reminder of the one question I ask. And it was really reinforced when my mother was in the hospital. I always ask that question of how would you want your own loved one assisted or mobilized? And the question or the answer? The only answer is the safest way. That's how. So that's about it.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a great question. And it really I think that's the essential question. Like, if I'm a nurse or I'm an EMT or I'm a caregiver at home, like, that's the question. How would I want my loved one to be moved? How would I want them to be mobilized? How would I want them to be treated? And does my program reflect that? Does the program reflect that we're going to be treating people not just with the cost the end cost in mind, but the end cost avoidance of all of the pieces that you've talked about and not just the monetary cost, but all of the parts that we've [01:05:00] talked about before. Really good points. Absolutely. So that really wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast. I really want to thank you both for being here today and sharing your experience and expertise with us and our listeners here. So thanks very much for coming on now.
Laurette Wright: Thank you, Peter, for inviting us on. It's great. It's always fun to share with others those things for a most passionate about.
Rob Sylvester: Thank you so much again. Laurette Thank you for everything. Your wisdom, your guidance over the years and definitely for your time today. And Peter, thank you for the awesome podcast. You Make Life Easy.
Peter Koch: Right on. Thank you very much again. So thanks again for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, we've been speaking about the unique challenges that a safe patient handling program might have and looking at it from the perspective of a consultant from the outside looking in. And we've been speaking with Laurette Wright and Rob Sylvester's safety [01:06:00] management consultants with the MEMIC group. You have any questions for Laurette or Rob or. We'd like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast. Email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find a bunch of additional resources and links to the first podcast as well. And you can see the entire podcast archive when you're there. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates if you haven't done so already I’d appreciate if you took a few minutes to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whatever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thanks, because it really helps us spread the word, please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time. This is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is [01:07:00] even better.
When a workplace injury happens, it is an indication that something within the organization didn’t function the way it was supposed to. If your organizational goals are set up well, then you can readily identify where the failure was and address it. Specific, Measurable, Agreed On, Realistic, Time Based - SMART goals are one way to help you and your organization develop a road map for safety success. On this Episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I talk with Randy Klatt, CSP, Director for Region 2 Loss Control at MEMIC, to better understand how SMART goals can help you stay on the path for safety success.
Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, welcome to MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're recording from the studios of Portland Pod. If a full service podcast, recording and production studio right here in South Portland, Maine. And if this podcast sounds good to you. Get a hold of Tanner. Down at PortlandPod.com. My name is Peter Kotch and I'm the host of the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. I've worked for a number of different organizations and small businesses over the years. And if I've asked the person in charge of safety was important to them and their organization, the answer that they had was always yes. And I was considering that the other day, preparing for this podcast. And I took that question one step further. So what did I understand the safety goal for those companies I worked for, to be? The answer for many, was some form of. Well, nobody gets hurt or everyone goes home at the end of the day. Those really, truly aren't lofty goals, but under more scrutiny. None of those organizations consistently achieve them. Don't get me wrong. These were great companies to work for [00:01:00] and successful in many, many ways. And they consistently achieve the goals that they set. However, that safety goal remained elusive for most of them. Looking back, I realized that even in companies that had safety as a goal or priority, I, along with my co-workers, made choices or engaged in tasks that could have, should have and sometimes did put me in situations where I might have been and sometimes was injured. And in speaking to others, I found that there were similar experiences and responses. Yes, the company I worked for has a safety goal. They don't want me to get hurt. No, I don't always work safely, though. And if they took the question even further and explored what backed up the safety goal, I found that in many cases there was no organized plan or they use their insurance loss run to track progress or the goal was just way too general. Sometimes it was a fairly specific goal and everybody was responsible for it. So [00:02:00] effectively, if everyone's responsible, then no one's responsible. And in one organization, the goal was very specific. But it was never achieved. And the same goal was set year after year after year with we need to do a better job working safely. As the sendoff. So I don't think that my experiences is really unique. So I want to get all you listeners to take a challenge right now. Do you know what the safety goal is at the business or organization that you work for? Don't take too long. They should come to mind fairly quickly. Now, think about the following questions. With that safety goal that you have in mind, how are they measured and when does it get reviewed? Is there a timeframe for that goal? Is the goal, General, or does it target something specific? Who is responsible for that goal? Has your company ever even achieved that goal? You might be surprised, as I was, that the answers to those questions weren't as easy to find as you [00:03:00] thought. So why does it matter? Why can't the goal be that everybody goes home at the end of the day and then leave it at that? Well, it's fine if everyone does that all the time, without exception. But I don't know many organizations that don't have at least one workplace injury a year and often more than one when an injury happens. It's an indication that something within the organization didn't function the way it was supposed to. And if the goals are set up, well, then you can more easily identify what went wrong and address it. If not, then you're in the Spray and Pray School of Workplace Safety, and that's not a functional place to be Today, I'm speaking with Randy Klatt, CSP and director of Region two Lost Control at MEMIC. To better understand how smart goals can help you stay on the path for safety success. Randy's career spans emergency medicine and active duty Navy pilot, commercial airline pilot and aviation safety instructor at the university level. Randy [00:04:00] is the current director of Region two loss control at MEMIC, leading a team of consultants serving the central Maine and southern Maine areas. Randy, welcome to the podcast.
Randy Klatt: Thank you, Peter. It's great to be here.
Peter Koch: Awesome. Great to have you in the studio today, Randy. So let's jump right into it. You've had quite a bit of experience in large organizations where goal setting was an integral part of work life. So I guess the question to you to start things off is why set goals at all?
Randy Klatt: So as a roadmap, as a method of reaching the end, whatever that end might be, we better have some goals along the way so that we know where we're going. We have people who understand what the responsibilities are going to be, how do we measure when we're there, all those sorts of things. So I just look at it as someone sent on a long trip with no compass. How do you figure out where you're going if you don't set it, especially with workplace safety? Because it is an elusive target. [00:05:00] It's a moving target and it takes a lot of work to get there. So if you're not organized and have a strategy and understand if you're failing or if you're winning, it's pretty hard to make any meaningful changes.
Peter Koch: So let's talk specifically about safety goals, because in many organizations, the goal of safety is really no one gets hurt but to have a good goal and safety if we have a functional goal and safety. How can that really positively impact the organization overall? So what's the positive impact of a good, solid safety goal?
Randy Klatt: Well, again, if you if you set a goal and you achieve it now, you know that you've made progress. And in the world of safety, of course, that goal is to prevent workplace injury. I understand when people say my goal is to have no one hurt. Safety is number one. You know, all those things are said. And I think they are genuinely. They come from the heart. People do believe that that's what they want. They don't want people hurt. But the real benefit [00:06:00] comes when you have a structure around that desire. We all want a lot of things in your personal life as well as your business life. And you know, you will not achieve them unless you have a goal set to do so. And then a structure around that to make it happen. And there's a lot of study out there about the human brain and what goals do for us, what it actually does to motivate behavior. And so back to your question about what does that do for an organization? Well, it actually helps you achieve that goal of getting no one hurt. Now, it may not be possible based on the size of a company and how much exposure you have to go from 100 injuries in one year down to zero the next. That's probably not going to happen. But a progressive improving program that is measurable and that is agreed upon by everybody in the strategy has been put [00:07:00] in place to achieve it. Certainly we pick away at those incidents as they occur and we learn from them and we set new goals. And eventually you find yourself in a place where a son of a gun. We actually did reduce injuries considerably and we've met our goal for the year. Now, we probably need another goal for next year and we'll continue that process, continual improvement is what it's all about. That's the way safety is. It never really ends. You know, as we know, safety never takes a holiday. So you have to continually work on it to make it better and better and better. And of course, the benefits, we could talk about that for a whole podcast. But the cost involved in human suffering and the way people feel when they're injured in the way it inhibits their lifestyle, it's just there are numerous benefits to having a safe and healthful workplace.
Peter Koch: Sure. So let's take that concept a little further and talk about how there's obvious benefits if I can achieve the goal [00:08:00] of fewer injuries there. There is a cost benefit. There is a culture benefit. There's an employee health benefit that is overall healthy for the company. But there is also a consistency in habit establishment there. If you are able to set a goal and you're able to go back to it all the time and consider what makes the goal achievable, what you have to do to do that, if you're doing that consistently, it builds those habits. So if you go from a culture that has, take your example, 100 injuries a year and you want to bring it down to half of that in the first year or a quarter of that in the first year, you want to go to 50 injuries or 25 injuries. You got to change something. And in order to make those changes, you've got to identify what the change and then you have to consistently do those things. So if you do it over a year and you keep going back to that, you could pretty much establish some fairly good safety based habits, which, [00:09:00] again, you know, what gets expected is inspected. So if we do those things, we will achieve the goals, hopefully.
Randy Klatt: Right. And I think all of that you just said can be summed up in the word culture. You use that a few times. It is the culture of my organization that we shall not have injuries. And I'm going to do everything as the company owner or the CEO or the general manager to make sure that happens. But simply saying that to people. Doesn't really make it work. So hanging up the banner in the facility that says safety is number one. Doesn't make safety happen. What makes it happen is the culture of the organization that supports that message or that goal at all levels. Not only supporting it, but actively doing something about it. As you said. If we don't change anything, nothing's going to change. There [00:10:00] are a lot of companies out there that have great safety records for a period of time. But when we really drill into it, they just got lucky because eventually that comes back to bite them. And they have a really poor year or several poor years or a catastrophic incident. There are other companies that aren't performing very well from a safety perspective, but have huge programs in place. But it's mostly compliance and it's fill in the blank. And it's lip service. And when we really get down to what's happening, the floor level, it isn't really significant for safety improvement. So that's why these goals have to be not only lofty and on the executive level. This year, we're going to reduce injuries by whatever. But they have to work their way all the way down to the newest new hire in orientation to talk about safety. And this is our goal for our company and this is the goal for [00:11:00] your department. You're going to and this is what your supervisor will expect you to do for your safety each day. And this is what we're going to do at every level through the organization. And it's all going to be measurable and it's going to be assigned to people and they're going to be held responsible for it. And when all that happens at all levels, son of a gun. Now we do make change and injuries, like all other aspects of a business, turn out to be manageable for the vast majority of them.
Peter Koch: That's a great point. Being able to establish behaviors and habits by looking at the corporate goal and then breaking it down so that corporate goal makes sense to each part of the organization, no matter how high up in the seats we are, how low on the totem pole that new hire might be so that they all understand what their responsibility is as [00:12:00] part of the success of that goal.
Randy Klatt: Oh, that's clear. And we see it as safety consultants. We see it almost every day. We go into businesses and you sit down with the owner and he thinks safety is great or you meet with the safety committee and they're all eating their doughnuts and very happy and safety is doing well. But when I walked into that safety committee meeting, I walked by three hazards that were obvious in the hallway or, you know, the fire extinguishers are never inspected. The emergency exit was blocked. There's electrical cord that's damaged. There's material that people are trying to lift by hand when there's a hand truck or a forklift or a pallet jack to use. Everyone's in a hurry. They're rushing around. And if they're not being hurt, they're just lucky at that point. It's inevitable it's going to happen. So everything has to translate down to the daily activity. And again, a culture will support that. But if you want to look for a structure to put around that, something that will help everybody [00:13:00] understand how to set those goals, then we need some kind of template. And I think that. The smart goal template, which we are about to talk about here, is the way to go because or at least a way to go. I won't pretend to be the expert on all goals or all a psychology or even all safety. But I found these to be very helpful and make it easier for people to set goals that are actually going to be attained. Again, the owner will say there's not going to be any injuries. That's my goal. And I applaud that. And I say, yep, that's the way it should be. But that's not the way it's been for the last 20 years. Somebody got hurt every year. So you're, as you said earlier, you not reaching that. So what are we going to do to actually reach that goal? And that's when we can talk about S.M.A.R.T. That acronym. To help people understand it. There is some criticism out there like there is on [00:14:00] most things that I guess our goals are outdated or it's not what it's cracked up to be. It's not the magic bullet. Well, you're right. Absolutely it isn't, because it's not the acronym that's going to make things change. It's the people who understand what it means and how to use it and actually formulate proper goals and processes to make those happen. That's what's going to make the difference. So it's a tool like any other tool in the safety toolbox that I think will help people but it in of itself. Doesn't do anything.
Peter Koch: No, you've got to take action in order for something to happen. It's not it's not the Alexa thing. Hey, Alexa, make me a goal.
Randy Klatt: Yeah, it's not a smart speaker.
Peter Koch: Thank gosh. It's done great. We can move on with our lives now. Someone else would take care of it. No, if you have the goal when you're speaking there, I was thinking that goals give you a reason for change. Like, if you don't have that goal, then there's no reason to change the behavior or the habit or the culture that might be causing [00:15:00] the circumstances for the injury to happen. So like you’re talking about, you go to talk to the safety committee and they're excited about what's happening there. They're the safety committee. We've just done this. But you've walked through and I've had that same experience walking through with the safety committee and in the stairway that's narrow enough to begin with. They have boxes stored on it, a propane tank stored on it and other equipment stored on it so that there's no way to actually get out of the office that's upstairs without going through all this stuff. There's got to be a reason to make that change. And if the goal is set appropriately, the goal then gives you a reason to change the behavior, to not walk past that, to understand that I can now take action and not that I can just take action, but I must take action because that's our goal. So it is a call to action if they're set correctly.
Randy Klatt: Yup well said. And I [00:16:00] think this format can be used at any point in an organization's development. It can be used by any individual. And we can talk about long term goals, short term goals, business goals, personal goals. You want to lose weight this year. You want to lose ten pounds. Okay, there's a goal. What are you going to do to achieve it? Well, I'm going to hope I lose 10 pounds.
Peter Koch: That's my goal. Yeah. Yeah. I hope.
Randy Klatt: It doesn't work. Well, it may. It probably won't. And it won't last unless you actually have an action plan to put in place. You have something that is specific. Let's just say it's specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.
Peter Koch: There you go. Oh, here we go.
Randy Klatt: Yeah. And there's your smart acronym.
Peter Koch: So before we jump into that, can you talk a little bit about the pitfalls that companies will stumble into when they're setting goals that make those goals unachievable or [00:17:00] they make those goals so complex that they can't? So what are some of the pitfalls that you see companies falling into when they're setting goals?
Randy Klatt: Two or three things come to mind right away. One is that the goal is too lofty a goal or too general a goal. Again, the top guy, nobody gets hurt. Now, you all carry that plan out for the year. It's not realistic for most cases. So the goal has to be realistic enough that it can actually be achieved. So we try to, we set people up to fail. If we do not set a goal, that is actually something that has a good chance of succeeding. The second problem is, even if it's a realistic goal, I often see that it doesn't translate to the lower levels of the organization or through all levels of the organization. It is a goal and it's been set by the safety committee or it's been set by management [00:18:00] or the general manager or the owner. But it doesn't get to the floor level. It doesn't get to the new hires. They don't understand it. I'm continually amazed when I do training with companies and I have a group in a room and I say, what's your safety goal for the year? Usually I get the deer in the headlights look. And then somebody says, well, nobody gets hurt. And we have that whole discussion about specific goals. But if I go ask someone on the floor or in a production area or on the job site or in the back office, what the safety goal is for the company. They don't even know if there is one. They've never even considered it. So your administrative support person in, say, a manufacturing company. It's just as important for that person to understand the goals, be in on that planning. Be part of the solution. And help the company to reach their goal [00:19:00] as it is for anyone on the floor. Because how many times have you seen the largest claim, the worst injury in a business is administrative support person with carpal tunnel syndrome or the back injury that occurred when they slipped in the parking lot on the way in, when they deal with hazardous materials and heavy machinery and all that all day long and no one is hurt there but someone else is with some mundane task of walking through the hallway that happened to be wet and they slipped and fell. So these goals have to be. Disseminated through the whole organization, and everybody has to be part of it. So clearly set a realistic goal. Advertise it. Publicize it. Make sure everybody understands it. And then put a structure in place where everyone is involved and everyone understands it. Every person in the building should be able to answer the question. What's your safety goal? You know either for the year or the day or the week or whatever you're asking them about. [00:20:00] If they just look at you like, well, I don't know. Or you can say what's who's on your safety committee? Who's your representative? And if they say, I didn't know we have a safety committee, well, there's your problem. So those lofty goals that have been set by the committee that they're all excited about have not made their way into where it really needs to go, where people will actually change or modify or train or replace equipment or inspect or hold people accountable for any and all of those things to actually make things change and to be safer. So set good goals and communicate it and have a structure in place to make it happen.
Peter Koch: Perfect. So a good guide, one guide, because as we establish before, it's not, this is not the only road map to setting goals, but it is a pretty decent road map to setting goals and gives you almost a step by step way to outline [00:21:00] a goal that should function well for your company. And that's the S.M.A.R.T Acronym. So we talked about it before. Specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, time based. And we can get in the E.R part later on, but evaluated and reviewed. So let's break that right down and talk about each of those bits and pieces separately. So let's start with specific. What does it mean to set a specific goal?
Randy Klatt: Just as it says, we have to be specific enough so that we can then understand what actions have to be taken to reach it. If it's too broad a goal to overarching. People aren't going to really know where to start with it. And we might not be sure that we've met it because it's too nebulous. So let's get a very specific goal. And when we talk about this S.M.A.R.T Acronym, you ask me about specific, we'll talk about the rest here as we go. But some of those letters can change. It depends on which version [00:22:00] you read. It can be updated. Typically, I don't think I've ever seen anything other than specific for the S and measurable for the M. Those are pretty universal and the T is always time associated in some way. It's either timely. Time related. Time framed. Something like that. The A and the R. Those can be a little bit different, depending on which version you read or which one would work best for you. I've seen Assignable, which I really like. That's the original from back in 1981 when this was first published. So assignable is good because that means it's someone is going to be held accountable for that goal, but it can also mean agreed upon. I've seen attainable, used very much like realistic could be relevant. I've seen a few other words for that letter as well. So sorry I got off track a little bit on you there. But in the end, it doesn't matter as much. Which one you use [00:23:00] as long as you use one. And it makes sense to you. And you don't leave one of those off if you leave off time framed or timely. Now, we don't really know when that ends. It's a continual process, and I know it is. But we have to know if we've made it at some point, probably end it and start over. But you can't leave it off if you leave off assignable or it's not realistic. Well, obviously, things aren't going to happen.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it makes it harder. So if we if we roll back to specific and we talk about a phrase that we've used a number of times, like no one gets hurt or everyone goes home at the end of the day in one piece. That's kind of specific. Like no one gets hurt. So nobody here gets hurt. So, OK, but like you said, that's a fairly lofty goal, depending on what industry you're going to be in. Is it actually realistic to do that? And is it truly specific enough like that might be the objective for the organization to have zero injuries, but [00:24:00] a goal that supports that objective might have to be more specific. You might need to look at where your injury trends are. So I go back historically and look at my lagging indicators. And while these are the areas where most of the injuries are coming from, so maybe I need to set some goals in those areas to be more specific about what might be causing those injuries or what the challenges are. So once we find that specific topic, that area that we want to improve on, let's then talk about measurable. So measurable is another one of those pitfalls that we might think we know how to measure, but we might not have a mechanism in place. Who can you speak a little bit about what different ways there are to measure goals?
Randy Klatt: Sure. Well, we're talking about workplace injuries here, of course. So I would stick to that area. So are we going to talk about OSHA recordable injuries, lost work time injuries, anything that requires a worker's comp claims, or are you going to talk claims in general? Or [00:25:00] we can talk incidents which are, of course, really important to identify. Go back to Heinrich's pyramid and find a three hundred incidents out there for every few injuries and one serious injury. So it depends on where you're forming these goals and what your area is. But at some point it has to be safety related and measurable. Now, that's when we're talking specifically about injuries. So let's take an example of a company that forms a goal of reducing OSHA recordable injuries by 10 percent for the next calendar year. So we've fulfilled the smart goal, assuming that we have assigned this to people to carry out. We've fit in the blocks. But as we mentioned earlier, simply forming that goal doesn't make it happen. So now what are we going to do? Well, now we have to set another goal and probably a whole bunch [00:26:00] of goals to follow this on in shorter timeframes and smaller overall view points. So let's go to each department and form goals that will support this. Let's form quarterly goals that will support this. Let's go to each supervisor and talk about site inspections. And you have to do one of those every week. OK. We can form a smart goal around that activity. Make sure that happens and then that will support the overall goal. So when we started with a smart goal that talked about reducing injuries, what we end up with is multiple goals that don't say anything about injury but are preventing injury. Their goals related. They're actually activities that are proactive. There are things that we are going to do to prevent the injury. So our overall smart goal is about measuring how many people were hurt. But to support that, we better come up with a whole lot of goals. That [00:27:00] are all about activities designed to prevent those injuries.
Peter Koch: And that's a pretty interesting point because the initial goal uses a lagging indicator as a measuring tool. So you're going to go back to that the OSHA log to determine whether or not you had 10 percent less injuries last year over this year, which assumes that you're actually recording. Of course, the injuries on the OSHA log, which is goes back to that measurable discussion. So what mechanisms do we have to actually measure the injuries that come in which might actually look into a different corner of your business? Do we have a mechanism to report injuries? Then do we have a mechanism to track those injuries, not just have them on the show log, but how are we actually looking at those? So the discussion about the S.M.A.R.T goal can take apart or unravel parts of your business to look a little [00:28:00] bit deeper, to see if you actually have mechanisms to manage the goal that you have. And then the beautiful part about what you said is, if done right and the overall goal of reducing injuries for your company gets pushed down to the different levels and departments within the company. Then we start measuring the leading indicators. Are you doing training in those areas where you might find those injuries? Is there injury reporting training going on even at that, the basic level? And is there technical training being done to help support engaging in the risk, the risky behaviors or the risky tasks that the individuals might have to deal with? Or even the non risky ones like you talked about before, parking lot, someone slipping and fall in the parking lot or the administrator who spends all day at their desk getting carpal tunnel. They're not engaging in the hazardous activities that their co-workers are on the factory [00:29:00] floor. But if they're needing to meet the goal, they have to make some change there as well. So there needs to be some leading indicators that can get measured for them. That's a that's a really great they really great thing about the S.M.A.R.T goals is it allows you to look more deeply within your organization to see what you're doing, measure what you're doing, and then look to see if you've actually achieved that.
Randy Klatt: Correct. And if you're using the A as assignable, then you have held someone accountable for that goal. So often we see a failure in safety because basically no one is held accountable for it. The owner says there'll be no injuries everybody says Yep. Good idea. We all agree. Let's go do our work. Someone gets hurt and they go, oh, gosh, that's too bad. I'm sorry that happened. No one is held accountable for that injury. And again, I'm not looking for blame. That's not what it's about. It's causal factors. And these things happen for a reason. We [00:30:00] investigate. We find out the reasons. And that has to be. Ninety nine percent of time. It's a human failure of some kind. It's a failure of supervision. It's a failure of training it's a failure of equipment. It's something that should have been fixed, should have been assignable to someone. And then you hold people accountable for that so it won't happen again. So if my evaluation has things on it like productivity and sales and widgets going out the door and customer service and, you know, I'm a great guy to work with and yep, that's teamwork is wonderful. Those are all things that typically people are rated on. But you also have a safety piece of that in there that you were assigned these goals. And we use this format and you know about it. And you didn't do it or you did. Congratulations. Thank you. We did have a great safety year. So it helps to keep everybody. Focused on the goal?
Peter Koch: Yeah, I think you're right. And then the [00:31:00] the individual or departments or a group of people who are assigned responsibility for that particular goal. Then when they know they're responsible, they can take responsibility for it. It's like the cord that's laying across the walkway. It's not my cord. It's not your cord. And I don't know whose cord it is, but everybody's walking across it. And I'm not responsible for picking it up until somebody falls across it and falls down and breaks something. Now, everybody's responsible for it because we didn't achieve the goal. But if someone was responsible to make sure the walkways were clear, now we can look to see were we successful. And can we celebrate or do we need to do some remedial training if we weren't successful? So that accountability or assign ability is a key part. Along with realistic, too. If I'm assigned a goal or a team is assigned a goal or a responsibility for it and it's not realistic, that has a really degrading quality to the [00:32:00] morale. As you look forward, if I'm assigned a goal that's not achievable, not realistic, then it doesn't help the safety situation or the safety culture whatsoever.
Randy Klatt: It does not. And in fact, when I see that a common way that I see that is when there is actually a safety director or a safety coordinator, you know, someone's been assigned in the company, which, you know, generally speaking is a good step to take. Someone should lead that program. But the problem then becomes everybody's is, oh, well, that job is the safety director's job. And when things go badly, he or she is the one that gets the blame for it. When, in fact, in reference to everything else we've talked about today, it's an organizational effort. There are S.M.A.R.T goals that should be formed for every one that safety director cannot be will not be in all places at all times watching. All people cannot realistically be held accountable for everything that happens. Now, [00:33:00] it is very specifically in their job description, I'm sure, and in their evaluation, because they're a safety person and that should be that way. But in order to attain company wide or organization wide goals, they need help and they need everyone's help to do that. So the owner will come down hard on the safety director because they've got way too many injuries when in fact, I can look back to the owner and say, wait a minute, where were you last week? When was the last time you walked through the facility and noted the issues? Have you ever stood on the top rung of the ladder as a foreman when you knew you shouldn't you have responsibility in this program? So those are the things that would really help to have this format in place, keep everybody on the same page, support that safety director. And when things go well, everybody can take credit for it because it is a team sport.
Peter Koch: Let's [00:34:00] pause for a moment and take a quick break. The MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is dedicated to discussing, describing and even debating workplace safety across all industries and applications with industry leaders, top executives and safety experts at MEMIC. Today, we've been speaking with Randy Klatt, director of Region two loss control at MEMIC, about S.M.A.R.T goals and how they can be used to help create a path to better safety performance. However, this S.M.A.R.T goal concept is only part of the roadmap to a successful safety culture. Do you lead people in your company, in your department, or maybe even in your work group? Then you'll want to check out our first episode with Randy Safety Leadership Walking the walk to find out more about how leaders can be successful and create a balance between safety, quality and productivity. You can find Randy's episode and more at MEMIC.com/podcast or check [00:35:00] us out on your favorite podcast platform and then subscribe since we drop new episodes every two weeks. You won't be inundated with notifications, but you'll never miss a new episode. Now let's get back to today's episode.
Peter Koch: So to support that team, like with anything else, it needs to be or the goal needs to be refreshed in people's minds time after time after time. You think about any other goal that gets set in a company, whether it's a financial goal, a productivity goal, quality goal. You talk about those things sometimes daily, many times weekly, definitely quarterly and always annually. But from a safety standpoint, if you only look at that goal once a year, that might not be. That might not be appropriate for you. You might need to put it in front of you more frequently. So that time based [00:36:00] part of the Smart Goal acronym is a pretty key part. And not just to say, yep, we're going to look at it annually or it's going to be within this year. That's fine. But then when are you going to go back to it? How are you going to measure it so that we know where we are and can forecast where we're going before we actually get there? Because then you can make relevant change in stride instead of having to wait to the end of the year using the measurements of our lagging indicator and go, oh, we didn't make it. We got to be safer next year. So everybody be more careful. Thank you very much.
Randy Klatt: Yeah, that that and that's exactly what we see most of the time. Even if a company has a goal for the year, which I think you have to set, I think that's important. Before you know it, 11 and a half months have gone by. And we look back at the goal and we say, oh, we didn't make it ah well it's because you didn't do anything differently. You didn't do anything to support that [00:37:00] overall overarching goal. That was a year long, even using the S.M.A.R.T format. You're never going to reach that goal simply by setting that goal. It has to be supported by multiple other goals with shorter terms. So, yes, let's review that overall goal every quarter or every month and then let's support that further by having the safety committee meet every month or having a team meet. Let's support their efforts by doing weekly facility inspections. Let's support it by doing tailgate talks or tool box talks every week on Monday mornings. Let's support it by doing quarterly all hands meetings, let's et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So. The timeframe is important. All those things I just measured mentioned are measurable. If I do it at once a week, we should have 52 of [00:38:00] them. All right. Let's do a couple of vacation this take a few holidays. All right. Let's we're going to do forty five of them this year. There's your assignment. So now there's there are people that have very specific, measurable, attainable, assignable, realistic, timely goal. Just one. That fits the format, that will help support the overall goal of injury reduction. That goal in and of itself still isn't enough. That's one person doing some training once a week. We have to do some other things, too. So every company is different. But I do know the universal truth is that if you have injuries and you don't change something, you'll continue to have injuries. So let's get this S.M.A.R.T goal format and in big into the company and make it a part of our DNA. And you can use this on a daily basis. I always ask people how much of your to do list. Did you get done today?
Peter Koch: Oh, [00:39:00] I got it all done.
Randy Klatt: Yeah, sure.
Peter Koch: Because I only set one thing.
Randy Klatt: Yeah, well, at least it was realistic.
Peter Koch: It was it was very realistic.
Randy Klatt: But that's the point, of course, that, you know, S.M.A.R.T goals are not just that overall annual goal for safety. And these other things that we've talked about, but it can be used on a daily basis. I have a to do list. Am I going to get that to do list done today? Probably not. And that leads to frustration. It's we are in a society where we're trying to do more with less quite often. So you're never going to get it all done. So let's take the bites out of it that we can actually chew and let's break it down. Use the S.M.A.R.T goal format. So today I'm going to be very specific. I can do these three things and the measurable part is today if it's done or not. I'm assigning it to myself. I'll make it realistic. I could do only those things. And of course, time is today. So boom there is a S.M.A.R.T goal. I've taken my long to do list [00:40:00] and made it something that I can actually manage and then I'm going to feel better at the end of the day when I can check off that block that I've actually accomplished something. It feels pretty good. In fact, I'll even sometimes write down things on my to do list that I did. I forgot to write it down. I did. I write it down, then check it off.
Peter Koch: Just so you could feel good?
Randy Klatt: It feels so good.
Peter Koch: Because sometimes it's the only thing that you've got done on your to do list.
Randy Klatt: Well that that can be the case. And I understand environment can interrupt all this in a heartbeat. But if you don't start with a plan, if you don't have some kind of structure around it, you'll just be treading water forever. So I think this will really help everyone.
Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about the ER part of S.M.A.R.T-ER goals, because those are two words tacked onto the end of the original acronym that hadn't always been there. But I think are fairly relevant to talk about, especially today and how fast paced business goes. So it's evaluated and reviewed. So [00:41:00] did you want to talk a little bit about the meeting of those two in the context of the smart goal?
Randy Klatt: Sure. And it makes perfect sense once you've reached the end of that timeframe. So you've done S.M.A.R.T. Maybe we should do something else to evaluate how well it went if we made it or not. If the goal was successful or not, it's probably a good idea to evaluate the process. Did we learn anything along the way? If we did. Let's incorporate it into future training so that we can be even more successful down the road. So we should have an appraisal of our goal and how well it went and what we had to do to get there or perhaps why. We didn't make it. So that's the E in the evaluation process. And then the review is in a similar vein. Let's reflect upon it and we can adjust next year's goal. We've done some evaluation. We learned these things. Now as [00:42:00] we review and plan for next year or next month or next quarter, maybe we do need to change some things to make it a more realistic goal. Or we can push a little bit harder. Maybe we can be a little bit more aggressive because we learned this was actually achievable. So it's a good thing to add. Make it a smartah goal. That's how we say it in Maine there is no R. So that makes it a little bit tough, but it makes for a more closed loop process that we've now come full circle around and we're ready to go again for next year.
Peter Koch: And I think that's a good framework for when I was listening to you about talk about evaluated. I thought about it could uncover those unintended consequences of your goal setting, like you might set a goal that excellent for the company. But as it trickles down into some of the different departments. There was an unintended consequence that was not healthy for the company. [00:43:00] It might have triggered a cultural change someplace where because of the way the goal was established or it was for lack of a better term, sold in that department to the people. It didn't go over very well. So that caused people to maybe not report injuries because they felt that they were going to be the ones that were going to make the company not achieve the goals. So they pulled it back. They didn't want to do that. So they let things go instead of being more open in their discussion, in their reporting. So evaluation can help, especially if you don't achieve the goal, can help look at or uncover those unintended consequences. And even if you do achieve the goal to look back and say, all right, so these are the reasons that we achieved it, that's really good. And then reviewing it to see if we can use those same tools again for next year and maybe, like you said, push a little harder or pull back a little bit and say, yeah, it wasn't really [00:44:00] realistic to say that we're going to go from one hundred injuries a year to 10. So we need to do something else for next year. So we're going to look at it in a little different way. And we only made it down to 80 injuries. So let's say we can take it now down to 50 instead of all the way back down to five. So it's a good, like you said, closed loop. It's a really good way to make sure that you are cycling your S.M.A.R.T goals or cycling your goals, that they are part of the company's overall health. And part of the company's overall success. They should always be part of that. If you're not, they're not there to help your company be successful, then it's not the right goal to have.
Randy Klatt: Right. And if you as you evaluate and review, you may find some things that weren't great and other things that didn't you might have met your goal. But we can still eliminate some of the things that didn't work very well and replace them with something that did when you were talking there. The thing that came to my mind was back belts. Let's give everybody [00:45:00] a back belt because then we're going to reduce back injuries. Great. That's our S.M.A.R.T goal. Everybody's going to get one. It's measurable because they have it or not. It's assignable, each individual. It's realistic because we just bought it and we gave it to you its timeframed I guess in that sense that you're going to wear it all everyday, all the time. We find out later that didn't work. So maybe we should have evaluated and reviewed a little bit more often to really decide if that was a good idea. So pieces of equipment, particularly, we think they're going to be great and well, turns out maybe they weren't. So that evaluation process might be really important.
Peter Koch: Yeah, very true. So just to recap here, before we get into our last section is a S.M.A.R.T goal, has a segment that's specific. It's measurable. It's assignable or achievable depending on what a you use. It's realistic and it's time related or it's in a box of time. It starts and it ends there. It's not one that just keeps going forever and ever and ever. And [00:46:00] then when you get to the end of that timeframe or you're within that cycle, there's an evaluation period and then there's a review period for it. So you can keep that goal going so that you can achieve the health of your company. So specific, measurable, assignable, realistic time related, evaluated and reviewed is the S.M.A.R.T.E.R acronym and just the review. Did I miss anything in there?
Randy Klatt: No, I think you sum that up quite well with the last thing. The last statement we should try and make there is that it is not merely setting those goals to guarantee your success. It actually takes work. It's not a panacea here. So set the goals. And if. If you don't make it, if you set a goal with the S.M.A.R.T format and you don't make it, it's not really a failure of the model. It's a failure of what you implemented. So let's rework that in that. Make it S.M.A.R.T.E.R for next year or next quarter, next [00:47:00] week. And I think you'll find continual success if you continue that process.
Peter Koch: It is interesting. I'm just reflecting back on a couple of conversations we had before the podcast. And we're talking about working with safety committees and setting S.M.A.R.T goals. And you get done with a smart goal and there's a sigh of relief. It's done. We set the goal. Yeah. But now the work starts. This is the time. What you've done is you set the roadmap for success. It's like getting, you know, putting your destination into Google Maps and then sitting in your driveway going. I hope I get there. No, you've got to actually follow the path. Follow. Take action. Follow the path and make sure you're always looking back at the goal so that the action is targeted. And that's a really important part to remember.
Randy Klatt: Perfectly said. And that prompted my thought of safety committees, because I see a lot of them and most of them are failures. And it's because they come to a meeting. [00:48:00] They talk a little bit about safety and then they don't do anything until the next meeting and they do that twelve times a year and nothing really changes or happens. So if I were the leader of a safety committee, I would say, let's meet today. And in this meeting, we are going to assign a S.M.A.R.T goal project to every one of you. So in the next month, there's a time part of it. I want you to do this, this and this. So it's specific, measurable, assign it to you it's realistic, timely for the next meeting. And those are all activities that you are going to conduct in the workplace. And there are millions of them that we could think of but report back next month as to how those things went. And that might be actually a successful safety committee.
Peter Koch: Yeah.
Randy Klatt: It's not about the doughnuts that you get at eight o'clock in the morning on that one Monday a month. It's about what you do between the meetings and using the S.M.A.R.T format will really help people understand what to do.
Peter Koch: Yeah, really good point. [00:49:00] Which brings us to our challenge. So I think that our listeners out there take this challenge. So go home or go back to your place of business and make a S.M.A.R.T goal. Find something that you want to change. Might be something at work. Could be productivity or quality based. Something at home. Might be something on your to do list and make a smart goal for that. Make it specific. Figure out a way to be able to measure it throughout the time that you're going to measure it. It's going to be assigned to you. Or maybe if you're a supervisor, you might assign it to someone within your team. And then as you talk to your team or think about it yourself, if it's your goal, is it truly realistic for you to do that? So make that smart goal and then follow through with it. Take action to see if you can achieve it, see if using this can actually make your goal setting process a little bit easier. Or at the very least, a little more structured so that you [00:50:00] can come up and actually be successful. One of the comments I make when I talk with business owners is it's great for you to have this goal of having fewer injuries. Fantastic. And if we get to next year and we're sitting here successful, that you've had fewer injuries. But you look back and you can't figure out why you got here or how you got here, then it's an exercise in futility because you can't replicate it. So a smart goal will help you to be able to replicate success if the smart goal is created correctly. So take that challenge. And if you've done that and you want to share your story, your success with us, go back to the MEMIC.com/podcast and leave us a comment there about what the S.M.A.R.T goal was and how successful you are with that. And we'd love to see how many responses we get from that. So please take that challenge and see how it functions for you. So, Randy, the last part for [00:51:00] you. Where can our listeners find some more resources about smart goals or developing goals overall?
Randy Klatt: Well, certainly I would be remiss if I didn't recommend MEMIC's Web site and our safety director, which has hundreds of documents in there related to projects, checklists, inspection information, all sorts of tools that can be used to help you formulate your own goals. If you really want to just know more about S.M.A.R.T, well, do what everybody does. Go to your computer and type in S.M.A.R.T goals in your Web browser and you'll earn your search engine. You'll find plenty of information about it. Some of the different formats, S.M.A.R.T versus S.M.A.R.T.E.R, and those other letters that sometimes represent other words like attainable or achievable or is it assignable and make it fit for you. There's plenty of information out there about it. Bottom [00:52:00] line is, I want you all to figure out a way to make it work for your business, for your activities, personal or business. And make this place a little bit safer. One goal at a time.
Peter Koch: Excellent. Randy, thanks. So that about wraps up our Safety Experts podcast. And thank you, Randy, for being here today and sharing your expertise with us.
Randy Klatt: My pleasure.
Peter Koch: Today, we've been speaking with Randy Klatt, CSP director for Region two loss control at MEMIC about S.M.A.R.T goals and its effect on workplace safety on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. If you have any questions for Randy or we'd like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast. E-mail us at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes that MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to resources for a deeper dive into this topic. Check out our Web site, MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find our podcast archive. While you're there, sign [00:53:00] up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take a few minutes to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you find us on. If you've already done that. Thank you. Because it helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned is even better.
If you’ve been outside on a trail, field, or wooded area for work or for recreation this spring or summer, chances are, you someone you were with had a tick on them. Ticks live in grassy, brushy, or wooded spaces, or on animals themselves and can carry germs that can cause serious and sometimes fatal disease. While not all ticks are dangerous to humans, there are a few that can make you or your pet sick. There are currently no vaccines to prevent tickborne disease in the United States, so avoiding tick bites is the best way to protect yourself. On this Episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I talk with Andy Wood, Safety Management Consultant for our Forest Products Programs here at MEMIC. Together we will dig into tick history, their life cycle, how to identify them, and the best ways to prevent tick bites.
Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch. It's open season. And what are we hunting? Well, it might actually be the other way around. Something is hunting us or at least trying to use us for a free meal. If you've been outdoors on a trail field or a wooded area for work or recreation, the spring or summer chances are you or someone you were with had a tick on them. Ticks can carry germs that can cause serious and sometimes fatal disease. While not all ticks are dangerous to humans, there are few that can make you or your pet really sick. Ticks live in grassy, bushy or wooded spaces or on animals themselves. So being outdoors in those areas can bring you in close contact with them. There are currently no vaccines to prevent tick borne disease in the United States. So avoiding tick bites is the best way to protect yourself on the line with me [00:01:00] today. To dig into tick history, identification and safety is Andy Wood, safety management consultant for our forest products programs here at MEMIC. Andy, welcome to the podcast.
Andy Wood: Well, thanks, Pete. Thanks for having me. And I look forward to our conversation here. I've spent a lot of time in the woods and, you know, ticks have been a prevalent issue for since my pretty much my entire career in the woods.
Peter Koch: Yeah, for sure. And I know in our history here, going back and thinking about all the work that we've done together when we're out doing chainsaw training for our different accounts, it's one of the things that we have to pay a lot of attention to. And almost every time, depending on the state that we're in, we'll find at least one if not on us, we'll find one on one of the participants. So it's definitely prevalent. And it is a it's a topic, a timely topic for this time of year. So before we get going. Did you have anything to add to that brief history of ticks that I just gave? I know you were talking a little bit about some [00:02:00]interesting facts that you dug up when we were doing some research on this. So I just want to give you an opportunity if anything fits in.
Andy Wood: Sure Pete. You know, it's a relatively new disease that we talk about. And we've had trouble diagnosing it for a while because people aren't so familiar with it. But actually, it goes back a long ways. The bacteria that causes Lyme disease was recently identified in amber. OK, so Amber is the fossilized sap from conifer trees going back fifteen million years. So before the humans walked on Earth, there was a bacteria that generated Lyme disease. And the first human case of Lyme disease that I could come up with was from a fella called Ötzi, who is the you might remember the iceman that was discovered in the Italian Alps in the 90s. Let's see. Was murdered in the Italian Alps and was left up there, covered over in the glacier and through global warming [00:03:00] and glacier movement was exposed and was discovered by a couple of hikers in the 90s. And with the all the research that we can do today and, you know, taking apart the DNA of people, they discovered that he actually had Lyme disease. So it's really been around a long time. There's quite a history, although it's just become prevalent, you know, here in the States. We're just dealing with this in the last, you know, 20, 30 years.
Peter Koch: Yeah, really. I mean, growing up and I'm from Connecticut, which is really sort of the epicenter of Lyme disease itself. But growing up, I never really talked to. We never really talked about ticks. Well, you know, 50 years ago when I was grown up in Connecticut. So it just seems like it's this brand new disease. But really, evidence shows that Lyme disease and then ticks go back millions of years. So they've been around. They've kind of been partnering with us. I guess you could say for a long time. So let's talk about the ticks [00:04:00] themselves. Then we'll get to some of the diseases that they transmit later on. But I think it's important for us to be able to know that there's not just one type of tick out there and tick identification is important, especially if you get one on you or if it bites you so that you know what you might be at risk for. So let's talk about the different or the common types of ticks that there are. And then we can focus on the ones that are most prevalent here on the East Coast. So can you take us through some of the different types of ticks that we can see.
Andy Wood: You know, sticking to the East Coast we really have 15 ticks that are, you know, very common, have established populations. And researchers say that eleven of them have very little impact on humans. For example, in Maine, we have the moose tick, which is killing moose. They call it the winter tick or the moose tick. And it is killing most currently in northern Maine, but has no impact. It's not a Lyme disease. It doesn't have any impact [00:05:00] on humans. And I'm sure other states would have similar situations. So we really have as far as the ones that are impacting humans and vectors for human borne diseases, we have the woodchuck tick, which isn't as is common. That tick carries Powassan, in which we've heard a little bit about recently, the dog tick, the American dog tick, probably a little more common. Keri's Rocky Mountain spotted fever. And again, you know, in the northeast, not really huge, but, you know, nationwide, that is an issue and that's a very serious disease. Newer entry to the northeast market is the Lone Star tick and the Lone Star tick is, you know, its claim to fame, I guess, is that it's the tech that generates the allergy to red meat, which people might have heard about relatively new. And then probably the big one, the most common tick is the black legged tick or the deer tick. People call it either one. And that is pretty much goes a little bit from the little [00:06:00] west of the Mississippi, going up north and south all the way to the east coast. And that is the carrier of actually all those anaplasmosis, babesiosis, Powassan and the Lyme disease, the one that we haven't really the biggest problem with right now.
Peter Koch: Wow. So how would you identify? I mean, I understand this is a podcast, but what are some of the common characteristics of, like, the Lone Star tick, the dog tick or the woodchuck tick? And how would you be able to differentiate those between themselves.
Andy Wood: Depending on their lifecycle as a larval or nymph, you really won't be able to see them anyways. They're so small. You know, the black legged tick as a nymph is the size of US poppy seed. So it's pretty tough to pick up any markings unless you're in a tick lab. So first, I would encourage folks to save the tech and send it to a lab if they have one. And most of the states, I think, have some active tick programs that they can identify those. So your [00:07:00] only chance would be identify the adult ticks so the black legged tick its legs are black it's head is black look at it from the from the top down and it's black. It's got kind of a black shield, they call it down, coming down from its head to the back. Most of the body in the back is more of a brownish or sometimes even a little bit of a reddish color. So that's a distinctive color tradition in the black. Coming down from the from the from the head, the Lone Star tick in the adult form is more of a brown tick. And it has a spot right in the middle of its back, a whitish spot, a very light color that's usually disconnected from the rest of the body. So it's a it's a it's an independent light coloring in the middle as opposed to the dog tick, which is also a bit of a brown or tick. And it has colors that start right at the head and that's little bit striped. And then it has a white spot as well, [00:08:00] but it's connected to the back of the head. It's not so standalone as the Lone Star is. And the Woodchuck Tick is has a similar color pattern to the black legged tick. It's the rest of the body is not as black. The legs and the head and the back of the head and the neck are not as dark, but it's kind of a little bit darker of a brown and then a lighter brown across the back. So you really need to get a tick. You know, if you get online, the CDC, Center for Disease Control, you know, have some good photos and an I.D. information so you can see the differences in color
Peter Koch: They are hard to see I mean, we're only talking about something that's maybe half the size of a dime from leg to leg when they're an adult or even smaller before they've embedded or after they've bitten you. So I guess some of the things that I'm hearing differentiation. So leg color and the black legged tick for sure. And then body color, like you said, the black legged tick has a black head [00:09:00] and a black spot behind its head that connects to its head. And then the rest of the body is brown. And then the other two ticks, brown legs. So that's a good differentiator. So if you get one with black legs, you know, pretty close that it's going to be a black legged tick because the other ticks that you described have brown legs and then they're really distinctive white spot or light colored spot in the middle of the back. Disconnected from the head for the Lone Star tick. The other tick there with the woodchuck tick. Is that the one that you went to next or.
Andy Wood: The dog tick has the connected colors that start right at the head and stripe down the back.
Peter Koch: So it's good to know. Especially if your going to be out in the woods. You should be familiar with the well one where they are. We'll talk about Habitat in Life-cycle next, but be able to identify them because certainly as some ticks are more dangerous to humans than others. So you really need to know. And if you're going to be working in the outdoors or if you're going to be [00:10:00] recreating in the outdoors, you should know. So identify and you brought up some good points there. Go to the CDC or go online. There's a lot of information out there, both at the state and the federal level that could give you some good information about how to identify the tick when they're in their adult stage. So I think that's a good transition. Let's talk a little bit about the lifecycle and what the lifecycle of the tick is and where their habitats might be.
Andy Wood: Sure, the lifecycle is kind of an interesting lifecycle that ticks. The ticks have. Depending on which one, two or three year lifecycle our black legged tick our most prevalent tick and our most hazardous, I guess, to our human population has a two year lifecycle. So they start their life in the leaf litter, usually in the forest floor or in the grasses close in the ground. And the eggs would have been laid in the spring and they will hatch out in [00:11:00] the in the larval form. Now, the larval form, the nymph form and the adult form, they look like ticks in each of the forms in the larval form. It's not like a caterpillar or worm or anything different. They look like a tick through the whole life. The only difference being in their larval form, they'll have six legs. And then when they molt into their nymph form, they get the eight legs so they can hang onto branches and quest in the beginning. They'll hatch and they'll be in the leaf litter in the brush. And they're going to have to get their first meal. They're going to quest. So when I say Quest, the way that they're going to Quest is they're basically going to climb up to the highest thing they can because the larval form are so small, they don't climb very high. So they're basically going to call up on that on a leaf. So if you walk through the force and the leaf layer, they're going to be on the tops of the leaves, hanging on with their back feet and just reaching out with their front feet, hoping something walks by that they can grab. So [00:12:00] obviously, a lot of, you know, a leaf layer, they're going to be in brush piles and things like that. They're going to be close to the ground. OK. So each of their lifestyle. Each of their life segments. The back legged tick has four stages, you know, eggs, larval, nymph, and adult in three of the stages. You know, once they're out of the eggs, each of the stages needs a blood meal to live and then move on to the next stage. So the blood meal in the larval stage is going to come from animals that are right close to the ground. The most common would be the white footed mouse. So mice are running around the ground and also they have nests in the ground. So the larva might move into a nest where there's, you know, there's young mice they'll attach to chipmunks and shrews and birds and other things. But generally, things are going to be right close to the ground. Those ticks in that form are going to be in the leaf layer or short grass detach under their first. Now, at this point in their life, it's interesting to note they do not have the pathogen for Lyme disease. They're pretty much sterile at that point. So if you get happened to get bitten by [00:13:00] a larval form, there's no hazard because they carry no pathogens for Lyme. So they first have to attach themselves to a host that is infected. The white footed mouse can carry Lyme disease, can't bite you, but it can pass it to the larva, which would then carry that into its next stage of life when it will turn around and then bite the humans.
Peter Koch: How big are the ticks at the larval stage, Andy? So how large are they? We're looking at the difference between, say, a larval tick and a nymph and adult tick. How big is that larval stage for that black legged tick?
Andy Wood: The nymph stage is usually considered the size of a poppy seed, something that most people are familiar with. A lot of them will only be half of that. You're talking something that is half a poppy. Yeah. So it's hard to even see them if they attached you in a larval stage.
Peter Koch: So it would almost be like a like a freckle. Like you might have a tiny freckle on you someplace. And yeah. You know what, I've heard [00:14:00] that before. If you're walking through the woods and you get back to your car or you're working out of doors and you've got a freckle that wasn't there before, or if the freckle moves that it's probably a tick and they need to go.
Andy Wood: Yeah. So they're going to and they will they'll have a blood meal and they'll be attached for a certain period time, which we'll talk a little bit more about, and then they'll fall off and they'll go back in the leaf litter and they'll spend the rest of the summer, the fall in the winter and the leaf litter. And then in the spring, they will molt and come out as a nymph. Now they have a leg so they can climb, they're a little bigger and they can climb a little better. So they're going to be in areas with tall grass and bushes. So they're going to be up a little higher when ticks attached to people ticks don't jump, fly or fall out of trees. They're always coming from the ground up and they need to be in the ground because they need to have that really high humidity, high moisture content to survive on a hot day. They can climb up a piece of grass to quest and look for a host. But if it's a hot, dry day, they've got to go back down on the ground [00:15:00] to re moisturize or they will dry out and die. So as a nymph, it'll have the eight legs and it'll be in the early part of the spring. It'll be in the leaf litter in the ground. And then as things warm up, it will it'll come out and it can start questing and it can go a little bit higher. It'll be in tall grasses and bushes then and more apt to attach to a host that's a little bit bigger. A fox, a deer or a person. At this point, if it had a host that was infected with the Lyme pathogen as a nymph, now it can it could be carrying the pathogen for Lyme. So the question is always, well, how many ticks are infected? And a recent study in Maine showed that they're averaging about 40 percent of the ticks that were tested were carrying alive the pathogen for Lyme disease in some counties, up to 50 percent. But statewide, it was about 40 percent of the ticks were carrying Lyme disease.
Peter Koch: Wow. And that's all [00:16:00] for the nymph or adult stage, correct?
Andy Wood: Nymph through adult. Yeah. So they are so up. The 40 percent were infected when they had their first blood meal on an infected host.
Peter Koch: Alright.
Andy Wood: We're at the nymph stage. We're going to attach to another host, have another blood meal. We're going to fall off. Go back into the leaf litter. Spend a little bit more time before the end of the year. We're going to molt into an adult. And then the adults are going to do the same thing that adults are the ones that in the fall. Sometimes some of the chart will show a little bit of a spike in the tick activity in the fall. And that would be the adults after they come out of the leaf litter, they're going to do the same thing. They're going to quest they're going to have one blood meal. And again, they're going to be on the bigger hosts. This is when they get on the moose and the deer and again, the humans and something like a deer is a great host. They're so big, dominate a lot of ticks that Lyme disease has no effect on the deer at all. [00:17:00] So it doesn't really bother the deer other than having the you know, the ticks bite them and extract a certain amount of blood. They're going to fall off that host. They're going to go into the leaf layer. And then in the spring, they're going to lay eggs. And in the spring, those eggs then if they survive, the winter will hatch and start the life cycle again the following spring.
Peter Koch: So when during the year are the most active and when are our people most at risk of being bitten by an infected tick?
Peter Koch: So as far as time of the year, ticks are active anytime the temperatures above freezing, I was in Vermont last winter in late February. We had a tick, came on the dog on one of the dogs. So a warm spell, you know, it got above freezing and they were active. But generally, it's going to be the early part of the spring. The nymphs are going to be out. And [00:18:00] then in the fall, there's going to be kind of a second little bit of a spike when the adults are out. So a little bit earlier on and of course, in the middle of summer, it's also the driest part. That's a problem for the ticks. Again, they need a lot of moisture and it gets too dry. They don't do well. So as far as time a year, early in the spring with the nymphs and in the fall with the adults, both at that point in their cycle, both could be carrying the Lyme pathogen.
Peter Koch: Very good. So it's really good to start paying attention during those times of year and really to maybe educate yourself a little bit more. And as an employer, maybe in the early spring or at the end of the winter, start thinking about maybe doing some education for your staff, about ticks and environments and what to do for prevention, which we'll get to some of that as we move through this a little bit farther.
Andy Wood: Sure, people are most active in their yards in the spring, right? gardening, winter clean up and all the rest of that. So.
Peter Koch: Yeah, And if they're coming out in the in the spring and they stay in the [00:19:00] leaf litter, I mean, that's what most of us are taking care of any leaves that haven't been picked up from the fall through the winter. You're trying to disturb that leaf litter and pick it up and maybe move it to compost at some point in time in that the spring and summer time frame. So. Yeah. Most at risk for maybe a larval connection or even the nymphs at that point in time because they're going to be in the taller grass.
Andy Wood: Interesting. Pete, with the leaf litter at my house. I live in central Maine. I've never had a tic problem. Here, I've never had a tic on myself or the dogs. This spring I raked up the leaf pile. Didn't get it taken care of. Went out probably three weeks later to clean it up. Came back in that night, had four ticks.
Peter Koch: No kidding.
Andy Wood: So just a direct correlation to what we just talked about. We had a leaf pile, got ticks into it, got ticks infested it, and then I went out a little bit later. Take care of. And they ended up on me. Sure.
Peter Koch: So we've talked some about their life [00:20:00] cycle. We've talked about when they can become carriers of the disease and certainly at the larval stage, right after they hatch, they're not born with the disease. So they have to have a blood meal from a host that's infected at the larval stage or the nymph stage in order to become infected with Lyme disease. So let's talk a little bit about transmission. It's not an instantaneous thing like a mosquito. Mosquito bites you and you're going to get a reaction from that right away. But with ticks, it's a little bit different. It's not an instantaneous transmission of the disease from the tick to the host, is it? How do how does the tick transmit the disease when they bite something?
Andy Wood: Interesting to note that most ticks don't make it through the questing process, so most ticks just die. They never complete their lifecycle because it's just standing on a leaf. Well, you're holding their hands out hoping something walks around that [00:21:00] you can latch onto as is free. Unless you're in a place where there's a lot of people or a lot of animals, it's pretty tough.
Peter Koch: it's a rough life.
Andy Wood: It is, So luckily for us, most of the ticks don't make it through the lifecycle. They are not successful questers. So they don't get attached. So the tick is going to get on your body and it's going to crawl around to find a good place to for blood meal. They like soft warm soft skin, moist skin. They're going to crawl around on your pants or on your boots and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. But they're going to just be crawling until they get on your skin and then they're going to look for a kind of a hiding place, like behind your legs or behind your ears or, you know, in your armpits. It's dark. It seems to be quiet in there. There's lots of moisture, a good place for them to settle in. And they're going to attach themselves. You know, they can crawl out around on you for hours before they find a place they're going to attach. And they're going to they're going to grab [00:22:00] on. But it is going to be a while before they start feeding. Now, depending on the studies you see, 24, 36 hours, there are going to be attached at one spot before they actually start taking on a blood meal. It is kind of interesting the way that works. They're going to slice a little hole in your skin and they're going to insert their feeding tube. Their technology is unbelievable. They're going to insert an anticoagulant so the blood doesn't gel on them. They're going to insert an analgesic so that you don't feel the pain of them being there. So you usually have no idea they're there. a human analgesic and they're going to have a secrete, a glue that helps stick them into the your skin. So kind of if you think of that, that's superglue for skin. they're starting to use it at The doctors, same kind of stuff. They have that so that when you try and pull them out, not only do does their feeding tube have barbs on it, but it's also glued in after it's been there for a while. So really important, if you can get it, if you can find the ticks before all that happens, you can usually scoop [00:23:00] them off pretty easy. But once they've gone through that, the barbs are in the glues in, you know, it's really tough to pull them off. So at that point, they may stay attached for 24, 36 hours before they start their blood meal. You know, an adult female may attach and drop right off to go lay eggs. And the male might stay attached for a few days and just take multiple meals so that does take a while. But if you think about if you've ever tried to pull a porcupine quill out of your dog's face, you know, you think, yeah, I've had them on the tailgate of my truck laying down and I can't even hang onto the quill. I have to go and get the vice grips and I'm pulling on. The dog's head is getting snap. I'm thinking, how can that quill be stuck in there so hard? If you tried to pull out ticks, it's really the same thing. Sometimes those little barbs and that glue gets in there and it's really tough to pull them out.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And we'll talk about how to do that here as we get into the prevention part. So it takes a while for them to get attached. [00:24:00] So obviously, if you feel that that freckle crawling, you should know it's the best time to get them off of you. But even then, you know, if you do have one in and it starts to become embedded, you do have a little bit of time before they start taking the blood meal. Does the tick transmit immediately the disease once it starts taking the blood meal, or does something else have to happen for the disease to be transmitted?
Andy Wood: Once they insert the feeding tube they can glue themselves in and they can put the anticoagulant, but generally until they start feeding. So it's really considered to be that 24, 36 hours before the Lyme vector is actually going to come out of their gut during the feeding process. That's going to infect you. So time is of the essence if you can get them, you know, fairly quickly every day when you come home from work. Do that tick check. You know, you can usually head off to the Lyme disease.
Peter Koch: And you said that the Lyme disease itself [00:25:00] lives in the gut of the tick, too, so that'll come up later on. We start talking about how to take get an embedded tick out. It makes a difference of how you latch onto that tick in order to prevent the accidental transmission if they haven't started taking the blood meal for that disease. So we get into that later, too. So we'll keep that in mind as we go. Let's talk a little bit about Lyme disease and the symptoms of infection, because you hear about it often people have Lyme disease. I have some good friends. One of my friends is in their 70s now and has had Lyme disease for the last 20 years, and it has really significantly affected him. He's an amazing woodworker, a wood turner, and he loves the work in his woodshop. He used to, you know, on his days off from the job as a carpenter. He would spend all weekend in the woodshop, building guitars, building boats, turning lampshades out of logs, [00:26:00] just an amazing turner. Now he's unable to spend more than maybe an hour or two in the shop at a time before he gets either exhausted or he's in too much pain to do the things that he loves. And that all happened from a tick bite that really went not only unnoticed, but then untreated and then misdiagnosed. And then finally properly diagnosed. But by that time, it was it was too late. And he's you know, he suffered with Lyme disease for quite a while. And then I have some younger friends that, with kids that have had Lyme disease fairly recently. Once you've been bitten and the tick transmits the disease, Lyme disease to you, what are the symptoms? What are the early symptoms? And then what happens to those symptoms and what are some of the later symptoms that then that might happen?
Andy Wood: Sure. So any time you get bitten by an insect, there's probably going to be a just a minor [00:27:00] infection at the site of the bite. Same as if you get a little splinter in your finger or something. There's going to be a little minor, you know, maybe swelling or just a little soreness so that may have nothing to do with Lyme disease. You might have just gotten you know, it's just from the infection of the bite and nothing will probably happen right off. It can take several days like the rash that people commonly look for that can take from three to 30 days before it shows up.
Peter Koch: Wow. That long. So you really need to pay attention too, especially if you do find a tick on you and it's been embedded. It's not just one of those instantaneous things. Oh, there's nothing there. I don't have to pay attention to it anymore. You really should keep looking at that site for a while. Correct.
Andy Wood: You need to be vigilant for a while. Yeah. And because the symptoms, you know, they vary a lot from person to person and they, you know, up to 30 days just for the rash. And who gets the rash? Well, depending on the study, from 60 to 80 percent of the people will exhibit the rash. Some people never get the rash. So the rash itself isn't the only [00:28:00] thing you really need to look for other symptoms, you may get the rash a few days later. It could be several days, could be a month. Fevers and chills, you may start to feel. Fever, hot and cold, aches and pains in your body. They'll start out just as maybe minor aches and pains like you had a rough day at work. Think nothing of it. They'll get progressively worse to the point where it'll start in your bigger joints. You know, it'll start to feel our arthritic almost and the joints may even swell as things progress. Fatigue will be another one. People who have had Lyme’s that went undiagnosed were often diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome because that was their prominent symptom was just the continuous fatigue. They didn't ever had that rash. they didn't associated with a tick bite. But they were tired all the time. So aches and pains the fatigue. Some people will have swollen lymph nodes as well, and that could start again several days out, or it could be quite a while. So headaches are another one. And then, just like I mentioned, just veins muscles [00:29:00] and joints overall. So the light can progress and a lot of different ways it can be, you know, exhibit itself.
Peter Koch: I've heard this, too, that the symptoms will sometimes appear like you might miss the rash or you might not get the rash and then you might have flu like symptoms, but then they'll go away. They'll subside for awhile. But that doesn't mean that the disease is gone. It just means that it's in a different stage or maybe dormant. And well, what happens if it progresses beyond the achy kind of flu like symptoms and swollen lymph nodes?
Andy Wood: If you don't identify the issue, though, and get a treatment, that's that cycle of aches and pains and headaches and fatigue that can go on for quite a while. And one of the big problems when we had Lyme and ticks in the late 70s and through the 80s, we didn't know what the problem was. We hadn't really identified it. The conditions would get worse if it's not identified and be it early on, they can actually lead to, you know, neurological disease, heart disease, brain [00:30:00] issues and death. And it did in its early days. Now, usually we get a diagnosis before it gets to that. But in the early days, there was a lot of suffering going on by a lot of folks before people finally made the connection between what their symptoms were and the fact that it came from, you know, a tick bite. I had a I had a logger I worked with and he was recovering from cancer. He had been treated successfully with cancer. And he started feeling fatigued and achy and pains. And they said, oh, that's because of all the cancer treatment you've had, you know, last year. That's going to linger on for a long time. Well, little did he know that he was actually getting Lyme disease and it was put off and put off, all these being attributed to his cancer treatment. And it was a he was severely incapacitated when they finally put two and two together and figured out that, no, it wasn't leftover cancer treatment issues, it was actually Lyme disease developing further and further. And the further it gets, the more serious it gets.
Peter Koch: Yeah, and I think one of the keys or key takeaways from this is for you, the individual. [00:31:00] If you're starting to feel symptoms like this and your you know, you can connect it back to the tick. You should make sure you telling your doctor those things, because a lot of the symptoms that you've described can be anything. They could be the flu. It could be another illness, a seasonal illness even that's coming through. And it's going to present itself not like a tick bite, especially if the rash isn't there or you missed the rash goes it goes beyond the rash. So cuing in your doctor that there might have been a tick by may prompt them to explore further and not just treat it as a seasonal illness or a flu. So those are, I think, really good points to take away from this. This part of the conversation, at least.
Andy Wood: And if you know, you had a tick bite, if you can identify that tick, I would keep that in the back of my mind. And then, like, as you said, any of those symptoms start to develop, [00:32:00] you know, just tiredness or aches and pains. knowing that you had a deer tick that you definitely, I would want to get treated for that, tested for that fairly soon afterwards.
Peter Koch: Yeah, because treatments come a long way as far as you've alluded to. And the sooner that you can get treatment, the higher the potential is for that treatment to be successful. So can you talk a little bit about what some of the available treatments are for someone who has Lyme disease or have been bitten by a tick that is infected with Lyme?
Andy Wood: If you have a tick bite? As I mentioned, you could have an infection cleaning the wound site that, you know, regardless of Lyme right up front, you know, antibiotics, triple antibiotic, alcohol, whatever, that's the first thing you'd want to do. But as far as the treatments from the doctor go in the early stages, they would say once you have the disease, you'll never get over it. You can have it treated and you can manage the symptoms, but you're not going to, you know, completely eliminate it. With treatments they have today and the research I did, they actually use the word [00:33:00] complete recovery. So some of the treatments they have now apparently can give you complete recovery. And again, the sooner you get it, the better. The more successful that's going to be. And it's usually antibiotics they're going to give you when they identify that. So it's going to be a series of antibiotics over a certain length of time. They give you to address that.
Peter Koch: Good. So, again, early identification is a key part to this and getting to you and your doctor. That might not just be this seasonal illness that you're coming in for, but letting them know that there could be tick involvement, even if you might not have found a tick on you. If you know, you've been in areas that have high infestations of ticks, you've been hiking frequently or often or been doing a lot of yard work and all of a sudden this comes on. It might be a good connection for your doctor, especially if there's no other indication that it could be a different type of illness or disease.
Andy Wood: Yeah, I think one of the one of the challenges is because this is a moving target. You know, [00:34:00] when we first got Lyme down in Connecticut, it took us quite a while to figure out what was going on. They figured out what was going on in Connecticut, but they didn't know in Massachusetts. And then they figured out in Massachusetts as their age group, they asked its doctors to it, to that. But then in Maine and Vermont, New Hampshire, they weren't aware of it in Pennsylvania. So as this grows, new doctors need to be educated and need to always think of that worth something they think about. You know, our first case was in 75. If someone went to medical school coming up through the 80s, probably never had any training on tick diseases. It was interesting in the research I came up with what they call an LLMD and at first I thought it was a joke. But it's actually a medical society that certifies LLMD that's Lyme literate medical doctors.
Peter Koch: Oh, no kidding.
Andy Wood: It's special training to be able to recognize this stuff. So I'm sure in and along the coast and Connecticut and Massachusetts and New Jersey, you know, they're aware of it. But as we get further and further away from where we started, you know, we [00:35:00] had to work to make sure doctors are aware of it.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And if you look at a map of the United States and start to look at where the concentrations are, when we talked a lot about Connecticut, Rhode Island, the New England, northern New England area, but really you start looking at it, it's you start looking at it from like Virginia north to Maine and then northern New England into like to the Michigan area. But just about every state has some reported cases of Lyme disease now. So there's a substantial part of it. But, you know, in those states that have few, like some of the a lot of the southern states or the Midwestern states or even the Western states, there might not be a Lyme literate doctor there. They may be misdiagnosing or misunderstanding the symptoms. So, again, taking part of your own medical treatments and bringing as much information as you can to the doctors so that they can make a proper diagnosis. [00:36:00] Those are all really great points.
Andy Wood: There's a couple of things at play there. One is that you went to visit another state that has a higher concentration of Lyme disease and were infected there. And you went back to your home state in the Midwest where there is almost no Lyme disease. You get diagnosed there but that doctors never seen it. So that's part of the equation. The other part of the equation is with the global warming, the migration patterns of some of these animals, particularly birds that can carry Lyme disease and carry the ticks themselves. They're going into new places. There may not be an established population that lives through. It's entire two or three year lifecycle there. But a flock of, you know, Canadian geese can come into the mountains of Maine. And for the next several months, there'll be ticks all over the place of a tick. What we don't normally have, like the Rocky Mountain spotted fever, we don't see much. There could be people are seeing it all the time. Well we have these well if just once short piece of their lifecycle, they might stay and eventually establish a population, but they might not be there [00:37:00] permanently at that point. So the migration patterns are part of that as well.
Peter Koch: Right. So let's talk now about prevention. And, you know, we talked about treatment. We've talked about where the ticks are. We've talked about how to identify the ticks. And obviously, if you find one on you, we'll talk about how to take them off or remove them if you find one on you to get rid of it right away, is best. But even better, if you can prevent the tick from being on you in the first place, then you really don't have to worry about it that much. So let's talk a little bit about some of the prevention strategies that are out there, either for maybe a homeowner or a business owner, or if you don't own the land, what can you do to help protect yourself personally from getting a tick bite?
Andy Wood: The first would be, you know, about the whole tick habitat thing. You know, you can spend a little bit of time walking around at work or your own personal property, decide where you think the ticks are going to be the greatest. And [00:38:00] you can just avoid that. Or if there's a chance you can eliminate that, that's always a good option. Well, I work with a lot of landscapers and tree service companies. And one of the services that are really hot the last few years are spraying for ticks. So they do have ticks that they can spray on the land that are very environmentally sound and not completely eliminate, but can control the ticks really well and bring the population numbers down. So I mentioned that one first because it's an engineering control. And if you look at our hierarchy of controls, eliminating the problem would always be one of your best options. Obviously, if you can't do that, if you can avoid that type of habitat. So look along the edge of your mowed yard. If you work at a campground or summer camp or ski areas just off the most areas, there's always going to be piles of brush or rake leaves that people have put up over the years. You can't treat them. You can't put them somewhere else. Just try and stay away from a more even moving a little back. So as kids and animals are running around, they're not right on the edge of that [00:39:00] big tick population.
Peter Koch: Hey, before we move on to more avoidance, can we talk a little bit more about engineering controls? And this is something that I've heard and maybe it's off base, but going to what ticks like for an environment. Right. And they don't fly or jump. They actually have to be carried or crawled from place to place. I've heard from a landscape standpoint that you might be able to put in like almost a tick barrier between if you have a wooded area or a high grass area, and then you can put an area of maybe it's crushed stone border or a barrier that would remain dry, that would help prevent ticks from kind of migrating from the warm, moist habitat into the yard more. Is that a possible engineering control or is that sort of an old wives tale?
Andy Wood: Yeah. No, I actually saw that in some of my research. The other thing that is a border of chips. People are using chips. Yeah. Not [00:40:00]chips that are ground into mulch because they tend to be better habitat and will hold more moisture. But the bigger chips. So chips or crushed rock that they're both going to be dry areas. You get a couple feet of that at the edge. Your lawn between that in the woods and the ticks are not apt across that. So that. Yeah, that's true. That's there's places that are doing that.
Peter Koch: That's great. So just another thought from a personal standpoint, you probably won't be able to do that if you are you have a job working in the woods, you're not going to be able to put a border in. But as a property owner, you may be able to do that, especially if you are in an area of high tick populations. So like the New England area that we know, we have a high population of ticks. So Connecticut through up into Maine. Good engineering controls is something to think about. All right. So we talked a little bit about elimination through the treatment of Habitat. We talked a little bit about some of the engineering that we can do. And you were just getting into avoidance in some of the other strategies that you can put into [00:41:00] play. So keep going.
Andy Wood: Clothing is a big part of it. So what you wear and how you wear it, people will push light colored clothing. And the reason for the light color is not that. You know, I've heard over the years bright colored clothing attracts bugs because it looks like flowers. It's bright colors and the pollinators. That's true. The pollinators are attracted to the bright colors. But this isn't really a pollinator. The only reason for the light colors is so that you can see the tick when it's crawling around on you.
Peter Koch: Good point.
Andy Wood: So if you have a camo pair of camo pants on and tick gets on your leg, he's got a long time. He can crawl around there for an hour. You're not going to see him. Whereas if you have a really light colored shirt on or light colored pants on, you might see a much more quickly, particularly if he's an adult. You got a pretty good chance to see him and brush him off. So light colored clothing just helps in identifying the ticks they have to there. Again, depending on their stage that they're in, they might attach down on your get on your boots and have to go up your pants. They might have to go up to your shirt until they finally find an opening to get into [00:42:00] your skin. So the harder you can make that for them and the longer and the better you can see them in the interim, the better chance you got to dust them off. One of the common practices is one of the first things that come up is tuck your pants in to your socks. Now, as long as you're not trying to make a fashion statement, that one works pretty good. It's kind of goofy looking. But I do see a lot of people when I go on Woods tours, people are tucking their pants into their socks and some are wearing gators. Now in the woods people who are working there, typically they have boots, work boots, you know leather work boots that are maybe eight inches high. And they tie their shoelaces at the top once around their leg before they tie them. Some of the military dress uniforms, you'll see, are their battle field uniforms. They tie their pants for the same reason you not catching anything and the ticks can't go up. Now they've got to go not just up into your leg, but they've got to come all the way up to your waist to find the next transition into clothing. Tuck your shirts in. If you have a tight fitting shirt, like a T-shirt, then [00:43:00] they've got to come all the way up to your neck before they can find a place that fit to your into your skin. If you have a loose fitting button up shirt, they've only got to come to your waist and then they can jump inside and run around inside and find a nice place. Tighter fitting clothes and pants tucked in your pants or gator or pant tied shirts. Again, tighter fitting, better seal tucked into your pants as well. And then there's a question of what the clothing is made of. They have clothing that is treated. There's different manufacturers that treat clothing. You can buy it for many or popular sporting goods, outdoor clothing places. The treatment this is came out of a military study, you know, in parts of the country where we're fighting malaria, an insect, how to get insect repellent to stay on clothing for over a long period of time. And in the research, labs have come up with the permethrin treatment that they claim can stay in clothing for 70 laundries. So that's 70 washes and 70 dry cycles, which just that's quite a bit more than the life of most your clothing. So the clothing, the treatment of the [00:44:00] clothing is good. You can buy the clothing that's treated some of the some of the same company is offer a service where you send them your clothing, and they will treat it for you and they will send it back. You get the same 70 washing guarantee or there's treatments you can buy or you can just buy the squeeze bottle yourself, but your pants and your boots and you can treat them yourself. You need to treat them when it's not on your body. You need to let that dry. Overnight would be good. But I think usually they say let it dry about four hours before you put it on and then it has no effect on your on your skin at all. So you can treat it that way. So without putting any treatments on yourself, you can start with that kind of a treatment. And those have actually proven to be pretty, pretty effective.
Peter Koch: So I think that's a good point to settle on just for a moment here, because as you think about it from a workplace safety standpoint or even from a personal safety standpoint, like it's summertime, it's hot, you know, you're going to want to be in a short sleeved shirt, a light shirt. Maybe shorts, maybe sandals. But [00:45:00] again, let's make an intentional choice here. If you're going to go into a habitat again, where you we know that there are going to be ticks and we understand what the consequences are. And they're pretty significant consequences of being bitten by a tick, whether it's a deer tick or whether it's a Lone Star tick of the woodchuck tick. There's plenty of different diseases, some that we haven't even discussed here, that the ticks will transmit or can transmit to us. So the first and best prevention that you have personally, if you're not going to be able to engineer, is choosing the proper clothing. So you're going to be in the right spot, make a good choice. So maybe you're going to wear long pants instead of shorts and maybe you're going to have even a pair of tights on underneath the long pants if you don't want to talk your pants into your socks. And then those are all good strategies for preventing the tick to get onto your skin, especially if you are one that doesn't like to use [00:46:00] chemicals for prevention. And then you can move into the treated clothing and making some intentional choices because of where you're going to go and what you're going to do about how you're going to protect yourself. So just some things to think about. Like you people might be thinking all I want to do that because it's going to be hot out. You and I hear that all the time. We go into the field and we talk to people about wearing personal protective equipment. And one of the biggest complaints that you get, whether it's a pair of safety glasses or a pair of chaps or a helmet is hot. I don't want to wear these when I'm in the summertime because the glasses fog up or the chaps make me sweat or whatever that is. But, you know, honestly, if you can identify the hazard and how you're exposed, you can make some good choices about prevention that way. So don't just toss the clothing out there and just rely on repellents because repellents are only as good as the applicator. And sometimes clothing is a much better barrier than [00:47:00] covering yourself in a pesticide that may or may not be effective, depending on how you've applied it and how long ago it's been applied before the tick attached to you or got onto you.
Andy Wood: If you look at all the high tech fabrics that's out there and all the money that's being put into casual clothing, there are some nice high tech clothing that is super lightweight and super protective compared to wearing a pair of jeans, which are terribly hot. You know, they've got some really nice stuff out there. So you might take a little effort to put yourself together, a couple sets of clothing that you're going to wear on those hot days to be completely covered. But I think it's worthwhile. The other thing that you don't want to forget when you're thinking about the treatment of your clothing is the gear that you have with you when you go in the field. If you if you take a day pack with you and you go out in the field and you spend a day out there, you're completely covered and you don't get a tick on you. That's great. But if your day pack sits on the ground or say you started [00:48:00] the day with a, you know, a fleece, fleece pull over just first thing in the morning. And that was hung in the tree all day. You take that home, you go back and you throw that in your pickup. You just have just infected your pickup with ticks. You take that home. You bring that inside. You just infected the rug. The dog, the family members. And those ticks, they have a short period time. They're going to crawl around until they either die from dehydration or latch onto something else, you or the dog or they kids or somebody else. So make sure that everything that goes in the field with you that could be a reservoir for a tick, could be a host for the tick is covered as well. And I think particularly I've found that packs were a problem because a lot of people go with their lunch in a day pack and there's no spare clothing in a day pack. And that's the permethrin can be treated, can treat the pack, you know, very easily. So that's a that's an easy solution for that one.
Peter Koch: That's a good thought. And so when we think about the Permethrin, that is the that's one thing that you that's good for fabric and clothing or packs, [00:49:00] but it's not to be used on skin. Right. So if we're getting into repellents and how to make differentiations of if you're going to use repellent, which one to choose. Permethrin is the one that you can only use or it's only rated to be used on your clothing or on fabric, not actually on your skin. So you've got to follow the proper instructions. You had mentioned it before. You know, you got to let it dry. So it's not going to then have an effect on your skin or be transmitted and absorbed by your skin. So you've got to be really careful when you purchase a repellent to make sure that it is correct for the use case that you want it for. So kind of moving in repellents other than Permethrin. What are some other repellents that can be used that are good against ticks?
Andy Wood: Sure. Probably the most common one, the one that's been around the longest. Again, this came out of the military prior to Permethrin and the long term treatment was is DEET. [00:50:00] So DEET, depending on the study you listen to, you want, you know, 40 percent or more. The you know, Benn's makes 100 percent DEET. You can get whatever range you want, depending on what you want, expose your skin to, you know, I would more is probably going to be better. I think that one of the limiting factors is not just maybe 40 percent would be good for the first hour, but it's longevity is not that long. It's life effectiveness, but one hundred percent actually has a longer, you know, cycle that it'll work over. So but what there's a lot of different ones. DEET is the most common. And there's a lot of manufacturers that don't have DEET on the label. DEET is an active ingredient, you know, at 30 or 40 percent for just that reason. A newer one is picaridin. DEET actually is very effective. One of the downsides is it dissolves vinyl and plastic. A lot of different things in the field, pieces of plastic. In fact, I was just a couple weekends ago, [00:51:00] I was working here at my house and I had put bug spray on and I had to use the phone. Now, when I was done with the phone. The phone stuck to my ear and I thought, oh, it's just sweats dry. And, you know, well, I'd looked at the phone. It had melted the phone against my ear.
Peter Koch: The case for the phone?
Andy Wood: Yeah. And the phone was all kind of the plastic where the numbers come up. It's all kind of hazy now. So the DEET is very effective. And in theory, it doesn't harm your skin, but it does harm plastic and vinyl. So the picaridin was an option that is almost effective as DEET, but doesn't have the downsides of dissolving plastic and vinyl. That's another one you put right on your skin. Those are probably the two most common. And then I would say some of the natural oils, the lemon oil and the eucalyptus and orange, there's a bunch of different ones because a lot of people want to go with it more of a natural. And some of those of the studies have shown some of those are getting very effective now as well. The one caveat I would offer for spraying [00:52:00] the bug juice on you when you spray bug juice on your skin to prevent the bugs, you usually just spray it on your skin, spray your arms, and may be around your neck where the bugs can bite you without your clothing. But if you're trying to prevent ticks from going up your pants and your pants aren't tied, you really want to spray down low where the ticks are going to start to come on because of your pants and then they can climb up to somewhere else. So with the treatment for myself, I treat with Permethrin my pants. I have certain pants that I wear working all the time. I spray those and I spray a couple of different pair of boots that are in the field all the time as well as my pack. Generally going to use a regular bug juice that I'm going to spray on, depending on what the situation I'm going to be in. So I'll start with you. So if you haven't treated it boots or pants and you're using just bug repellent, you spray yourself, spray your self down low even though you don't have a skin exposure. You want to prevent the ticks from getting on you and going up inside [00:53:00] your pants as well.
Peter Koch: All right. So those are all great. So making sure that you're choosing the right repellent for the use case that you have. Are you going to put it on your skin? Are you going to put it on your clothing or your pack of treating the habitat? Avoiding the habitats? Wearing the correct clothing or the clothing that is going to be best for the environment that you're going to be in. So you've done all that and you know, it's not a perfect solution. And you get a tick on you. And now it's bitten you. Not sure how long it's been there. How do you once you've identified it and it's bitten you. How do you take it out? What are the steps that you can take to remove the tick once it's been embedded?
Andy Wood: The first question I ask is, did you get tick on you? So the last part of that prevention is tick checks. Like you said, you done like precautions. You get home at night. It's not a perfect system. You can still have a tick on you. So doing the tick checks is really important. [00:54:00] You need a mirror to look behind you. You want to do a close look. If you can jump right in the shower, right, then if you have ticks that are on you that aren't attached yet, some will be washed off or in the process of washing. If it's a bigger tick, you might feel it or see it. The smallest, the larval form. You might not see or feel when you're doing that. So take the time to take a tick check because that's the easiest time to get him off in the first few hours. They might be crawling around or you have just attached before they've glued themselves in. You can usually pull them off with some of the tools pretty quick. So tick checks are probably really very effective form of prevention as well. And then and then you're going to go to get the ticks off. The worst way to get a tick off is to grab him and pull them off. You know, unless he's just walking around and you can dust them off, that's OK. But once he's attached, you really don't grab them in the field, a lot of people just reach down and grab him and pull him off. He comes right off. No problem. But what you've done in the process of pulling him off. If you [00:55:00] squeezed his body, when you squeeze that tick, you're going to anything in his gut and his mouth, in his saliva. You're going to squeeze into that wound. So saliva. Normally, it would take 24 to 36 hours for him to inject that into your bloodstream. Now, you've just squeezed it right out of him and he's either squirting that right out or he's, you know, regurgitating that right into your bloodstream. The old methods we heard about put alcohol on them, cover them with Vaseline and they'll die and pull them off. All those agitate the tick. The tick may just throw up. And if he throws up, then that's going right into your bloodstream as well. So avoid all those things we used to try before we realized how this works. So the best way to remove a tick is to do the same thing. Get right as close to the skin as you can, grab on to the to the mouthparts and pull them slowly and consistently off. So they have the tweezers. They work good. Get right close to the skin. Pull. Don't pull the [00:56:00]body of the tick again. Just pull the mouthparts. They have the little, the Tick key is what I like. The Tick key is a little bit bigger than a quarter and it's got a kind of a triangular shaped hole in the middle and you put the tick through a hole and pull it towards the part that tapers. And it just that little wedge shaped grabs him right by the mouthparts and lifts him right out. They make the tick's bones same thing. It's it looks like a little measuring spoon and it's got a little groove cut in that you do the same thing. Put it right close to the skin. It's as tight to the skin as you can. Again, it grabs him by the mouthparts and just steady even pressure and pulls him up. So the thing about the key tick is it's not very big. It's got a hole to put in a key ring you can put in the pocket on your pack. It's not very big. It's you can have it. I have one and all the bags that I have in the field and one in each vehicle. So if it's not right handy, you know, when the tick first gets on you, it doesn't take much to get them off. If you get home and it's been ten or twelve hours or the next morning, then it's a challenge to get them off. [00:57:00] So get them off early. So I haven't some of those tools, those options right hand in the field with you are important. So any of them. A lot of will work good. But they all going to work the same. They're going to go against the skin, pulling the mouthparts steady, even pressure up.
Peter Koch: Yeah, those are all good points. And again, the key there is to make sure that you have the tool with you. So if you do have a potential challenge or you're going to go in to an area where you know you're going to have ticks or even if you're just going to be out in the woods, then you want to make sure that you are that you have the correct tools with you. So a lot of this is about planning to make sure that you have the right stuff with you. So be informed. Make sure you have, you know, where you going. Make sure you that you can identify the ticks. Make sure that you have the information to be able to protect yourself from the insects that are there. We're getting close towards the end here. So let's talk just briefly about pets and then we'll talk a little bit about resources. So you talked a little bit about pets being one of the potential for bringing a tick [00:58:00] into your home. What are some of the concerns about pets and ticks that you might help us with here?
Andy Wood: You can't have a package of treatments for yourself without considering your pet. Both dogs and cats can get Lyme disease. We know a lot more about the dogs. They have more debilitating issues as humans do. So we want to protect the pet for his own self, his own welfare. But we also want to prevent him from being a carrier of bringing ticks into the house with him. So then infecting someone else in the family was you or your kids or anyone else there. The dogs and the cats. Your vet can give you all kind of systemic compounds or topicals. There's actually a vaccine for a dog. So the humans don't have a vaccine yet. But the dogs do. You really want to talk to your vet about it. Because the treatment needs to be specific to your pet. It needs to be specific to the lifecycle of the tick in your area. And it needs to be specific to the tick or a spectrum of pathogens that you're expecting it needs to be exposed to. So to have a conversation with your vet about which one [00:59:00] you think would work the best. They have collars that are impregnated with the treatments that whether its permit there. They have, you know, the bandanas that all the dogs wear are treated with permits and they have the dog coats wear the high visibility dog coats that you see during hunting season so dogs can be seen or the ones that are for winter that are warm. All different styles are treated with the tick prevention compound. So there's a lot of options there for the dog as well. So that needs to be part of your whole package of prevention for yourself and for the good of your dog.
Peter Koch: That's good. That's always good.
Andy Wood: In my house, if I got Lyme disease, it wouldn't be a big deal. But if one of the dogs got Lyme disease, I'd be in big trouble.
Peter Koch: Right? Very true. Very true.
Andy Wood: I'd be sleeping outdoors in his house probably for two weeks.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And we got to consider them, you know, the. The pets that we have. They can be a carrier of the tick into the house. And so you want to make sure you're paying attention and it's always good to make sure that you're able to protect [01:00:00] them so that they don't get the disease, because as challenging it is for a human to have Lyme disease. It's just as painful and as debilitating for your pet to have it. They really rely on you to make sure that you can protect them and do what you're able to do to manage their exposure to the ticks. So let's talk about a couple of the resources that we have. You had started this talking about some states or most states have a tick program and we're here in Maine. So let's talk a little bit about some of the resources that the states might have and how those resources came to be established.
Andy Wood: I can speak specifically to my state, but an interesting thing that did happen just recently. I can't remember what state she was. But Senator Kay Hagan died in the fall last fall, 2019, with a complication of Powassan. And as a result of that, I think it's called the Kay Hagan Tick Act was passed in December of 2019. And that authorizes one hundred and fifty million dollars for [01:01:00] tick research. I think every state is getting 20 million for research and testing and education. So in the state of Maine, we have the Maine Tick lab, lot of resources. They have a lot of educational material specific to kids or adults. And they do testing as well. Send a tick in and they will test it. They can do it tick I.D. and they can also test it for pathogens. Every state should be developing some version of that. I can't speak to every state, but they've all been funded for a certain level to do research and development and education. So there should be more resources out there going forward.
Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about what we have here in Maine. What resources here do we have in Maine that can help us with tick ID and other information about ticks and tick borne illness?
Andy Wood: A lot of organizations are reaching out with training woodlot owners, a lot of the recreational communities, the forestry, you know, reaching out with educational material, which is good as far as someone [01:02:00] at home getting information. The CDC, they probably have the most information that's out there and a lot of good diagrams on identification of ticks and all that. So in Maine, we have the Maine Tick Lab and that's hosted at the university. They'll do ID for free and they test for pathogens for their own research. And they're also doing some other research projects with landowners to identify both the prevalence and how many ticks are infected with Lyme and habitat and things like that. So that's through our university.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's great. So that's through the extension .UMAINE.EDU/ticks. That's where you can find the Maine Tick Lab. And if you just Google Maine Tick Lab, it will come up as well. And there's a lot of great resources that will take you much farther down in to the weeds. Pardon the pun about ticks and how to prevent tick borne illness. How to identify ticks. What different diseases are there and how to manage ticks, whether it be around [01:03:00] your home or within the workplace. So that's a fantastic resource for you to go to the Maine Tick Lab from the University of Maine extension. So a great place to check it out. And then the Kay Hagan tick act is also really good. You can check out LymeDisease.org And they'll have some great information about the Kay Hagan, tick act and what it encompasses and what your states might be using that for or doing with it. So a number of good resources there for you. So a couple last questions, Andy, before we end the podcast here. What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started out? So about ticks, like, what do you know now about ticks that you wish you had known when you had first started out working in the woods?
Andy Wood: Education is huge. And how easy would a little bit of prevention. You can solve a lot of a lot of serious problems, knowing a few folks that have gotten the advanced version of Lyme disease and how debilitating it is to think that just wearing the right clothing or doing a tick check [01:04:00] when you get home at night could have made all the difference. You know, it's the that's the age old classic. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And the downside of that, if you get a tick and you even if you get Lyme’s, if you identified early, but if you don't, you don't know you had a tick. You don't know you had the disease and it gets the advanced stages. It is a life altering event, you know, like I said, cardiac arrest and neurological issues and all that. So a little bit of prevention can go a long ways. And we just didn't have that. The other thing I mentioned I learned just recently would never had a tick here at home, worked in the brush in the in the leaf pile, got four ticks. So they're out there is just you got to avoid the places they're at.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's good. So education all around is a great thing to do. So no matter if you're a homeowner, if you're a school teacher, if you're a camp counselor or you're an employee who works in the woods or a business owner who has employees that work outdoors. Then some education is really important. So there's lots of resources out there [01:05:00] for people to be able to get more education on it. So as we come to the end here, Andy, is there anything that I should have asked you about ticks and tick safety that I haven't. That you'd like to impart to us?
Andy Wood: I guess the one thing that I would mention, and I hear this a lot, I work in northern Maine where we traditionally have not had ticks and people will say, well, we don't have ticks here. Well, you've got to realize it's a moving target. It's moving and it's moving fast. If you are a land manager, if you are work at a summer camp or a campground or you're of a college campus or you're just a gardener or a landscaper, you're hearing a lot about invasive. It's these invasive species that are taken over our woods and take over and over our gardens and our yards. And that that's a result of part of it goes back to the global warming thing. And the climate is changing. Animals are traveling into different patterns in different places, needs invasive species that a lot of people are up in arms about invasive species, create perfect, perfect tick [01:06:00] habitat. So if you have the invasive species in your local people are saying you got to look out for this thing, grow in your yard for Barbaria buckthorn. And, you know, the Asiatic bittersweet. So it's a moving target. So you've got to think just because you didn't have ticks last year doesn't mean you're not going to have them next year. So keep that in mind and we might have it tomorrow if we don't already have it today. And the habitat, like I said, the that is just stirring that pot all up. Yeah. Creating new tick habitats where they never were before. I mentioned the you know, the global warming ticks like warm places and they like high humidity. And in the last several years, most people agree that climate warming is an issue in New England. We've had a lot of weather events that drop a lot of humidity, tropical storms. We never had those in New England. We've had a few in the last several years. So we're getting more rainfall or getting higher temperatures. And that's more tick habitat.
Peter Koch: Sure. For sure. Climate change is definitely affecting. And you can see it with when you start looking at tick migration maps and [01:07:00] where the disease vectors are coming from. I go online and start looking at those. It's definitely following that warmer trend, making the tick habitat broader across the United States. So really good point there. If you've never had them, don't ignore it. Educate yourself, because chances are if you hadn't had them last year, you might have them this year. So pay attention, keep your eyes out for them. Again, they're tiny little things, but they can make a huge impact in our life. Well, we've just about hit the end of time here for the podcast. So I really wanted to thank you, Andy, for joining us today.
Andy Wood: Sure it was a good conversation, Pete, and hopefully our folks got some good information. They can they can take back to the field and use for their for their own protection and protection of their pets and their employees.
Peter Koch: I think they will. So I really appreciate you being here today. And thanks again for joining us. And to all our listeners out there today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking about tick safety with Andy Wood, safety [01:08:00] management consultant with the MEMIC Group. If you have any questions for Andy or like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast, e-mail me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources and links about ticks and ticks safety, as well as our entire podcast archive. If you want to check out a different episode. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog. So you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you'd find us on. And if you've already done that, well, thank you. Because it really helps us spread the word. And please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMICs Safety Experts podcast is good, but using [01:09:00] what you learned here is even better.
Dementia is a disease that can strip away the very essence of who a friend or loved one once was. It ravages the mind, while, in many cases, leaving the body alone until late in the disease timeline. Understanding the signs that accompany the disease, especially those in the later stages, will help improve quality of life, end of life choices, and the relationships of the people it affects. On this Episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I talk with Dr. Heather McKay, manager of Partnerships for Health in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Together, we delve into the late stages of Dementia and how caregivers and loved ones can make sense of the disease’s effects and be better prepared for end of life choices.
Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. Dementia is a disease that can strip away the very essence of who your friend or loved one once was. It ravages the mind, while in many cases leaving the body alone until late in the disease timeline. It's challenging, frustrating, maddening and heartbreaking for the patient as well as the loved ones and caregivers that surround them. While we may know much about the effects of dementia and have developed strategies for treatment as of this episode, there is still no cure. However, understanding the cues and signs that accompany the different stages of the disease can help improve quality of life and the relationships of the people that the disease affects. So I'm your host, Peter Kotch. And back with us today to help us make some sense of the effects of late stage dementia. And someone who is both passionate and compassionate about the disease is Dr. Heather [00:01:00] McKay, manager of Partnerships for Health in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Dr. McKay is an occupational therapist. Dementia care specialist and international trainer and speaker. She provides caregiver education and consultation on topics related to dementia and Alzheimer's care. In her research, Heather designed and tested a new educational program for dementia care teams, which facilitates teams resolving real world challenges and will be very useful in developing a more effective dementia care workforce. She's the creator of the caregiver training video series Dementia Care for America's Heroes, featuring caregivers in the Long Island State Veterans Home and has collaborated with MEMIC to produce a webinar series called The ABC is of Dementia A Caregivers Guide. In an earlier episode, Heather walked us through the early stages of dementia and had some great insight and advice for caregivers and loved ones. We ended that podcast by describing some of the steps to the positive physical [00:02:00] approach, which is a method of engaging a person in the early stages of the disease. In today's episode, we're going to delve into the late stages of dementia and how caregivers and loved ones can make sense of the disease's effect and be better prepared for end of life choices. So, Heather, welcome back to the podcast.
Dr. Heather McKay: Thank you. It's a treat to be with you again. And I'd like to take a moment at the beginning to thank MEMIC for the partnership that we've had in its impact in reaching so many different kinds of caregivers. Concerns for people living with dementia be their family members, friends, neighbors and professionals of all stripes. So while we talked today, sometimes I'll be talking to you from the perspective of an occupational therapist, and sometimes I'll take that therapist hat off and talk to you like a granddaughter. For those of you who caught our first episode, you'll remember that both Peter [00:03:00] and I are family caregivers to a beloved grandmother in both of our cases. My grandmother has passed away now, but she is still teaching me especially about the later stages of this disease, because unlike some folks, my grandmother went the whole race. She passed away from dementia, not from something else. So our intentions today will be similar to our first episode. A conversation with which last time, because we started putting some science behind what folks know about changes in the brain and different parts of the brain that explain why people with dementia do what they do in a different stages, as well as adding to the toolbox of strategies that work to support people as they change in this progressive disease. So I appreciate [00:04:00] the invitation to continue the conversation like you, when you're talking about something that you love and something that has been so meaningful in your life professionally and personally. Boy, the conversation can just keep going.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it sure can. It sure can. And it's a really good point. We had started that conversation last time about really relating some experiences that we both had. And like you, I don't work in the field of dementia. But as I look at friends and family and connect the different resources that are out there and especially the webinar series that MEMIC and put out, when I can connect some of the information, the science that comes in, I can recognize that both in my grandmother when she was alive and then also some friends and other family members that might be in the early stages. I had another friend whose father passed from it probably five years ago now. And it sort of struck me as I was preparing for this episode with you, Heather, as I was thinking back through different friends [00:05:00] and family members and thinking about my friend's experience with her dad and what she had to go through, because I knew the dad as well. I could see him decline. And we had skied together for quite a few years. And then what we initially thought were some physical problems happening with him that changed his ability to maintain balance and to remember things. They really turned out to be dementia, which was something that hadn't been diagnosed early and got diagnosed pretty late in the disease when some of those signs of the late stages of the disease were very prevalent and they seemed to have been hidden by some not really a false diagnosis, but a misunderstanding of what was going on and some denial on the part of the friend and the family members that this is not really happening. It's something that we can fix with a back surgery or something else from a physical side. And it's not going to progress to what it did. So [00:06:00] I think this is going to be really good for us to talk about the late stages or really talk about the effects of early stages and give some tools and tips as people prepare for the end of life care for their loved ones who are in those late stages of dementia. But I think, I think, though, we need to put it into perspective by summarizing some of those early stages, because without knowing what the early stages are, you may not recognize the early signs of those late stages. So could you summarize that for us a little bit? Talk about those early stages of dementia before we move into the late stages.
Dr. Heather McKay: I agree, Peter. Absolutely. Let's situate ourselves on the timeline of dementia. Some of the earlier stages may have appeared in changes in the person's memory. In our last episode, we talked about specific types of memory because while short term memory is probably the most well understood or common symptom that folks will recognize [00:07:00] short term memory loss. Maybe when a person has trouble remembering what they had for breakfast or thinking through what happened earlier today or yesterday, some of those changes will be hallmark signs of the number one most common type of dementia, Alzheimer's disease. But there are other memory changes that happen early on, specifically in the person's ability to recall what just happened. It's even faster than short term memory changes in immediate recall. So family members may detect or spot an early change when they're answering the same question back to back to back to back. That's hard to miss. I mean, when you've answered the same question 47 times, it's not even breakfast. People will say that was a clear road sign and it happened in the beginning. Other changes [00:08:00] that happened fairly early on are changes in a memory file called situational memory. So in the early stage and continuing through the moderate stage, a person having trouble understanding a situation. And you'll remember this is how it worked. Situational memory holds information together in an order. So, you know, while you're sitting there in the studio this morning. Because it started with a and a led to b led to c led to d. And that's how you got here. Well, an early sign that families or professional caregivers can pick up on is when a person asks the question, how did I get here? What is the name of this place? What am I supposed to do right now? How do we get home? All of those are questions because the person's having trouble putting the situation together in order. Situational memory will affect not just their understanding of where they are and what's happening [00:09:00] in that place. It also shows up in problems with the daily routine. So take, for instance, a routine of getting up, getting yourself ready and out the door in the morning. That routine has an order. First you do A, then you do B, then you do c without situational memory. Family members and professionals are noticing that a person in early and moderate stages is having trouble doing steps of the task in the right order. They're skipping steps or they're repeating the same step over and over again, or they're getting steps in the wrong order. And that causes a problem. I'm thinking of a situation that I remember from my home health practice years ago. But this client stands out in my mind because she clearly was in the moderate stage of dementia in that she didn't she didn't look [00:10:00] exactly like herself. And here's what I mean. When I greeted her at the door where she was living in her own home. She had on two sweaters. A dress a pair of pants and a big, big red scarf tied in a bow right under her chin. I know that's not how the woman dressed throughout her life. But in getting the steps of dressing in the wrong order, she had just piled on a few things that she saw laying around bedroom. Now, that particular visit doesn't stand out necessarily for how the woman was dressed, but it stood out because when I got to the door, I smelled some smoke coming from her kitchen. She invited me in with some small talk, some chitchat that sounded perfectly normal as we were swapping howdies and walking back toward the kitchen and noticed that smoke is pouring out of her oven here. By the [00:11:00] time we got the fire alarm turned off and investigated what she was up to that morning, I could tell that she was trying to fix herself breakfast, but she'd gotten the steps of that task in the wrong order. So picture this. She's got a cookie sheet, or a sheet pan with toast on it. But instead of putting the bread by itself under the burner, she had the plastic bag laid out on the cookie sheet. She had the toast sitting on top of the plastic bag and the jelly already on the toast. When she put that in the oven under the burner, she made a nice little molten lava of sugar and plastic. That was basically a smoke machine.
Peter Koch: Oh, my gosh.
Dr. Heather McKay: She didn't recognize the mistake was in the order of things.
Peter Koch: Yeah right all the components were there making the bread
Dr. Heather McKay: Yeah. All the components were there. And she had the good idea [00:12:00] of, hey, I'm you know, I'm up. I'm ready in the morning. Time to make breakfast. So she had the mission. She had the good idea to make herself something to eat. But in that middle stage, the devil's in the details when situational memory starts to fade. It's the order of things that get folks in trouble. So through that moderate stage, combining changes and different parts of memory, along with us, together with, changes in language, both comprehending understanding language, but also producing it for her. Spitting it out makes giving folks instructions particularly challenging. In that middle stage, caregivers are upping their coverage. In other words, family members are getting closer to and spending more time with their loved ones. Additionally, adding paid caregivers. [00:13:00] So that that person can continue to data things that they want and need to do. But with a helper in that stage, the helper gives a combination of visual cues and short of verbal cues, along with sort of a step by step rhythm for what to do and in the right order to take care or smooth out some of the risks in moderate stage. So we ended our last episode with some of the tools and communication strategies that make living together and doing things and staying socially connected a little bit easier through that middle stage, a positive physical approach, that combination of cues, they're going to continue to be helpful to caregivers and people living with the disease long into the late stage. So when you recap that positive physical approach, it means that the beginning [00:14:00] of our interaction is worth thinking about to get every interaction started on the right foot in the right direction. We want to drive around an automatic protective reflex that spared through the middle and late stages of the disease. And that reflex is a fight flight fright reflex, you can think of it, that reflex as the startle button in your central nervous system. If someone approaches you from behind or from the side, thankfully we're all built with that protective startle button. It just means that if somebody hits that startle button, you turn, look, find where you find where the threat of the risk is. And you can override that reflex with a full brain. But in the middle and late stages of this disease, avoiding that startle button is all the more important as people with dementia are losing area in the [00:15:00] front part of their brain. That impulse control judgment and that the reins on the horse that we pull back on to say, whoa, don't do that. Somebody could get hurt if we hit that startle button in the middle and late stages of the disease. A person with dementia is at higher risk of getting hurt. And caregivers face potential dangers, too. Sure. Starting on the right foot means coming from the front. Let the pivot. Let the person see you before you're in their personal space. Give them a visual cue. Something that takes no explanation. Put your hand up to wave to not only help the person see you, but when you give a visual cue like a wave and show your hand in a handshake position. It just says I'm coming into your personal space not to do anything weird in our culture. We get connected hand to hand before we really touch anywhere else on our bodies.
Peter Koch: Very [00:16:00] true,
So coming from the front, given a high visual cue to get the person's attention and offering your hand can surely be one of the best tools and the caregivers toolbox to get every interaction started on the right foot driving around that protective fight flight fright reflex.
Peter Koch: Now, that's great, because if you don't if you push that, if you push that button and the part of your brain that's supposed to allow you to process the startle, understand that it's not a threat, that you're just surprised and then interact, that if that's not there, then the chance of that person striking out physically or running and getting themselves hurt is much higher. So, yeah, that's a really, again, a really great point. And I think what you're connecting here to is that needs to continue for the middle stages through the late stages as well.
Dr. Heather McKay: You got it. So we're building a toolbox of strategies, many of which [00:17:00] can last and serve caregivers. And the people they're supporting all the way through to the end of this disease in a positive physical approach is one of the most important tools in my toolbox. And additionally, we've got some communication strategies that serve us in the early stages, but become even more vital as the disease progresses. That combination of visual cues showing people what you're saying or what you're talking about, what you want them to do can help them get started to do things with you as the language center continues to change in the moderate to late stages of the disease. What will happen as a person moves from the middle stage to the late stage when caregivers will say, Heather, we had some really good strategies that were working with a modified a lot of our activities around the house to do things together. We were working the buddy system. Some people will say, other [00:18:00] folks will call it the caddy work. I love the caddy analogy because in the game of golf, you know, there's two people. You've got the golfer and the caddy. The caddy is a really, really important part of that game because the caddy knows the lay of the land. The caddy has the bag packed and the caddy can put using visual cues, every tool or every item right in front of the golfer with a little bit of rhythm. Staying one step ahead of them the golfer never has to think about or ask for the next tool or item. It's right in front of them right when they need it in the middle stages of the disease. A person can take the shot just like Tiger Woods rolls on, motor memories, motor memories or something that is still strong for the person in early to moderate stages. But at the end of that middle stage, motor memories start to fade. The caddy, who had a terrific [00:19:00] setup and flowed through the steps of making a simple meal together with their loved one, will say Recently, Heather, I've noticed when I hand my dad something, he doesn't know what to do with it. That's a road sign along the progression of this disease that motor memories are starting to fade. Let me say just for a moment. Let me back up and explain how motor memories work in your brain. We can all appreciate how our brains work when we know what happens just automatically. So motor memories are the way your body moves on automatic pilot. I'm not talking about high level coordination here. It's not walking a tightrope. But a motor memory would be how you put one foot in front of the other to just move your body over to the sink in the kitchen, going in a direction toward your chair or moving your body in all the right places to get up from the bed. [00:20:00]Those are things that you don't have to think about. Sitting in a chair is not something that needs concentration. When you have motor memories, it just happens. If you say it's like riding the bike, that's a motor memory. If you say it's automatic pilot, you're talking about motor memories. When motor memories change, you may notice that a person stands up and can't figure out how to start moving. They literally can't figure out from their brain to their body how to pick up one foot and put it in front of the other. You might notice in another situation that a person moves toward the chair but doesn't turn at the right time. We took this for granted when it was a motor memory that you have to turn around just the right time, just enough to get yourself squared in front of the chair. Instead, the person in the late stages of dementia will approach the [00:21:00] chair. And instead of turning nose to nose right up with the chair and head in head first. And the caregiver said, hang on a minute. That's not how you get in the chair. Another break down in motor memory that the caregiver may notice headed toward the chair. The person started to turn. But too soon. Now they're turning in the middle of the room and there's still five feet from the chair. They talk about making your heart go pitter patter. These caregivers are sweeping chairs underneath the folks and late stages of dementia just to just to save them from that spill.
Peter Koch: It's an interesting connection there, if you don't mind. I'm just thinking, as you're talking about my friend and her dad that passed from dementia, we were having a conversation a number of years ago and this just came to mind. She was telling me about an experience that was really frustrating to her and then kind of scary because up until this point, everything [00:22:00] had been going pretty well. They were starting to manage the memory issues. They were starting to manage the startle issues. They were starting to manage a lot of things. And they had gotten to a point where it seemed to be fairly stable. And then one morning, she had handed her dad a piece of toast that she had already buttered and put the jelly on at breakfast. And so it's it was a normal routine. They would get up in the morning. They would come downstairs, they would sit at the table. My friend would make her dad breakfast. Dad would eat breakfast. They would go on their day. And nothing had changed for weeks. And all of a sudden, he was handed the plate with the toast on it and just held it for probably two minutes and she's waiting for him to finish the process of putting that plate down and begin to eat the toast like he's done all. It struck her that I don't know what to do. Like, what do I do? And then she helped him out. And he was able to make [00:23:00] the connection again. But that seemed to me like that was the that was the sign that this disease is now starting to progress farther than it was before. I didn't recognize that until I was, until I'm listening to you right now talking about how the mobility memory, the motor memory changes.
Dr. Heather McKay: It's a perfect example. And it reminds me of a time when my grandmother and I had gotten a pretty good routine of doing things together because I tried to be a good caddie and we'd gotten used to our rhythm and working together and with my support like your friend. In a step by step setup, she could still do a lot for herself. And I remember the morning that we were in the bathroom and I was helping her with her morning routine, and I knew exactly what she liked to do. She'd get a full face and makeup on. And as I handed her [00:24:00] the toothbrush loaded with the toothpaste, all ready to go. I turned my back to reach for the lipstick because I knew that's coming next. By the time I turned back around, she had the toothbrush with that blue toothpaste right through her hair. The motor memory from taking the toothbrush and putting it in her mouth and brushing. Didn't it click? It was the first sign. That's why it stood out in my mind. It was just the first sign that this is different. And in your example, you make a really good point that so many caregivers have said to me it's like Heather, as soon as you get used to the new normal, just as soon as you get your routines and all your strategies flowing together like clockwork. And we're having a good day as something changes. What they notice about that constant sort of need to adapt, the constant need to [00:25:00] recognize, notice and change ourselves is summed up in one caregiver's words of wisdom. Who said, Heather, when it comes to dementia care, what worked for you yesterday is not guaranteed to work for you today. And I thought, no, no better words have ever been spoken because it just captures the ever changing nature of the disease in the person living with it, but also the need to adapt. In all of their caregivers.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a really good point. Really good point. And can be a little daunting, I think, for the caregiver or the loved ones, because we're all creatures of habit. We like consistency in our lives, in different things. So knowing that as this disease progresses, that the normal that was yesterday might not be the normal for today can be a little challenging. But again, I think that the hope that you're giving here is you can recognize [00:26:00] some of the cues to help you in the planned parts so you can be prepared and have a strategy for if this happens. I can move more comfortably into the new normal.
Dr. Heather McKay: Exactly. And with changes in motor memories as one of the big road signs leading us into late stages of dementia and dementia caregiving, it just signals to us that now that perfect set up with just the combination of visual cues and short verbal cues isn't quite enough anymore. And it means that in late stages, the care becomes more hands on. And that's new. That's different. It's not the way it was in early stages of the disease when a routine was all you needed. And the mid stages of the disease when a good caddy was worth their weight in gold. Now, the setup of just handing her something isn't quite enough. She needs maybe a little physical help to [00:27:00] start the beginning of that task or to drive around the hard parts of it so that she can still do the parts that are easier in late stages of this disease. Caregivers who are getting used to. It takes a little time to, you know, build the coordination and that rhythm and timing up to help somebody physically with Hands-On care. But as caregivers are getting better at that and driving around some of the pitfalls that they foresee. Taken over some of the harder parts of the task to leave, the easier parts for the person. What they'll say is there were better days. On the other side of that change, too, I noticed that when I helped her to get started just by putting the toothbrush in her mouth, why she could finish brushing on her own. A caregiver said, If I helped Dad to make the turn at the right time, then he can still s [00:28:00]t safely. And we avoid a lot of falls because I'm helping him with the turning part. Turning harder than going straight. Lots of caregivers will say if I help my loved ones start putting on the clothes in the mornings, they position the pants in the right direction based in the right direction. Put them right down there where it's easy to step in and he can step in and pull them up on his own. So the hands on care is still really sort of are doing together proposition. Because caregivers have noticed when I try to take over and do that task to him, it rubs him wrong. And he seems to be more resistant if I try to take over the whole activity instead of giving it up to him in the parts that he can still do.
Peter Koch: That's a great point , because there there's still parts of that person that are still there. There in the parts of his memory of the personalities [00:29:00] still there, the determination that the person had before the disease came in. The independence that the person had before the disease started getting worse is still there. So if you try to do everything for them when they still have the ability to do something for themselves, of course, it's going to rub them the wrong way. So there seems to be a very delicate balancing act between how much you can do or will do for the person you're caring for and what they can do themselves.
Dr. Heather McKay: Bingo. And by the time this disease has rolled on and entering the later stages, a caregiver may have five, eight, ten years of practice with this person living with dementia. This is the late stage doesn't pop up overnight. We get into it through the progressive nature of dementia over the course of years. And so caregivers notice that even in this late stage, [00:30:00] a principle or a rule of thumb still holds true. And that is the person still has abilities, even with profound losses, a focus on what the person can still do and facilitating them. Doing that part can actually make activities, the whole daily routine run easier for both people involved. So focusing on areas of the brain that are preserved long into the late stage of dementia means we're thinking about emotional memories, not just what happens, but how it happens and how it feels to the person. Emotional memory is one of the skills or abilities preserved the longest in this disease. It means that people in late stage dementia will still pick up on the tone of your voice. Even if they don't recognize all the words they'll hear the feeling that carries that travels through the tone of what [00:31:00] you say they'll pick up on your body language. So they'll get a sense that something is going a little too slow or a little too fast or just the right pace. They'll hear pressure in what you say and how you say it. So thinking about the tone of your voice, how fast or slow you're going, and the emotional vibe that you're creating when you let somebody do the parts of the task that they can still do. Lending a sense of control and respect and autonomy even into the late stage is a really critical idea.
Peter Koch: Yeah, no, that's really good. I just thought of this, too. Is there? I'm thinking of the brain as like another muscle that we have. And if they're allowed if the dementia patient is allowed to exercise those parts that are still functioning or even if they're not firing correctly all the time, when they can align them, do that, will it help [00:32:00] preserve? Certainly not for the entire time that the disease progresses. But will it help with the disease? Gosh, I'm not sure how to say this will help them feel better, I guess not just emotionally, but retain some of their abilities for longer than if you were just to take over and do everything for them.
Dr. Heather McKay: You got it. You got right to the heart of the matter, which is it's still use it or lose it proposition. As long as there are areas of the brain that are still working, then helping in facilitating the person to use those areas, to use those preserved abilities, can actually help them maintain skills that would get this otherwise be lost sooner. So it doesn't reverse the course of the disease. It doesn't even negate the fact that it's a progressive disease and losses are a part of that progression. But by helping the person [00:33:00] maximize what they have in every stage of this disease, to me, I call it maxing out every level, helping a person max out every level we think of as helping them be their best at every stage. So caregivers who get attuned to that in early and middle stages carry that through all the way to the end in helping the person use what they still have. Let me tell you about one other part of the brain, as you called it, a muscle that we can help people in late stages of the disease to still use at the capacity that they still have. It's an area of the brain, actually, that involves a whole sort of synergy of a brain activity in the front, the back, the side. And both of the sides is sensory processing. Sensory processing is everything that comes in from the environment through [00:34:00] those pathways in your central nervous system that connect to your eyes. What we see to your ears, what you hear connect to your skin in which you feel your nose, which is smell. Some of those senses may be their best strengths in the late stages of the disease. So caregivers are thinking creatively about activities and ways of doing things that please the person's senses and let them sort of get rich sensory experiences by combining senses. Now, quick little neuro recap. Your brain brings in information through the senses and then the other side of the road on that sensory processing path is the motor control. So sensation comes in through all your senses and then you act on the world through [00:35:00] your motor control or your movement, sensory experiences that involve all of the good sights and sounds and tastes and feel together with move in the body with rhythm and sort of automatic movements really turn out to be great activities all the way through the late stage of this disease. A person may not recognize some of the more controlled movements or how to do something like put their coat on. But if you add a little bit of rhythm and there's music in the environment, just watch. They may be able to move to do a little dance or tap their foot to the beat of the song, clapping their hands to put more than one part of their body together. They're hearing the music, they're feeling the rhythm, and they're moving their body in areas of the brain that are preserved even in the late stage. We're seeing as the disease sort of marches on, that those activities can be modified to somebody [00:36:00] who spends most of their time in a chair, spends most of their time in a bed, because so much of that coordinated movement is lost. The person's mobility in their environment is considerably diminished. Caregiving starts to become an activity that happens in a very small space. Around the person's chair, around a person bad, but caregivers are still bringing these sinfully rich experiences in with something as simple as, you know, rubbing lotion on the person's hands and helping them spread it over their arms, in their body and on their face to smell a favorite scent or bringing in something that's warm. Fresh from the oven. A favorite flavor in a snack and making that whole sensory experience something that the person still relates to and connects with as a favorite. Thinking [00:37:00] about how. Those experiences can be modified with things like music. Rhythm, rhythmic movement, sight, sound, taste, touch. All of that can inform the caregivers toolbox for late stage dementia care.
Peter Koch: Sure. And it really seems to help bring some balance to the quality of life for that person who can't do it on their own. So the caregiver, whether it's the loved one or if it's the professional caregiver who's coming in to assist the loved one. This all has so much meaning for the person who's living with the disease to be able to have good or better quality of life than to not have that because it does stimulate parts of the brain. It brings things back and it gives them an experience that they might not be able to have otherwise because they've lost the mobility to get out and to do things. And again, I was thinking back about my friend one of the last times [00:38:00] that Tai saw her dad. So he was avid skier, loved to be outside. And one of the last time I saw her dad before he went into hospice was when he came to the ski area. So they brought him up. He was in a wheelchair. But again, those sensory experiences like so the sense of being in the base lodge and the people talking in the music playing. You know, he's a rock and roll guy. So it was the 1960s, 1970s. Rock and roll was his thing. And that was the music that was playing in that particular day and the cold of being there in the wintertime as he came from the car into the lodge. You can see his face just lit up. And he was more like himself than he had been the last time I went to go visit him at his house. So. Right. Those sensory experiences are just that. They're so valuable not only for the caregiver, but I think for that quality of life of the individual [00:39:00] living with the disease.
Dr. Heather McKay: In your state I've met so many wonderful caregivers in a number of state veterans homes. Your state has a wide support for veterans and families, and one of them Maine State Veteran times. I learned about a family who was struggling with some of the decisions and choices around end of life care for their dad, who'd had dementia for over a decade, who was clearly in the later stages, and that he slept more he was less mobile. He spent most of his time between a bed and a chair. But there was one particular ritual, a routine that this gentleman had been participating in with his son all the way up until this late stage of dementia. Little background. The older man was a blueberry farmer. He had passed. He passed [00:40:00] on that wonderful occupation to his son, who was now running the blueberry farm. And every morning before dark, his son would arrive at the state veteran's home to pick up his dad and taken to the farm to ride the tractor right next to his son. Going up and down the rows. Doing whatever the tour was, whatever the task was. Dad sat on the tractor seat right next to his son up and down the rows as caregivers at the veteran home had noticed. Dad was sleeping more. It was harder for him to eat and, you know, in the routine that he had always eaten, he was eating less. They were constantly trying to, you know, get as much nutrition and hydration in the man. But it was hard as he slept more hours of the day at the same time. His son said, now [00:41:00] hoist them up into the tractor seat. It's very hard for him to move his body once he gets there and he sleeps most of the time up and down the row. The question was, how long can dad still do this? And I thought, well, this is it. This is a question for the family. I knew the benefits of riding along that tractor from a sensory perspective. I knew they got the feeling of the sunshine and the sound of the tractor and the rhythm and the vibrations that were coming through the seat. Probably like rocking a baby to sleep. Might have been some of the best rest to the man got. But how long could he still do it? And I said, well, there's one important question, knowing that at the end of this disease, we expect there to be the continued decline leading to the person's death. We can't avoid [00:42:00] that. So the question is not how can we keep him alive? The question becomes, how can we maximize the quality of his life until the very end? And so I asked the son, what would you do if your dad passed away on the tractor seat next to you? And the son's answer summed it up. He said Heather I'd finish the row. In other words, in other words, he was ready for that. He had considered that before. And he decided that that was an okay way for his dad to like my granddaddy said, go on to his reward.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Dr. Heather McKay: When the care team realized that they were all on the same page and they were making decisions not about physical survival needs only, but about quality of life needs. Then they kept packing daddy, you know, getting [00:43:00] him ready first thing in the morning before the sun came up for his son to do all of that heavy lifting and continued helping that man be on the tractor right up until the end of his life.
Peter Koch: That's a great story. Well, amazing. And just a really heartfelt story. It makes me think that there's more to the help than just the family. I think if you wait too long in order to engage assistance and help, you're not going to be able to help your loved one as much. So if you're the family caregiver, if you're the son or the wife or the husband who's taking care of a loved one there recognizing the signs so that you can engage, help earlier and have a good plan I think is essential to quality of life for everyone in that position, because I imagine that even though the dad in that story got a lot out of going up and down the rows, the son got just as much out of that, even though it was hard work to get [00:44:00] the dad ready and to move the quality of life for both of those people was raised because of what was happening. That can't be done without a team effort.
Dr. Heather McKay: It can't be done without a team effort. And you're exactly right. The team in end of life care acknowledges there there's more than one important person in every story. And as teams prepare for end of life, caregiving and end of life decisions, these decisions are going to impact more than one person. And so that becomes a collaborative and team centered discussion, I think, in the story of the Maine farmer. One of the breakthroughs that the team at the veteran's home had was it wasn't a matter of making the right or wrong decision. It was a matter of coming together to make a collective decision. And when the team at the veterans home understood [00:45:00] that the family was prioritizing quality of life over merely physical survival or length of life, then they all felt more confident and more supported in the choices that they were making. As we're in a time now of considering risk reward in new ways, given our situation with a pandemic. Families are considering risk and reward more today than ever. And to situate our conversation about end-of-life, dementia, caregiving in this environment of social isolation and incredible risk analysis, I think families dealing with dementia have some important decisions to talk about. To talk about because there aren't right or wrong choices, there are opportunities for [00:46:00]care teams to look at all of the options and help families make choices that are right for them. I mean, a step outside of the context of COVID 19 for a minute, because I've been reflecting on a family recently that I met years ago in my hospice work at the hospice home, which is an end of life care facility where families receive support in the last day of a loved one's life. I got a call from the hospice home in my local community who said, Heather, we've got a dementia care case over here and we could really use your help knowing that time is of an essence in the work of hospice home caregivers. I kind of went right over without asking too many background questions ahead of time. I was surprised when I got over there that the patient in the hospice home did not have dementia. I said, okay, wait a minute, catch me up. They said, well, the man in our hospice [00:47:00] home has very limited life expectancy. We expect that he'll be with us for a day or maybe less. But his family is considering a difficult choice to mom. His wife is living in dementia care unit in town in late stages of dementia. And the family's struggling with whether or not to bring mom here to see her husband, who's currently, you know, actively dying. I went into the family's room there and saw that the son and the daughter and they were obviously torn. What's the right thing to do? The son summed it up and he said, you know, we were about to lose our dad today, but we don't want to lose our mom to. Wondering if bringing mom over to this experience to cause her even more damage and long term damage? Well, and talking [00:48:00] a little bit back and forth, I ask the question, you know, knowing that that's a legitimate consideration. I said, how long if they'd been married? The daughter said, 72 years. I say, go get her. We don't have time. Somebody has got to make a choice here. And I said, listen, it's not the time to teach you a tool box of dementia, caregiving, communication strategy. But if you'll go get her, I'll stay with you and help facilitate this visit. Let's take a chance. Seventy two years. Deserves it. They went over across town. And as the sun was feeling mom into the hospice home, I did a quick little scan and could tell she was chair bound. It was going to be hard for her to move out of that chair. Her language was minimal as she was coming down the hall in the wheelchair. She was waving some of the people that she passed and [00:49:00] coming out of her mouth with this cute little hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. She wheeled up to the room and saw her husband in the bed. And without any words, her face just dropped. And I stand beside her and said, there he is. That's yours. And she said, I had no idea he had to lay down. And I said, yep, he had to lay down. And our son, wheeled her over close to the edge of the bed where she pulling all of her strength. And I imagine every little brain cell she had to lift herself out of that chair. She stood up and sort of leaned over her husband's body and patting his face. She said, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I asked the daughter and the son to tell me how the two had met because I felt that if she heard this sound of her whole old familiar story, she'd recognize parts of it, if not just the rhythm of it. And they told the story how these [00:50:00] two had actually met in elementary school, third grade. They were in the same class. The teacher actually had to separate them in third grade because they couldn't stop talking to each other. And mom had always told the story that that teacher could not stand in the way of her and her husband getting together. And that was the funny part of the story. And you know what? Mom laughed. She laughed at that part of the story and nodded her head, I cued the family up to sing a few old familiar church hymns that were familiar to mom sitting back down in her wheelchair. She was tapping her foot and nodding her head to most of the songs until we got to the one that goes when we all get to heaven. What a day of rejoicing that will be. She started singing at the top of her lungs. She had every word. She didn't miss a note. And at the end of that visit, because I had prepped the family that we [00:51:00] might need a strategy for leaving. They said, Mom, let's go get something to eat and we'll come back. As they helped her put her sweater on, something that she could no longer do herself. That helped her put the sweater on and she wheeled toward the door. She kind of indicated she wanted to stop and the daughter looked at me like, oh, no, here we go. This is what I was afraid of. But we said turn back around. Go back to the bedside. One more hug. Tell him we'll be back. And she did and sat back down in the chair and down the hall. They went on the way out that door. The woman with all her limitations waving to the people at the hospice home was saying, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And it brings it home to me. It comes home to me more now than ever. In the days of such tough choices, when decisions [00:52:00] that we make may put an older person at higher risk, whether it's high risk of infection, a high risk of a mobility problem or a fall or anything that could happen to a person and in stage of this disease. We are considering those risks alongside the rewards. For doing something as meaningful as saying goodbye to a loved one as of over 70 years.
Peter Koch: That is a really moving story. And it highlights that it highlights the need for a plan that highlights a need to bring the caregivers into the plan. It highlights the need to have conversations about. Quality of life, what do we want for dad? What do we want for mom? How do we want to extend quality of life? What [00:53:00] do we want to do? Just kind of thinking back in my own experience and some of my friends that have had to manage parents with dementia or currently manage parents with dementia. It's really easy to not think about those things because they're hard things to think about for the family to make those decisions or even to think about those decisions, because you're thinking about the end of life for someone that you love. But you highlight the importance that you can't make those decisions in a vacuum. And you really shouldn't be making those decisions without parents, without having those conversations early on in. In the early stages, in the mid stages, so to be able to recognize the key points and the patterns that come up and that change that it's important to have those conversations and to not put them off so that at the end, when faced with a difficult decision like the family was with your guidance, they were able to bring a true gift [00:54:00] to not only the mom, but to the dad, and then for the family to be able experienced that.
Dr. Heather McKay: It was it was something that to that family at the end of that experience, as positive as it was. And believe me, through laughter and tears, you know, it was a positive experience. They said at the end, we believe we did everything we could. We did. We did the best by our parents, the best we could. And I consider that a positive outcome. I want families at the end of this journey to say we did the best we could with the information that we had and the choices that were in front of us. It's that kind of resolution that I hope for families. And it keeps me on the mission of sharing information about the disease, letting families know the road signs and helping them understand the risks that are just inherent at the very end. So I always have to kind of take a deep breath. But [00:55:00] to explain what happens at the end to a person with dementia, if they go the whole way, I feel is a responsibility as a good hospice worker. So let me just outline three quick things to help sort of inform family members. Tough decisions, tough decisions. There's some risk. They're unavoidable. At the end of dementia, the brain mass shrinks by two thirds, leaving the person with one third the brain that they started with. And when you have that whole brain shrinkage like that, a person's end of life typically happens in one of three ways. First, central nervous system shrinks and loses control over the swallow reflex. It's an automatic action that happens without us thinking about it all through our life. But when a central nervous system shrinks, a person can't swallow safely. It's important [00:56:00] to know that feeding tubes and an artificial means of swallowing at this point only increase the person's risk for aspiration pneumonia. I'm going to repeat that. A feeding tube increases a person's risk for aspiration pneumonia. At the end of dementia doesn't make it better, makes it worse. So we know this is a natural course of the disease. The second thing that can happen is a constant recurring infection can eventually just sort of sweep over the person and the person becomes another vocabulary, word septic or has sepsis. And that means that an infection is sort of system wide and the whole body. We see that as a natural course of dementia. Not that we're not going to use antibiotics to fight infections all the way through. It just means that we're in a ready position on the day that the antibiotics [00:57:00] aren't enough because the person's losing their immune system. When the central nervous system shrinks, we get system failures. And the immune system was always her body armor, the body armor that helps her fight infections that are out there in the world. Well, without that body armor, there is no antibiotic in the world to replace a good, healthy immune system. So the constant recurring infections will eventually kind of overwhelm her immune system. And the third thing I call the domino effect, but it's really just described a cascade of problems that starts with one little seemingly innocent issue. A friend of mine who's taking care of her mother in the end stage of dementia called me up and said, Heather, I'm going down to Florida because mom has something. The matter is no big deal. The nurse said, but, you know, in the end stage of dementia, something little can turn into something [00:58:00] big. They saw on the scan that she had some little internal bleed. They weren't really worried about it today, but we were just going to be ready in case it case something got worse. An hour later, my friend called and said I couldn't get there. I couldn't get a flight to get down there fast enough. She passed away. She said it was too fast. And that's the domino effect when my son said it was too fast. She was not talking about 12 years of caregiving. She was talking about today. Today progressed so fast. And so the domino effect when a person doesn't have the resilience to bounce back can seem like one little thing tipped and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Before you know it, all the dominoes are on the table. When he when we know that that happened in the late stage of dementia, then it can actually support families to make those decisions. The way. That's right for then managing [00:59:00] those tough choices around risks and benefits.
Peter Koch: So with all the unknowns, we know that the disease is going to progress, but we don't know how rapidly it's going to progress. We can identify certain cues and patterns. We can understand things about it in the moment, and we can know that ultimately the outcome is going to bring us to the end. However, there's a lot to know and there's a lot to understand. When should somebody be reaching out for outside assistance for home health care or to move to hospice help? How does a person make that decision? When should they do it in order to try to help with quality of life for both the caregivers and for the person living with dementia?
Dr. Heather McKay: It's a wonderful question. And it takes us back to where we started, Peter, because at the time of diagnosis, it is the right time to start gathering information and making connections with. Not [01:00:00] just folks in your family, but health care workers and partners in your community, that will be a part of your story over the course of a disease that on average was for most families between eight and 12 years. So we're talking about a decade of caregiving and a decade of changes for the person with dementia. So the earlier we can get to diagnosis, the sooner we can start building our community of partners and we can start tapping information before we're in crisis mode to learn about the services of hospice, to learn about strategies and support services that could be helpful in the middle stage of the disease, or to learn about some simple communication strategies that can really help in the first year of the person's disease. You know, they're still just getting used to this diagnosis. And what challenges the disease is inevitably going to throw their way. So backing up [01:01:00] to the beginning helps us think at the end of our conversation today about being proactive to learn about and then explore options. It means that I tell health care workers of all stripes, don't hold back on this end of life care information. People need this information right upfront before they get to the stage of end of life caregiving. People need to know about hospice before it's the last week of a person's life when family members and people living with dementia can tap their full hospice benefit, meaning they get months of support before a person nears the end of life. Then the quality of life for not just the person living with the disease, but the quality of life for the family and caregivers. It all goes up. So I've done a little bit proactive. I say that because it makes me take a deep breath. [01:02:00] It's hard to talk about how somebody dies, especially when it's a crisis happening today. I think it's a little bit easier to talk about it in advance. Let some of those conversations flow naturally over the course of months or years so that families, when they reach this important, important chapter of life, the end of life. They reach it in a consensus in a way that they feel their team, their team, whoever that may be, their team is as solid today as it's ever been. One of the true kind of lessons that I took away from my experience caring for my grandmother alongside family members and many professional caregivers was that. The whole experience, as hard as it was, but the whole of the experience left our families stronger and more adaptive, ready for the challenges that life [01:03:00] was going to continue to throw our way. And for that, I have my grandmother to thank.
Peter Koch: That's beautiful. That's really, truly beautiful. And, you know, it's interesting. I think if you go into that knowing the outcome and then you can build strength with your family like that and you can thank the person that had the disease for bringing you together for those pieces. I want to ask you if someone's looking for information about hospice like they might be in the midst of end of care, life choices for a loved one, or they might be in the beginning and they're listening to this thinking, well, where should I go? Where where's a place for someone to get more information about hospice care?
Dr. Heather McKay: Hospice is one of the best kept secrets in our health care system. And I appreciate all of the work that the National Hospice and Palliative Care Association does to spread, the public awareness of what hospice is, who [01:04:00] can receive it. When are we eligible and where will we meet our hospice caregivers? All of those questions can be answered by visiting the National Hospice and Palliative Care Association's Web site. I can maybe dispel a few myths just quickly, hospice is for everyone. Every one in our country will be eligible for hospice as their disease trajectory nears the end. Can I personally think hospice for more than six months? Many people do. It means that they go by eligibility criteria or guidelines. Knowing that we don't have a crystal ball. So finding out what qualifies a person for hospice is really helpful. And the last thing I would say is hospice is available anywhere A person lives. People receive hospice in the hospital. They receive hospice in their own homes. They receive hospice in Long-Term Care Facilities. [01:05:00] And some people actually tap the services of an inpatient facility at the very end called a hospice home. And I have been inspired and taught by many hospice workers in all of those places. Some folks find it interesting to know because they didn't know before, but they find out that the hospice benefit extends to the whole family. When I say family, I mean anybody that the person considers family. Any person, anybody that is considered family is sort of named by the person. See what I mean? And that family benefit extends past the death of your loved one. For a year after a loved one passes, family members are still eligible for important bereavement counselling and support.
Peter Koch: It's great information and I think great advice for people to go and look for information through the National Hospice and Palliative Care Association. [01:06:00] I just go to the Web site. We'll have a link in the show notes after the podcast drops so people can go in and find out some more information if they have questions. So I've got a couple last questions for you, Heather. And one question I think is an interesting one to think about is since you've had such a pretty intense journey with dementia over the over the years, what do you know now that you wish you had known when you started out? What's one thing that you would love to have known early on, either in your career or in your experience with dementia?
Dr. Heather McKay: Well, you're taking me back to a moment with my grandmother again, that was over 20 years ago now. And it was when she first confided in me that she didn't feel herself. She didn't know what was happening. But she just felt like it wasn't normal. Something about her brain function didn't seem right to her. And it [01:07:00] was a hunch, but it was something that only she could have detected because she looked great, Peter. She was doing great. My grandmother went to work every day till she was 80 in a family business. You get to do that when you're the boss. But she knew about herself that something was different. And in that moment, I didn't know enough to say you should really get it checked out and talk to your doctor about it. You know, if I could go back to that moment. Well, all of these caregivers listening to us today are just nodding their heads. There's something that they wish they could go back to and didn't know then. What I know now, which is people in early stages of dementia, do sense that something's different and they may be the first person to actually detect the change. And if you don't feel like yourself, it's worth checking out with your doctor if for no other reason. But for a healthy [01:08:00] brain checkup, we know that having a good baseline for how your brain is operating normally is a really great sort of measurement point to include in all elderly checkup.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a really great point. I was I was nodding my head, as you're talking about, that like yup I can see that totally see that. I had an experience again with one of my friends that came to me one day and said, you know, Pete, I just don't feel right like I've got something going on. And we talked about it a little bit, but it went on for months before we finally said, you know, you should probably go see your doctor about it. And it turned out in the long run he had ALS and that was, you know, end of life there as well. But that's a really great point. Like those hunches that people come to you and don't. Don't discount those, especially for loved ones. And getting that brain health checkup is a great piece [01:09:00] to have a baseline so that you can measure like where's where has been the decline? What do we need to think about or to worry about? Really, really great point there for the end.
Dr. Heather McKay: If we could all if we could all include in our conversations with our doctors, you know, how how's my brain doing? Even though I feel normal today. Now, how's that part of my checkup.
Peter Koch: Right. Hey, so last question. Is there anything that I should have asked you? But I. But I didn't. That we might have skipped over. Is there something that you want to let our listeners know about that we didn't cover?
Peter Koch: Well, I don't think it was an oversight on your part, because I heard you mention something earlier in the conversation that that triggered me to share with you. This when you said people are moving through the stages of this disease at a different rate. And that, to me, is one of the million dollar questions that many family members and professionals will ask me. Heather. We [01:10:00] know the timeline. We've got some road signs. We know some strategies that can help in every stage. But how long is it going to take? How long will this last? When we're in middle stage, how long will we be there when they enter the late stage? How long will they hold on? And that question of just how long it all takes is the most difficult answer to pin down. And it's just because people move in a rate now that they may move in a pattern of change that's very similar, but they move at a rate or a speed that is very individual. And that can be one of the hardest things to sort of get a handle on is that we're going to do the best with what we can today. But we just don't know how long this stage will last.
Peter Koch: Yeah, really great point. And I think it reinforces the that theme that we've had for the both podcast, which is to be aware [01:11:00] of the signs, to know the signs. Be aware of the patterns that are occurring with you, the person that you're caring for, and to be flexible because we don't know when that's going to happen. And if you can be flexible with that and you understand the signs and you understand what's coming next, then you can move to that next stage without being wrenched out of your normal to move to the new normal because you're going to be flexible in how it's going to work. Again, great point on that as we come to a close here.
Dr. Heather McKay: Thank you, Peter. It's always good to talk with you. And there's still more there will always be more to talk about in terms of dementia caregiving, living with the disease. As a country helping the millions of families that that are going to contend with this as the prevalence of all types of dementia is expected to rise.
Peter Koch: No worries at all. So thanks for sharing your expertise with us today, Heather. Where can our listeners [01:12:00] find more out about you and your work?
Dr. Heather McKay: I invite listeners to access the Web site. Partnerships for Health at www.PFHNC.com. They'll find more information about me. More information about education that I provide, as well as links to educational videos and other resources. I appreciate the partnership with MEMIC as well as others in your state. The Maine Health Care Association, all of the Maine state veteran's homes in our partnership. For years, I've learned as much from you as I as I have left behind.
Peter Koch: Well, thank you very much for that. And we appreciate the collaboration, that partnership with you, too. Heather, we couldn't do this without you. We'll put the link to it, to the Partnership for Health within the show notes as well, so people can go there and find you on the web. And if they have questions, they can send questions to [01:13:00] you through your e-mail or Web site. And they can also check out the show notes, too. So thanks again for joining us today, Heather. Really appreciate it.
Dr. Heather McKay: Thanks. Good luck to all the Mainers.
Peter Koch: Very good. So today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, we've been speaking about caring for someone in the late stages of dementia with Dr. Heather McKay, manager of Partnerships for Health in Hillsboro, North Carolina. If you have any questions for Heather or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. E-mail me at podcast@MEMIC.Com. Also, check out our show notes at Memic.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources links to the first podcast with Heather, as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done [01:14:00] that. Thanks. Because it really helps us spread the word. So please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
Expect the best, but prepare for the worst, a quote made famous by Zig Ziglar is a good guide when evaluating your workplace safety plan. As a business owner, supervisor, or manager, you have identified hazards and exposures, created and implemented controls, hired good people, trained them, and now expect the best from them. But what if the worst happens and someone is injured. What do you do? On this Episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I talk with Jared Payton, Claims Service Manager with MEMIC. Together, we will look at the parts of a good injury management plan and why it’s important to have them in place before you need them.
It is serious work, physically demanding, and can put nurses, caregivers, and their patients at risk of serious injury. Assisting and moving patients happens hundreds if not thousands of times a day in each care facility or home depending on its size and capacity. No matter if you are recovering from day surgery or in hospice, This close quarters caregiving is essential to the recovery path for any patient. And it’s these movements that are putting caregivers and their patients at risk. This is Peter Koch, host of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast and in this episode I speak with Lauren Caulfield, Director of the Atlantic Region Loss Control here at MEMIC about the Patient Handling Problem, it’s effect on providers and patients and how the MEMIC Safe Patient Handling Program is helping care facilities reduce the number of provider and patient injuries as well as increase the quality of care delivered. Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch. So imagine for just a moment, if you can, that you're walking with your elderly grandmother or grandfather down the hall back to the kitchen table, or you're with a friend recovering from a medical procedure that's left them weakened, somewhat frail, or you're guiding a patient back to their room and then they stumble and fall. What do you do? Well, you go to help them get up because I don't know. That's what I would do. Or you try to help keep them from falling in the first place, because that's just the natural reaction. It's what we do. It could even be a compulsion to help others, especially when their loved ones or if it's your job. And so therein lies the problem that we're going to talk about today. It is the patient handling dilemma. We are compelled sometimes to help people. And when we go [00:01:00] to help them, when we try to lift them up or move them, we put ourselves at risk of injury. And there are statistics out there that show health care workers, that's the number one cause of injury for many health care workers, is patient handling when they try to move a patient either from the floor or across the bed. And it's a big challenge. Well, today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Lauren Caulfield, the director of the Atlantic region. Lost control here at MEMIC. Lauren has extensive experience within the health care industry before coming to MEMIC. We used to work with large accounts, both managing self-insured groups and providing lost control services once an injury has occurred. Lauren has been with MEMIC for more than 15 years, using her expertise to help our MEMIC health care accounts realize that patient handling injuries as a loss leader is a solvable problem. And then helping them to implement workable solutions. So, Lauren, welcome to the [00:02:00] podcast today.
Lauren Caulfield: Thank you, Peter. I'm so happy to be here.
Peter Koch: Very excited and great to have you on the line here today. So patient handling injuries is a real challenge within the health care world. Talk to me a little bit about the extent of the problem. How pervasive are they really and what's the cost?
Lauren Caulfield: Well, as I look at the injuries that come through the door at MEMIC for our health care clients, it's no secret that overexertion injuries are definitely on the rise with our nursing employees. And I think part of that problem is that patients are getting bigger. They are harder to handle for sure. And what's also interesting is the patient acuity is higher. So what I mean by that is people that used to be in the ICU use are now on the med surge units. So if [00:03:00] you take that patient size issue, you take the patient acuity issue and then mix that in with a chronic problem with our health care clients. And that is that they're often short staffed. A lot of nurses are leaving the industry because of different types of overexertion injuries. And it's really a challenge for a lot of our clients. So as we look at that, you know, I was looking the other day at the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data. And what I found really interesting is they were looking at the overexertion injuries across all industries. OK. So we look at that rate and that rate for these overexertion injuries is 33 per 10000 full time workers. So I said, okay, let's take a look specifically at [00:04:00] our health care industry and how does that compare? And I was really kind of shocked when I saw really that the rate of overexertion injuries for hospitals being twice that average.
Peter Koch: You're kidding. Twice the average?
Lauren Caulfield: No, twice say the average. The rate was 68 per ten thousand full time employees. And then we all know that, you know, a lot of times the nursing homes and the long term care folks, they're getting injured at higher rates as well. So I went one step further and that, you know, I found out that it was three times the average or 107 per 10000 full time workers.
Peter Koch: And that's for which group within health care? The hundred and seven?
Lauren Caulfield: That is for our nursing homes.
Peter Koch: For the nursing home. So, yeah, general health care was 68 per 10000 full time workers. And when you looked at nursing home, so like your long term care facilities, there was one hundred [00:05:00] and seven per 10000 workers. Yeah. Yeah. More than three times.
Lauren Caulfield: Right. Right. So that's 68 per 10000 worth for your hospitals. So they are twice the average. And then our nursing homes are three times the average. And if you look at the data as well. We all think that, you know, our truckers and our roofers and our construction folks are the most hazardous. But one of the things that comes to light is health care is one of the top high risk industries. As you look at these musculoskeletal disorders, so they're at the height. And we have some statistics internally. And I think people would be surprised to see that one back injury can cost upwards of thirty six thousand dollars. So it's so important with, you know, the industry data that we're getting that we get a solid handle [00:06:00] on that because thirty six thousand dollars is a lot of money for one injury. And the good news is there's so much that we can do to help our clients.
Peter Koch: Yeah, no doubt. And it is pretty amazing when you when you think about it, you think about health care being a healthy place. There's a lot of good stuff that's going on there. You don't really think about the musculoskeletal, the potential risk for back injuries and shoulder injuries as you would for your construction or your manufacturing or some of the other more traditionally we consider traditionally physically intensive jobs. So it is fairly staggering that we consider that long term care or long term care facilities are three times the national average. Hospitals are twice the national average for those musculoskeletal injuries. And is it mostly lifting or are there other causes [00:07:00] in there that are increasing that number of those musculoskeletal injuries?
Lauren Caulfield: Well, as we look at the types of injuries that our clients are reporting, some of the more challenging transfers that we see generally are toileting are lifting people up off of the floor because the easy part is getting down and trying to, you know, get the patient all set up. But the hard part is actually when you manually lift somebody off of the floor and if you ever step back and really look at the body mechanics that people put themselves in and those awkward postures, it's a nightmare. And you know, that's the reason why so many folks get injured when they're doing those floor recovery type transfers. And then the other thing that we see is a lot of upper extremity injuries from moving patients over their bed. So those turning repositioning type [00:08:00] transfers are really presenting major challenges for our folks. So oftentimes the client will say, well, you know, when somebody gets up off of the floor, we do a proper assessment and then we get five or six people to move them up off the floor. And that's when we, you know, are able to provide some great education for our folks to say the safest transfer from the floor is with the use of the lift equipment, because ultimately what we tell our clients is there's no safe lift from the floor when you do it manually.
Peter Koch: So elaborate on that a little bit, because you would think we talk about that in other, you know, not people handling. But in other manual material handling issues where if you have to move something by hand, then maybe have a team lift to be able to do that. And you had mentioned a client might [00:09:00] come in or they have a patient that's on the floor and they'll do an assessment or they'll be in a bed, they'll do an assessment and then they'll get more people to come in and help. So why isn't more people a good solution? Why do you still go back to if you have to move the patient from the floor? The best way to do it is with a mechanical assist. How come more people isn't the solution?
Lauren Caulfield: It's not because our bodies were not made to lift this amount of weight. And it's not only the weight, it's actually the awkward postures that we put our employees bodies in every day that's creating the issues. So what's interesting, and I always point this out to my clients go to U.P.S. or some sort of delivery service, and they will tell their customers 70 pounds or 75 pounds is the lifting limit. Right. [00:10:00] So we're making sure that the customer is not putting in more than 70 or 75 pounds into a box because they have deemed that unsafe for their drivers. Well, when I say to my nurses, I'm going to give you ten,.0 Seventy or seventy five pound patients on your workload today. What do you think about that? That's a win win for that. Right. They say, wow, that's an easy day. So it's all in perspective. We're looking at nurses that say, wow. Seventy five pounds. That's just an easy day for us. That's an easy person to lift. But the reality is that it's not. And in fact, if you I'm not sure if you are aware, but there is a gentleman, Dr. Tom Waters, who is with NIOSH and him and several different researchers set out to answer the question, [00:11:00] how much can we safely lift without assistive equipment in some of the factors that they looked at? Is the fact that patients or residents are unpredictable? Right. So sometimes we might to go to move Mrs. Jones and she might get combative or aggressive and bite or hit or swat at the employee. So that was one of the things that we have. The other thing is we're not lifting boxes we're moving patients or residents. And when you're doing that, you can't always get them close enough to your body. Right. So we talk about when we lift boxes, make sure that you're getting that close to your body. Well, that goes out the window when you're moving patients. And then the other things that boxes have are handles. Right. So patients don't have handles. So [00:12:00] what do we do? We typically put a gate belt on them to provide those handles for that caregiver. So through their research, they concluded that 35 five pounds was the maximum acceptable weight for manual patient handling. And that is under ideal conditions. Okay. And many times when you are moving or transferring a patient or resident, you're not under ideal conditions. So as I talked to my customers about that many times, they'll say, oh, we have. Lift equipment, and so we have a program. But in fact, when I go and actually look more closely at their program, here's what we're finding. We're finding that lifts are not being consistently used on the floors. [00:13:00] We're finding that a lot of the nursing staff are still manually lifting and are not using that 35 pound acceptable weight limit as their guide. And I think it's about education and changing the client's mindset and perspective. And that's the reason why MEMIC decided to introduce our safe patient handling program.
Peter Koch: Well, that's really that's interesting. So when we think about patient handling as a problem within the health care and because you can't get away from it, you have to manage patients looking at that from. How do you do it safely? You can't take the same structure that you might have in a warehouse or a package delivery service, but you have to look at it with some other factors. I like what you said about the unpredictability, because even if you are able to get a handle [00:14:00] on a patient using a gate belt and you're trying to get close to the patient, it's still the unpredictability what if they move? What if they reach out? What if they strike? What if they are more nervous? What if they pass out and all of a sudden the load changes? That doesn't happen with a package. That doesn't happen with a piano. That doesn't happen with another material that you might be handling. It's a human package that we're trying to care for and then add the human factor of the patient handler. The caregiver themselves, who doesn't want the patient to fall, doesn't want them to go back down. So they're putting themselves at greater risk even for that. So. Boy, it really is all about helping change perspective, because you're right. I've talked to health care accounts before. I don't have many of them, but I've certainly spoken to someone. I've talked to you before about this. And there are patient handling devices everywhere, but [00:15:00] they aren't used as much. We go back to that, the human contact, the human piece. So talk to me some about MEMIC's patient handling program and sort of way it came about. why do we go to such lengths to put this program in place?
Lauren Caulfield: Well, I think the biggest reason was that our main goal with our employees is that they leave the building in the same condition that they arrive. And if you look at the data and you look at MEMIC data, patient handling injuries are really the top loss leader and then follow by slips and falls in aggressive or combative residents. So we really felt that it was our duty to work with our clients to come up with a program to address these musculoskeletal injuries that were occurring at alarming rates. And not only that, you [00:16:00] know, we want to make sure we're keeping our employees safe. But at the same time, it's you know, it's all about quality of care for the patient.
Peter Koch: That's a really good point to think about this as well. We have to address it from both sides. It is the safety of the worker themselves, but also the quality of care for the patient, which doesn't always think about that. On the other side, we always talk about managing safety, quality and productivity from a safe workplace standpoint and the quality of the product. And we talk about, you know, if I drop this, there's going to be a quality issue if I'm picking up a package or moving material. But that really goes well beyond that. When we start thinking about handling another person, moving another person from point A to point B and helping them. So the quality of care is a key part to this, too. So sounds like the key impetus behind MEMIC creating this program is [00:17:00] obviously reducing the worker injuries, but helping to maintain a high level of care for the patients without putting the worker at risk.
Lauren Caulfield: Sure. And I think, you know, when you're talking about families, it's important to get them on board with this concept because, you know, a lot of times families think that Hands-On care, a.k.a. manually lifting their loved one means good quality care. And when you introduce the concept of equipment, they say, oh, no, no, no, no, I don't want I want I don't want that to happen because they fear the equipment. Right. They're looking at they're afraid that you're going to put them in the sling and their loved ones are going to fall out of the sling. But in fact, it's the safest possible way to actually move a patient or resident.
Peter Koch: So you're [00:18:00] really you're talking about not only changing the perspective of the worker in the workplace, the nurse, the nurse, case manager, management of the hospital or the long term care facility, but really giving them some tools to help change the perspective of the family, of the patient that they're caring for. That's a really unique concept.
Lauren Caulfield: It is. And, you know, one of the important things that many facilities should do is to incorporate that into their welcome package or their admission kit, because when your loved one may come into the facility, the long term care facility, independent and everything's all good. But when that resident declines the families, it's a tough time for the families. It's emotional. They're making emotional decisions. They are feeling [00:19:00] terrible that their mom or dad is no longer able to be independent. So it's good that we introduce the concept and the benefits of a safe patient handling program by use of equipment and reducing that manual lift at the admission phase, because then they can understand the concept and the facility could say, you know what, we're not here yet. But later on down the road, as the you know, your loved one declines. This is what our you know, our strategy is. We want to keep our employees safe and we want to keep our, you know, your mom or dad safe as well. And this research shows this is the best way in order to do that. And not only that, what we have found and we talk about quality of care. We have found that this patient handling program [00:20:00] will actually increase the quality of care for the patient or resident. And let me tell you what I mean by that. First of all, when you're not manually handling somebody, there is a lesser chance that there's going to be skin tears. So the data shows that by using lift equipment and reducing that manual lifting, that it's having a very favorable impact on the rate of skin tears, which is great. Hospitals are also showing that they're having reduced length of stay because with the use of equipment, we have early mobility. We can get patients up sooner with the use of equipment. And it's a win and it's actually a lot. It really enhances the dignity of the patient. So one [00:21:00] of the things that we're finding. I wanted to explore that aggressive behavior topic a little bit more. And what we found is this. If you and I, Pete, transfer our resident today,
Peter Koch: OK?
Lauren Caulfield: And then tomorrow you go on vacation. And Arielle and I are transferring that same resident. Those two transfers could look very different.
Peter Koch: Oh, yeah, sure.
Lauren Caulfield: Because we're. Yeah. We're using different people. You might be taller than me. I mean, there's so many different things and components that come into that. So the patient or resident that might have dementia or Alzheimer's. They can't predict what's going to happen because every day it's going to be a little bit different. Makes sense.
Peter Koch: It does make sense. Even if even just having two different personalities with a patient with dementia or a patient with cognitive challenges, just two different personalities [00:22:00] from one day to the other could be a very difficult position for that patient just mentally for them to understand what's going on. Not even to mention the physical differences in the lift of how that's going to work.
Lauren Caulfield: For sure. And now we introduce the concept of lift equipment. Right. That patient now can anticipate what that lift is going to look like every single day because it's going to be consistent. And as a result, these behaviors are being impacted in a good way.
Peter Koch: No kidding. So the aggressive behaviors are being impacted by somewhat of the consistency of the lift process by utilizing the equipment.
Lauren Caulfield: For sure. For sure. So, again, as we look at these different things and selling these to our families, it is so important that we're pointing out how this can positively impact. The quality [00:23:00] of care of the loved one.
Peter Koch: And that's what it's all about. I mean, having worked in emergency medicine, I mean that the comfort of the patient is always a critical piece. You're trying to manage what crisis they're going through, whether it's mental or it's physical. But the comfort of the patient and making sure that they trust what you're doing is really important. And I think that has to be a key part in your long term care or even in short term care in the hospitals, that making sure that the patient is comfortable and then making sure that the family understands because that's, oh boy. That's a huge part of that.
Lauren Caulfield: For sure. And I think once you one of the things that we do is we will put this information into our brochure for the client so that they can put it into their admission kit. We also recommend that they have family nights so that you can [00:24:00] come in and bring in your families and get them in the equipment and, you know, get them comfortable with the equipment. And I think that's really important. And oftentimes when I train during my workshops, I will ask folks, you know, raise your hand if you've never been in a piece of lift equipment before. And it's interesting how many caregivers have not actually trialed the equipment and pretend to be the patient and get in the slings and all of that. And I think that that's critical because if you're going to really appreciate what that resident may be going through, especially a resident that may be scared. Right. Or feel uncomfortable, it's so important that you really put yourself in their position, get in these slings, you know, be transferred with it and all of that, and then you can help sort of put [00:25:00] that patient at ease because you've done it before and you can say with certainty it's going to be OK, this is what's going to happen. You're going to feel like this, you know, that type of thing. I always you know, it's kind of like getting a root canal. I always say to the dentist, OK, before we start, what's going to happen? You know, I need to preview it in my mind. So I think, you know, training is just so critical. And to go one step further. It's you know, sometimes facilities will train by use of video, which is good. it definitely has its advantages. A lot of the vendors will have training videos that you can use, but we always recommend to go one step further. Demonstration and return demonstrations are critical because it's sometimes it's so easy. The vendor comes in or the nurse educator comes in and does all this training. And you sit back and you watch and you say, yep, that looks great. And [00:26:00] this happens a lot with the friction, reducing devices that are used for repositioning and turning at the bedside or on the bed. And, you know, they get all this training. They don't have an opportunity to return demonstrate, and then they go back to the bed. They start using or trying to use the device. And they're like, no, it's not as easy as it looked when the vendor came in and did the training. And they're fumbling with it and they don't know how to use it. They're trying to figure it out. And meanwhile, you know, the resident is starting to complain because you there too long and this keeps taking too long. And what happens? They say this doesn't work.
Peter Koch: I'm done.
Lauren Caulfield: I don't want to use it.
Peter Koch: Going back to my old habits right?
Lauren Caulfield: Yes. And so, so often. And this was, you know, one of the things I mentioned before [00:27:00] is that turning, boosting and repositioning in the bed is a top loss leader nationally as well as at MEMIC. And one of the best solutions to that, are these friction reducing devices. And they are being so underutilized in our facilities. And when we look at that, we say it is important to train, to give ample practice time and to have a competency process, not only for your friction reducing devices, but also for your lift equipment, because that should be annual, because you have to go back and make sure that people feel comfortable. And one of the things that we find that are on the rise is not only the back injuries to our nursing assistants, but also to our RNs. And why is that? Well, it's because RNs typically aren't [00:28:00] involved as much with the patient transfers. But getting back to that problem with people being short staffed. What do you do? You go to the RN and you say, hey, can you help me? And they say, sure. But the last time they used the equipment might have been months ago. And oftentimes people will say, well, we don't really include the RNs on our training because they don't do the transfers. Well, these transfers may be a non-routine task, but anyone that knows about non-routine tasks, those are the people that tend to get injured because they're not as familiar. So when I do observations on the unit, I'll often hear an RN say. Yeah just tell me what I need to do. And they will sort of educate them on the job and the use of that equipment. So as we look at our injuries and where they're happening, when we're doing our trending analysis, it's so important to pull in and look at. And if you're seeing [00:29:00] an increase in RNs being injured due to patient transfers, look at that training program and make sure they're getting training as well. Because I think that's really critical.
Peter Koch: Yeah, absolutely. You may definitely miss those individuals that you don't expect because it's not part of their job. Their main job description. But they may very well be doing some of those non routine tasks almost assuredly. And you had mentioned it early on. One of the challenges that is pervasive across all of health care and really actually any industry, but health care specifically is the lack of people, the lack of staff. I don't have enough. we don't have enough nurses. We don't have enough nursing assistance to manage the number of patients that we have in the same way that we used to. So we are using people in different ways because we are short. So if that does happen. So training is pretty key. Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about the patient handling dilemma episodes, [00:30:00] parts two and three coming up over the next few months. We'll be going deeper into the problem of using outdated thinking for patient handling and how good safe patient handling programs can be successful. In future episodes we will address the barriers to implementing a safe patient handling program, as well as talk with different health care teams to find out what has made their safe patient handling program work. Check back to the MEMIC podcast page for updates or subscribe to get notified when the next episode drops. If you're a MEMIC policyholder check out all of our safe patient handling resources on MEMIC's Safety Director Web site at www.MEMICsafety.com. Now let's get back to today's conversation. Lauren, you mentioned a whole lot of different steps and different concepts and different things to do. They all seem to be part of this MEMIC patient handling program. Can you talk [00:31:00] about like what is in the program? So how does the program work? What is it? What does it do?
Lauren Caulfield: So for our MEMIC policyholders, we made a commitment that we were going to really provide some good, solid research, evidence based training for our customers and in that our job. I really look at our role as making sure that we are in the forefront. We are going to conferences. We're looking at the latest data in research and all of that and incorporating that into our safe patient handling program. So that is what we did several years ago. We realized that if we are going to have solid outcomes with our clients, we had to really get the right people around the table. So it starts out with what do they say, get the right people on the bus. And that's really what we [00:32:00] did. So we started with hiring RNs, occupational health nurses, physical therapists, OTs people that had been in the industry before. And I think our clients appreciate that because there's nothing better than sitting across the table and talking to somebody that has done the job before. It lends instant credibility with our customers. So when we go and try to help them and make recommendations, they're all ears. Right. Because they say, wow, it's nice to have somebody that understands all of the different nuances that come into play with our customers. So that was the first thing getting the right people. And then we developed a process, so to speak. So when a new client comes on board, I always say you can't make recommendations from a conference room. So we do what we call our transfer resident [00:33:00] transfer observations. And what we're doing is we're rolling up our sleeves. We're spending a couple hours on the nursing units and we're just observing transfers in real time. So we're looking at those floor recovery transfers. We're looking at how are we getting patients or residents out of the bed? How are they bringing them to the toilet? How are they repositioning that resident in the bed as well? We're tying it to those known injury sources that we have researched. So, as I said, we're rolling up our sleeves. And one of the things my directors of nurses always say to us, this is probably one of the most valuable things that you bring to the table. And it's really about reinforcing those positive behaviors that we see that the employees are doing. Are they planning for the lift right [00:34:00] you know? Are they moving things around that need to get out of the way, that are going to come into and be a barrier for them when they're, you know, when they're in the middle of a transfer? Are they using the right sling? Do the residents know what sling to use? Are they the proper size? Are they accessible? We're looking at. Are they manual lifting or are they using the equipment consistently? We look at their communication tools. So Mrs. Jones was just transferred with a sit to stand lift. OK. Let's go back to that modified care plan and let's see what that modified care plan says in terms of the transfer method. Many times, unfortunately, how they're transferring and what the care plan or the modified care plan says do not jive. So that gives us an opportunity to help them not only with tricks of the trade in terms of the transfer, [00:35:00] but also to look at their communication tools, because really that's what it's all about, making sure that our communication tools are updated. And we look at just a variety of things in terms of locking wheelchairs and locking beds. So. And I could go on and on, but I think you get the drift with that.
Peter Koch: I just wanted to kind of frame that. So the first step is before the program was put in place was you got the right people at MEMIC. So you pulled in the people that would have the best knowledge. They had experience within not just within healthcare, but people that had experience with handling other people. So your physical therapist, athletic trainers, agronomists to be able to provide information to create the plan. And then instead of just getting to going to a client saying here's a written program. Have fun with it. You start with observing what's going on, on the floor within [00:36:00] the unit itself and seeing what's actually happening. So getting real time information and then comparing that real time information into what's actually supposed to happen, to be able to provide some guidance and some feedback. So that's great. Got the right people getting some good information. Real-Time information that's happening right at the facility itself, comparing it with what's supposed to happen. Once that's done, what's the next step in the program? What do you do next?
Lauren Caulfield: Well, the next step is really to help that client take that process and adopt it themselves. So we're all about helping clients put systems in place. So we will ask that either their peer unit leaders, their rehab aides, maybe the nurse managers actually do these types of observations because it provides you with an opportunity to reinforce positive behaviors. But it [00:37:00] also provides you with an opportunity to provide just in time training where you see it's necessary. So from them, we now have a good understanding of what that program looks like. We then provide an onsite, full day safe patient handling workshop. It's nationally accredited. They can get CBUs for this. And what that is, is it's not death by PowerPoint. I can assure you it's more getting all levels of nursing in one room. We start out the workshop and we talk about the challenges that we're seeing and tie that back to the observations that we just did. And then what we do is, you know, certainly there's PowerPoint slides at the beginning to sort of set the foundation and the key concepts for everybody. But from there, once we get that all in hand, we now look at the challenges that we have seen [00:38:00] from the beginning. And everyone participates in that. We go around the room, they ultimately tell us what their challenges are that they see on a day to day basis. And then we have group work. And usually it goes like this. So we assign topics to each of the groups. So it could be change of shift, you know, really assessing that whole process. It could be looking at the patient assessment program, looking at their training programs, because what we see is people have great training programs. But you know what? People don't attend. How do we get them to attend? What is the content? What are the different learning styles that we incorporate into the training. You know, everyone has different learning styles, as we know, some people are visual. Other people can read a manual and learn that way. So really looking at the different learning styles that they have introduced into their training programs, some of the groups are assessing communication, overall [00:39:00] communication with physical therapy or from nurse to nurse or nurse to C.M.A. So basically what they do is they spend the second part of the workshop reviewing and assessing and analyzing these very key topics. And then what they do is come up with recommendations that they present to the class. And what that allows them to do is to have a solid action plan going out of the class, because I don't know about you. I go to a conference, I attend all these great classes, and I get home and I got, you know, a binder so thick and I sit there and I say, oh, my gosh. Now, where do I start? That takes that guesswork out of it. They walk out of that class. They have structured a safe patient handling task force that will work on the different recommendations and concepts and challenges that we identified during the class. And [00:40:00] they setup a time to meet and a schedule and hour lost control. Consultants who are health care specialists will actually attend some of these task force committee meetings and help them not to run the meetings, but just to be there if they get stuck or provide some guidance around that. And that's really a key to the process. So we start out with a patient transfer observations. We help them incorporate that into their program. We provide the full day safe patient handling workshops. We help them with their safe patient handling task force. And through that, we're making sure that key people in the organization are involved in that process. So we tie in the Safe Patient Handling Committee into the Falls Committee. We make sure that we have a quality person on the task force. We make sure there's a nursing representation purchasing [00:41:00] because, you know, certainly there is purchasing of equipment that may be needed. This nurse educator, the rehab staff, all of these key people come together to work on the initiative because safe patient handling programs do not mean you just have equipment. And I think one of the other things that we work really hard with customers on is their system of accountability, because oftentimes you have equipment. And that's the easy part. The hard part is getting people to use the equipment.
Peter Koch: And I think that's a key part to think about that accountability. You couldn't get the accountability with having the right people in the room and you couldn't get a system in place without knowing where the challenges are through the observations. And you couldn't do any of that, have it work well without getting the group together to be able to buy in to the solutions [00:42:00] that were created. So this is really it's not a one size fits all solution. There are some guidelines that you're helping them work within, but they're really taking those guidelines and developing a safe patient handling solution that works in their facility that they developed, that you helped facilitate and then will help them maintain that through observations and assistance going forward. Is that a good description of how it works or why it works?
Lauren Caulfield: That is a perfect description. And when, you know, clients will always say to us, so, you know, this is a commitment. Absolutely. It's a commitment. But what are we going to get out of it? And in looking at the injury statistics from before they came on board and didn't have this formal approach to afterwards. What we're seeing is an average reduction in the cost of their employee injuries related [00:43:00] to overexertion averaging at about 35 percent reduction in cost, which I think is phenomenal.
Peter Koch: That is phenomenal. That's truly phenomenal. It's interesting. I've had the pleasure quite a while ago now, but I've had the pleasure of sitting in part of one of those daylong safe patient handling workshops that you've done. And the dynamic was really interesting. So at the beginning of that workshop, everyone was sitting their arms crossed like it's another training. Can I just get back to my work and using the real world situations that not only you've been through and have seen But also the observations that you've seen on the floor and talking about stories and the impact and then getting people in the audience to talk about their challenges. And it's real. It's so real to them. And all of a sudden the arms start to get un-crossed and they're leaning [00:44:00] in a little bit more. And by the break, by lunchtime, by the time you're getting them to work as a group, everybody or the majority of everyone are leaning into the problem. They're excited about trying to problem solve that. They all know what the challenge is. You've just brought it to an actionable process. And now they're able to take action. And it's something that they can own. And I thought that facilitation process was fantastic. And then the results that you're talking about, if they're able to implement the plan that they're developing to see on average of, you know, with 25 to 35 percent reduction in claims. That's amazing. It's a real testament to the process that you've been putting in place to facilitate safe patient handling across the different health care organizations that we work with.
Lauren Caulfield: Sure. You know, it's a great thing to see. And I smile when you're saying, you know, the arms crossed and all of that. [00:45:00] You know, we pull in the patient transfer observations and you come in and you certainly have your book of paper or your clipboard or what have you, because you're going to do observations and make some notes and you meet with the CNAs and, you know, your nursing assistants and they are looking at you like are you the state and oh no, what is she here to do? I'm going to have somebody looking over my shoulder. This is horrible. And we you know, we try to say, you know, we’re the friendly people not the state. We're just looking at what a day in your life looks like so we can make it safer. But they're always skeptical and I get it right. So then, you know, you'll say, OK, well, when you transfer these residents, please come and get me so I can observe the transfer and what happens. They'll say, oh, I forgot. So, you know, and that's OK. And you know what? And then over time, we start observing a few and we're working with them. And then we're saying, you know [00:46:00] what? Let's stop for a second. Maybe. Can we just come in at a different angle with the lift or if we raise the bed a little bit higher? That might be a little bit more helpful for you. So you're not bending over and all of a sudden those same folks that didn't want to be , you know, shadowed are now coming to me saying, hey, can you come down here and look at Mrs. Jones? Because you know what? This is a really challenging transfer. Not only is it challenging because sometimes she tends to drop to the floor or she's resistant, but the other thing is she can be very aggressive. So we go in and we're not only looking at patient transfer techniques, we're looking at the whole, you know, how are we approaching that resident so that they don't become aggressive or at least we're limiting or showing them techniques about positive approaches and all of that. So it all goes hand in hand. And what [00:47:00] we're definitely seeing with our customers is not only are our patient handling injuries going down, but our aggressive behaviors are also going down. So it is definitely a Win-Win.
Peter Koch: That's fantastic. I think the thing that I'm finding about this, is it's not just a canned program. It's not a notebook that someone can download from the electronic resources. And then here it is. It's a comprehensive assessment, training, guidance and ongoing feedback loop that you've put together to help address not only the injury itself, but the cause of the injury. And that could be the interaction with the patient to begin with, to help reduce the aggressive behavior or really just the tense behavior of the patient not understanding what's happening, but then the way the patient is moved [00:48:00] as well, and having providing the resources to or not so much the resources, but helping the different clients understand that it's not just a one and done. You can't do this training just once there's a system of observations and continued training and return demonstration that really makes the not just the program work, but the results come out. And that, to me, Lauren, is a key concept that folks need to take away when they start looking at this, because it's a huge problem. We started talking about this as the problem of patient handling or the patient handling dilemma. There are so many facets to it. There is a cost and a quality to it, but it's not just a one cause it's not my battery is not strong enough in my car. That's why it won't start on a cold morning. I replace the battery. I fix it. Done deal. I give the package handler a cart that they can use. Done [00:49:00] deal. It's not a done deal. There's so many facets to this. And the interesting part about the program is it addresses all of those facets.
Lauren Caulfield: You are spot on Pete because it is definitely not a cookie cutter approach. Every facility is different. They have different cultures. They have different staffing patterns. Patients change can change every single day depending upon what's going on with them at any given moment. And these changes can be very unexpected. So as we work with customers, it's important to tailor these programs to the different challenges that they have. The culture that they have in really in order to be successful. And it is a collaborative effort. We don't go in and just tell them, oh, gosh, here you go. Here's the laundry list of recommendations and head out. We listen to them and sometimes, you know what? I may make a recommendation then like, no that's not going to work for us because of this. OK. Let's [00:50:00] go back to the drawing board. What will work? And we develop plans that are going to be feasible for our customers. And I think that's really a key.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a fantastic unit. And it has to happen that way. From my experience, working in different industries, that even though the industry might be the same. Like you work with a restaurant someplace or a construction company someplace. And the stuff that they're doing is the same. But you identify that, well, the culture is different. The clientele is different. The environment is different. How the team works together is different. And if you don't address those things or don't allow those things to be part of the plan and you just give a cookie cutter solution, the solution is bound to fail. As soon as you step away from it, I think that's a really key part, is you want this program to be successful without your involvement. You want this to keep going regardless of who [00:51:00] is there at the meetings or who is there at the at the facility.
Lauren Caulfield: Right. And I think that comes from the top. The first thing that we always do is meet with the top management before we roll any program like this out. And we make sure we have the key players around and say, are you ready for this? Some clients have competing priorities. And, you know, we make sure we do it at a time. That makes sense. And once we get that commitment and we roll out what that plan looks like, we typically are going to get some really good commitment and support from the top because it's going to take time and it's going to take resources from the facility in order to make this work. And I throw out something because it's sort of my Bible, if you will, for those that are looking for a great book that will help you to determine and give you a good best practice check and balance on where your program [00:52:00] is and what you need to work on. The American Nurses Association put out a publication called Safe Patient Handling and Mobility Interprofessional National Standards. And it's excellent. I would highly recommend it. And at the bottom, it says across the care continuum. And they basically took all different disciplines across the care continuum to come up with these standards. And I refer to this all the time. And what was really enlightening was as I went through this book and I looked at all the key components that they suggest need to be in place. And I compared it to our workshop and our process. We hit each and every one of these. So I felt that it was a really nice way to evaluate our program and make sure that it was in line with what the industry is telling us the best practices were. So that's [00:53:00] just I wanted to throw that out there for folks that might be interested.
Peter Koch: That sounds like a great resource. And we can put a link to that publication within the show notes for this podcast itself. But so. All right. How would a health care facility use that? Could they could they look at that, evaluate their program based on the publication that you just spoke about? And if they're missing different parts and pieces, then how does a company know that they're ready to change their patient handling process? How do they know that they're, it's time for them to do that? Not just they have a lot of injuries. Great. It's going to happen. But how do they know that they're ready to make a change?
Lauren Caulfield: I think it's just looking at their overall program, getting feedback from the staff that do the job on a day in and day out basis. And you can generally tell by walking around what [00:54:00] that culture, what that environment looks like. You know, look at the patient and the injuries that you're seeing. Hopefully not a lot and none, actually. But, you know, are you starting to see an uptick with these areas? Are you starting to see that? We have a lot of holes in the management team. We have a lot of people that have left the company. And there's a great amount of turnover in clients that come to me and say, you know, we just can't keep good people. They're leaving for five cents an hour more and going down the road. One of the things that I offer is you have a great patient handling program. Make that a marketing tool for you when you're looking at recruiting really good employees. Put that in your ads because I don't know about you, but if I had a choice in three different places to work [00:55:00] and two of the places require me to manually lift all day long and put me at risk, and one place has a solid patient handling program that has great devices and equipment to make it safer for my job. which facility do you think I'm going to?
Peter Koch: I'm going there.
Lauren Caulfield: Absolutely and get that message out when you're advertising. And you know what? For clients that had done that. They are getting people through the door. So there's often many, many different things that come up that you say, you know what, I can't do this anymore like this. It's it behooves us to make some changes to make it safer for our employees and our residents or our patients. And when you do that, I think everyone just wants to keep their employees safe. You know, there's nobody likes to see that somebody had a back injury under their watch. There are solutions out there. Does it take time and energy? [00:56:00] Absolutely. But in the long run, you are going to see a lot of benefits to that.
Peter Koch: Yeah, absolutely. And it sounds that the patient handling process, having a good, safe patient handling program can not only be a tool that can be used to well, like you said, pull good people in and keep them there. But it can also be something that if it's not so up to snuff in your particular company or you're looking at some of those lagging indicators like you've got a lot turnover or there are injuries that are happening both on the patient side and the worker side, that if you made some changes to your patient handling program, that could not only reduce the injuries, but it might also be a retention tool for you. And you could keep some of those good workers that you have and they won't go someplace for 10 cents an hour more or five cents an hour or more.
Lauren Caulfield: Absolutely. Yes, [00:57:00] absolutely.
Peter Koch: Well, hey, Lauren. Jeez, we've been talking here for just about an hour as time just flies and we're right about the end of where we are on the podcast. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with our audience, our listeners today about the safe patient handling program or any parts of it or any challenges?
Lauren Caulfield: I just think that I just encourage folks, keep doing what you're doing. Keep looking for continuous improvement. It's so important once you put these programs together and make that investment, it's an investment in your employees and you will get so much back from your employees. I laugh. I have a hospital down in Connecticut and we worked with them on a very formal program. And their program has absolutely just done a whole turnaround. And the medical director I was at a meeting with him the other day and he said, Lauren, you're like the mayor in this [00:58:00] place. Everyone talks about, oh, my gosh, look, what these folks did they came in and it's so awesome to come in, my back doesn't hurt at the end of the day. I don't feel fatigued. I can go home and actually play with my kids and not be exhausted. And I said, you know, it's not what I did. It's what you folks did. You made the commitment and you made this a better place to work. And that's really what it's all about. So I encourage everyone to look at your programs and see what are the good things that you're doing that should be reinforced and keep the momentum going. And then just identify some opportunities for improvement and start working on them one issue at a time. Don't try to do too much and get overwhelmed. Don't try to roll out too much. Make it a very methodical process and you will do just fine.
Peter Koch: That's fantastic. That's great advice. And if you're not a MEMIC client, I guess one of the resources that they could use would be that publication you referenced before as [00:59:00] a as a guide. But if they are a MEMIC client and they're thinking, you know, I'm ready to make some changes, how do they how did they find out more about the safe patient handling program that MEMIC has to offer?
Lauren Caulfield: The first place to go is call your loss control consultant and they will have all the resources you can talk about a plan that's going to fit your needs and that is the first place to go. I think that they'll be able to provide some great guidance and direction for you.
Peter Koch: Fantastic, Lauren. Thank you very much for all the time and sharing your expertise with us today. Lauren, it's been fantastic. I really, truly appreciate you being here today.
Lauren Caulfield: Thank you, Peter. I appreciate you having me. It's been a great discussion.
Peter Koch: Fantastic. So thanks again for joining us. And thanks to all of our listeners out there who continue to listen to us. And we've been talking with Lauren [01:00:00] Caulfield, the director of the Atlantic region, lost control at MEMIC about safe patient handling and the program that MEMIC has and the challenges that safe patient handling or handling patients safely has for the health care industry. And if you have any questions for Lauren or like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, e-mail podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/Podcast, where you can find more links to resources for a deeper dive into this topic. Check out our Web site MEMIC.com/Podcast Where you can find all of our podcasts in an archive. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you find us on. If you've already done that, I really thank [01:01:00] you. Because it helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the Mimics Safety Experts Podcast is good, but using what you learned is even better.
Now more than ever, worker health is a key part to any successful business. Beyond the obvious connection to lost work time, healthy workers tend to be happier, produce more, and can be safer on the job. When a worker is out sick, it leaves the workforce short. In order to address the problem, you must look at it from both ends. What happens when an employee gets ill and how employers help employees to stay healthy and not get sick in the first place.
On this episode, Dr. Delia Roberts, President of Fit Safe Solutions, digs into the impact of an employer health and wellness program and unpack its 4 key tenants. Relevant, Committed, Effective, and On-Going.
Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. Now, more than ever, worker health is a key part to any successful business. Beyond the obvious connection to lost work time, healthy workers tend to be happier, produce more and can be safer on the job. There have been numerous articles and studies done on how companies manage employees who are ill. And I'm not talking about an illness that's related to or caused by work. That's an entirely different podcast. I'm talking about a cold or the flu or a migraine or the effects of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stress, anxiety and even depression. Much of the news these days focuses on paid sick leave as a benefit to help people who are sick to stay home. This is an important part of the puzzle and it can help the worker to manage their illness, but it still leaves the workforce lacking, regardless of what equation you use to measure success. Employees are still a part of it. When you're short on staff, it throws the whole [00:01:00] equation out of balance. Successful businesses need workers and those workers need successful businesses. In order to address the problem. You've got to look at it from both ends. What happens when an employee gets ill? Do they have health care or sick leave, etc.? And this is a big and. How do employers help employees to stay healthy and not get sick in the first place? This is more than health insurance and a gym membership. It requires buy in commitment and accountability, but it can pay big dividends if it's done right. I'm your host, Peter Koch. And on the phone with me today is Dr. Delia Roberts, president of Fit Save Solutions and now retired professor at Selkirk College in British Columbia, Canada. We're going to dig into the impact that employer health and wellness programs have on the worker and the success of a business. Welcome to the podcast, Delia.
Dr. Delia Roberts: Thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure to be here.
Peter Koch: Thanks. It's really great to have you on the line today. We've [00:02:00] known each other for a while. I got to know you and your work initially through reading the research that you published regarding the replanters out in British Columbia and the resort workers in North America. And it actually moved me to take a class through Selkirk College that you had ran, which addressed employee productivity and safety through looking at data, biology, physiology and psychology. And then after that, knowing you a little bit more, I got to assist you in implementing the Fit for Snow program here in the east, for different resorts and kind of thinking about that the last time we talked. This is the 10th anniversary of Fit for Snow. This year is and it's been around for 10 years.
Dr. Delia Roberts: Yes, that's correct. We did a two year study that started in 2010, so the implementation phase is actually the following year that we started 10 years ago.
Peter Koch: Wow. That's pretty amazing. And it's really that program in particular has [00:03:00] grown. And has it affected a number of resorts here in the east. And I know quite a few more out in the west. We'll talk a little bit more about that. What I found in your research, in your programs and the class, too. What stood out is how you correlated the relationship of work culture and employee health to performance results, such as like increased productivity and decreased injuries. So what I'd like you to do, if you can, is tell me a little bit about how you got started doing that research and how it evolved to what it is now, because you didn't start with the resource. You started with some other industries.
Dr. Delia Roberts: Yes, that's correct, Peter. And it's kind of a fun story, because when I first started this, the idea of worksite health and wellness or workplace physiology as part of safety was we didn't even exist. So I was a biochemist and I worked for about fifteen years with the Canadian Olympic teams. Again, [00:04:00] a very long time ago. So before the dawn of kinesiology and the man that I worked with was a very, very talented coach. So he had this inkling that there might be ways to truly monitor the adaptation to training and brought me on board as a biochemist to investigate that process. So it was a wonderful experience. And after I had my children, I moved to a more rural area in British Columbia to teach at a small college. But after a few years, I really miss the research aspect of it. And in my classes, I had quite a few tree planters and of course in British Columbia we have a lot of forests. And as they cut those forests down, the companies that do that are mandated by the government to reforest those areas. So they have a huge crew of young people generally who go out and [00:05:00] carry the trees up the side of the mountains and dig the holes and put the trees in the ground and then close the holes over. So the physiological load there is truly extreme. And these individuals who are in my classes retraining because it's just such hard work that they can't sustain it for very many years, started to talk to me about it. And I thought as a biochemists exercise physiologist, that it would be a very interesting work situation to evaluate and again the timing was good for me because at that time, literally one in five planters would suffer an injury that would knock them off work. So the forestry companies were interested in having a look at something that could help them reduce their worker's comp costs. So that's how it all started. And as [00:06:00] a sports scientist, it was important to me to measure what the workload actually was. So that was sort of the biochemistry physiology piece. And the planters are a rather unique culture. They work very hard and they live under quite strenuous conditions. So it immediately became apparent that if I was going to convince these individuals to look after their physiology, I needed to understand what motivated them. What kinds of things would speak to them from inside their cultures. And the other advantageous, peace. From my perspective was that the planters are paid by per piece, so they get so many cents per tree that they put in the ground. And that made it very, very easy to measure the outcome on productivity. So the [00:07:00] model that I have used ever since that time was to spend one year or one season monitoring, evaluating the workload, looking at the physiology, describing the type of person who would be employed in that area and the deficit. So the weaknesses in their physiology, where are they strong? Were they not strong? And then the following year, I was able to get enough funding to take three groups, control group and two test treatments and train them or apply those treatments prior to this season beginning. And then monitor them to their season. So we had very clear measurements then of what would happen if you had groups. Which one either prepared physically or the other big piece with nutrition hydration component. And [00:08:00] look at the outcome both in terms of the productivity or the number of trees they put in the ground. And then also the changes in those individual bodies in terms of injuries, but also more subtle measurements. For example, what was going on with their immune system or their ability to manage certain physical tasks appropriately?
Peter Koch: Sure. So that combines a lot. You spent some, quite a bit of time trying to identify what the problem is and then try to really address those organically from the ground up by introducing different solutions for them. But I think you hit the nail on the head, too, by saying that you really had to convince them that this is the way to go, do it to make some changes and you're able to show some success. So I would imagine that afterwards, after they saw the success of their peers, the difference in what happened or what was going on the previous year to the success [00:09:00] of the current year, that they were able to see that success and want to be on board more.
Dr. Delia Roberts: Absolutely. So from the company's perspective, we were able to look at the number of recordable incidents in the different groups. And the nice piece about having a control group is that you have similar size, fitness, gender background, etc., people who are working under the same conditions and without the treatment. So, you know that the changes that you made are effective or not effective compared to no change. And what we saw right off the bat was a significant reduction in injuries. But interestingly, a huge gain in performance, because when you give people the fuel that they need to keep working hard. And also the physical capacity to complete that work, then [00:10:00] you have an advantage over an individual who doesn't have those tools out there.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Their disposal. So, again, that's another interesting part, because many times when we start to look at a problem of, say, lower production or increased injuries, we tend to look at it as what kind of personal protective equipment or what sort of extrinsic solution can we provide, whether it might be a different tool or something, something else to help protect the employee from the hazard that's there. And in this case, you couldn't eliminate the hazard because they had to plant the trees. They were continually exposed to the level of physical activity in the environment they were in. There wasn't a whole lot that could be done to change that. So you addressed it through more of a wellness program. Would that be an appropriate frame for that?
Dr. Delia Roberts: Yes, absolutely. [00:11:00] So there are many, many occupations where people have to perform movements which are not ergonomically advantageous. So we can redesign the tool and shift the load. You can put a barrier in place to say, oh, the person can't go past this barrier. That would protect them from, let's say, some kind of mechanical injury. And you can ask them not to indulge in certain behaviors that might also increase the risk of illness or injury. But these are all external factors. And unfortunately, in the way of this world, often when you tell people they are not supposed to do something, it almost makes some effort to do that. Yeah. So there's that independent piece. But there's also the piece of people who have been doing it that way for many years find it difficult to change those habits. [00:12:00] So there's lots of reasons why those external pieces can reduce the risk to a certain amount. But they can't take it away. So when you give someone an intrinsic tool, what happens is that it combines together with their own personal perspective the way they approach things. And then it's in place 24/7. So it's not just there when the supervisors watching. It's not just there in the barriers in place or where it's convenient for someone to do something a certain way. It's there all the time when their mind is distracted by other things and so these intrinsic pieces which become part of a person's approach to doing anything. Protect them every day at work, all day. But it also protects them outside of work. So in terms of the decisions they're making about the other activities that [00:13:00] they engage in.
Peter Koch: So describe a little bit more about what would be an intrinsic tool that you would help the workers understand or get a hold of?
Dr. Delia Roberts: Absolutely. So the programs that I do usually take a two pronged approach. And one, as I mentioned, is looking at nutrition and hydration. So body needs fuel in order to perform physical work, but it also needs fuel to perform mental work. So the way our brain makes decisions is very much influenced by our physiological status. So when a person is in the workplace, whether it's a question of am I going to power this machine down before I reach in and pull that whatever it is out of the way? That decision can be influenced. Extrinsically by there's a barrier in place to prevent [00:14:00] you from putting your arm through that hole. But that barrier can be removed in many situations. So the intrinsic piece would be giving the person the ability to assess that risk appropriately, to see that it's not a case of, oh, if I turn the machine off, I am going to lose time and then I'll have to power down. I'll have to start it up. It's almost the end of my shift. I want to go home on time, etc., etc. Versus looking at it and saying the risk of me sticking my arm inside that home means that I'm going to maim my arm. And that's probably not a good decision. Therefore, I'll power it down. So the intrinsic pieces that the person understands the consequence of that and is able to correctly evaluate whether or not it really is a good decision to bypass the safety barrier and engage [00:15:00] in that behavior.
Peter Koch: And you were able to correlate some of that with the person's well, their mindfulness, their physical ability to make decisions. So, you know, how turned on they are that day or that shift and that comes quite a bit from, well, not just the amount of sleep that they get at night, which is a cultural thing, but really the food and fuel, like you mentioned before. So part of that intrinsic tool has to be education, as well as talking about how food and fuel it would affect you, but also having some opportunity to get access to that good fuel as well. And hydration as well.
Dr. Delia Roberts: Yes, absolutely. So what happened was because I was interested in fuel for the tree planters, primarily because the workload is so high, I was looking at availability of that fuel in the blood. And what became [00:16:00] apparent pretty quickly was that when blood sugar is very low, people's reaction time and their ability to perform complex movements was impaired. And this is a physiological phenomena that's very well understood. We often talk about getting the hangry. So we well understand at least. And if we can't recognize it in ourselves, we see it in our partners or children that when they're hungry, when they haven't eaten or drunk any fluid in a long time, their behavior starts to pull off. So mood is affected. And the way we perceive our environment is affected. So with the tree planting group, that wasn't my main point, but it did drive home for me that fuel can also affect other things. And the group that I worked with immediately after the tree [00:17:00] planters was a group where decision making has very high consequences. So this was a group of mountain guides who work in British Columbia again, helping people travel through the mountains without getting hurt or being able to go and enjoy the snow, for example, heli skiing and avoid avalanches or terrain that could cause injury. So there's quite a bit of crossover between workers in those two groups. And so that group of people saw the progress from the tree planting perspectives and said, hey, we think this might be something that can help us. So when I started looking at that group linked between the availability of food and water, also brought in another parameter, which is that in many cases, groups which have time constraints on their activities or [00:18:00] believe that it's unprofessional to eat and drink in front of a client base may self limit. So even though there's water available, for example, to a physician in the hospital, they may feel that it's not appropriate for a patient to see them eat or drink. And what ends up happening then is that if that food is available, people may not partake of it. And the decisions that those people are making, the physician in surgery, for example, have very big consequences. So when we started investigating that more clearly, what we saw was the piece around decision making and that it's not just having a low blood sugar, but rather the normal pattern of eating in North America where we eat something sweet. It drives blood sugar up very quickly. We then release the hormone [00:19:00] insulin that pulls that sugar out of the blood. Blood sugars fall. And then we get this cycle of fatigue, confusion, maybe loss of reaction time. And so the person eats something sweet and drives it up again. So it's the variability in that curve going up and down which causes the problem. And when you look at different groups in industry, the access to food sometimes drives that. So a worker who's working on a production line only gets to eat at their break. So how many break do they have during the day in terms of providing that nutrition they need then end up eating larger meals with a lot of sugar that drives the blood sugar up. Two hours later, they have a crash in their blood sugar falling quite low. And yet they may not have access to food [00:20:00] during that time. So that can impact the way they approach their work, but also their physical capacity. So then they start slowing down. They start making more mistakes and it affects the productivity as well.
Peter Koch: Yes. So affected the productivity and the quality in those pieces.
Dr. Delia Roberts: Absolutely.
Peter Koch: For sure. And you made a good connection there. Like, it's not just those physical jobs, like the tree planters or the critical decisions of your health care workers, your doctors, nurses or your mountain guides, but your production worker, the driver who is going to be out there driving for a package delivery service, or gees even the person who might be working at the convenience store that might be in a busy place and can't eat from a hygienic standpoint. I mean, the ability to make good decisions for guest service, for productivity, to manage safety things gets impacted. And you brought up the hangry, [00:21:00] which I like that term, because I think everyone has had experience with that before. But if you if you look at the hangry is not just from your attitude, but if you think about how when you're in that position and you are hungry and you might not feel hungry, but your attitude is changing, you're not making the same decisions that you would be if your blood sugar was stable at the moment or at a place where you had the fuel in order to make the good decisions. You're focused on different things. You're being irritated by things that you would normally be able to manage. And those big differences in lock out tag out decisions in following procedural decisions in when you're going to take a break or even fallen back to maybe old physical habits that you've had training to manage from an ergonomic perspective. That's a huge [00:22:00] connection there for workers and for employers to see that there is a huge benefit to make sure that employees understand their physiology as they are for work. Like, how does how does their work and how does their food and fuel consumption fit their work balance or their shift balance?
Dr. Delia Roberts: Absolutely. So that kind of pulls us back to the cultural piece, because you can tell someone that that's the case. But if it's not something that fits into their perspective or their frame of reference and has value to them as individuals. And that change is going to take place. So, for example, in working with a group of long haul truck drivers, you can talk to them about the fact that the incidence of diabetes, obesity in a group like that is almost [00:23:00] 50 percent, even though the average age is only about 35. So it's huge health risks there in terms of heart disease and also diabetes. But no one believes it's actually going to happen to them. And yet if you give that individual the opportunity to see how it plays out in something that's relative to them. So, for example, being able to actually measure the change in their ability to respond to an unexpected visual stimulus. So this is a slow car pulling out onto the highway in front of them, an animal jumping out onto the highway. A patch of ice coming into a corner or an obstruction on the road. How long does it take that individual to move their foot from the gas to the brake? So we can measure that. [00:24:00]Or we can model it by giving them a little test that they do. So they actually stop driving, pull over to the side of the road in a safe place, stop driving. And then they have a 10 minute test that they run on a handheld device where a light flashes on the screen and they have to tap a button or a light flashes on a screen. If it's red before green, they hit one button. But if it's yellow before green, they hit a different button. So they have to see it, interpret the information and make a decision which actually models real life much better. So we can show them that there's roughly a third of a second delay in their ability to respond when their blood sugar is fluctuating. So that doesn't sound like very much time, though, when a fully loaded big truck is driving down the road. That translates into about 40 [00:25:00] feet of stopping distance at 50, 50 miles an hour. So it's huge and it's going to make the difference between life or death.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a really that's a great example of how to connect the results into the culture of these, to get people to understand that they need to be able to make a change. And you're describing one of the measurement tools you used with the truck driving program that you or the truckers that you've worked with, too. So this isn't, you didn't just make up that example. You actually used that in it. Was it fit for driving or fit for trucking?
Dr. Delia Roberts: Yes, that's correct. So there was a big study that we did with long haul drivers and looking at the impact of the nutrition and hydration on those individuals. So most of the programs [00:26:00] sort of have this fit to work sort of theme to them. So there was fit to plant for the tree planters and for snow for the ski instructors to drive for the drivers. And then I also have one that runs in the forestry industry.
Peter Koch: That's fantastic. All fairly physical. And you might not think that the long haul truckers are physical. But I would challenge anyone to get in to the seat of a truck driver and spend the amount of time that they do there. It's a very, it's a physical job in another way. It challenges your body in very different ways than, say, your planters or your loggers might. But it still is very physically challenging.
Dr. Delia Roberts: Yes, that's correct. And just some mental load on having to really concentrate for that period of time. They work very long hours and they [00:27:00] often have to do maintenance on their trucks afterwards. So a very high fatigue in that group.
Peter Koch: Yeah, for sure. And what was their response for each of those groups that you work with when you were able to show them their deficit and reaction time with their blood sugar was fluctuating. What was their reaction?
Dr. Delia Roberts: Right. So those drivers are professionals and they fully understand that consequence in terms of the risk of having an incident on the road. And again, it kind of brings forward a theme that I see. Every single group that I work with. So, for example, physician, Physicians fully understand the impact on health, of that fluctuation in blood sugar. Or let's say not consuming fluid. And yet the dissonance [00:28:00] between their behavior and their own health is huge. But you have to tie it to something that's relevant to that individual. So for the truck drivers, that difference in reaction time is going to determine whether or not, for example, they kill a family that's driving on the highway because those trucks are so big that whatever it is that they connect with, it is going to be severely damaged. And the same for a physician, they're not going to pay attention to their own health. But when you tell them that looking after their own health helps them practice better medicine, then they are completely on board. So that's a cultural piece of finding what it is that motivates an individuals. So let's say you have an 18 year old who's working at a ski resort for one season and they've come to that resort to have a good time [00:29:00] and see as much as they can and engage in meeting a bunch of other people and having a lot of fun. So that 18 year old is not going to understand how sleep loss will impact their risk of injury on the mountain. So you have to find something that motivates them. What can make them pay attention to these recommendations that will also keep them safe? And that piece can be a big challenge.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it's that's a huge challenge. And it's different for not only every industry, but it's even different within the age groups to get them to not only see that there's a problem or identify that there's a problem, but the problem actually can affect them, like you said with the truckers and with the doctors. And I think more challenging, you know, when the decisions might not be as life changing as, say, it could be with a long haul trucker or with a doctor [00:30:00] or a nurse, but it could be career ending or at least season ending for ski patrol or a ski school person or a factory worker that makes a decision or a slow decision or the wrong decision for machine guarding or lockout and puts their hand or fingers someplace where it shouldn't be. And now all of a sudden, they lose the use of that or they lose it altogether, or the outdoor professional that blows out their ACL or has a significant back or head injury and now are unable to participate for the rest of the season or for the rest of their career, depending on their age. The significance of the injury?
Dr. Delia Roberts: Absolutely. And no one ever believes that's going to happen to them.
Peter Koch: Very true. Very, very true. And that's a barrier that you can't get through. But you can do a lot with education and using those real world examples and try to try and really to show [00:31:00] that the data between this is reaction time when your blood sugar is fluctuating and this is reaction time when your blood sugar is stable and see that. What are the consequences? Ask the questions. Try to get them to try to determine what the consequences might be if they're not choosing diet that would help stabilize blood sugar. Let me ask you, how much of a change did you have to make with these groups? From a nutritional standpoint to stabilize blood sugar? Was it an enormous change, like a life changing thing, or was it just a few things that they were able to modify on a regular basis to stabilize blood sugar?
Dr. Delia Roberts: The changes are dependent on where that group starts from. So, again, depending on where you're working, you may have to take quite a different approach in some cases. You have a group who has had no education at [00:32:00] all in terms of nutrition, and they eat the foods which are either culturally presented to them or sometimes given economically. So, for example, working in a sawmill in southeastern United States, fast food is very inexpensive and yet to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, surprisingly, was very costly. So some of that was driven simply by an economic factors. in other situations you have a group which has, for whatever reason, picked up a certain approach to food. Which may be driven by something that's presented in the popular press and especially around nutrition. There are so many myths about what actually is healthy people can get very entrenched in that piece. So [00:33:00] all of the Fit to Work program focus on a basic diet that is rich in fruits and vegetables, unprocessed high fiber greens and fat, which are more tending towards the unsaturated fats as opposed to animal based saturated fats. So it's a very basic, healthful philosophy that follows the recommendations by the different scientific organizations that study diabetes, heart disease, mental diseases and so on. The basic nutritional pieces. And I think it also brings home that one of the really important pieces is evaluating where you're starting from because you can't implement change unless you know what it is that has to change. So in the sawmill's, for [00:34:00] example, being able to look at what foods are available on site and then transition a little bit away from having packages of potato chips and candy bars toward foods, which has the potential to be perishable. So creating problems within the organization in terms of supply and demand, but are important to make those changes because they make a big difference in terms of what is acceptable to people. So it's not a simple answer because it's a complicated question. And it also brings home that point that there's no one size fits all. So it's dependent on the situation and where the people are starting from, what they have access to and what kinds of changes are going to be acceptable. Because if you go in and you simply say you can't have any of those foods that you enjoy or culturally [00:35:00] important your not going to make inroads at all people will just shut down.
Peter Koch: That's a really great question. And when you were talking about culturally acceptable changes, I was thinking about my experience actually over in France a year or so ago and fresh, fresh bread everywhere. And could you imagine going into a particular company and talking about a diet that doesn't include bread? It just it wouldn't work. It just would not. People would not accept it, no matter if that was the best thing for them. They just wouldn't be able to do it because it's so culturally ingrained. And then the access, like some companies, if you wanting to start a health and wellness program. And part of that is information on diet and nutrition. Looking around at not just what you have available in your workplace, like [00:36:00] your vending machines, and if you have access to an employee cafeteria or a break room, what's available there? But if people go outside for their lunch break. What do they have access that's close. So if they have 45 minutes or a half an hour for lunch, What’s within walking distance.? Is it going to be the fast food pizza this? So you need to look where people are accessing their food when they're at work and they might be bringing it with them. So how do you help them make a good meal at home to bring with them at for their lunch break as well or where any of their breaks? So that identification of your cultural and your access to food it's a really key part. And I think that's where some of the health and wellness falls apart, you can provide some information education. But it only goes so far if the employee doesn't feel they have access or the ability to make the change because of expense or culture [00:37:00] reasons.
Dr. Delia Roberts: So there are some specific incidences that I can share with you that we can come back to. But I would like to sort of capture this by saying that when you look at the health and wellness studies and now there's a huge body of science where there have been thousands of groups that have looked at implementing health and wellness programs and what works and what doesn't work. And when you look at them, there's a huge range of outcomes. So some of them fall flat on their faces and organizations have spent a lot of money and had no positive outcome. And in other cases you see very, very positive gains. So the return on investment can be as high as six to one because of lowered injury costs, lowered health care costs [00:38:00] and improve productivity. So these studies, which pool all of this information together and dissect what really makes a difference in terms of having a successful program. Come back again and again to four key points. And the first point is that the program has to be relevant. So it has to solve the problem that that particular group has. And I would emphasize again, and unless you know what the problem is, you can't provide people with a solution that's going to address their problem. The second point is that the organization has to be behind the program. So, as you said, you can't just offer a health and wellness program. Here's an address to something online or here's a pamphlet that you can use and information because that only is in [00:39:00]the field of view for a few seconds. You have to stick with it. And management has to find a way to make it important to the people who are engaged in the program. So that's incentive for the workers, but accountability for the supervisors at all levels. You don't just hand it to one person on top of everything else that's on their desk. You actually have to invest in giving people the tools that they need to make it happen. The third piece is that you have to have effective communication and you have to expose your workers to it again and again and again. So not a one time thing, but rather you have to remind them all the time that this is important. And anyone who's ever tried to change behavior can understand where that point is coming from. And the final element [00:40:00] is that it needs to be ongoing. So there has to be support going into the program, evaluating what's working and what's not working, and then changing and re introducing or modifying and bringing new tools to the forefront. You have to keep on making it relevant as things change because the problem won't be a few years from now as it is now. So in my own personal experience with roughly 15 different programs that I've investigated to date, it seems to take about four years of repeat exposure before you really make that information intrinsic. And on the fourth year, all of a sudden, it's not this external program, but it's our program. It's what we do here at this site this [00:41:00] resort in this location. And the 10 year anniversary is interesting because this is the third program where on the tenth year we had a zero recordable incident year. So that's a pretty amazing place to get to for examples for tree planting when you think that it was a 20 percent injury rate to start.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's huge. Wow.
Dr. Delia Roberts: But it does take 10 years to get there. And I, I don't think that there are very many organizations that realize, though, when they implement a health and wellness program, that they're looking at a minimum of four years to truly be committed before they're really getting to see that turnaround.
Peter Koch: Yeah, I think you're right with that, with the companies that I work with specifically. And I think culturally, when we start to look at [00:42:00] the just the business culture in North America for sure, where it's not so much a program de jure, but we're going to try it if it doesn't seem to work within a short period of time. We're going to move on to something else that we think is going to work better. Instead of trying to look at like what you said, identify the problem, find a program that is going to respond to the problem and then stick with it for a long enough time to see the results. Because those four points that you made, the relevancy, the buy in of the organization, that's effective and pervasive communication to establish and continue behavioral change. And then it needs to be ongoing and not only evaluation. Those are all key parts to anything. But what we look at here with the wellness program, it's a long term cycle instead of maybe just a year cycle or a two [00:43:00] year cycle. Four years is a long time to put your money where your mouth is. But like you said it, six to one return potentially is enormous.
Dr. Delia Roberts: It is when it's done right. The payback is huge. Absolutely.
Peter Koch: So in your experience, where do you see the companies have the biggest challenge when they've identified the right or maybe they haven't identified the right problem, but they're looking to start an employee wellness program because they want to address some issues within their company on the employee side, where do they make the biggest mistakes or the most frequent mistake out of those four things that they don't do?
Dr. Delia Roberts: That's a great question. So to me, I think the biggest mistake is expecting an H.R. manager or a health and safety manager who is already fully occupied with [00:44:00] their existing job to run a health and wellness program. You can't do it because in order to do it properly. You have to engage in those activities on a daily basis. And you have to be involved with the supervisors at every level for them to have the resources to be able to make those changes. So that to me would be the answer there, that not having enough dedicated resources within the organization to make it happen. So my group can come on site periodically, but we can't be there every day. And the kinds of changes that need to be made, need to be made all the time. The message isn't something that is applied in specific circumstances on specific days. The message that you're trying [00:45:00] to send is that this culture of safety runs 24/7. And so you have to have the resources to be able to do that.
Peter Koch: That's great insight. And as you're talking, I'm thinking about, again, my experience with the clients that I work with. And I could bring up an idea and we'll talk about the implementation of the idea. And I'll explain that you have to have the resources behind it. And what they hear is I have to give this to my H.R. person or my safety person, and they'll be able to make it happen. And it falls flat because the safety person, like you said, or the H.R. person, or it could even be the supervisor that gets tasked with implementing this on top of everything else, like they aren't given any extra time. They're just given additional responsibility. And they'll focus on it for a little while and they'll try it. They'll get a program in place and [00:46:00] it will look good, but it will fall flat because they can't get back to touch it. They'll give it to that next level supervisor or the employees and the employees. Look at it go, this is great, but I need help. And help doesn't come and it doesn't get reinforced and it falls flat. So what a great lesson, I think, for employers to hear that putting that health and wellness program in together. You need to have not only the financial resources to do it. And there's really ways to make it affordable. But you have to have the human resources to make it successful.
Dr. Delia Roberts: Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that it's a question about training. So in any situation, in any organization, you need training time to make sure that the employee is able to do their job correctly and that training time pulls [00:47:00] away from production time. So there's always that balance between being able to provide enough training and cost to the organization and the time required to do that training. So unfortunately, you can have fairly large costs at the front end and then somehow expect that this hour in a classroom is going to have an impact on an employee six months later and it doesn't. Unfortunately, that training has to be ongoing and continuous.
Peter Koch: Yeah, for sure on that. For sure. And like you said, your employers might see a fairly sizable chunk of financial commitment right up front and then it will all get wasted if you don't put the time and resources into it for the long term. So going back to that first point that you made in those four items that are required. The [00:48:00] program has to be relevant. It has to solve the problem that the group has. And sometimes you're trying to put resources into a problem that either doesn't exist or it's not the actual problem. It might be an effect or as a result of a problem someplace else. So you identify the problem and make sure that you have resources to put into it. And then you will see an effect. You know, we've both worked with some companies that have had significantly reduced injury costs and have seen increased productivity in the groups that they've put through programs like this or have incorporated a health and wellness program within their company.
Dr. Delia Roberts: Yes. It's wonderful when you start to see those changes taking place.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it really is. It truly is. And then you get to go back. And I think for you too, being able to go back a [00:49:00] number of years after one of these programs have existed with a company and get to see some of the progress that they're making and struggles at first, too. But some of the progress that they get to make and the successes that they have, that must be very rewarding for your perspective.
Dr. Delia Roberts: It is Peter, and even more so, partly because where I live, it's a relatively small community, but this is actually happened to me elsewhere. So, for example, walking into a restaurant in Colorado and having the server say to me, I attended your training at a resort three years ago and it changed my life. And everything I do now is based on this ability to be healthy and stay fit and strong and make good decisions. And my family's health is better. So that's I think the other piece of it is that while [00:50:00] you touch people at work, you also reach their families. And when they leave that organization, they take those intrinsic changes with them. And that's probably the biggest joy for me is to be able to see that take place.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's fantastic. Oh, that that just must tickle your heart.
Dr. Delia Roberts: It's pretty fun when it happens.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Totally must. Just couple last questions here. What do you wish you had known when you started out? It's like you look back from where you are now to the programs that you started and some of the challenges that you had putting stuff together. What's one thing that you wish you would have known that you could have told an employer or an organization to help them be more successful?
Dr. Delia Roberts: So I have a friend who works in sales and marketing, and he runs a consulting company where he goes into an organization and helps them analyze [00:51:00] where they should be targeting their sales initiative. So where are they making big sales that are very profitable? And when he works with an organization, he will not take a contract unless the organization commits to meet his training requirements. And on the multi year level, and if there was one thing that I could do differently, it would be to structure my programs along that model, because that's where it fails, is when an organization tries it for six months and puts no resources behind it whatsoever and then it fails and they walk away from it. And it saddens my heart that organizations are willing to put those kinds of resources into sales and not into productivity and injury prevention. Because [00:52:00] one of the really interesting exercises, and I'm sure you recall, Peter, during the course that we did together, was where I asked you to choose an injury, which is the most common in one of the groups that you work with. And then to cost that injury out and then the final step once you know what the total cost is. So not just the medical costs, but the costs to productivity and interruption of work in replacing the worker and so on, but also looking at what it would take from the organization perspective in terms of their profit margins. So once I know this injury actually costs ten thousand dollars or one hundred thousand dollars, now I need to know how many hamburgers do I have to sell to get the one hundred thousand dollars back. And it's truly shocking for an organization to see that amount. So you can say [00:53:00] if I could increase my sales by X percent, my profit would go up. And people seem to do that or to be willing to do that. What they don't realize is that, for example, a sawmill has to run 28 days to make back one shoulder injury or a ski resort has to sell 15000 lift tickets to meet back injury. And that's where the translation falls apart. So that was a long answer to a relatively short question. But what I would say is that if I had a way to do things differently, I would insist on a four year commitment upfront. And I do try to do that. But, of course, an organization will look at a contract and say, didn't do anything this year. I'm canceling in the second year of a four year contract [00:54:00] or the first year before your contract.
Peter Koch: I think it's a great lesson, though, for anyone listening if they're thinking about health and wellness program. As part of their company is that it really needs to be there for the long term. It's not a one year wonder. When they look at the program, they should structure it such that they are going to, it's going to start at this time and we're going to re-evaluate at these times. But the success or failure isn't going to be six months, one year, two years, three years. But the success or failure identifier will be four years out because statistically, you've said that that's what it is. And I think that's a good lesson. Like, if you could have done that at the beginning and really worked that in maybe other companies would have found that model to be more successful for them or they wouldn't have struggled with it so much. So I think that's a great lesson [00:55:00]for people to think about, because it's not a manufacturing process. It's not a I can push the button and I get 50000 widgets out of this piece of equipment. If I do it this way and I can do it in six months or I can do it in a week. Once it's installed, this is really it's what you're talking about here is culture change with commitments. And what you're getting from it is increased productivity, decreased injuries, increased quality of the product that you get to put out there. And at the end of the day, you get decreased absenteeism, which keeps your workforce stable. So you talk about blood sugar needed to be stable if you keep your workforce stable. I mean, the same thing happens when your workforce fluctuates, when you don't have enough, when it dips down to low. Just like the person trying to make a decision about the deer jumping out in front of them on the highway, they're not going to be able to react nimbly enough to avoid it. And if your workforce is too low and there's another shock to [00:56:00] your supply chain or there is a shock to or you get a big order, you know, success. You know, we have another million dollars of work coming in or I got a group that's coming to my resort. But if my workforce is too low, we can't respond well enough to have a qualitative product and the chances of us having injuries are even greater. So the results can really be beneficial. But you've got to got to stick with it for the long term. Like you said it was a long answer to a short question, but it wasn't an easy question. And I think you gave a really, a really well qualified answer for that, for people to take away from that, too. That's fantastic. So is there anything that anything that I didn't ask that I should have that something else you'd like to impart to the listeners here before we close?
Dr. Delia Roberts: No, I think I think that pretty much covers it. I think the message is pretty clear that a worker [00:57:00] who is healthier, who is able to do their job in a positive light, is going to be a better worker no matter which perspective you look at it from. But it does require resources and support to help that worker stay healthy.
Peter Koch: And the data backs it up. Like, if you can do these things,
Dr. Delia Roberts: The data backs it up.
Peter Koch: Data backs it up. You're right. Thanks again, Delia, for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there today, we've been speaking about workplace health and wellness and its impact on safety, quality and productivity with Dr. Julia Roberts, president of Fit Safe Solutions on the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. If you have any questions for Dr. Roberts or like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, e-mail me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to resources on workplace wellness, as well as our entire podcast archive. While you're there, sign [00:58:00] up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our safety articles or news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher I, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, well, thank you, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC's Safety Experts Podcast is good, but using what you learned is even better.
Many of us haven’t heard of the term until the current novel coronavirus pandemic. However, this isn’t a new tool at all. Studies back in the early 2000’s and late 1900’s discuss physical distancing as one of the main community mitigation measures recommended during influenza pandemics. On this Episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Pete talks with Kevin Roche, CEO of EcoMaine a non-profit waste management organization serving a third of Maine’s population. Together, they explore the decision EcoMaine made to begin physical distancing early on in the novel coronavirus pandemic, what impacts it has had on their team and business plan, and leadership that made a difference.
Peter Koch: Hello listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. Some say absence makes the heart grow fonder. And while this may be true, in some cases, the current situation certainly calls for us to be separated. And I can say that physical distancing is making me more aware of what we lose when we can't be face to face. However, social or physical distancing is a reality now and a good tool to limit the spread of any disease in the workplace. And that's not a new phenomena. There have been studies showing that physical distancing is one of the community mitigation measures recommended by the CDC during any influenza pandemic. That said, many of us haven't even heard of the term until the current novel coronavirus pandemic. However, we have all participated in physical distancing in one form or another over the years. Some of us were kept at home from school and we got sick or stayed at home from work due to illness or decided not to go to an event because we were ill or the host canceled due to illness. All examples [00:01:00] of physical distancing, and if that was never your experience, I expect that you've decided to keep yourself distant from someone who is coughing or sneezing during cold and flu season. So regardless of how or why you did it, someone maybe even you made the decision to keep yourself distant from someone else in order to prevent the spread of germs. Well, I'm your host, Peter Kotch. And on the phone today with me is Kevin Roche, CEO of Ecomaine, a non-profit waste management organization serving a third of Maine's population and more than 70 member communities. Kevin and I are going to explore the decision that Ecomaine made to begin social distancing and what impacts that it has had on their team and the business plan. Kevin, welcome to the podcast today.
Kevin Roche: Thank you, Peter.
Peter Koch: Great. And it's really great to have you on the line and giving us some time today to talk about the decision that you made for physical distancing. And I think it's a very apropos topic for the time that we're in. But before we get into that, why don't you [00:02:00] tell me a little bit about yourself and an Ecomaine so that our listeners get a little bit more of an idea about what Ecomaine is and what they do.
Kevin Roche: Sure, Peter. I think our mission statement really describes us best, and that is Ecomaine provides comprehensive long term, solid waste solutions in a safe, environmentally responsible and economically sound manner and is a leader in raising public awareness of sustainable waste management strategies. So we have several facilities to help us manage the waste and recyclable materials that are collected from our member communities. And there's over 70 of those member communities, as you pointed out. So we have a recycling single salt recycling facility that processes all the recyclable materials boughs that material up and sends it off to market. And then we have a waste energy facility that takes in all of the non-recyclable waste burns. That waste generates steam, then generates power, electricity, and then we sell that electricity to [00:03:00] the grid. We also have a landfill to dispose of the ash from the waste energy facility. And we also have a food waste recovery program where we send it to an anaerobic digester for energy recovery of the food waste and then to support all of that infrastructure. We have an aggressive public relations and outreach program whereby we provide tours, classroom presentations, online education to our member communities so that we get really, really good compliance and participation from the residents and businesses in our communities.
Peter Koch: You got a lot going on there, it's more than just a place where you bring trash to, there's a bunch happening and I bet you the complexity of the systems to make sure that everything functions correctly and keeps going really requires quite a few people, quite a bit of technology to make it all happen, which [00:04:00] I think it can be pretty challenging to keep going, especially during times of crisis.
Kevin Roche: That's correct. And, you know, I’ve been in the industry for about 30 years. And, you know, when we were first faced with this crisis, the one thing that I knew was that we needed to continue offering these services to our member communities because we didn't want this crisis to lead to another health crisis whereby the trash would be backed up at our hospitals and our restaurants, at our medical facilities and even at our households. We knew we had to find a way to keep the trash moving out of the homes, out of the businesses, out of the hospitals and be processed in an environmentally and safe manner.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And I imagine that would have been a pretty challenging thing as you're watching the news and sort of seeing the world get smaller and smaller because the pandemic got larger and larger and [00:05:00] we were thinking about shutting businesses down. You were thinking, how do we keep this going? Because like you said, you never really think about trash as an essential business or trash collection as an essential business. But when it doesn't get picked up or it doesn't happen, whether it be on the day that it's supposed to happen or maybe for weeks, it can be a pretty significant not just inconvenience, but I think you hit the nail on the head. It can be a public health emergency as well. So that was great forward thinking on your part as you started to look at the potential impact that would be happening with the current crisis. So that was the prompting, I guess that Ecomaine needed to do something. But why did you choose the physical distancing as a policy to try to put into place?
Kevin Roche: Sure. So with the understanding that we needed to find a way to continue our operations through this crisis and [00:06:00] you know, at that time we had no idea how big this crisis was and how long it was going to last. But it appeared that it was here and it appeared that we you know, we needed to make some changes in the way we operated. So early on, you know, we started making calls. And, you know, when the city had their first crisis right there at city hall, you know, I spoke to the city manager, I spoke to the county. And I also spoke to the CDC. And my question to them is, look, you know, we're an essential service. We need to continue operations. What are the tools that we could employ to ensure that we can continue to operate during this crisis? And so they gave me, you know, all of those resources really gave me a whole laundry list of things that we could do. Some of them were things that I really couldn't employ here at Ecomaine because they [00:07:00] just you know, they really weren't either they didn't make sense for our operation or we were already doing those taking those measures. But the ones thing, it was almost at the end of a call kind of thing. One of those conversations was that, well, you know what you could do if you want to ensure that you can continue to operate and you didn't lose your entire staff because you had a positive test for the coronavirus. One of the things that you could do is you could practice physical distancing. And at that time, this was early on the physical distancing and the recommendation was three feet. Now, the CDC, you know, had had moved to six feet shortly thereafter and we adopted the six feet. But our first requirement was to keep all of our employees separated by three feet. And that went with, you know, our contractors and customers, too. And then what really was the game changer for us was [00:08:00] that we started documenting every one of those close encounters that were within three feet. And then, of course, as I mentioned, it went to six feet. So every single employee had to document write it down, report it. on this form that we had formatted every single six-foot close encounter that lasted for more than 10 seconds. And to me, that was the game changer for us because it did two things. It provided for self-awareness of the close encounter that every employee was experiencing throughout the workday. And then secondly, provided a way to Correct The issue so that these close encounter forms went to the supervisor and the supervisor and the manager discussed, OK, how can we eliminate those close encounters the next day? And so they came up with strategies to engineer ways to eliminate those close encounters. And then finally, [00:09:00] the final benefit is if we did have a positive test result, then we could go back and easily trace who's been exposed to who. So that we didn't lose the whole organization, that we could just quarantine those that had the exposure that, you know, require that quarantine to be employed.
Peter Koch: That's an all-encompassing plan that you have there. I do want to talk about the encounter tracking for sure, but I want to back you up just a little bit. And let's talk about the policy for physical distancing itself. How did you roll that out? Like how did that once you determine this had to happen, what did you need to do to make sure that you had proper knowledge within the workplace and that you had some buy-in? Because I can imagine that if you just put a couple of signs up there and put it in a memo and said, you guys, like you all got to stay three feet or more than three feet apart, that there would have been a lot of smiles and nods and it might not have happened the way you needed it to. But really, the stakes were pretty high here. [00:10:00] If you couldn't do this. You might not have been able to maintain business throughout the crisis. So how did you implement the policy to start with?
Kevin Roche: Right. And that's a key point. You know, this is 100 percent leadership, leadership, leadership. And I needed my managers and supervisors to buy into this going forward, because at that time, early on, you know, there were still you know, there's still a split out there as to how real and how serious this thing was. And so, you know, I what I asked for is, hey, look, we all have our opinions on where this is going, where this crisis is going, and really that the foundation behind this crisis. And I said, we're not here to argue about that. We're not the health experts. We manage waste and recyclable materials. That's our expertise. You know, what I told my team was that we need to listen to the health experts. They have told us that [00:11:00] physical distancing will be, should be a priority and will be the most effective way to reduce transmission of this disease. And so we had to accept that. We had to accept that advice from the health professionals, in particular from the CDC. And so that going forward, that kind of created or almost mandated buy-in the of the current circumstances and then how we were going to deal with those circumstances. So, you know, we laid out the requirements for physical distancing and it had to happen every day, every hour with every single employee, including myself. So I started filling out the forms, every single interaction. You know, I had to record. And that made again, that self awareness piece was so critical because it made me think about, OK, geez, you know, I came into this contact with this other employee. How can I reduce that next [00:12:00] time? And so, you know, habits are hard to break. And so the documentation forced the habit to change. And that's why the documentation behind this was so critical and making this effort successful. And so you can't let your guard down for one moment. So we started recording this information into a spreadsheet and then created the summary. And so I got to report each day that showed me how many close encounters we had and we started color coding them. You know, we had greens, yellows and reds. And the idea was to change the reds, those long duration close encounters and get them to yellow and get the yellows into the green category. And so the minute you let your guard down, you know that one person doesn't fill out their form and doesn't turn it in. Then you begin to lose participation and compliance, you [00:13:00] know, with this effort. So we haven't you know, we're a month into this. Now, we haven't let our guard down. We actually started this on the 18th of March, you know, so we're almost a month into this now. And each and every day we basically fill in the holes. And if there's any missing forms, we go out searching to make sure that every employee is filling out a form every single day.
Peter Koch: Well, it's a lot to take to take in and to take care of. So you were talking about color coding and obviously the greens were good yellows were for a shorter period time, but longer than you would want. And then the Reds. Were a longer period of time. How did you when you looked at the red ones that you wanted to manage? What was the process by which you went through to try to put something in place so that that wouldn't happen again? So you had an encounter that was closer than six feet and it lasted for quite a long time or a longer time that you wanted [00:14:00] it to be. What process did you go through to troubleshoot that and to put a plan in place for it.
Kevin Roche: So, you know, firstly, we asked the supervisors, OK, those areas that are coded in red, you know, find a solution to eliminate the reds and move them to yellows or even better yet, greens. And so that was kind of the first line of defense to find that corrective measure that would make that happen if they continued it then moved from the supervisory level to the managerial level. So then the managers would look at it and say, OK, we're not moving this red area to yellow. So they would look for ways to correct the situation. And then if that wasn't correcting itself, then it went to senior management and myself to determine, OK, what needs to be done, how can we fix this problem? And there were some situations where we found it very difficult to move [00:15:00] out of the red category. So we had to find another solution. And so in those areas, we were somewhat fortunate in that we already had met. Many of us, including myself, are already fitted annually for half face respirator. So we had a lot of the equipment that perhaps not everybody has so that if we had to operate within a certain area within that six feet for an extended period of time, we put the tools in place, the PPE, personal protective equipment to ensure the safety of our employees. And that included masks, that included Tyvek suits, that included goggles, everything, you know, that would be required as far as PPE goes to ensure the safety of our employees. But first and foremost, even before we got to that level, we wanted to find ways to keep our employees separated. And it was amazing that that really was the solution that usually could be found with thinking outside [00:16:00] of the box and finding a way to separate those employees.
Peter Koch: So that's a great tool Is engaging the supervisors to come up with the solution. Like you've identified that there's a problem you want that problem. You realize the gravity of the problem and the supervisors are bought in. And the tracking form, like you said, really helps with that awareness. And to identify that there is a challenge here, like we understand that there is a health problem going on. One of the solutions is physical distancing. Here's those places where we can't make physical distancing happen. So how long are they lasting? How often are they lasting? Great awareness tool and then engaging the supervisor to come up with an elimination or an engineering problem. And it's great that you didn't dive right into PPE as the solution that you actually looked at other ways to manage that first before you went to the PPE answer because PPE is not always the best. Like you said, you had to be fitted for the respirator. It's [00:17:00] got to work. It's got to be maintained. There's a lot of other challenges there and it sounds like your supervisors and managers were fairly successful in coming up with out of the box solutions to still get the job done, still maintain good productivity and workflow while keeping the encounters to a minimum.
Kevin Roche: That's right. That's right. And they did an excellent job because they were focused on. It was a priority it is our number one priority. So, you know, they really had that keen focus. And this element, what they were able to do is they were able to look at the lines. You know, we have these sorting lines where we sort a lot of the material that's coming in and separate those employees by at least, again, six feet. some of the problem areas actually were the lunch room and the locker room. And so simply by staging lunches and moving people around [00:18:00] a little bit and changing the punching in and punching out so that people weren't lined up at the time clock, those kind of things were simple solutions to keep people apart. One of the other things that we have done is we've provided for a company sponsored lunch so that employees weren't having to leave for lunch and go to the store to get their lunch or go to the convenience store to get their lunch or, you know, early on when restaurants were still open. You know, go to one of the restaurants or takeout. They could stay right on site, but still they would take a box lunch, staying six feet apart and then take that lunch to their own space. Whether it was their own car was whether it was a picnic table that was outside on the warmer days anyway, or that that space in the cafeteria that we kept people six feet apart or maybe their own office. So that was an easy solution in that coming together at the beginning and [00:19:00] the ending of the day and the lunch period, the lunch breaks. Those were some of the problem spots that we had to change the way we normally did business.
Peter Koch: And those were identified, those problem spots were identified through the tracking form is that how they were really identified that this would be a problem spot for you.
Kevin Roche: Yes. They really were you know, people don't think about the locker room, you know, and you practice physical distancing all day long and then you're coming together and you're changing your boots, you know, in order to go home. And you're sitting three feet away from, you know, your co-worker. So, you know, yeah, those areas kind of came up on the tracking form and enabled us to formulate ways to mitigate that.
Peter Koch: It's just another way that that tracking form really helped it didn't just identify where were the areas on the work line were, but some of those places where you wouldn't actually think of or you might not think of until it's too late. Because if you hadn't [00:20:00] identified those right off, those would have been the places where you probably would have had some sort of transmission and you might have lost the whole plant if you hadn't identify those areas.
Kevin Roche: That's correct. Yep. And I've shared this with a lot of colleagues and friends. And it only works if somebody is looking at the data every single day and responding to that data and filling in the holes. You know, those forms that aren't turned in, if you let this self manage, it doesn't work because the minute somebody thinks that nobody's really, you know, taking this serious or really responding to the issues that are raised, you know, I think you lose. You know, you lose your base. So the only way that this works is if you're committed to it. You review it every single day and you respond on a daily basis.
Peter Koch: And I know you touched on this earlier, but can you talk a little bit more about the specifics of how [00:21:00] you reviewed the data, like who reviews it? What's the process for response? How do you manage those areas that you deem to be challenged?
Kevin Roche: Well, because we have so many eyes looking at these close contact form, six-foot close encounter forms, starting with the supervisor and then going to the manager and then going to senior leadership, including myself. We have a lot of areas that, you know, corrections are being made and, you know, we're asking the questions. OK. You know, if there's some reds there, what was done? And, you know, it wasn't acceptable. The status quo was not acceptable. And like you point out, throwing PPE at it is, you know, may or may not be the best solution. And so it's really important to have all supervisory staff on board. And your middle managers as well as your senior managers [00:22:00] on board with this so that everybody is working as a team to correct the situation. And then everybody in the organization knows that this is a priority for everyone and that's when everybody begins to buy in and takes it seriously. And then, you know, again, you can't let a great day go by where you miss, you know this Information you don't pay attention to these data points that you're collecting because, you know, again, if you're not responding to your problem areas, then you're really not giving this a fair shot.
Peter Koch: Right. And responding appropriately, I keep going back to that. The PPE example, and I just had this vision in your head when you're talking about PPE again. If PPE was the solution that you threw at the lunchroom or the brake area, that would be just a weird experience to go into the break room where everyone had to wear their PPE to eat, to be with each other. And that would that'd be the solution? Right. So if that was the that was the solution that you came up with to manage the close encounters [00:23:00] in the break room or the locker room, it just wouldn't function. So thinking out of the box sometimes and looking at it from a how do I eliminate it? How do I engineer it. What are the administrative controls that can be in place to help me here before we put PPE in place? I think that's an important lesson for people to learn with this, because many times when you think about what's been in the news, we've been talking about masks. I think for the last four weeks here. And are they functional for the public? Are they functional for workers? We know they're functional for healthcare workers. But why are they functional? How are they functional? So there's a lot of questions about how effective PPE can really be. And I think the thing to consider is that PPE, it still puts you in the line of exposure, the hazards still there, the exposure is still there. And what you're trying to do is trying to eliminate that exposure or at least engineer or administrate the potential [00:24:00] for exposure there. So good lesson to learn and really nice to see that you're thinking so far outside the box, providing box lunches to keeping people away, changing the sorting line, changing different how brakes are taken and probably how some shifts are managed within the facility too.
Kevin Roche: That's right. Yep.
Peter Koch: Nice. What other things did you have to put in place to make this successful? Because it certainly here's the encounter piece. Like we're trying to keep people away. But then people leave. They go home. They go to they need to do the things that they've been doing at home. At home. How did you manage sick employees? Did you mind talking about that a little bit?
Kevin Roche: Sure. Another measure that we put in place early on was that we provided an additional 40 hours of sick time to all employees to ensure that sick employees stayed home or, [00:25:00] you know, employees that were having issues, you know, would stay away from the workplace because we knew we had to keep our workplace healthy and we needed that healthy base to keep our operations going. And so more than ever, we couldn't have people who were obviously exposed to the coronavirus at the workplace or people who were, you know, had a bad cold or even a mild cold here at the workplace, because we really want to ensure that we stayed healthy so that 40 hours allowed us to encourage people to stay home. They were sick and also allowed us to send people home that appeared to be sick. And so, you know, every workplace has those people who come to work, no matter what. You know, they are just so dedicated. It doesn't matter if they're sick or if they got a cold or if they had a flu. They show up every hour of every day. [00:26:00] So this allowed us to send some of those people who were obviously ill home and then keep them home until they had recovered. What this also allowed us to do is people early on who were traveling, you know, we didn't know, you know, this whole thing. I believe it started from travel. And so people who had been traveling were on vacation or dealing with loved ones or whatever they were doing when they returned. This allowed us to keep those people at home and quarantine them until we knew that it was safe for them to come back to work. So everybody in this also kind of served as an equity issue because everybody received it. So that allowed the healthy employees to keep coming back to work. And it also allowed the people who were not healthy or were sick to take care of themselves or take care of their dependents and not return until they were ready. So that was one other [00:27:00] measure that we took that I think was quite effective. And then, of course, you know, we did what just about every other workplace did as we looked at who could work from home and provided accommodations for that to happen. Unfortunately, when we looked at that in the industry that we are in, we couldn't send the garbage home and we couldn't send the recycling home. So a lot of our work had to be done here at our facilities. But there were some people who definitely could do their work from home and those we did we sent those folks home to do their work.
Kevin Roche: So that's great another strategic way to look at the business and to determine. So if this business is truly essential and we're all behind this and we're providing a service, if this business goes down, we're going to affect more than just the people who are working for us. It's going to be a broader impact. So we need to put some things in place and looking at it strategically. So who can work from [00:28:00] home? When did they do that? And who can't work from home? And then how do we protect them here and the additional 40 hours of sick time? It is a great way to help people feel comfortable to stay home when they feel ill so that they can contribute to the success of the company in that way. So again, great way of thinking outside the box to try to ensure the health and safety of the workers who are here. Let me ask you this. Kevin, do you see any of these practices, whether it's physical distancing or whether it is the box lunch policy or any of that? You see it occurring again at some point in time. We are going to get on the backside of this at some point in time and the virus will be contained and controlled and we'll have a more normal workplace. But do you see any of your policies and procedures being able to be implemented again in the future, or is this just a one time one and done? We're not going to have to deal with this again.
Kevin Roche: Yeah. No. This [00:29:00] you know, this experience has been enlightening for me. And the way I manage and, you know, really gives you a better pathway forward and can allow us to react even more quickly next time. You know, we you know, we didn't have this blueprint in front of us. And you know, that first two weeks I mean, this became my full time focus and to some extent it still is. But, you know, it was you know, I was calling, you know, everybody I possibly could to see what we needed to do. And, you know, one of the, I think, real benefits or opportunities that I had was, you know, I could not do this myself. I needed everybody to come on board with this. And I needed that buy-in. I had an opportunity. Dr. Shah was on main calling and, you know, the CDC early on. Well, you know, I think probably was overwhelmed with the number of calls and inquiries [00:30:00] that they were getting and the concerns that they were getting. And so I had the opportunity to call in, talk to Dr. Shah about the provisions and the measures that we were taking. And I actually asked him the question. I said, you know, the one thing that's missing for me is we're doing You know, we're documenting every single close encounter at the recommendation of the county and the CDC. But what's the duration of these six foot close encounters? I mean, are we talking seconds if you pass somebody by in the hallway? Is that what I should be concerned with? And what about surfaces? You know, there's a lot of issues out there with touching surfaces. And, you know, his response to that was really reassuring. And we recorded that segment so that I could convince my employees that this is the top health expert in the state. And he had one of his comments was that that our measures were exemplary. Those [00:31:00] are his words in containing, you know, this issue that we were faced with. And in the workplace. And so that really, I think was convincing to a lot of our workers here that, you know, we had, you know, the top health expert in the state really signing off on some of the measures that were taking place. Was it perfect? No. Did it take some time to roll out? Yes. Did it take some time to change habits? Yes. But, you know, over the last month, we're still operating. We have a healthy workforce and we've lost very few people due to sickness.
Peter Koch: That's great. And it's really good to be able to have well, to have your plan reviewed like that and have had the top health expert give you those marks. That's fantastic and great, great opportunity for buy-in for your staff. But I think also what it does it highlights something you said early on is you didn't do this on [00:32:00] your own. You reached out right away. As soon as you felt that you needed to take action and weren't sure who, who did you reach out to? You said you reached out to the city, to the county, to the Maine CDC to determine what steps do I need to take, what's out there? Because, again, you're not the expert in epidemiology. You are an expert, Your companies an expert in solid waste removal and recycling. So who's out there to help? And I think that's a good lesson that don't wait. Reach out. Reach out to your state and local governments to see what resources are out there. Don't try to make decisions in a vacuum. Try to get information so that you can put a good plan in place. And it shows in the results that you've had, you've seen some success with your physical distancing program that you've had in place, which is fantastic.
Kevin Roche: Yes. Yes, and I really appreciated the resources that took the time. [00:33:00] One that I didn't mention was the Cumberland County Emergency Management Agency. You know, the time that they took with us to put these procedures and policies in place, you know, without their advice, you know, we wouldn't be where we're at today.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And you said early on, too, that you were provided with a whole slew of resources. but some of them you had to evaluate each of them. And were you able to implement this particular solution or this particular process in order to make this work? And you had to evaluate it based on your business. But when you found ones that you could implement, you did implement those. And that again, that's a good lesson too when you start to look at it, look at the resources that you have. Evaluate it based on your business and determine which ones will be most effective and which ones will be appropriate for the business that you're in. [00:34:00]Because some would be very effective, but some aren't going to allow you to maintain a certain level of production that you need to, to meet the demand.
Kevin Roche: That's correct. And you know, one of the simple things that everybody, you know, I think has been doing is, you know, wiping down surfaces. And we made that a requirement for each and every employee. So, you know, when you touched a doorknob, you know, you needed to wipe it off. You know, before and after for the next person, early on when we were still having some meetings, you know, when you sat down at the conference table, you wipe down the area before and after. Now, we've since then moved off of those meetings, you know, that was when we could still have meetings early on. We've turned to obviously Zoom for just about every meeting that we have now. But you know that buy-in alone, you know, seeing each and every employee, no matter if it was a manager or the general manager, all the way down to every single worker in the organization, having [00:35:00] to pay attention to those surfaces again was, I think, a teaching environment for taking this as seriously as we did.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it's great. And it really again, a way to reinforce and help people understand the importance of it so that if someone noticed that a surface or a doorknob or a high touch area wasn't wiped down, that I can imagine in that environment, someone would have said something and someone would have told the person that hey, remember, that's got to get done. And just another way to help reinforce the importance of the process that you have in place.
Kevin Roche: That's exactly right.
Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about how a lot of businesses don't just have an ecosystem where it's just their employees. You have a business that you're going to have contractors come in, you're going to have delivery people come in and your ecosystem that you can typically control with your staff. Now, has people from the outside coming in. How [00:36:00] does your physical distancing policy and all the policies you've put in place for the current situation, how does it affect the contractors that come in and work with Ecomaine?
Kevin Roche: Yeah, that's a great point, because what we found was that some contractors were ahead of this and some contractors were way behind. And so, you know, anybody who was working for us, we actually had to go into an outage, our annual outage we evaluated that occurred during the last month and we evaluated whether we could suspend the outage. We could defer some parts of the outage. But by and large, we needed to maintain our equipment if we were going to continue to operate. And that required us to make the necessary repairs and upgrades to our equipment in order to keep our employees safe and continue to operate. So we made the decision. [00:37:00] There were a few things that we could suspend, you know, to the fall or late summer or early fall. But there were some items that we couldn't spend or delay those repairs. And so we had, you know, almost 200 contractors having to come into our facilities and assist us with making these repairs. So, again, we had an orchestrated effort to make sure that our contractors knew what our procedures were in dealing with COVID 19 and making it safe for their workers and our workers and minimizing any opportunity for exposure. And so that worked out fairly well. But follow up was really what was key. And we would have contractors come in and, you know, they'd be kind of coming into the front door here and huddled together and, you know, without any form of PPE or masks and things like that. And, you know, we kind of caught them at the front door and say, Hey, [00:38:00] hey, wait a minute. Didn't you get the memo? And so, you know, before we would even allow them into the facilities, we made sure that they understood the procedures and policies that we had to put into place to deal with these very important measures. And that took some education, no doubt about it. But, you know, I think that because we required it, it wasn't an option and because we had follow through. You know, I had a lot of people focus on safety during this outage. They would make their rounds and really enforce the six foot distancing procedures that were in place and enforce the wipe down of all surfaces that were touched and then enforce the requirement of PPE. But much it was a higher challenge than our own employees because our own employees were you know, it [00:39:00] already had become habit for them. And so we had been doing it for two weeks. So when the contractor started coming in, certainly it was we kind of had to renew our efforts.
Peter Koch: Did you have to reinvent or make changes to some of the normal processes during that outage? Like if you had a plan for a lockout tag out or for maintenance of a particular machine where in months past people would work shoulder to shoulder with each other to get this done? Did you have to go through and maybe change some job hazard analysis or procedures to get the maintenance done, to be able to meet the physical distancing policies that you had?
Kevin Roche: Yes. And we actually we did that right through. You know, the JSA's in and looking at each job and how to keep each job safe. You know, we orchestrated that effort. And one of the things we did find was, [00:40:00] you know, one of the biggest challenges was communication. So you're trying to fix a piece of equipment. It's a loud environment and you're getting closer and closer in order to communicate and share ideas and share solutions. And normally, you know, you would look at that as, you know, a good thing. You know, a good solution are people are communicating so well. But in this circumstance, it wasn't, you know, really working with the new policies and procedures we put into place. So, you know, for that example, we, you know, encourage our employees, you know, if you need to talk and communicate, leave the area that you're going to have to be so close to communicate and go to an area that you're going to be able to hear each other from a minimum of six feet apart. You know that that's an example of one of the common you know what we talked about those red high exposure [00:41:00] areas that were showing up on the 6 foot close encounter forms that we had to correct. And that worked, you know, that really got people away from the work area that they had to be so close to communicate in and allowed them to have that conversation from six feet apart.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it's a great example of giving permission to do something different and still maintain the importance of both the current situation practices and the maintenance that has to be done. Typically, people like you said that it's good. I'm close to the person that I'm working with and we're going to communicate about this and get this done in the most efficient and safe means possible where, you know, the new policy gives them more and implementation of the policy gives them permission to move to a different area. And it's not that they're leaving the job. It's not that they're doing something wrong. They're thinking outside the box. They need to communicate. They can't do it in front of the [00:42:00] machine. They've got to do it in a place where they can hear each other from six feet away. Great thought about that. Again, thinking outside the box.
Kevin Roche: And you know that 10 seconds, the advice that we got from Dr. Shah, you know that 10 seconds allowed for people to pass each other in the hallway, stairwell, you know, things like that, you know, going through a doorway. And, you know, his focus was, you know, it's those interactions that have some level of duration. And, you know, he felt like the ten second rule was, you know, going above and beyond where you needed to go, but certainly would provide for a certain level of awareness to reduce those close encounters, if at all possible.
Peter Koch: Sure. And still allowing for people to work in the same space with each other. it's a great way to the. Some relevance to it and meaning to it. So a couple of questions as we flesh this out here. I'm going to throw this one out yet. [00:43:00] I'm not sure I talked to you about this before, but what do you wish that you had known before the decision to implement physical distancing that you know, now,.
Kevin Roche: You know, that physical distancing was a tool that worked? We did physical distancing early on. But even, you know, even myself, even when I created the policy and the requirement, you know, I wasn't certain that physical distancing would make a huge difference. I was just listening to the health experts. And because I didn't know, I had to, I had to take her advice. And, you know, I wish I had known or better understood that from day one, because then, you know, I could have started this even sooner than we did. And I could have been, I guess, had more conviction and understanding of how well social distancing or physical distancing [00:44:00] actually will work.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a great point.
Kevin Roche: And now we're a month into this and we're all you know, everybody's saying the same thing. Is that physical distancing, you know, has worked and has limited, you know, exposure to the limits that we're seeing today?
Peter Koch: Sure, sure. And you talked about this a little earlier as well. And this is in reference back to the encounter checklist that you've had there and the encounter documentation when that was going on, that was the main way that you were documenting and holding people accountable for the encounters that they were having. How were you able to determine that your program was being successful in the middle of it using that checklist?
Kevin Roche: Well, you know, that's a good question, because we didn't have a track record and we were just beginning this. And, you know, I did get some pushback early on. You know, I'd get, you know, one of the things people would [00:45:00] say is, well, you know, this six foot thing, you know, this is being transmitted because people touching surfaces. This is being transmitted, You know, if I just go into somebody else's space five or 10 minutes later. But what the health experts were telling us was that the primary way of transmission. Yes. It can be transmitted a whole host of different ways. But the primary way was the person to person, you know, durations of close contact within six feet. And that was what we needed to focus on first and foremost, you know, getting people home. I guess this is the first thing. You know, keeping them at home, those that could be at home. But then, you know, for those people who had to be at work, you know, really limiting that and wiping down the surfaces, too. But no, there's no way that we can ensure that we're wiping down every single surface between every single touch. But that was not ever communicated [00:46:00] as the primary way that the coronavirus was being transmitted. And so the really, you know, we were focused on the best, the best return or the best value for, you know, the efforts that we were making. And that was that 6-foot social distancing or physical distancing that we employed as being the number one way that we could move forward. And so, you know, I found that, you know, we had to hear what the health experts were telling us. And we had to give it a try. And that did take some convincing early on. But, you know, I feel like now that we're a month into it, I no longer have to be the one who convinces people. I think it's you know, the track record has convinced each and everyone who works here.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And retrospectively looking at where you are now, the lagging indicator of a healthy workforce shows that the social distancing or the physical [00:47:00] distancing and the tracking has worked. And I think in the middle of it, as I think about another way that tracking tool can help the company overall is when you reach out to the experts, they tell you that this is the cause. And here is a way for you to prevent this from happening. You put that in place when you start looking at how the encounters start overall, start to get reduced. So I imagine right at the beginning, like you had said, you had quite a few of those encounters. And then as you start to look at the numbers, the number of red encounters, a number of yellow encounters started to decrease over time. And so you probably have the majority of them are green and some of them might still be yellow. And you're looking into those two to make changes. But. That's a great tool, data is an awesome tool to be able to look at as long as you've identified the problem and you're [00:48:00] implementing a solution to see in the moment whether or not you're making some progress because it can be pretty scary, especially when you don't really know what is going to happen looking back. We know what has happened, but looking forward, we're not really sure. So in the moment, using that data to show that you can be successful helps not only you as the CEO, but your executive team, the managers of the different departments and the supervisors and then the staff themselves to show that, hey, we are making a difference here. Right. We are truly making a difference. So the importance of that tracking tool I don't think you can speak to that enough in this whole process.
Kevin Roche: That's exactly right. And when we had had some illness issues, we had been able to go right back to the data, the actual data point, instead of relying on somebody's memory and who they have been exposed to over the last [00:49:00] two weeks. We can go back to the data and we can show, OK, these people, these two people were exposed to one another. They were exposed for 10 seconds or 30 seconds or no they were exposed for an hour. And then you can react to that with a good understanding of what the exposure actually was. Instead of trying to guess what happened two weeks ago.
Peter Koch: Sure. And I think that will probably provide some comfort to the individuals, not only at work, but even you at home when I go home. Hey, you know what? We know we had an illness here. But I can track I can go back and show that I was not I didn't have any contact with this particular individual. I can even go back two weeks and prove that I didn't have any contact with this individual or if I did, it was only for a few seconds and we should be good. So that's a it's a great [00:50:00] tool. The data can certainly help you guide the solution, come up with different processes and take some comfort that the solutions actually working. So awesome. Great with that.
Kevin Roche: Yeah. And I did get a call when we did have a positive test from the CDC when they were doing their investigation. You know, I kind of told them what measures we had in place. And, you know, their response was, well, awesome. You know, it appears that, you know, you've got this well managed and under control and you can determine who needs to quarantine and who doesn't.
Peter Koch: That's great. That's really another affirmation that the process is working. Now, going back, I know we talked about this already, so thinking about the contractor piece because again, that's an important part. Did you did you approach the contractors ahead of time and kind of give them a written copy of the policy as well as approach them when they came [00:51:00] to the facility to start work? You did both of those things, correct? To help them understand what process they would have to have in place.
Kevin Roche: We did. And, you know, we did verbally and in writing and sometimes more than, you know, once or twice to ensure that they were coming into an environment that, you know, was treating this crisis very seriously. But even with that, again, you know, as I mentioned before, you know, the seriousness of the of the actions that we were taking, I think, you know, sometimes, you know, maybe it didn't get down to the front line, maybe it did get to the frontline. But they weren't really in habit mode yet. And so, you know, we actually, I got some positive feedback from some of our contractors, you know, who kind of came to our facility and we're like, whoa, you know, you guys are really taking this seriously, aren't you? And so they had to kind of rethink the [00:52:00] way that they were operating. And so it really took, you know, a lot of emphasis when it came to contractors because they were coming at us at different levels of understanding and different levels of how serious they were taking these measures. But once, you know, once they were here, they really had, you know, no excuse. As far as not understanding the procedures and policies that we had set in place. And, you know, if they weren't willing to follow them, then they were asked to leave.
Peter Koch: That's a that's a really great point, because I can imagine that could really undermine all the efforts that you've put in place if you're allowing contractors to come in and not follow the same rules as your employees do. And the stakes are pretty high with this one all that work that you. Put in for the weeks prior to build those habits, to get buy-in, to get people to understand that they're all in this together, [00:53:00] to try to make this company successful and to stay healthy. That a contractor coming in and undo it and not following those procedures can have a significantly negative effect on the attitudes and the effect of your program. So that's a great point that you made there, Kevin.
Kevin Roche: And we did have an experience where a contractor who came in to do their work, you know, a week later, then notified us that he was tested positive. And then we had to go back through those close contact forms to find out who was exposed. So those close contact forms are not just utilized for employees, fellow employees, co-workers. They were also utilized for contractors. So if you did come in to close contact with and or have a close encounter with a contractor, you were required to document that as well.
Peter Koch: And [00:54:00] those were reviewed again at the supervisor level, at the manager level, if it could have been fixed. And then again, at your level, the executive team level, to make sure that solutions were put in place if it kept happening.
Kevin Roche: That's correct.
Peter Koch: Right on. Great. Well, we're coming right to the end of the podcast here today, and before we go, is there anything that I should have asked you about this? But I didn't. Is there anything else that you want to add to our conversation today?
Kevin Roche: You know, I think you covered just about all of it. The only thing that I would emphasize is the importance of the buy-in, the importance of leadership in this. And that's not just leadership from the Top Gun, whether it's the CEO or the general manager or the executive director. It has to be leadership from everybody on the team. Everybody in your employment, because everybody can take a leadership role when it comes to [00:55:00] keeping every single employee safe, including the front line. So the front line can be leaders in this in protecting their co-workers and protecting the contractors, really protecting everyone and how to stay safe and when they're faced with these circumstances, such as we've been faced with over the last month.
Peter Koch: That's a really interesting thought there. And as you were talking, what I thought of is you could really put any situation into that. It doesn't have to be response to a pandemic or coronavirus, but it could be lockout tag out. It could be machine guarding, it could be slips and falls. It could be another potential hazard that's there and leadership at all levels. Right. You said from the top all the way down to the line staff person, there has to be buy-in, there has to be leadership in order for those to be effective. And it's something that lacks in a lot of things. And [00:56:00] the items that you talked about today in order to make the solution for physical distancing really work. It's not just the paper that you have in place, but it is actually the leadership and the accountability. And you said it more than once. You can't let your guard down. So if you want to have a good response to a pandemic like this or you want to have a good response to a change in your lock out tag out program or another program that you have for employee safety, those are concepts that can be brought to any of those things. And they're really critical concepts that have to be implemented to be a successful company. And I appreciate you bringing that up because it really ties this all together. So. Thanks. Thanks very much for. For throwing that out there, because it's not only a great lesson, but it's a great example. So thank you for that.
Kevin Roche: Certainly.
Peter Koch: All right. Well, I think that about wraps up this safety experts podcast. I really [00:57:00] want to thank you for sharing your expertise with us, Kevin. Thanks very much.
Kevin Roche: Thanks, Peter. And look forward to joining you next time when you we're on the other side of the circumstances that we're faced with today.
Peter Koch: Yeah, me too. Hopefully we can have you back on and we can talk about something else a little lighter than the response to the pandemic. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to that as well.
Kevin Roche: OK.
Peter Koch: Excellent.
Kevin Roche: Thank you.
Peter Koch: Today we've been speaking about implementing a physical distancing in the workplace with Kevin Roche, CEO of Ecomaine , on the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. If you have any questions for Kevin or like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. Email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find our entire podcast archive as well as a link to our pandemic planning a resource page with workplace safety tools for keeping workers safe and healthy. While you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any [00:58:00] of our articles in safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, I-Tunes, or whichever podcast service you found us on. And if you've already done that. Thank you. Because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports in 2018 the goods and service producing industries had a hand injury incidence rate of 30.8 per ten thousand full time workers. And these are only the injuries that got reported. Think of all the times when you hit finger, got a paper cut, a splinter, or another small injury to you hand. That time, it might have hurt for a moment, but there is always the chance it could have been worse.
The human hand is one of the most delicate and dexterous instruments we have to interact with the world. With them we can feel the heartbeat of another person, create art and music, pick a flower, or grasp a tool, adjust a machine, and pick up stock. Without them or without full use of them, we lose a big part of our sense of touch and how we interact with everyday things. According to the stats, it’s at the workplace where our hands are most at risk.
If they are such an important part of our lives, why don’t we treat them with more care. In this episode, Pete explores what makes safety work using someone’s hands as the focus with Joe Geng, Vice President of Superior Glove and author of the book, “Rethinking Hand Safety: Myths, Truths, and Proven Practices”. It’s not a book that you would expect, it really is about how to rethink safety from the perspective of your hands, the pitfalls you will see on the way, and examples of how to move forward. Check it out on your favorite podcast platform or at www.memic.com/podcast.
Peter Koch: Hello listeners and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. Today, we're recording from the studios of Portland Pod. They have a full service podcast, recording and production studio right here in South Portland, Maine, and if you like this podcast and the way it sounds. Go ahead and get a hold of Tanner at PortlandPod.com. Today, we're taking an interesting look at hand safety through the eyes of Joe Geng, author of Rethinking Hand Safety and vice president of Superior Glove. Joe grew up among the tanneries of Canada, helping his father make gloves, and he has spent his entire life studying industry hand safety, doing glove R&D and consulting with leading companies like Toyota, Honda, Space-X, General Motors, Bombardier Aircraft and Shell Oil. The Geng family business Superior Glove is considered one of the world's most innovative glove manufacturers. Joe, welcome to the podcast today.
Joe Geng: My pleasure, Peter.
Peter Koch: Yeah. So it's really great to [00:01:00] have you here on the line. So I just want to kind of give you a little background here. When you first approached us to come onto the Safety Experts podcast, I thought, I'm not really sure about this we're really not about endorsing a particular safety product or service. And while it's important to innovate, at MEMIC, we believe that safety is not really about the newest tech or better piece of PPE. Then I read your book, Joe. And for our listeners, you might figure that a book on hand safety written by a glove guy would be just chock full of gruesome stories of mangled digits, missing limbs, stacks of regulations and requirements and endorsements to use a particular type of glove. Well, while they're stories, they focus the reader on the event chain. And while there are endorsements to use gloves, it's more about how and why to pick the proper one. There aren't any regulations in the book, and it's all about an exploration of what makes safety work using someone's hands as the focus. But what you describe [00:02:00] in the book can be applied everywhere, not just in your hands, but all over the place. It's not just a book that you would expect. It's really about how to rethink safety, using your hands and the pitfalls that we might see on the way and examples of how to move ahead. So, Joe, tell me about growing up in the glove industry and what inspired you to write this book?
Joe Geng: Sure so, yeah. I grew up in the business. My dad bought the business in 1961. And my brothers both worked in it. And then growing up kind of through high school and earlier on, I worked part time in the business and more or less every lunchtime and dinner conversation was shrouded by gloves. So I was kind of in your blood in a way that just by osmosis, I learned a lot whether I wanted to or not. And this whole community, it's kind of interesting. We're just in a small town outside of Toronto, and the town to its core is a glove and leather town. I remember being at a, just a funeral [00:03:00] for some older gentleman. And then outside there was a bunch of older guys talking. And you think like in most small towns, they'd be talking about how their high school was their football record or something like that. And these guys were talking about how many gloves they would make after school and how much money they would make in the different club shops growing up. You know, and there's just kind of it's really part of the town’s culture. So it's an interesting place to grow up. It's just a lot of history and glove history for a couple of hundred years kind of thing. So then what inspired us to write the book is we just deal with a lot of customers and factories and construction companies and even when we recommend the right gloves, we found that sometimes they're still struggling with hand injuries and we really didn't know what else to do other than recommend that they buy more gloves or more expensive gloves or something like that. So we thought we got to take a step back and look at what are the other things we can do to try to help those customers. And then writing a book we thought would be an interesting way to just create the discipline that we would have to go through. And if we're going to write a book about it, we have to learn about it. And so that we thought was a good process to go about getting a better understanding of how to help those customers.
Peter Koch: Well, it certainly shows reading through the book. You know, like I said initially, I was a little. Well, I didn't know what to expect, honestly. I've read a number of books on safety and some of it can be very regulation based and some it can be very specifically based on like behavioral based safety or metrics or something else. And you really did a really good job, I think, of journeying you or the reader through safety overall and really through the focus of your hands, which is your expertise. Like you said, it's in your blood. So it's a really interesting way to look at safety overall, but look at it specifically from the point of somebodies hands. And you made a point in the book right at the beginning to talk about sort of how you marvel at the hand itself and then what we take for granted. So in a past [00:05:00] life, we were talking just before about skiing. In a past life, I was as a full time paid ski patroller and we saw numerous injuries in some of the most challenging weren't always the worst. They were the hand injuries, the shoulder injuries. And I remember reading the book, what came to mind was a particular person, a grown man who we had just sent over to the clinic. He had an x ray and it had his hand set and casted after multiple digit fractures from a fall. And we were sitting and talking finishing up paperwork. And I just watched his face, go white and I'm like he's going to pass out. He must be in a lot of pain. We started talking to him and what his realization was. He wasn't going to be able to play piano at his daughter's wedding. And so just that piece about that fall, the injury on his hand, it changed a portion of his life that he was really looking forward to. So hands are a big deal. Hand safety is a big deal. And I [00:06:00] think you did a good, really good job at getting us to understand safety through that through focus. So tell me a little bit about the book. First, describe it first. If you had to describe this book to a safety manager and you describe three different types of companies and we could talk a little bit about that later. But in that third type of company, a company where that safety manager is working, he wants to get better at safety. And you think this would be a good book for him to read? How would you describe that book to him, how would you describe this book to him?
Joe Geng: Well, I think the short version of that would be just it's kind of a summary of the best practices that companies use to reduce hand injury. So we went in there, really, we had a blank slate. We didn't know anything about safety, we knew gloves, but that's about it. So we went in and just researched. We did a lot of academic research. And it was really surprising how much academic research there is about hand injury reduction. And then we interviewed dozens of safety managers that we've seen at companies that have reduced their hand injuries. [00:07:00] And then we talked to safety experts that work with those companies. And then the final piece is we just talked to our sales team because we have a field sales team that are around these customers all the time. And they had a lot of interesting and colorful stories that add a lot to it. And so when you kind of put that all together, it was okay, this is what we know or what we've uncovered as some of the best practices for reducing hand injuries.
Peter Koch: Right on. So you said you did a lot of research for the book. What sort of things did you learn as you went through the research and what was maybe surprising to you as you did that research?
Joe Geng: Yeah, there was a lot of surprising things. Some of them are odd and some are funny. I remember there was one academic study that that dug into the factors that led to the likelihood of hand injury in the construction industry and so they've done this really thorough study and there was all kinds of interesting factors that you would not have thought of. So they said, for example, being a smoker puts you had an increase odd of a hand injury and I’m [00:08:00] not really exactly sure why that is. Maybe if you're smoking on the job, you're not paying attention or something. Not having played sports as a youngster made you more likely to get injured overall. Oversleeping, under-sleeping and oversleeping were both factors that led to higher rates of injury, which I would not have anticipated that sleeping more. It was more than nine hours a night made you more likely to be get a hand injury and then time of day. So there was a higher frequencies at certain times of day. So it was like mid-morning on Monday I think was one of the most likely times to get injured. And then also kind of the things that you would, I guess, think that maybe like Friday before a long weekend, there was higher injury rates, things like that. So there's really when there was attention lapses. So that was just one study, right? There was a whole lot of interesting things uncovered from that, just that one study. But overall, yeah, there was interesting practices around behavior based safety. That were found to be very effective. And I mean, I can I can talk for a long time about all the interesting and weird stuff. [00:09:00] And another one that really stood out that was kind of funny in a sense was there was an oil drilling company in western Canada. And they rolled out a campaign where they gave all the drillers, they gave them a pair of pink gloves. And they trained them on hand safety and said, if you see one of your co-workers doing something unsafe for their hands, we want you to go up and give them the pair of pink gloves. And they have to wear that for the rest of the day. And then for every incident or a pair pink gloves that you guys give out, they'll donate $5 to breast cancer research. And that campaign was a lot of fun. They had a good time with it. And there was it was taken, you know, in the right spirit of reducing injuries. And they saw a huge reduction in hand injuries and it maintained their hand injuries. I mean, stayed low even after the campaign was over. So that was kind of one of those interesting studies where they're engaging in effective peer pressure to reduce injuries.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Right. And you had talked about gamification within your book as well. And that's one of those examples of trying to make safety almost competitive where because it comes [00:10:00] down to people together have the responsibility for each other's safety. So you've got to be paying attention. And if you know someone's watching, you're going to pay more attention. And that was, I thought that was really neat idea. And then tying it into the breast cancer donation really makes it almost fun. So it's not like I'm trying to get you. I'm watching. And if I do see it a I'm not just giving it to you because I want to show that you're doing something wrong. But the companies behind us in such a way that they're even going to donate money to a great cause. So fantastic way for that great example.
Joe Geng: Yeah. The more that a company is able to make everybody the safety manager as opposed to just having one person with that title and do it in a good spirited way, then that really multiplies the effect of the safety program.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Let's riff on that theme for just a minute so everyone being the safety manager, let's flip it around. Early on in the book, you talked about this concept of fatalism and how fatalism is immoral both at the management level [00:11:00] and at the worker level. So let's start there and talk about that for a little bit as kind of the start of the barrier to having the safety culture of everyone being the safety manager. So tell me a little bit about the concept of fatalism.
Joe Geng: Yeah. So the most interesting story that illustrates that point that we came across, it was really powerful story. It was from Alcoa, the steel manufacturer. And it was when they had a new CEO that came in, Paul O'Neill. And pretty early on in his tenure, there was a fatality. So a young guy, I think he was like 20 years old. He'd hopped over this barrier to unclog this production line and he unclogged it successfully. Then a boom came around and killed him instantly. And then so Paul O'Neill brought all his plant managers and safety managers in. And he said they were all grieving for the loss of this kid. But at the same time, it was like, well, that's really unfortunate. It's an unfortunate part of the workplace that it's dangerous. And Paul O'Neill took a step back and he said, no, that's not the right answer. The [00:12:00] right answer is everybody in this room killed this kid. You killed him. I killed him. We're responsible for his death. And they said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's going too far. It's not our fault that he did something stupid. And Paul O'Neill said, actually, yes, it is your fault and my fault that we didn't train him well enough. There's all kinds of steps we could have taken. And basically that it was our fault and that we can't take the attitude that. This is just a part of the workplace that needs to be fixed. So he had a hill to climb there, but he did change that culture from one that accepted injuries as a part a part of everyday life in an industrial setting to one where he said, no, we're going for zero. And then when he said that they were like, you are crazy, that's not possible. It's going to be financially too expensive to do that. And he just wouldn't take that as an answer. He said we're going for zero injuries.
Peter Koch: Yeah. That kind of leads into that safety attitude of the entire [00:13:00] company starting right at the top. Like if Paul hadn't said that as the CEO at Alcoa. I think someone would have said that, yeah, we're responsible. But if the top dog doesn't get behind it and doesn't realize that he has just as much responsibility for the injuries, whether it's a splinter or a fatality, he has just as much responsibility for those injuries as the supervisor, the manager, the director, the foreman or the brand new person who comes on. You'll never make a change. And that that's a great I mean, it's a truly unfortunate example that it has to happen sometimes. It has to happen that way for a company to realize how challenging the problem is. But in that case, he was able to turn it around. He had great success at Alcoa during his time there. So he was able to, as you said, climb that hill and really get beyond the fatalism [00:14:00] piece and making safety something that is culturally accepted, not just culturally acceptable, but something that everybody just does not something extra.
Joe Geng: And kind of further to your point on fatalism. A lot of times when you look at an accident that is seemingly random, but if you if you actually kind of brainstorm like what are the things we could have done to prevent this injury? And there's actually a lot that you really can do to minimize those options or the risk of that happening again, whether it's training or guards in place or when you sit down with a team and brainstorm, you can really come up with some interesting ideas and then there's a lot more that's under your control than maybe you would have thought otherwise.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And having actually having sat through those both in business prior to my working for Maine Employer's Mutual Insurance and now working for MEMIC sat through those meetings, they can be incredibly productive. When you sit and brainstorm what are all the potential [00:15:00] conclusions or causes that you find when you're going through a post-accident or post-incident analysis. But you've got to stick through them because the first time that you do it. Can you just imagine the conversations that happened after the next injury that happened at Alcoa after that? So they've just went through. Everybody's responsible. You're all responsible. Everybody's responsible. So now you sit down and of course, with responsibility comes accountability. And everybody's thinking, well, if I'm responsible am I going to get fired if I talk about this? So you really have to work through those cultural challenges of the barrier for people, to be honest with you, with those conversations, especially the post-accident conversations. But the fruit that it bears, if you can do that, is amazing. But you've got to stick with it totally you have to stick with it.
Joe Geng: Yeah. Yeah those kind of accidents and then also the like, the near misreporting that is really challenging for a lot of companies to get, to encourage honesty [00:16:00] in those situations. It can be really tough. What we see is a lot of companies that just kind of go through the motions, checking the boxes, but they're really not getting at the core and trying to find what those real issues are. They're kind of afraid of uncovering those problems.
Peter Koch: Yeah totally. So let's give a hand safety example where there's been a hand injury and it can be something small or can be something major that maybe you've seen or been involved with where you've actually helped the company sit down and go through that process to come to the conclusion of what caused the event to occur. Do you have any examples that you could share?
Joe Geng: Yeah, ok one example from the book and those kind of a startling example is one of our sales guys in Quebec. He went into pulp and paper mill and they just recently had a bad accident where a guy was holding a doctor Blade. So these heavy blades that they used for cutting rolls of paper and slipped and then cut [00:17:00] his belly and the safety manager product sales guy, and he said, OK, you're going to need these highly cut resistant gloves or you need to cut resistant aprons. We're going to cut resistant pants all this sort of stuff. And the sales manager just took a step back and said. Or the sales guy said, why is this guy walking around the plant with a blade in his hands? Why don't you just build a cart out of plywood or box out of plywood? Put the blade in there, put it on a cart and you eliminate that hazard altogether. And that's something the safety manager should have known and taken that step back. But it took somebody from the outside looking at the problem and thinking about it a little bit of a different way. So That's the kind of thing where ok you're jumping to a solution. But maybe you need to kind of uncover what are the other possible solutions to that issue that are much more effective and much less costly.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a great actually lead in to talking a little bit about the hierarchy of controls, which you discussed [00:18:00] in your book there fairly extensively. So I'm going to just I'm going to describe it for a second. But you had two amendments to that, which I think are pretty important. So, of course, there is elimination at the Top and the suggestion of personal protective equipment that the supervisor gave in that particular or the safety manager gave in that case that you described, would have helped a little, but would might not have prevented the event from occurring again. So the cart eliminates the need to carry. So that's the best solution. And then you've got substitution, engineering, administrative controls. And then finally, at the end of this is personal protective equipment. And I thought it was really interesting that your sales guy. Right. So that the glove guy who's going in to sell more personal protective equipment provides the solution of elimination. So and a much better solution overall. So you provided two amendments to that hierarchy of controls. Can you describe what those two amendments are and how they fit into the safety [00:19:00] culture philosophy you have?
Joe Geng: So I think when a company is trying to reduce injuries like hand injuries specifically or injuries overall like that, the first thing you want to do is that hierarchy of safety controls. That's the most effective thing for sure. And but it shouldn't stop there. And so there's lots of other things that can be done. So for example, behavior based safety, which in some safety circles has gotten a bad rep, but it's actually very effective when done properly is where you're looking at the behaviors that that people do. Recording this behaviors, reporting how often they happen and then working to eliminate them and where it's gotten a bad rap. So we've seen some stuff from some unions and things like that where companies are using behavior based safety instead of using the hierarchy of safety controls. And they call it blame the worker safety. But done properly and done with workers is actually a very effective way of reducing injury. So an example that I give just from one of the workplaces that we saw using this is they were doing a job where they had box cutters at a table and they were cutting some [00:20:00] product, they're kind of like trimming the product. And when they looked at where their injuries were coming from, a lot of the hand injuries coming from just somebody grabbing the knife or putting their hand on the table by accident and then getting cut on an open box cutter. And then so all they did was they created sheets for the box cutters to be put away. And then they had somebody in the workplace just one day a week. They would take 10 minutes and record how many box cutters were left open and then they put a chart up. And then they said, OK. This is how many we're seeing in a week, what can we do to eliminate that? And then every week they would have that person recording. OK. Now there's sort of ten this week, there's five this week and then the following week there's two. And they were really able to reduce those injuries. And then when you kind of multiply that across all the different injuries you're seeing, that's when you see some really good injury reduction. So in addition to that hierarchy of safety controls, behavior based safety is very effective as well as basically anything at your disposal that you can add to that. And the way we look at is like. Ok. It's like if you're getting in a car, you're not going to say, OK, I'm in a safe car and I'm driving on a good highway, [00:21:00] I don't have to buckle up my seat belt. You're going to buckle your seatbelt. You can do everything that you can to try to be safe. So anything you can add to that mix that helps reduce those injuries. Definitely use that. And then the no broken windows. That was from a New York City Police is where they took the attitude to try to clean up the city and to not look past the little crimes. And then they found that when they did that, the major crimes like murder were dramatically reduced. So it's kind of this odd thing, like we're going to stop the jaywalker and then in the end, that's going to result in a reduction of murders or serious crimes. But it was very effective. So this same kind of principle applies a workplace if you overlook the little things and then those bigger accidents tend to happen. So it's kind of paying attention to the small details and having a tidy workplace in addition to that. Housekeeping can be surprisingly effective injury reduction as well.
Peter Koch: Oh, totally. I completely agree with that. I go [00:22:00] back to my grandfather when he was alive and he was a school teacher and he was a woodworker. And in the basement was his shop. And when I was younger, he died when I was eight. So when I was very young, I would go down into the basement. And when he wasn't there, well, when he was there, I would watch him work and he would make furniture and tables and things for my grandmother. But when he wasn't there, I would go take tools off his bench in the workshop and I would play with them. And of course, then I'd get distracted and I wouldn't put it away. Well, of course, when he walked down to the shop, he knew because every tool had a place. Once I figured out that he could look at the workbench and know if anything was missing because every tool had its place. I realize that if I took it off, I had to put it back because there was a gap. There was a hole. Something was missing so that no broken windows is a I think a really great thought process to help you to ensure that safe [00:23:00] culture throughout the workplace. So watch pay attention, have a process, make sure that the little things are taken care of. And I almost think that goes to your description of right at the beginning of the book, which really caught my attention of the three different types of companies that you'll walk into or work with. Can you describe those three companies and kind of how that no broken windows kind of fits into this description of those three companies?
Joe Geng: Sure. Yeah. So the first kind of company is those companies that have a great safety culture. And you just know when you walk into a place like that, it's typically brightly lit, the floor is clean. And just like you said, every tool has a place and you just get a sense of order when you walk in. And it reflects on the people's attitudes. You know, that people are engaging, they're not suspicious, that sort of thing, because they know that management has their best interests at heart. And so you just walk in and you kind of know right away what the safety culture is without even having to do very much investigation. Then [00:24:00] the third kind of company is those companies where it's more or less the opposite. So things are dimly lit. It's grimy. And I mean, that's relative, right? Like some industries are just like you're not going to go to an oil company that's going to be spotless or something. But you get a sense of that there's order. So those places there's that lack of order things are lying about unnecessarily. And then typically they're using the wrong personal protective equipment as well, they're using the cheapest thing that they could get away with.
Peter Koch: Or none, right? Yeah.
Joe Geng: Or often none. Yeah. Or it's not worn or something like that. And then there's those companies that are kind of in the middle that they're struggling between the two. They're trying to get to be the first. But maybe they have a history of some of the behaviors of the third type. And so it's sort of a spectrum, I guess.
Peter Koch: That concept of no broken windows, you look at that best type of company and there are no broken windows, or if there is a broken window, it's identified and it's corrected. Right off the bat.
Peter Koch: Let's hit pause for a moment. To take a quick break to [00:25:00] consider how hand safety can be an indicator of your workplace safety culture. Look around your workplace or if you're not there, think about it. What are the jobs that put hands in danger? What's the condition of the gloves that the workers are wearing or are they wearing any at all? If you needed to get a pair of gloves from a supervisor, would you be supported or questioned for needing them? Do you see some indicators that there could be some gaps in your safety process? Well, in this podcast, Joe shares some interesting ways to see hands in your safety culture. Do you need some help figuring out how to move your safety culture ahead? Or maybe you got that wired, but you're looking for some different ways to assess your workplace for PPE. So check out the resources at MEMIC.com under the workplace safety tab where you can find free written resources. Our safety net blog and our podcast archive. And if you're a policyholder with MEMIC, you can log into the MEMIC safety director to dig deeper into the online resources that MEMIC has [00:26:00] to offer. Now let's get back to today's conversation.
Peter Koch: On the opposite side of the spectrum. There's broken windows everywhere. So there are things that could be fixed, but it becomes normative for the people working there. And they don't expect the change. They don't think there should be a change. They've tried to change, but they're not getting anywhere. So they've just they're at the fatalism place where injuries are going to happen. It's a dangerous job. We're not going to fix it. Let's just keep going until we can't anymore. And then that middle company where there's you're going to have broken windows, they identified that and they're trying to keep up with it and they're doing the best they can to manage it. But they might not have all of the answers or all the tools that they need. Like they might not know how to choose the right glove or the right PPE or eliminate the hazard because they just don't have the experience or they haven't [00:27:00] engaged the employee into that.
Joe Geng: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. To kind of reinforce that point. There was a study done at a shipyard and they engaged in this basically just to have a very thorough housekeeping process where every tool had a place. Previous to this, it was disorder and chaos. And then they did this where they tidied everything up, every tool had a place and created a much more orderly environment. And the safety manager was involved in that. They just estimated maybe a 10 percent reduction in injury because they attributed 10 percent of the injuries to like tripping on stuff and that kind of thing. But instead, they saw a 70 percent reduction in injury. So it was like a really effective safety program. Just by tidying up.
Peter Koch: Wow. Well, it's just from the housekeeping. Really focus on housekeeping. Everything has its place that they were able to realize a 70 percent reduction in injuries.
Joe Geng: Yeah, exactly. So can you imagine if you're applying, you know, effectively applying the hierarchy of safety controls, working on your safety culture, and then you [00:28:00] add a housekeeping program, you know, like you're kind of put all those things together and then you're going to see some pretty good results.
Peter Koch: Right. Yeah. And that talks about the sort of how when you start a program and you gain people's respect about the particular process that you're going to use. And they can engage in the program that it really will go beyond just housekeeping, because I would imagine that, yeah, if I'm going to not trip on stuff, we're going to have a 10 percent reduction. But in order to deal with all of the hand injuries and the injuries that are caused by not paying attention and the injuries that are caused by having to go walk 30, 40, 60 paces to go get something and then come back. Those causalities will be captured in the housekeeping piece because it's just going to it's going to translate from one place to another.
Joe Geng :Exactly. Yeah, surprisingly effective.
Peter Koch: Yeah. You also talked a little bit about this concept of what's normal and [00:29:00] trying to look at your business, your company as like you're going to look at it and you're going to understand that this is normal. But sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes or the safety manager to look at it with a fresh set of eyes to understand that things aren't normal. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Joe Geng: Sure. Yeah. So kind of goes back to that, the earlier point of fatality that or fatalism where you're thinking oh this is inevitable, but with a fresh set of eyes like what we've seen in a lot of companies, that they've dramatically reduced their hand injuries or basically eliminated them. So that's kind of the point we're trying to get across, is that you're having hand injuries. You don't have to accept that as an everyday reality, that with the right programs and tools in place, you can. You can go for zero injuries kind of thing. And so the challenge sometimes from the safety manager, is that if you have employees that have been there for a long time, they accept that, oh, I'm just going to get injured or the cuts and that kind of thing [00:30:00] that's part of working here, that to kind of overcome that, it can be challenging and then it can be also challenging if you have a lot of employees that are born in other countries. So if they're from Latin America or really anywhere else that doesn't have a great safety culture, that they will be more prone to engage in behaviors that are dangerous and then not bring up those things that said maybe somebody born in Canada or the US would consider as dangerous. When we talked to one safety manager at a construction company and had some workers that were from Syria and he had a tough time getting the wear PPE and do other things safely and they more or less told him. We're used to being, we're coming from a wartime environment and this construction spot is the safest place I've ever set foot in. So I think it's no big deal that I'm not wearing my hardhat. I'm used to being shot at. So like you have that extra step to overcome, right. That their attitude was all right. I'm fine. Everything's going to be OK.
Peter Koch: Right. And if he hadn't had that conversation with those workers, he might never have understood what the reason is. I mean, he probably told [00:31:00] them 100 times to put your hard hat on, but they keep forgetting because it's just not part of their culture. It's not they don't see it as a hazard or a danger. It's not like their normal is very different than his normal.
Joe Geng: Yeah. And even more like their outlook on the world was that from certain cultures was that this is in God's hand. So I don't really need to act safely because what will happen has already been predetermined by God where you're like Americans more than anybody. Let's take ownership from outcomes in my life and that kind of thing. But not everybody's grown up that way. So they really have to take a step back and look at our assumptions, right?
Peter Koch: Yeah, absolutely. And there's a phrase that you had in the book that I think sums it up pretty well. As a manager, you have a vital responsibility to get as far inside a worker's head as you can. And I think that story that you brought up highlights that really well, you've got to know where your employees are coming from. You got to know what their backgrounds are, at least in general. You might not need to know exactly [00:32:00] what they do when they leave the construction site. But to get an idea of what their normal is can really help you not just encourage, but teach and train them so that they can see a new normal.
Joe Geng: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's easier said than done too, right? Especially if you're meeting somebody from another culture that maybe their English is not perfect and then they might not be that open with their boss. That kind of thing. So as much as you can do it, that's great. But it's not always so easy.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And then you get some pushback certainly from managers and supervisors and safety managers like, oh no, I got this. These are all my people. I get it. No problem. You know, I used to do this a long time ago. These are my people. And really if you don't step back and take stock of what's really happening and look at the workplace and the activities and the behaviors with a fresh set of eyes, you're going to miss something. And when you miss something, you're really putting your workers at risk. Go [00:33:00] back to that example of in the paper mill where they just had an injury where a guy carrying a really heavy and a very sharp blade by hand from point A to point B cut himself. And then the solution is, well, we're going to have more PPE. Well, if we can look at it with a fresh set of eyes, we can look at it from a very different perspective. And sometimes that's getting the workers involved. Right. So I can't just do it by myself. I actually have to get the workers involved in it.
Joe Geng: Yeah, we spoke to a guy at the University of Colorado, Matthew Hollowell, and they've done an interesting study where they had safety managers kind of walk through workplace and safety managers who are trained only identified about forty five percent of hazards. So you mean they're missing 60 or so? Fifty five percent of hazards and missing more than half. And that's just are human nature, right? That if we walk through, we quickly see what we think is hazardous. But we really miss a lot. And so it's a challenge. How do you go from that forty five to trying to get to ninety [00:34:00] five or hundred percent? It's kind of bringing in that fresh set of eyes or a couple different sets of eyes, you know, not only for your own safety manager, but somebody on other workers or maybe somebody that's not in that environment at all, you know, or an outside safety consultant. The more you can do that and more of those hazards you're going to identify because they're just with our eyes. We're just going to we are really going to miss so much and overlook some of those things.
Peter Koch: Sure. Because we definitely come into this with some biases. Right. We're going to have cultural biases, will have different biases that will see the world through which we might end up turning a blind eye on to something. We might not recognize it as a hazard. So, yeah, a fresh set of eyes. And you do talk quite a bit about biases in the book. You have a whole section on that. Can you describe a little bit how bias can either help or hinder us as we assess the environment for hazards?
Joe Geng: Yeah, there's all kinds of biases that that affect our ability to objectively judge really anything. [00:35:00] So workplace or any other thing. So one example was there was a mine that had caved in on some workers and then they went back and looked at the like the pre-work analysis. And they said they had inspected the mine shaft and they said, everything's in order. Everything's in place. Everything's perfect. And then when they actually looked at it, I think it was like one hundred and twenty bolts were missing from this one structure. And so really, it was in bad shape, but they had checked it off as all the bolts are in place. So just in that case, you kind of have confirmation bias, you're going in with it assuming that everything's fine and then checking the boxes quite quickly then. To give you an example, if you have two drills or two like augers drilling into the ground and one is moving from our human nature, we'll judge the moving auger as dangerous. But then the reality if the other auger is stuck and not moving. That's the one that's building up energy and is about to blow up. And so there's like this potential energy that just from the way our human mind is structured is we see something that's not moving, we consider it [00:36:00] safe, when really that could be the thing that's much more dangerous. So we have a bias when we're doing hazard assessments to see some things as dangerous and other things as not. So like that kind of potential energy that's being built up like an electrical box that could blow up and kill you. It could be turned off and be totally safe. Or it could be about to let out an arc flash. But those are the kind of hazards that we don't typically identify because it doesn't from our mind. It doesn't look dangerous.
Peter Koch: Yeah. That's the reason why people put their hand in a snowblower. Right. Because it's the impeller get stuck because it's plugged up with snow. Nothing's moving. I'll be fine until they lose a finger doing it. Yeah, I totally get it. Yeah.
Joe Geng: Yeah. Embarrassing stories. I did that exact thing with a blender. So I was blending up food for my son who was quite young at the time. And I without thinking, just like there was a total lapse of thought. I put my finger into to unclog this blender and then cut my finger quite badly and had to go get stitches and [00:37:00] then come to work. And I can imagine the hard time you're given as a cut resistant glove expert who has a stitches.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Oh, my goodness.
Joe Geng: Yeah. But it's a couple of lapses in attention.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Absolutely. So there's so much in this book that we can talk about, and I really would like you to come back at some point in time and we can go into depth and some more of these subjects. But I do have one more question for part of the book, and it comes from the section that's titled For the Want of a Proper Glove. And you have a description of a proper glove, and I'm going to quote it here, "the proper glove is the one that meets the minimum requirements and that people will actually wear." So and you then you go through and you describe what that statement actually means. So can you take me through what that definition means? And maybe we can actually look at that not just as it applies to gloves, but as it applies to safety over [00:38:00] all.
Joe Geng: Sure. So what we see, a lot of safety managers making this mistake is that when they're specking a glove, they will over spec. So if they need a certain level of protection, they might go two or three levels higher than that just to make sure that no injuries happen. But what the downside of doing that is you're getting something that's less comfortable. So we advocate for really. I mean, you have to have something that's actually going to protect your hands. You don't want to wear nothing. But as long as you're meeting those protection requirements, that comfort really has to be a huge factor in glove selection, because comfort is what's going to mean somebody's wearing the glove or not wearing gloves. And where there are there are studies done by Liberty Mutual where they show that 70 percent of hand injuries are the result of people not wearing gloves in the workplace. So it's like the gloves are too cumbersome. They're taking them off to do some fine motor tasks. Then likely forgetting to put them back on, and then they're getting a hand injury. That's what we see a lot in the workplace. So that's where we really advocate for really choose comfort, get workers involved [00:39:00] in the selection to make sure that they can actually do the job wearing those gloves. So given the choice of over protection or erring on the side of comfort, we'd advocate for erring on the side of comfort. It's going to be compliance because the best glove is one that someone actually wears and not one that's going to sit in the tool chest or chest or somebodies back pocket.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a great thought process. So like it meets the minimum requirements. So if it's got to be cut resistant, it has to be able to resist, at least at a minimum, what the worker is going to be handling and that it's got to be it's got to fit well enough, be made of the right material and comfortable enough so that the people will be able to wear it to do the rest of their task. You had a couple of descriptions in there where, you know, you had a company that was working with metal all the time, but they had a touch screen that they had to use after they handled the metal. So what would happen they'd handled the metal? They take their gloves off to touch the touch screen and then they may or may not put the gloves back on to handle the metal. So [00:40:00] in the book you described that your company was actually able to come up with a solution so that they could have touch capacity through the glove with the fingers so that they could they didn't have to take the gloves off anymore. So, again, minimal requirement. So there's numerous examples in the book that you go through that talk about the wrong piece of PPE, or the wrong glove versus what makes the right glove for this particular situation.
Joe Geng: Yeah. And luckily, material science is getting a lot better. There's just some more materials coming out and better and better engineering in place. Gloves are getting more and more comfortable over time. So what people who are 20 years ago would be considered really bulky, to what they're wearing now and then hopefully five or 10 years from now, you'll be able to get those really high levels of protection and barely feel like you wearing a glove at all.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And even now the difference between what I was wearing 20 or 30 years ago versus what I can wear now for cut resistance. The tactile sense that I have, the agility that I have with my hands because of the different [00:41:00] fabrics that are there is just amazing the difference. So if you are 20 years ago in technology, there's something new that can do the job and even better than the old glove could. So, you know, I always, always look forward, but understand what your hazards are and don't try to overthink it too much.
Joe Geng: Yeah, that's sure. Yeah. The gloves are one of those interesting things where they're really personable. Right. So it's hard, sometimes hard for people to make a change because they like what they've been using for 10 years or something like that. But it's remarkable how emotional that decision can be sometimes.
Peter Koch: It really is. That's a it's a it's a good point. We're coming right to the end of our time here. Joe, is there something that you would like to leave our listeners with before we close?
Joe Geng: Yeah, I guess it's just that knowledge for the safety manager or that encouragement that if you stack up those small wins, it can really lead to big results so that a safety manager can sometimes get overwhelmed or discouraged that they're not having success. But if you can kind of stack up those wins, so even if it's picking a better glove or getting a better house keeping program in place, [00:42:00] if you can start headed in the right direction. And make those improvements. That over the long haul, that's going to have a huge impact on the safety culture of that company.
Peter Koch: Yeah, definitely. Cause safety sometimes is that elephant in the room. And if you eat the elephant one bite at a time, it's not going to choke you. So that's a great piece to leave us with there, Joe. So that really wraps up this weeks Safety Experts Podcast. And thanks for sharing your expertise with us, Joe. Where can people find out more about you and about your book, Rethinking Hand Safety?
Joe Geng: So we have a Web site for the book, RethinkingHandSafety.com Or just superiorglove.com as well.
Peter Koch: If someone has a specific question for you, what's the best way to get a hold of you?
Joe Geng: Probably Linked-In or my email address is Joe J-O-E at Superiorglove.com
Peter Koch: Today, we've been speaking with Joe Gang, vice president of Superior Glove and author of the book Rethinking Hand Safety. If anyone would like to find more information about hand safety or like to hear more about a particular topic on [00:43:00] our podcast. Email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast Where you can find links and resources for a deeper dive into the hand safety topic. Check out our web site www.MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find our podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our safety articles or news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher I-Tunes or whichever podcast service you find us on. And if you've already done that. Thank you. Because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC's Safety Experts Podcast is good, but sharing what you learned is even better.
Crisis can bring about interesting times…. And it’s in times of crisis when, as employers and leaders, you need to step back, be sure you are focused on the right priorities, and then lean in to support your team. Now more than ever, workers need to know that their leadership is committed to their health and safety. Intentional regular communication is a critical part of balancing the immediate response to any crisis with workplace safety, and worker wellbeing. Planning for crisis communication, meeting people where they are, and the delivery are all critical parts of the communications puzzle. This is Peter Koch, host of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast and in this episode I speak with Michael Bourque, President and CEO of MEMIC. Drawing from more than 30 years experience developing and delivering messages with employees, peers, and external contacts, Michael discusses concentric circles of communication planning and lessons learned from supporting workplace teams through challenging times. Check it out on your favorite podcast platform or at www.memic.com/podcast. ***
Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC’s Safety Experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch. Crises can bring about interesting times and it's times of crisis when as employers and leaders, we need to step back, be sure that we're focused on the right priorities and then lean in to support our team. Now, more than ever, workers need to know that their leadership is committed to their health and safety. Regular communication is a critical part of balancing the response in any crises, workplace safety and worker well-being. [00:00:30] I'm your host, Peter Koch, and on the phone with me today is Michael Bourque, president and CEO of Main Employers Mutual Insurance Company, or MEMIC. And we're going to dig into the communications puzzle as it relates to employees and workplace management during a crisis. Hey, Mike, welcome to the podcast.
Michael Bourque: Hey, thanks, Peter. It's a crucial topic and a perfect time to be talking about all of this, that's for sure. That's sort of our everyday right now.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it is our every day. I think things are changing rapidly and kind [00:01:00] of getting used to this new normal is pretty challenging. So I'm really excited to have you here today and you're experience at MEMIC as a communicator has gone on for quite a while, and you've been involved in communications at MEMIC since its inception. And even prior to you being at MEMIC, you were in a position that had you working in communications as a reporter. So the first question I want to throw at you today is before you came to MEMIC, [00:01:30] what did your time as a reporter teach you about communicating in a crisis? Because that might be a critical setup to some of the things that we talk about going on in the podcast today.
Michael Bourque: Well, you know, I think one of the things reporters always learn is that when a reporter calls, sometimes that means it's a crisis automatically to a lot of people who you don't think you want to hear a reporter on the phone, especially if you have a hint that there's something that may not be perfect that you're about to talk about. But the biggest [00:02:00] mistake that people make in talking when something seems like it might be a little bit wrong is clamming up, not saying anything, because, I mean, you know, as soon as you hear somebody say no comment, if you hear that, you think, all right, there's something wrong, there must be something wrong. They wouldn't say no comment if they would be able to comment. And if that was true and you know, of course, the truth is most people are just being conservative and trying to be smart, maybe saying, I don't want to say anything until I have all the facts. I don't want to make a mistake. [00:02:30] But that in and of itself says something. So, you know, one of those first lessons is that you have to communicate. Now, there are different ways to communicate. I can't talk about that right now. But this sort of no comment, tightlipped, nope, refused to talk to you. That generally is something that will start to stir the pot and maybe end up getting you in more trouble than when you started.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that makes sense. I've had that experience before in a past life, having [00:03:00] a reporter call me or an attorney call me and then getting into that position where I'd just clam up. I have no comment at this time. And initially that didn't set me up for great communication later on, I thought it was the right response initially, but then interestingly enough, the questions came from the other employees that I was with, the management group that I was with that were wondering what was going on. [00:03:30] Like they didn't have the information either. And I was putting out a message of no comment, which was protective, but it wasn't communicative. It didn't really talk about what was happening to the extent that I could. It didn't set up my team for, really a good relationship with the information and understanding what was going on.
Michael Bourque: Yeah. I think, I mean, you know, it's one thing when it's a lawyer that's sometimes that is the time to be quiet. But, you know, somebody is sort of digging for something [00:04:00] in particular or you don't have the information. But I think in general, when you have something that is already external to some degree, you know, you can't stop information from flowing if it's started to flow. You have to be responsive to it. And that means responsive is sort of what the what the perception is that's being built already. Sometimes if something difficult has occurred and then you refuse to talk about it, then the assumption is, well, there must be something even more wrong [00:04:30]than you're willing to speak about.
Peter Koch: Sure. Do you have any examples in your history where that tactic really turned around to either bite you or the individual or the group that made that no comment? The silence instead of presenting some better information for the question.
Michael Bourque: You know, not in my personal career [00:05:00] experience other than as the reporter, you know, asking an organization about something and having no comment and saying, OK, well, I'm going to ask somebody else. And then getting further comment from somebody else who is probably less official and maybe even had less information about exactly what had occurred inside the organization. I won't bring up the company, it was a company. It actually did involve a workplace injury, a significant one that had occurred at a press actually, at a printing press. When I was a reporter. [00:05:30] And so that was an example of it turned out they got more information out. And then a group of employees who wanted to talk about it and was not good news for that employer, they could have they could have stopped it. If we just had a conversation at the outset.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it probably would have been able to manage the information flow and also get the message, the important message out instead of any message out. And I think that's a key point to consider [00:06:00] here when we're talking. What is the important message? So as we think about providing information or communicating with employees in a crisis, trying to understand what the important message is. So not only what do you want them to know, but what did they need to hear in order to be able to manage their own position, their own place and the things in their life that surround the situation at that time?
Michael Bourque: Yeah. I mean, we sort of look at a [00:06:30] grid of stakeholders who are the stakeholders who needs to know who, and then what, what message they need to hear and messenger who delivers the message actually matters as well. Is it a close, trusted supervisor? Is it the CEO of an organization? Is it somebody external? I think those are all considerations to make. And you really can sort of draw up a plan pretty quickly if you think about it from that perspective.
Peter Koch: Yeah. I think one of the takeaways there is to have a plan. I mean, crisis is going [00:07:00] to come up. We're living in the time right now where this is really unprecedented. How are you just communicating at all? So instead of doing this together in the studio at our office, we're doing this over the phone, communicating over quite a few miles at this point in time using technology. So even communication today is different in the way we do it and not just the message but having a plan. So if crisis happens, what do we think about, what do we want to talk about, who makes [00:07:30] the decisions, who delivers the message? Those are all good parts to have in that particular plan. So let's talk a little bit about your experience here at MEMIC when you were the senior vice president of external communications. I think that was the correct title. Is that right? Or just vice president of communications
Michael Bourque: It was External Affairs was officially the title. It included communications, lots of communications.
Peter Koch: Lots of communications. [00:08:00]So how did your time as a reporter sort of form your tactics on communicating to the external groups and also to internal groups about different news and things that were happening. So how did your time as a reporter inform your process of communications?
Michael Bourque: Well, that's a good question. My time as a reporter, it was a little bit different way to think, but it sort of it evolved over time as I came in. I mean, certainly I had an understanding [00:08:30] of how the media works and how people hear about things and how people deal with bad news and good news. But it's received you know, one of the theories that I sort of quickly adopted, when I came to MEMIC was that of the idea of concentric circles of communication. So it's part of the stakeholder model, but it really is thinking about your various audiences as they move out from the center. And one mistake that organizations often made in those days and [00:09:00] you know, they're better and better at it now, all though not all of us are great, was forgetting the employees in that part of the concentric circle. You communicate with your senior management. You communicate with your board of directors who are all really close, those sorts of things. But the next line is really your employee group, and they can be, ultimately, they will amplify your message outside from what they hear. So the value that they provide. Plus what the news means to them is usually a lot [00:09:30] as stakeholders who are that closely tied to an organization who may have to execute some of what it is that the future may hold. They really are important, and you can't forget them. And so thinking about employees next and then thinking about policyholders, customers, injured workers, agents, those next close partners, and then sort of the larger world inclusive of public policymakers, you can never forget that you're also communicating within a certain environment and that's a stake holding group. That cares [00:10:00] very much about how you operate as an organization, as an insurance company we're highly regulated. So talking to our regulators about things that are happening on a daily basis, I've already spoken to Superintendent Insurance last Monday. As soon as we went to this home part of this pandemic policy. So things like that I think are important. So that perspective, I guess I don't know that I developed that as a reporter, but I very quickly saw the benefit of that when I came to [00:10:30] work for MEMIC.
Peter Koch: So that's a that's a really interesting tactic on considering communications, those concentric circles and looking at how your organization or what your organization interacts with. So like you said, your team and then not taking for granted that the team that you communicated with is going to get the message out, but really making the plan, to, OK, Who is going to deliver the message? What message is going to be delivered? When is it going to be delivered and how [00:11:00] is it going to get out beyond in those circles that that connect to your company but are not directly related to the internal workings of the company?
Michael Bourque: You know, there's always an informal network that occurs. It's absolutely right. You have to create a plan and feed those people, whether it's you know, people call talking points in the industry now. But I think essentially, what are we hearing from the top or from the management? And what does it mean? And so if you have that group, feel well-informed, trusted [00:11:30] and in a good frame of mind, they will then help amplify your message out into the field, into their contacts. If you miss that step, that can be really problematic.
Peter Koch: Absolutely. Funny. As I was preparing for this I was thinking about some of the communications challenges that I've had over the years, both here at MEMIC and at other organizations where I've worked and either having been the one to receive the message and [00:12:00] then deliver the message further down or the one to have to create a message and then deliver it out. And there has been some times where I've made the mistake of assuming that when I delivered the message, whether I created it or I was the receiver and then had to pass it on, would assume that the people that I was passing it on to would deliver it to the next circle, that next group that they would touch. And sometimes forgetting that they had a touch point to some of those [00:12:30] other concentric circles outside of our organization. So talking to some of the employees that might have a connection with an outside service group that might be coming in or a distributor or another partner within the organization or outside of the organization that they would communicate. So we give them, we gave the employees, or the department group a message, but we didn't really talk about. So where [00:13:00] does this message go from there? Like, what parts of this are appropriate for you to share with the people who are tangentially associated with our organization?
Michael Bourque: Yeah, no, that's usually important. And that's sort of partly what you talk about, about having a plan and being deliberate. I think you really do have too. And none of us is perfect at this. There's no question it's hard. But having a plan upfront and then realizing, OK, this circumstance is different than what we planned for, but we [00:13:30] have the elements of the plan here. Let's put it into place. You know, this pandemic, I think is a perfect example. While certainly there have been all of us look at the idea of what it means, what a pandemic would mean. I certainly didn't have a real sense of what it would mean to be essentially having everybody work from home. I didn't know what social distancing was until three weeks ago. And, you know, we're all finding that out now and how that works. So you can create a plan. But the [00:14:00] events on the ground often change or are different than what you might have envisioned. And you got to be able react. But you do have to start with at least, have a plan.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Yeah. You're not going to be able to have everything written down for every circumstance. But again, having that plan, talking about what those circles are and then having a process to develop the communication, I mean, maybe that's a good place to go now is too, OK, so we're in a crisis, whether it be a small crisis or a large crisis or an outside [00:14:30] crisis that's currently affecting the particular business or even family structure that you're in. How do you develop the message? Like, what do you think about when you have to develop a message that you have to deliver to employees or people that you're responsible for and you care for? Like what are some of the things that you got to think about when you start putting together a message?
Michael Bourque: Well, one of the things that particularly in this [00:15:00] crisis is putting yourself somewhere as close as you can into the shoes of the person who you're communicating with. What are the things that they need to hear? What are they worried about? What are they concerned about? What don't they know that they wish they did? And it's sort of meeting the people where they are and having that understanding, I think is hugely important. I mean, you know, we all could go on and regurgitate what we hear on the news to share with employees about this is what's happening in this pandemic. And, you know, we have this many [00:15:30] cases in this state and this is the governor all this and this. That's all great. But the truth is the method of communication needs to be human. And so you need to meet the people where they are and be a human being yourself. I think that's hugely important. And that's something that I certainly have tried to do. And as we work through this, because this one in particular is personal in nature, in that people are at home dealing with kids, dealing with elderly parents, that they may be worried about dealing with neighbors, that they're concerned about. If you only come forward, only [00:16:00] to acknowledge that there's a work challenge. Then you're missing a lot and you're not showing the perspective that you need to. You know there are other crises that may really be just about work. Something that's occurring at work. And yet the other thing you have to think about is people are obviously always thinking about what does that mean to them? What if the company fails? Do they have a job? Do they have, you know, what is their future look like? And so I think always putting yourself in the shoes of the person who's [00:16:30] receiving the messages is an important start.
Peter Koch: That's a great point. Meeting people where they are and taking some time to think about where they are. So who are your employees? Where do they come from? What are some of the things that they're going to need to know? Again, having a conversation with a policyholder just last week actually about what was happening, and I was on a conference call or a video call with the director and a number of their employees. And [00:17:00] the reason I was on the call was to provide some information about the virus and what to do and how to manage it. And it was really interesting to hear some of the questions that came out that reflected where people were. There was one particular person who worked in the mailroom and her concern was how long does the virus last on any surface? Like, what about the packages that we is it different on cardboard, than it is on a tieback mailer than it is on bubble wrap than it is on something [00:17:30] else, like how do I manage that? And then someone else was talking about the social distancing. If I have to interact with somebody, how far apart do I need to stay? What do I need to do? Do I need to wear a mask? Those pieces. And then there are questions about, well, I have to go home and I'm like, my mother or father is living with me. And how do I manage that? I don't think I've been exposed. But how do I manage that particular [00:18:00] challenge? So understanding where they are and my initial message to them was sort of clinical, like I had a plan, I had a presentation. We're going to go through here. The facts. Just the facts, ma'am. But it really turned into a conversation about. So how do you manage? How do you take these facts and bring them into your own work life? And then recognizing that this might have a potential impact to your home life, too. And then the park [00:18:30] director was pretty awesome about this particular thing. And he had a couple of themes that sort of wandered through. And the first part was, stay calm, like, don't panic. There's some facts around this that we can get our arms around and we can come up with our own plan for not only prevention and protection but keeping going. So meet people where they are and stay calm, sort of understand what that what that message should be. So you put that message together, you've got [00:19:00] it in your head, you're thinking about it. You put it out there and you get some response. You get some response with emotion. So how do you manage? How do you manage that? Because that's real. That's people are going to come back at you with, well, what about me or what about this or here's this emotional response. How do you deal with that as a communicator, especially in crisis situation?
Michael Bourque: That is a that's a really great, great question, because it happens. It's exactly what happens that people are emotional. We're emotional individuals, very [00:19:30] emotional beings. And so in our fight or flight response is not far from the surface. And that's just deep seated. That's, you know, that's in our genetic makeup. I think one of the more important things is we have to understand that even if we know exactly what the logic of a circumstance is, if you're met with great emotion, your facts don't matter. They really don't. They can easily be superseded by the emotion of a circumstance. So that's [00:20:00] sort of an example of the meeting people where they are understanding that you have to acknowledge people's fears or concerns or even anger in some cases. Having people understand something like that is the first step in being able to have a deeper conversation and communicate. But if you tried to make the emotion seem as though it doesn't matter, the response back will just be louder, and you won't get to really deliver the message that you are hoping to deliver. So, you know, the place where I heard it described is [00:20:30] in cases where an organization, say a manufacturing facility might be looking to site a new plant and they want to put it in an area where there there's some people who are living and they make some sort of material that people don't know about. But sounds dangerous. It sounds chemical. And you can say, look, you can eat a pound of this stuff every day and you will be fine. You can say that over and over. But the neighbor who has a new interaction plant about to be put next to them, who has a five-year-old and a seven year [00:21:00] old at home, they may not believe it. And, you know, you can't just feed them science and expect them to say, OK, well, all right. Since you told me that, that's fine. I got that. That's not how it works. And I think that's really an example that, you know, that brings it home for me.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a really great example. And so hard to deal with. So you as the communicator, might be really excited about the message that you're going to present. But the person that's hearing the message is actually hearing it as a crisis like this is a crisis of [00:21:30] I chose this place because of these things and I've got this family life that I'm trying to manage. And all of a sudden, they hear this message of, hey, you're going, you're going to do what you're going to make what near who I've got. I've got kids. And then to recognize their emotion or their reaction to the message is, is really legitimate? Like you said, and it's not personal. And I think sometimes as the person delivering the message hearing that [00:22:00] and it can be delivered in a very personal way, but you need to be able to take it maybe not as personal so that you can acknowledge the legitimacy. Because as you said before, you know communication is just it's a human thing. We have to do it. It's something that we're created to do, to communicate with each other in different ways. And when your communication is being challenged by someone else in a very emotional way, [00:22:30]you can come across very defensive in that way. So acknowledging that they have fears. And then once you acknowledge that they have fears. How do you help them along with those fears as a communicator in a crisis? So how do you get them maybe not to put the fears aside, but to recognize that something might be done? So what are what do you do with that?
Michael Bourque: Yeah. You just made a really great statement [00:23:00] there not to put the fears aside, because if you find yourself convincing people to put fear aside, that's a way of resisting it as opposed to acknowledging it. And I think, you know, really putting yourself there, I think to the degree I mean, in this pandemic, I think we're all in this together. And so maybe it's a little bit easier to acknowledge that there are things we all don't know, concerns that we all have. We all are worried about people. I think to the degree that as a leader, you can share your own humanity [00:23:30] in this kind of a crisis. That's important. And so I think some of that ability to provide some insight into your own sort of humanity as you're making this, I think that does allow you to then pivot to the OK, so we do know this, but here are the things we all have to know. Here are the things we have to do. Here's where we think this is going. You know, it's a matter of trust. You have to have developed some trust with people so that in a time of crisis that they believe what they're hearing from you. We're [00:24:00] talking here about a crisis communication. The truth is, if you haven't communicated or don't communicate normally on some sort of regular basis, you may not have had the opportunity to build the trust that you're going to need in the trust bank when something like this happens. So those are all ways that you are prepared and able to then share the information in ways that it will be heard. And then beyond that, the basics of good communication sort of are important. You got to tell the truth. If you don't know [00:24:30] an answer, you've got to say we don't know where we're working on finding this. We need more information about this. Thinking that blustering your way through something is not a way to go. There are some people who were good at it and have survived, but it's a pretty high wire act and not something I would recommend. But I think those are sort of the fundamentals for how you move forward.
Peter Koch: Yeah, those are those are great points. I hadn't really thought about this in this way, like preparing [00:25:00] for this as crisis communication, but then you bring up the point where when you communicate in a crisis, you are cashing in from the trust bank. You are reaching into people's lives and asking them to trust that the message that you're providing is true to the extent that it can be to the extent of your own knowledge, because we're only human. I mean, you think about the information that came out within the current pandemic here two weeks ago. We're living in a different [00:25:30] world or even three weeks ago or four weeks ago. All this is not going to happen. It's not going to change us. It's not going to do anything. We're working in this particular form. And then all of a sudden where we are now, the message has changed, or the situation has changed. So, yeah, realizing that all of our communication, especially as a leader, whether you are a business owner, where you're the president or the CEO or you're a supervisor or you're a parent leading your family, [00:26:00] you are all in a place where that ongoing communication is critical for you to establish trust in a good two way process for communication so that people feel comfortable with asking you the question. So if they're comfortable asking you questions outside of the time of crisis, they're certainly going to be a little more vocal during the time of crisis and will possibly ask better questions at that time. So maybe less emotional questions and maybe [00:26:30] more realistic questions as we come down to it, because it's all pretty, pretty critical as we go forward. Let me take you back to that conversation that I was having last week with that group, one of the parts that the park directors kept talking about again. Just stay calm but remain informed. So one of the messages that he put forth and he asked me to talk a little bit about, too, was while acknowledging that we don't have all the answers, like [00:27:00] you were saying before, Michael, but where to find it? Like, where do you go to find your information? So, you know, today, if we're talking about the pandemic, where do you go to find your information? Well, you want to go to the most reliable source you can, which might not be social media, which might not be the news source that you're looking for, might not be your next-door neighbor. It might need to be the CDC or the W.H.O. to find some current accurate information to be [00:27:30] able to keep yourself informed so that you can check to make sure that the message that your leader is giving you is founded in facts as well. So it helps you trust when the leader can say, hey, this is where I'm at, here's the information I have. Go check it out at these places, because this is where we're working on for our plan with our information. So remain informed was a key theme that sort of worked through. So meeting [00:28:00] people where they are.
Michael Bourque: I think that remain informed. I think that is also really important. And on the one hand, if you develop trust, you can be a source for your employees, and you hope that you are. But you're absolutely right about needing to be able to reflect where it comes from, because I'm not an epidemiologist and I should not pretend to be ever. And so whether it's CDC, either in your state or the CDC nationally or it's some state [00:28:30] governments, I think have done a very good job. You know, we happen to be recording this here in Maine. And the director of the state's CDC has gained really great respect. People didn't even know who his name was before this crisis started. And he's proven to be smart and calm and really informative. And I think he's developed his own cult following probably as a result of this. But he's clearly a smart man who thinks about these things and has [00:29:00] thought about. This is not something he's just doing off the cuff. He has a plan. He's thought about it and he knows how to provide the information. And while he's a doctor, he also understands how to reflect. He has the empathy to deal with an individual person who may be a call-in person, somebody calling in on a radio talk show. So, you know, those are those are some we're seeing some good examples, actually, of the kind of communication that is necessary in a crisis like this.
Peter Koch: It's a really great example. And [00:29:30] again, going back and looking at when you're preparing your message, where is your information coming from? The person delivering the message should rely on not just themselves, but think about as a team effort, use that executive team or the team of supervisors that might be around you to help understand the facts and then deliver those facts in a way that can be that can be ingested by the people who are listening to you, again meet [00:30:00] the people where they are. Recognize and legitimize the fears that they might have. Provide them with the facts and where to find more information about the particular crisis that we're in. And certainly it's easier if the crisis is going to be longer, but if it's not, even if it's in a short-term crisis, it could be a fire. It could be a power outage or an environmental emergency that's shorter lived than what we're dealing [00:30:30] with right now. It might be harder to find information, but still there's going to need to be a place where people go back, can go back too and find additional information about that. So whether you're the message deliverer, the team that's helping provide the message, or you are the message receiver. Being able to know where those trusted sources are pretty key. What else is there to communicating in a crisis? What other. What are the things are important to keep in mind when you're [00:31:00] communicating to your employees in a crisis?
Michael Bourque: One of the others, I think, is frequency. I think you have to develop some kind of a cadence that is certainly much more frequent than you would under normal circumstances. I think particularly within a fast-moving crisis where things are changing, facts are changing all the time, that that's important. An example I remember that actually goes back to here in our home state of Maine. 1998 was a time when we had a terrible ice storm that shut out power for a large percentage of [00:31:30] people statewide in the organization, Central Maine Power, which had both the president and the communications director. Communications guy was a guy named Marcus Kennion, and he was on the radio every single morning explaining where they were, where the workers were. The progress they were making and acknowledging people's challenges every single day. And he became sort of a mini celebrity over that period of time because he had showed empathy in his way of speaking. He [00:32:00] didn't speak like a corporate titan from an energy company. He spoke like your neighbor. And he understood communication is hugely important.
Peter Koch: I remember that I wasn't working for MEMIC at the time. I was working for a different company and we were personally out of power. My wife was seven months pregnant at the time. Power's out. Not really sure when it's going on, going to happen, but I remember listening to him every day. And well, as I reflect now, kind of compare [00:32:30] and contrast with some of the things that helped me assuage my fears were that they're out working. We're bringing other people in. There's teams coming from other states. They're in these areas. And again, acknowledging that he gets it. People are out of power. This might be extended. We're working as hard as we can to get it out. You know, his family didn't have power either. There were personal things that allowed me to connect with the message that was important. And [00:33:00] it kind of made me get behind the crews that were out. They were two streets over from where I was live. And we didn't have power. They were working over there, and I was like, cool, they're over there. They're working. They're working hard. They're doing great. And it put a different spin on it rather than being in the dark about it. Pardon the pun about what was going on during that timeframe.
Michael Bourque: Yeah, no, I think that was it. And it was held up as an example of really smart response. And it [00:33:30] was it was good for those reasons. They had facts. They were moving in the right direction. And they acknowledged the concerns of individuals and they were human about it. And there was a human scale. So I think that's just really important elements. They're fairly simple when you think about it. And yet it's easy to be overwhelmed by the depth and scale and the change. We've all seen here in the last few weeks. But, you know, it comes down to those sort of fundamentals.
Peter Koch: Yeah, absolutely. [00:34:00] Making me think back again at that conversation last week, there were two more points. And you touched on one of them, that human side of every crisis that there is and that the importance to stay connected, to get connected with your fellow employees, to get connected with people, especially like now, when we're not able to have the same connection, like I'm not able to have the same connection with the policyholders that I typically come [00:34:30] to instead of being face to face with them on a regular basis. We're communicating by email and phone a lot, which changes the relationship, but at least there's some connection there with them to get them to know that, hey, I'm still there to help you and they're still there in the event that there's a challenge that they can reach out with me, but, you know, remain connected with your coworkers as well, which is just as important to check in on your community members to make sure that you're [00:35:00] connecting with the other people around you, that that connection of whether it be an audio connection or visual connection is a really important part of our humanity. And to remember that crises challenges our humanity. And we want to, we want to remain essential to those things that make us human. That connecting peace back and forth. An important part.
Michael Bourque: We're social animals. You know, even if, you know, some of us may like things quieter and, [00:35:30] you know, we all have to interact. And those are important to us. And so while we can't do it the way we have, I think, you know, one of the beauties of technology is that it is allowing for communication face to face, even when you are miles and miles apart in a fairly easy way. And I think these are things that we're all take manage of and have to continue. And, you know, one of my messages to my senior team recently has been, this is not a time where you can communicate enough. There's [00:36:00] no such thing as over communicating at this time. You really are going to be in touch with people all the time and it's going to be hard because there's a lot to do.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a really good point. The cadence and frequency of communication and in times of crisis has to be more than in other times. And I think you said it in one of your emails that if you're you know, if your team is not tired at the end of the week, or I could be remembering that from another piece that I remember. But if your team isn't tired [00:36:30] at the end of the week about trying to communicate to their staff, then you might not be doing enough. You might think that your job as a manager on the floor might be really tiring, but trying to manage the communication's piece on a continual basis in times of crisis is even more challenging as a manager or supervisor and you're going to be tired or are going to be mentally exhausted at the end of the day or the end of the week because of the continual messages [00:37:00] that you have to put out and maintaining that consistency of message, recognizing that people are going to hear it. Trying to understand what the response is going to be. And then to be prepared for that inevitable response when it comes back. There's one more side of this. We've been talking a lot about the communications part and making sure that we can all talk to each other or communicate in terms of crisis. And it sort of ties into the cadence of communication. But it's the vigilance [00:37:30] that's important in times of crisis. And I think as a leader, whether, again, supervisor, presidents, CEO, doesn't matter who you are, if you're leading people, it is time to be vigilant, to make sure that the message that you put out is consistent, is delivered in the right way, is put out at the right frequency, and you have the right information. Don't put out a message that's going [00:38:00] to have the same information as you did last week if you haven't conferred or corroborated that that information is still accurate. So you want to make sure that you're not communicating just to communicate, but you're communicating for a purpose.
Michael Bourque: Yeah, no, I think that's true. And you talked about vigilance. You know, I think vigilance covers a whole bunch of things at this point. But because we're working in different ways, things like workplace safety, all of those, because we're in new environments, different places, all of us. We may [00:38:30] take our eye off that ball. But it's the time, actually, to tell people that not to be afraid to remind people of those, because as we always talk about, safety is not something you just do a few days a week or even a few times a month when you have a safety meeting. It really is something that happens all the time and much the way communication needs to have the regular sort to be part of your everyday, certainly reminding yourselves that things are different. And that means you sort of have to focus a little more on each task. Each thing you're doing, whether [00:39:00] you're at work or working from home.
Michael Bourque: That's great. Really great point that there are things out there that exist in the workplace other than the current virus epidemic that we're having that can still injure you, that can still put you out of work, that can still put you at a disadvantage overall. So remaining vigilant is important in those pieces. And to remind your staff that are, actually give permission to your staff to pay attention to those [00:39:30] hazards and exposures that you have beyond just the hand hygiene and social distancing that we have in place right now. So what do you wish that you had known when you first started out that you know now?
Michael Bourque: I do think that some of it is around understanding the humanness of reactions and that understanding that emotion truly does rule us as individuals in so many ways, [00:40:00] and, you know, I was always somebody that would say, well, the logic tells me this, and so therefore this is the answer. And I think really sort of feeling okay about expressing that, that we feel like we don't need to sort of unmask any of ourselves in order to be able to communicate to a larger group. But the truth is that every communication ultimately is a one to one communication. When I send a message out to 500 employees at MEMIC, it's to one [00:40:30] single individual who sees it, reads it, receives it in the way that they think about things within their environment. And that's where the messages and so understanding that. And if I was having a communication with somebody across my back fence with my neighbor, it would be different than if I send an email. In the end, you can't necessarily think of it in that way. You really do have to think about those individual interactions and that just because it's a big announcement doesn't mean that it has to happen in some formal way as though you're standing with a flag behind [00:41:00] you and at a podium. That's not normal communication. That's not necessarily effective communication.
Peter Koch: I think where there's so much that we could talk about on the communications side, but we want to talk about some key points on crisis. We did discuss those. We talked about making sure that we're meeting people where they are understanding sort of that tactic of concentric circles of where the message is going to go and who's going to receive it and who should be putting that message out. Acknowledging the emotion that's going [00:41:30] to be there to help people, to stay calm, to get connected, remain informed and then be vigilant are all concepts for communication in the crisis. And this should all role into a plan that as any business you should have or even as a supervisor, you could take a smaller chunk of that. And if there is a crisis like an employee injury within your department, how do you manage that? You can scale it up or scale it down depending [00:42:00] on the circumstances. So I really do appreciate your time here today. We're right about at the end of our podcast time. Is there anything that I should have asked? But I didn't ask so far that you want to you want to touch on?
Michael Bourque: No, I think you did a great job, Peter. And I think I read the summary you just gave I think is really useful information. I hope people took notes when they heard you go through that list, because I think that really is the essence of what we're talking about. And I think there's a lot of great stuff. If [00:42:30] I had that list 20 years ago, life would be easier. So I'm going to write it down after I get off the phone.
Peter Koch: Right on. I'm going to write that down, too. I really because a lot of that list came for what you were talking about. So I've learned a lot in this conversation today. And again, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us and talk about crisis communication today.
Michael Bourque: You're welcome, Peter. Nice to be with you. And be well, thanks.
Peter Koch: I appreciate that. And to all of our listeners out there, I thank you again. Today, we've been speaking about communicating with employees at times of crisis with Michael Bourque, president [00:43:00] and CEO at MEMIC at the MEMIC's Safety Experts podcast. If you have any questions for Mike or like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast. Email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find links to a new safety blog about communications as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for the safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. [00:43:30] And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take it a minute or two to review us on Stitcher I-Tunes or whichever podcast service that you find us on. If you've already done that, well, thank you, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast [00:44:00] is good, but using what you learned is even better.
The OSHA General Duty clause states that every employer has the duty to provide work and a workplace that's free of recognized hazards. Workplace violence is not a traditional hazard like a piece of machinery, repetitive motion, heavy lifting, falls, or confined spaces. It’s a threat from co-workers or as OSHA defines it, clients, customers and even visitors to the workplace. Do the statistics make workplace violence a new recognized hazard? The National Safety Council reports that in 2016, 17 percent of workplace deaths were a result of violence. And according to OSHA, about 2 million people each year report some type of workplace violence.
The more you look at it, the more you see that this could happen anywhere people are at work, even your own workplace.
So, as a business owner, are you prepared? Or as a worker, do you know what your employer's plan is? And as a supervisor or a leader within the workplace, do you know what action to take when it happens?
In this episode, “Are you prepared? Violence in the American workplace”, Rob Sylvester and I take on what workplace violence is, some of the causes, some strategies for prevention, and how to be prepared if it happens. Check it out.
Peter Koch: Hello listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC's Safety Experts podcast. A veteran city engineer shot and killed 12 people at his office in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he worked for years. A sous chef at a restaurant in Peabody, Mass. Was stabbed to death by a co-worker. And on the day he was fired from the Henry Pratt Company in Aurora, Illinois, a worker returned to the plan and opened fire, killing five workers and wounding five police officers. These are all recent and tragic headlines outlining workplace violence from around the country. And the statistics are even more sobering. The National Safety Council reports that in 2016, 17 percent of workplace deaths were a result of violence. And according to OSHA, about 2 million people each year report some type of workplace violence. OSHA estimates that 25 percent of workplace violence goes unreported. The more you look at it, the more you see that this can happen anywhere. And you might think that it could happen some place, even at your work. So, as a business owner, if you're listening, are you prepared? Or as a worker, do you know what your employer's plan is? And as a supervisor or a leader within the workplace, do you know what to do when it happens? I'm your host, Peter Koch, and for today's episode. Are you prepared? Violence in the American workplace. I have Rob Sylvester. Safety management consulting with MEMIC on the line. And together, we will look at workplace violence. Why it happens and what you can do to prepare to be prepared for it. Rob, welcome to the podcast.
Rob Sylvester: Morning, Pete. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate your time so we can talk more about workplace violence and how we can assist people out there and developing programs. Everything ranging from recognizing to policies and procedures to truly response and, of course, recovery of an incident. Those statistics you gave were quite alarming. They say that half a million employees miss an estimated 1.8 million workdays, which is 55 million dollars of lost wages alone with an estimated losses of 130 billion dollars. That's with a B. So, combined with your statistics and taking that and even further, as they say, homicide is the leading cause of death for women in the workplace. Very alarming for anybody on this call today.
Peter Koch: Yeah. No kidding. Those those are truly sobering statistics, not only from the impact to the work, which you don't really think about that you always think about the impact to the person or the people who are affected by the violent act that occurs in the workplace. But the impact to the business that you had mentioned recovery before. How do you recover both personally and how does the business recover from workplace violence? But that impact of 1.8 million lost workdays and 130 billion dollars, and that's each year, is that correct? Or is that total all across the board?
Rob Sylvester: My understanding is that's per year, which is an amazing statistics statistic. And as you mentioned, the cost of the workplace violence incident goes well beyond the initial or direct costs. Of course, we in a safety as safety professionals, we like to concentrate on the person and then help with processes and procedures and of course, you know, the typical policies in place. But that cost goes so far beyond just workers compensation, of course. You know, there's lost productivity and it's not just the person involved in the incident, but those around them. You know, when you see an incident occur, whether it's harassment, bullying or full on assault or or mass shootings, you know, people are scared to come to work. The the articles you read earlier, they just they're prevalent in today's society. And it's very unfortunate, at least a decreased morale at the workplace and at home. You know, fear, bad public relations. How often do we turn the news on, and we see something in the news that's related to workplace violence? And then, of course, medical costs, legal fees and other expenses that go along. But truly, how that affects the person and their family. It's quite alarming.
Peter Koch: Yeah, most people think about going to work as a safe place. They might not have a safe place at home to come back to or their community might not might not be a safe place. Their their their home life might not be safe. And so, some people actually come to work looking for that safety and security of their their work friends or their work family. And. And when you consider it, many people spend the majority of their work week at work, instead of at home. So, I come to work. I want to be safe. I want to be able to contribute and to do the job that I'm employed for. It reaps the benefits with whether that be the paycheck or the relationship that I find with my work friends. However, when that when that safety gets crushed by an event in the workplace, whether it be something as significant as the headlines that I read, whether it be a killing within the workplace or another act of violence or something, even something even, I won't say less, but something that is. Not so connected to to a physical, violent act could be an emotionally violent act that sort of tears your world apart and all of a sudden it changes how things are going. That's that's tough. Really tough.
Rob Sylvester: Excellent points, Pete. You know, we go back to definitions, you know, workplace violence isn't just that mass shooting or true assault, that physical altercation. It goes to any threatening behavior or behavior excuse me, threatening behavior or even verbal abuse that occurs in the work setting. And whether you're a family owned small business range or ranging all the way up to multimillion-dollar multi-location corporations and any class of business. There is exposure's out there. Their work setting is any location, whether it's a day to day or just a temporary work that employees performing work. So, if this is somebody on the road, that's their workplace. So, we really need employers to assist their employees with identifying precursors to true workplace violence and understanding that there should be a zero-tolerance policy regardless of where they are at work, regardless of whom is doing that, how it's coming across. Because again, in today's society, you know, things can escalate very quickly. We never know what's going on in somebody else's life, whether it's a personal or professional life that's going on that may cause them to have a trigger that's going to create a negative behavior. And then we end up with consequences such as mass shootings or assaults in the workplace. So really, it's key to have a program in place where employees are trained to recognize those triggers and precursors to workplace violence events.
Peter Koch: Yeah, you bring up a really good point that we normally think of workplace violence, especially because of the headlines that it is this. It's a mass shooting, it's a stabbing, it's an alter, a physical altercation between two people. But you alluded to that it's not that I was looking up some definitions before. And you can see OSHA actually has a definition of workplace violence so I'm going to, I'm just read it here because I think it fits into our part of the conversation. We can talk about the nuances of it. So, OSHA defines workplace violence as, quote, any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation or other threatening disruptive behavior that occurs at the worksite. It ranges from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and even homicide. It can affect and involve employees, clients, customers and visitors, end quote. So, there's a lot in there. I mean, that workplace violence, the word workplace violence or the term covers so much more than maybe what we think is a typical definition. So, let's let's talks to let's talk about some of those other things that might actually be precursors to the big physical altercation that we need to catch earlier.
Rob Sylvester: Excellent points, Pete. And as you say that we talk about the statistics, they say that, you know, as you said earlier, 25 percent really go unreported and that maybe even a low number I read, depending on types of business, that it might be higher than 40 or 50 percent go unreported. Many times, we have bullying in the workplace and people don't look at that as workplace violence. But truly, by definition, it is.
Peter Koch: Yeah, and that is that's pretty crazy when you start to think about and we've all had that experience, I think at the workplace where we felt possibly uncomfortable with the words or actions of somebody else as they confront or approach us. And certainly, we need to to take some of it with a grain of salt and have a little thick skin when we're in the workplace. But it can only go to a certain point. And then we have. It has to be curtailed. It has to be reported. It has to it has to stop so we can have a safe place and we feel safe in the workplace.
Rob Sylvester: Definitely agree, Pete. You know, it ranges everything from dealing with your co-workers to customers to patients if you're in health care. But it goes across the board. It truly is anything when those different forms that you talked about, intimidating or frightening others. You know, it doesn't have to be somebody slamming a desk or a computer, you know, harassing, stalking or even showing undue focus on an individual, especially in a negative manner. These things all need to be addressed because we don't know if and when that is going to escalate. So, we definitely need to nip these things in the bud. And as you said, you know, develop, you know, thicker skin. But at the same time, recognize these things. And employers, we have to have something in place. We have to have reporting mechanisms in place and people feel safe. There's not going to be retribution for them coming to whether it's human resources, security department. And as you mentioned earlier, you know, OSHA has a definition of workplace violence. But many don't know that there is no specific OSHA standard on workplace violence. And. Go ahead.
Peter Koch: No, it is. They don't have a standard workplace violence. And I guess we could talk OSHA for just a moment. I think as OSHA would see it at this point, they talk quite a bit about OSHA or workplace violence on the Web site because it is it is becoming more and more prevalent. But every employer has the duty to provide a workplace that's free of recognized hazards. And here we go. This is that new recognized hazard that's out there. It's not a hazard from a piece of machinery or repetitive motion or heavy lifting or falls or hearing or confined spaces. It is a threat from the co-workers or as they talked about in their definition, clients, customers and visitors are also included in that definition.
Rob Sylvester: And that's a great point, and that's exactly what the OSHA standards talk about, the letters of interpretation, I should say that they will use the general duty clause, you know. OSHA has come out with various resources and I will touch more about on those later on. But they developed, you know, enforcement procedures and what they should be doing for workplace violence. And again, you know, those are great resources to help develop a program. And many use the OSHA aspect to kind of drive the reason why they need to do this. But let's get back to what it's really about. It's about providing a safe workplace for people that you see daily. Many times, those causes you talked about, it could be domestic violence. You know, people have substance abuse issues, emotional problems. Again, this is anybody that you're exposed to in the workplace. One of the big ones we see is patients to caregivers. More and more OSHA and state entities are getting involved in workplace violence when it comes to patient to caregiver. So that's one that really needs to be concentrated on from a health care perspective. When we get outside the health care perspective, we're talking about, you know, retail establishments and other late-night businesses, hospitality, disputes with customers, robberies, those are all considered workplace violence also. So, you know, what do our employers what do we have in place to deal with these things, whether it's, you know, training, mitigation, response and recovery? That's, you know, from an emergency management perspective, really, that's how we should be approaching these things.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And it's it's really about the preparation. So, reaction is certainly one component of the plan. What do you do when it happens? But a lot of this is is really looking at it from a proactive standpoint. How do you how do you help people recognize where the boundaries are? How do you put things in place? So, when an employee recognizes that they do feel threatened, that they have a place to go or something to do. I can tell you a story. I was at an account. Oh, quite a few years ago now, really, before workplace violence became such a hot button topic. And I was sitting there talking to the risk manager. We were having a conversation and her phone was just blowing up and started asking her, so what's going on? Because she was getting a little stressed out about what was happening and what was going on at that time. They had and this was a hospitality establishment. They had a housekeeper who was who had reported last week that her her estranged boyfriend, that she had a restraining order against him. And she got a call from the estranged boyfriend that he was going to show up at work. And it's a fairly large establishment. It's not just a single hotel where you have one entrance and one exit. There's multiple places of contact. And it was they were reacting to a potential for workplace violence. And at that point in time, all they had in place was some basic human resources, policies and procedures, but no real practice in place for what does the employee do? What is the what do the other employees do? How did they manage it? How did they handle it? And it was a pretty stressful situation for everyone around. Their solution at the time was, I think, very appropriate. They they they called the sheriff and the sheriff came in and actually removed the individual when he came onto the property. However, it's not always that clear cut. So, there's a lot of detail that has to go into the plan to make sure that you can be prepared for some reasonably anticipated situations that could happen at the workplace.
Rob Sylvester: Excellent point, Pete, and I can tell you, you know, when it comes to domestic violence that generally does carry into the workplace because people, especially those working nights or evenings in my past, I've dealt with that many a times and I think one of the gro- the one of the ways to handle it is making sure that employees are comfortable and understand that there is a way to report these things in advance. Going to your story, it sounds like they responded quite well, but did they prepare that employee? Did they even prepare the workplace on really more of a prevention? One of the things I've seen where it helps our programs and has been successful is getting people to not only understand, as we talked about earlier, understand those warning signs, but understand reporting things in advance, such as maybe this individual could have reported to human resources or their supervisor, somebody they're comfortable with, that there was a restraining order in place. So and, you know, take that a step further, depending on the culture, depending on the the organization is making sure other people understand that this person on the other side of the fence, that person with that domestic issue or somebody else identified, you know, should not be at the workplace. So sometimes those things, you know, could be identified in advance. But it goes back to training your employees on your process, training them on recognizing and getting them comfortable to understand that as an employer, we are here for you. And, you know, putting OSHA aside and yes, we have to create the same workplace. But let's think about the people. You know, it truly is about those people and how we should be working together as a team.
Peter Koch: Yeah, totally. You're right on the money. And you talk about training and preparation. So, the typical training component that most employers have in place stems back to the harassment policy and that came from the sexual harassment policy. So, you have this sexual harassment training that I remember sitting through one before I before I came to my current position. And there are a lot of chuckles. There are a lot of nods. It really wasn't taken very seriously. It was done to the check the box, but it really wasn't always done to to prepare the individual for the potential. And the the effects of of training like that really puts a stigma on bringing some of those concerns into to your supervisor, to the employer, because, well, the employee doesn't feel like it's one, taken seriously. And two, they're not always really clear about what the what it is that they should bring forward. And then who they should bring it to. And then even after that. Talk about the supervisor and what training does the supervisor have to receive that comment or the question or the report from that employee? There's a there's a lot to that. Can you speak a little bit to like what kind of training would be helpful for an employer to put together for workplace violence prevention and maybe even touch then on how do they take that to the supervisors as well? What would be important for those supervisors to know?
Rob Sylvester: Sure Pete, great questions. I think that's where a lot of times organizations need the most improvement. You know, we can conduct a hazard assessment backing up to that point, as you know, assessing your organization and having key stakeholders involved. And if you want, we'll touch on that later and just address the training. Now, you know, all employees need to be hired, you know? Ah, excuse me. All employees need to be trained on aspects of workplace violence. It should be a minimum at hire and then annually, of course. And as needed, if you start identifying trends, employees at all levels from frontline worker all the way through up senior management team need to be higher or need to be trained. Excuse me. They need to be trained on the workplace violence trends. They may be seeing in ways to mitigate those, you know, as you said, train on the recognition and reporting in accordance with the policy and procedures. You know, employees should be trained on watching for signals that might be associated with potential workplace violence that ranges from verbally people expressing their anger and frustration. You know, that's quite forthright. You know, people in your face or saying, I'm coming back. You know, there was recently a school age child actually at school use their finger to form a gun at somebody at school. And that was a workplace violence in excuse me, an incident of violence in schools. And depending on how you look at these things, body language with threatening gestures, you know, if somebody shakes a fist at you at work, you know, some of us may just shake that off, OK? Rob's having a bad day, but if that is something that makes an employee uncomfortable, that's something they need to recognize. They need to know how to report that to the appropriate individuals at their workplace. You know, the signs of drug or alcohol use. You know, again, we were on a work together. We want a safe workplace. And regardless of the type of facility we work at or the class of business, you know, employees, especially supervisors and again, you know, organizations have to decide how they're going to roll out the training and or what level what employees and what job titles get both supervisors, you know, signs of drug or alcohol use. If people are impaired at work, you know, is that something that has been a trend for that person, you know, coming in continuously day after day and they're under the influence? You know, that's a time they kick into high mode of maybe the employee assistance program. Maybe they need help. And, you know, you're heading off that that train that's just going over like the old movies and an off the overpass or over the cliff because the tracks are broken. You know, just recognizing those things, you know, and of course, you know, things like presence of weapons and things like that. That's that's quite, quite easy to see. But in addition to those watching for those signals, we need to make sure that we as employees are maintaining our own behavior. That's going to help defuse situations. You know, how many times have we we start feeling hot under the collar because somebody is yelling at us, they're yelling at us, and we may engage them verbally and that just may escalate and continue escalating things when really we need to take that step back. We need to make sure our employees understand to take that step back, present that calm attitude, you know, show that you care about their their dilemma. Show that you care about them as a person, you know, as we as we continue down that road of mutual respect. I always talk about mutual respect, regardless of what I'm doing in life. I try to recognize mutual respect. We talk a lot about, you know, treat people how you would want to be treated. And I always say, you know what? Treat people how they want to be treated. So, again, you're going to help diffuse situations by not matching those threats, not being demanding, you know, acknowledge how people feel. If somebody is having a bad day and they're getting in your face or making threats or showing other signs of potential workplace violence, you know, try to diffuse the situation. And many times, employers don't do that. Healthcare, when I say they don't do that, that's about the training aspect. You know, health care does a great job of it. They do a lot of de-escalation training. But other classes of business may not they may not understand the need to. And I think that is very important aspect of when you're conducting that hazard assessment it's really recognizing not only the locations, the physical plant aspects, but understanding that there's other column triggers or other situations that may occur that are unique to your business, whether it's cause of the as you mentioned earlier, exits, you know, limited exits, limited entrances and things like that. So, again, each organization is going to be slightly different, and that's why we need to ensure that people are conducting a hazard assessment and then rolling into the training. And you mentioned earlier is training for supervisors. You know, take that to the next level. Making sure that supervisors truly understand and support their people, not just from the initial and annual training, but supporting their individuals. So, so their employees, their direct reports truly feel safe coming to them about a situation. We may say, well, it's just you know, I'm not going to worry about Rob today. You know, he's just blowing off steam. Well, again, they should feel safe to go to their supervisor and have that dialogue and say, you know what? This is the third time this week or it might be the first time, depending on how it is that Rob's been acting like this. And I'm really worried for him. And at this point, I'm worried about my safety.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Those are those are really insightful comments, too. When you're talking, I'm connecting. There is a responsibility on the employer to have to assess their workplace. So not for just physical hazards that the employee might be exposed to, but some of the trends that might be occurring or unique challenges that their employees might have to manage. It could be, well, like we said, a physical plant thing because the exits are way to get out in the event of a workplace violence event is is challenging. The exits are in challenging locations or there is only one or two entrances or exits that you can that you can actually get to. Or it could be that it's a high stress situation. There is a lot of productivity going on. There's a lot of demand for quality assurance that happens within a particular area. For whatever reason. It could be time, a season. It could be the product itself. It could be deadlines that are happening. It could be because you are, you're actually dealing with a human resource, like you said, within health care or even hospitality or the stakes are are a little higher. So, the employer responsibility there. Then there's the employee responsibility who has to, you know, treat the other employees with dignity and respect. So, they need to be able to recognize that the workplace isn't the place to air out the dirty laundry to express that frustration. But we're humans and sometimes it happens. So that brings us to the supervisor and the training that the supervisor needs. And this was an interesting connection, at least for me, that the supervisor needs training on how to be a supervisor, because in order to to have, a, an environment where an employee feels safe to bring something up to their supervisor, that supervisor has to be a good supervisor, not just a supervisor for productivity or really good at the job that they came from, but really good at working with the people that are around them and that will help them address the particular situation that comes up and be able to start the de-escalation process. So, lots of lots of different components to what the employer has to do, the training that the employee needs, and certainly a multi-faceted training regime for that supervisor.
Rob Sylvester: Definitely. Great point, Pete. You know, we always say we need to make sure our supervisors understand, and we make sure that they are a good manager. But as you said, we aren't generally end up talking about making the widgets or understanding policies and enforcing procedures when really they need to have better training on crucial conversations with people and how to deal differently with people, whether it's the leadership series or other training. I think it's just a great point to make that, you know, supervisors do need, as they call them, soft skills. They need those soft skills. And when it comes to workplace violence, because we're dealing with people with personal problems, substance abuse, emotional issues, I mean, we didn't even mention financial difficulties. You know, number one, one of the number one concerns of families today are financial difficulties. And as you said earlier, is bringing those things to work. You know, we shouldn't be doing that, but we are human. So, things follow us. We can't just put that wall up and block things. So, we really need to understand that from a supervisory level, definitely going with leadership and supervisor training really is critical to the success of any program and any organization.
Peter Koch: Definitely. Definitely. I think we're at a place right now within the podcast. We're going to take a quick break and we're going to we'll we'll be back in just a few minutes. Very good.
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Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Rob Sylvester safety management consultant with MEMIC. So, let's jump back in to some more questions. Before the break, we were talking about the prevalence of workplace violence, where it is the different components of it. What makes up workplace violence? The definition, how really OSHA might get into it. It's how the employer might see the employees and then the supervisor. We also talked about training that would need to be done once we've determined what what what we're what we're exposed to or what trends might be in the workplace. While we were discussing those things, Rob, you you had mentioned numerous times, assessing the workplace, identifying what the challenges are. So, can you talk a little bit about what that assessment entails, what an employer might need to do to determine the points of workplace violence that they would have to manage?
Rob Sylvester: Sure, Pete. It's a great question. You know, we can have all the policies and procedures in place and training in place. Before we get to that, we really have to conduct that hazard assessment, as you mentioned, and going into detail with assessing an organization. You know, I always tell people start with your key stakeholders. You know, that's going to vary by business location, business model. Are they traveling? Where are they going? Do we have union versus non-union? What type of relationships there are with not only union, but local and federal law enforcement? I always tell people that call about workplace violence, use your subject matter experts. And to me, that truly is your local law enforcement. Many organizations will bring in local law enforcement to conduct or assist with an assessment. You're the subject matter expert on your facility, but if that's your responding resources, then they definitely want to be in from the ground floor. Some organizations actually not only bring when the police come in, the law enforcement officers, they will actually come in with a fire department and possibly E.M.S.. Again, it depends on the business model location and those relationships. So, I always encourage people to look at that from that angle. You know, anytime you assess your organization, whether it's for workplace violence, whether it's for as, you mentioned earlier confined spaces, machine guarding, whatever it may be, you want to ensure you have those frontline staff participating with you. You can use screening surveys, you know, culture surveys, different questionnaires to get feedback on the organization and how you're dealing with workplace violence. And in health care, some states actually mandate that frontline staff are participating. Just make sure you know your state and local requirements. You know, when you're assessing organization, not only are you looking at physical plant, which we're going to get more into, but you have to collect that historical data if you can collect near misses and what we think of as minor occurrences and really collect that information from various data sources, depending on what you're tracking and how you're tracking things. Again, some may start off with just things. I'll call it anecdotal, but, you know, not formal reporting. But as you start doing this hazard assessment, whether it's with your safety committee or you've formed another a workplace violence committee or response team. You know, you may start hearing things. You may not have an actual report that says this was workplace violence because, again, there may have been no accident. There may have been no incident or injury that occurred. So, you may not get a formal report. But as you start looking at this and assessing your organization, using surveys or getting out on the floor and talking to people, you may find out that there has been, call them near misses, but there's been situations where workplace violence has occurred. Again, we're not just talking about physical assault. And that's where I think we missed some data points because people say all workplace violence. Now this is safe. Well, how about when Pete was all upset and he was leaving one day on a Friday, he thought he got shorted on his paycheck and or he got a day off for violating unsafe work practice or I should say, violating a safety practice. And he was shaking his fist as a supervisor. Oh, well, nothing happened. Well, you know what? Again, that's a workplace violence. So, as we start looking at data, we really need to be looking at all aspects of it, both formal and informal. You know, getting into the physical location assessment. You know, it can be some things like, you know, locks. Do we have appropriate locks, keeping life safety code in mind? Of course. But do we need to add locks? Do we need to, a lot of facilities are actually putting locks on bathroom doors because that will now be a safe place? So, you might have a multi stall bathroom or you might have an office that normally doesn't have a lock on it all. But now that might be a safe place and might be a refuge point. So, again, you want to find out where you currently have these things. And then as you start developing your program, your committee, and again, using your key stakeholders like local law enforcement, take those recommendations on where you will have to reinforce some of your physical plan aspects. Lighting. Lighting is a big one. We talk about it a lot from a slips, trips, falls, exposure. But lighting at night, I always encourage employers, regardless of size and class of business and location. Visit your facility at nighttime. You know, many places will have timers, but they don't change them when daylight savings time kicks in. So, the timer is off by an hour. Many places have older lighting that as it gets older, it gets reduced effectiveness. So again, look at lighting. Look at lighting and parking lots. Look at lighting in approach paths and exits. It really can be key. It makes people feel safe. I mean, how many times do we walking? And we notice that is dark out and the lights are not on in the parking lot where you park during the day. You know, we start our heart starts racing and we get very nervous about. OK. This is doesn't feel right. Something doesn't feel right. So, they get to safety very quickly, hopefully. But again, look at the lighting. You know, do you have, and do you need sign in and out procedures? A lot of larger organizations truly have sign in and out procedures. It could be anything from fire safety perspective. So, you know who's in the building. But go into the world of workplace violence again. But and have those sign in, sign out procedures. Know who's in your building. Identification. You know, you have contractors working in your facility. When you start looking at that and you may depending on level and size of your business, you may get to the point where you work with third party vendors or you might work with your local law enforcement, as I mentioned earlier. And they may do what we call probing attacks or an audit where, you know, one of my favorite ones used to be as contractors throw in a hard hat or grab a clipboard. And I always joke that you can get in just about anywhere. No I.D. needed securing a valuables, of course. That's another aspect of, you know, just general overall safety and security is making sure valuables are secured. Critical infrastructures. Organizations need to look at what is critical to them, what is critical to keeping them in business, whether they have generators, emergency power, natural gas, I.T. I mean, how many businesses, if their I.T. were to go out, let's say a contractor was out front digging and they cut the fiber optic or other Internet lines to their facility. Those are critical infrastructures. So, again, although a lot of this is outside workers, workplace violence excuse me, outside of workplace violence, these are true critical infrastructure aspects that need to be looked at in my past life. I actually had the critical infrastructure response team or excuse me, critical infrastructure evaluation team in New York actually come out. It was a combination of military, both federal and state, and they actually did a physical assessment of our facility as a with critical infrastructures in mind, because, again, yes, workplace violence goes from bullying and harassment all the way through. Active shooter situations. But if somebody wanted to go the route of, you know, best excuse the expression, but bang for their buck, you know, they may want to sabotage your facility. So, think about that. What are our critical infrastructures, and do we have a business continuity plan in place? So, again, as we start peeling that onion, just like everything else with safety, you know, yes, we start talking about a lot of things that add on the surface. You say, what's that got to do with workplace violence? But when you think about it, workplace violence has so many different forms that you really need to look at your facility overall, including critical infrastructure.
Peter Koch: So really what you're talking about here, too, is integration of. This the workplace violence plan into your business plan. And if we back up, if we start where we just ended for business continuity practices. So, what happens? I mean, you think about it from a storm perspective. Yeah. There's a big storm there's a hurricane. There's an ice storm. There's a tornado. There's a fire. How do we keep the business in business when this happens? The same thing happens when there's a workplace violence event from a critical infrastructure standpoint two, two divergent roads here. One, if the workplace violence starts with manipulating or damaging those critical infrastructures, how do you work around it? But even even aside from that, if you're going to need those critical infrastructures to communicate workplace violence to the outside so that you get response in, what are those things that need to be up and running? Because what happens if you're I.T. system crashes not related to the workplace violence incident, but you have voice over IP phone system. How do you get out? How does it work? What happens if this at the same moment that there is a workplace violence incident, you're in the middle of a storm. I mean that when we start to add environmental challenges within the situation, workplace stress can go up, which can contribute to a workplace violence event that outside of the environmental conditions might have been de-escalated relatively easy, but easily. But now it can't. Places to put your valuables, secure your valuables. Where do employees put that? Where do you secure your business valuables? How how easy or difficult is it to get to those areas? And then, oh, gosh, a critical part, employee I.D. how do you know who's in the building, who's not in the building? So, all this gets integrated into your your business plan. So, it's a critical part of that emergency response plan. Right, from hazard identification. So where are the where the vulnerabilities of the business? And then using those stakeholders to find out where they feel vulnerable when you were talking about the hazard assessment process. Rob, what I heard there was trying to find out from them where the vulnerabilities are. Where are those informal events that may have not been reported where we just sort of pushed it under the rug because, oh, it's just that person. No, it's just that person. Or they were having a bad day, but or. Really weird. Where did the employees feel vulnerable, whether their work work, remote employees, traveling employees or employees that are stationed directly at your facilities? So those are really great points. So currently we we talked about step one is hazard assessment, talking about what's happening, where the potential for workplace violence could happen. Second, you talked about physical plant evaluation, identification of safe places. Do you have the appropriate locking mechanisms to to lock down the facility if necessary or provide a safe location for your employees to go? If there is a workplace violence situation, lighting, parking areas, making sure that those are all safe and secure and there's ways for employees to communicate and then employee identification, knowing who's in your building, whether it's sign in, sign out, swipe and swipe out, identifying who's supposed to be in the building through some sort of identification process. I love that description. You put a hardhat and a clipboard on somebody and they can get in just about anywhere. And it's it's true. It's kind of human nature. We look at we look at someone who looks to be official and you're going to give them access because you have no reason to think not. But in today's day and age, whoever needs to be in the building should be in the building. And those people who aren't don't need to be in the building and they should be prevented from accessing it through means other than the appropriate means. Go to the front entrance, talk to the the the security person, go in through your main administrat- administrative entrance instead of one of the employee entrances. All all really good ideas to step through valuable securing critical infrastructures. And then finally, business continuity plan. Are there any other steps to take in order to or to to develop a an employee or a workplace violence prevention plan, Rob?
Rob Sylvester: Great recap, Pete. And what a great way to bring it full circle. You know, along with that hazard assessment, we're looking, as you said, access control, you know, limit entrances. That's usually the easier part, but control access if possible. And as we get into recapping all the steps before we get there, you know, ensure we're developing emergency alarms, monitoring systems if possible. We talked about lighting earlier, but going with environmental design, depending on the business, you know, security devices such as cameras, smaller businesses, may their security devices may be locked doors might be one of those ring style doorbells where they have an air phone style camera at the front door to limit people's access. You know, we go back to emergency management, as you said earlier, is training, mitigation, response and recovery. So as we start rolling that, you know, wrapping that up, you talked about that hazard assessment and using local police departments and other subject matter experts, you know, that can be led by your workplace violence committee or your safety committee. And that same committee would be responsible for not only conducting but also reviewing and developing plans for mitigation and response. They would develop a policy which we have touched on earlier. And again, that policy truly needs to be what I call scalable. Many times, we do a workplace violence policy. I can't tell you the number of times I get a policy to review and they'll be like, here's our workplace violence policy. I'm like, okay, great. This is only about assaults. This is about mass shootings. What do you have for bullying and harassment? And many times they may have an employee handbook and it might have, you know, a paragraph about what to do if you feel bullying in the workplace report H.R. You know, take it a step further. Have and have they completed training on identifying what is bullying? I have this conversation with my 8-year-old. All the time, soon to be 9 or 19 as he likes to think he is. But, you know, oh, so-and-so is being bullied at school. And when you talk about it, you know, do we really know the definition of bullying? You know, harassment, assault, assault is a big one. Varies state by state. Harassment versus assault. So, as we start developing that policy, we want to start with those definitions. We want to roll that policy into understanding how people should report. And we mentioned it earlier, but number one is no form of workplace violence will be tolerated, period, end of conversation, because if we don't roll that policy out, role that training out and truly reinforce and enforce that policy, where workplace violence won't be tolerated. The program's not going to work. The program will not work. People will not be feeling comfortable of reporting workplace violence situations. They're not going to feel, as you said earlier, comfortable coming to work. And that can not only impact your business. But it's going to impact the people and vice versa. We all know as leaders that, you know, once morale starts going down, the tube can be very difficult to stop. So, we want to be proactive. And part of that truly is, is having a policy that not only people understand, but it truly is going to work. And that's why you need those key stakeholders, both external and, of course, internal frontline workers and others on that committee or policy development. Once you have that policy, Pete, I would say, you know, develop training employees at all levels. You know, some organizations or I should say some classes of business do this all the time. You know, health care is a big one. You know, they're doing different levels of training. You might have entry level training. And then as you start getting up in different departments, you're going to see various levels of training. It just increases, the time commitment increases, and it really is valuable. So again, develop that training based on their exposure. What hazards are they dealing with the public, you know, a front office person or our gatekeepers versus somebody in the back room that generally doesn't deal with that everybody needs workplace violence training. But it's just at what level? And then as part of that policy, that plan, and program we're looking at is reporting to who do they report to? You know, how do they report? Is this a verbal report, which is never a good thing without follow up of documentation? But it'll initial reporting verbally report to your supervisor and then the supervisor must take the following steps, really have that roadmap for people. So, they understand reporting, they understand expectations at all level. You know, OSHA has a lot of good guidance out there. And I recommend people review that and look at, you know, that work, developing a workplace violence response team on that could be the same committee we referenced earlier, but their job would be to evaluate not only the plan, but looking at that data. Look at the reports at a facility I worked at in the past, believe it or not. When we first kicked this off, we were meeting weekly, Pete. That's how often we because we had so many reported. And it was very cumbersome. But I will tell you that the employee reception, when you have over 3000 employees, the employee reception of this was very well received because they we truly showed that we we had considered all aspects of workplace violence and we were very responsive. Now, again, we have so many different employers out there listening today. That may range from just a few people all the way through thousands in multi locations. So, again, you know, using the resources that are in the safety director or utilizing the OSHA resources, depending on what class of business you're working in. There there's so many different resources. And again, it should be scalable to your organization. So really needs to be tailored by you to your organization. Because, again, every business is going to be different, whether it's the the culture we always talk about or it's the environmental design of the facility, you know, the physical layout. Each one is going to be different. And truly those steps we just talked about. That's the way to put a workplace violence program together.
Peter Koch: Those are that's great advice. Kind of walking through all those steps and it might seem overwhelming to small business owner that might only have a few employees or even it could be even more overwhelming for a business owner or a corporation that has, like you said, hundreds or thousands of employees and multiple locations, because there's a lot to it. What I kept coming back to is the scalability starts with the hazard assessment and really spending doing your due diligence to understand what your threats and liabilities are at that hazard assessment. So, looking at all those different aspects, again, looking at the your stakeholders, so where where do employees feel threatened? Where is the data? If you do have a reporting process and then the lot of the the assets that you have to bring in like your outside response agencies and what they can do to help assist you in in that event or provide you some guidance, they go, hey, you didn't check this out. This is an area that you should look into as a potential liability or threat for workplace violence, physical plant. In that assessment. How you control your employees in and out. How you control people that aren't employees in and out. And then again, back to critical infrastructure. And how do you keep the business going in that response? I guess this to sum those parts up you, you said it I think pretty well training, mitigation, response and recovery. And if we put the zero at the beginning of that or the first thing at the beginning of that before you can have training is that hazard assessment, policy development, trained folks on the the policies and procedures that you have. I think mitigation is ongoing training. So, it's not just the initial and annual, but it is ongoing training about how what do you do in the event of a workplace violence issue? What are the definitions of workplace violence? How do you manage some of the challenges with another employee? Those all might need to be part of the training plan, depending on how your hazard assessment works out. And then, of course, response. What do you do? What do you do as an employee who might feel threatened? What do you do as an employee who witnesses something? And then what do you do as a supervisor when you hear it, or it's reported to you? How do you respond as a supervisor and then how does the how does the company respond in order to, one, protect those employees in the event of a physical, violent act that's coming into your facility or protect those employees from the emotional issues that are going on with a non-physical threat that's happening within the facility? And then finally, recovery, what do you do in the aftermath of the problem, whether it's big or small? Just a couple of employees or one employee to another or a large mass shooting event and a tragedy.
Rob Sylvester: Definitely. Great recap, Pete. And you know, those four-phase emergency management, like you said, that training is part of the preparedness level. You know, you have the preparedness, response, recovery and a mitigation, but preparing people. And, you know, we it seems like we generally skip a lot of the steps when it comes to these types of programs and emergency management. A lot say, oh we can respond very well. But truly, you know, what have we done? We can't respond if we haven't taught people. We haven't prepared people. So, I think your recap just really brings it all full circle. And I appreciate that.
Peter Koch: Sure. Hey. So, we talked a little bit about some of the resources that are out there and again, overwhelming the number of things that someone might have to do if they're starting from square one. So, where do people typically go to when they're looking for resources? They go to their good friend Google and they end up Googling workplace violence prevention plan enter. And I just did that. And you get well over 20 million results. So how do you know what to start with? Like if you're looking for a resource for hazard assessment or you're looking for resource for physical plan evaluation, or you're looking for a template that has components of your workplace violence prevention plan in it that you can use as a guide to developing your own. Where do you go? What do you? Where would you look for those things?
Rob Sylvester: That's a great question, Pete. You know, Google's my best friend. We know that we've been we've been best friends for many years. But depends on your class of business. A lot of times you'll have trade associations, you know, whether it's association manufacturers or others, you know, OSHA does have a lot of good stuff. You know, they have it for health care and social service workers, hospitals, of course, you know, taxis are for-hire drivers. They have one from 2009 for a late-night retail establishments. So, again, there's a lot of resources from OSHA. But at the same time, there's the American Society of Safety Professionals, Healthcare Accrediting Bodies, American American Nurse Nursing Association and others like the National Safety Council. So, they it is so very overwhelming. And I encourage people, again, start with their local law enforcement and start with trade associations. And then, of course, we have the safety director within our safety director are presentations. We even have past recorded webinars on workplace violence for general industry then we have them for healthcare. And then we went into acute care. Also, in there, we have the workplace violence plan template. So, there's actually a workplace violence prevention plan template that talks about starting off with on that hazard assessment and tips and considerations and going on through. So, it's a great template to start looking at workplace violence. So, safety director has multitude of resources MEMIC Minutes. So, there is a lot of stuff out there. So, I encourage people to use those resources in the safety director, their local law enforcement and then any trade associations they may belong to.
Peter Koch: Perfect. I think that's a that's a great list of different resources. As a supervisor or a business owner, I want to know what I need to do. And again, like you said, it can't just be. I pulled this off the shelf. I bought this from whatever safety company online. And now I've got this workplace violence prevention book that I paid a lot of money for, but it's not truly specific to your company. So those are the key points. And using those trade associations, pulling your loc, local law, law enforcement and emergency response entities in, you can customize some of that information to get help with customization. And then the safety director, there are ton of resources out there. So that's www.MEMIC.safety.com. If you're looking to get on to that and check out some of the MEMIC specific resources that we have out there as well. So, a ton of resources that people can look that are good and then can be specific to their their industry. That's fantastic. Hey, so that about wraps up this weeks. Safety Experts podcast. So, I really appreciate your sharing those your expertise with us, Rob. Thank you very much for all those those comments. But before we close, I got to throw one question. That you you might not be prepared for, but I'm a throw it at you anyway. So last question. Why? Why is safety important to you? This is this is you've made a career of this in some form and another over the last however many years. So why is safety important to you?
Rob Sylvester: That's a great question, Pete. You know, I guess the easy way to summarize that' I care about people. It's the people taking care of one another. I mentioned earlier mutual respect. And I think that's what we all need more of in our day to day lives, whether it's at work, whether it's at home, just dealing with other people is mutual respect for one another. And a lot of situations in our our own world would improve. But when you say why are you in safety for over 25 years? It is truly because I want to help people. I want to be there for others. I want to help others learn. And I truly think as a safety professional, we have an amazing opportunity impact to help. Those we're around in creating not only the physical plant aspect and safety, but make it better, make people healthier, keep them at work, get them rolling for retirement, because let's face it, that's the end state for all of us. So, a great question.
Peter Koch: That's perfect. That's per. That's why I love you, man. That's that's great. So, you think about it. We started this conversation earlier today talking about the headlines of all the people who were affected by workplace violence. And then we jumped into some of the policies and procedures. We talked about OSHA. We talked about compliance. But it comes back down to what you said is most important to you and also to me as a safety professional is the people. And if we can keep the focus on the people, then we can end up keeping more people safe in the workplace. So excellent points. Thank you again, Rob, for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there, I thank you again. So today we've been talking with Rob Sylvester, Safety Management consultant with MEMIC about workplace violence on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. If you have any questions for Rob or we'd like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. Email podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to resources for a deeper dive into this topic. And check out our Web site www.MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find our podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. If you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, I-Tunes or whatever podcast service that you've found us on. And if you've already done that. Thank you. Because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good but using what you learned is even better.
Mentioned/Resources/Links
- Veteran Engineer shot and killed 12 in Virginia Beach, VA - https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/01/us/virginia-beach-suspect/index.html
- Sous Chef stabbed to death in Peabody, MA - https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/08/30/changs-employee-who-was-stabbed-death-worker-was-year-old-from-salem/Ub3hxrqfLPBpjb9WozlPQK/story.html
- Man fired from Henry Pratt Company returns and shoots five - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/16/man-kills-five-warehouse-shooting-spree-shortly-after-being-fired-illinois-police-say/
- National Safety Council - https://www.nsc.org/safety-training?utm_campaign=DSA&utm_term=&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_grp=68218917512&hsa_acc=3965156914&hsa_ad=338185148306&hsa_cam=1732015670&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=dsa-670781419821&hsa_kw=&hsa_ver=3&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_mt=b&gclid=Cj0KCQiAt_PuBRDcARIsAMNlBdpJD3PHzcwf7u_LBqGRQe7QqHKRb6GXvtUvSoRNfUpK9XL4kXuYvRIaAhr0EALw_wcB
- OSHA - https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/workplaceviolence/
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) - http://workplacementalhealth.org/Mental-Health-Topics/Employee-Assistance-Programs
- MEMIC’s Safety Director - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/about-safety-director
- American Society of Safety Professionals - https://www.assp.org/
- Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations - https://www.jointcommission.org/
- American Nurses Association - http://www.nationalhealthcouncil.org/about-nhc/members/american-nurses-association
- MEMIC’s Safety Net Blog - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-net-blog
- MEMIC’s Safety Experts Podcast - https://www.memic.com/podcast
- Email us at: podcast@memic.com
Infection control and prevention are always in the news during flu season, but this year we have a new player that is causing more than a stir in the world today, the novel or newest corona virus, Covid-19. There are plenty of statistics and interpretations out in the public domain that don’t seem to jive, causing conflicting opinions, incomplete understandings, and misguided actions. It can be difficult to know who to believe and what recommendations to follow.
On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Debbie Willard-Web, Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC and I will lay out what the current understanding of Covid-19 is, what parallels it has with influenza, standard practices for basic hygiene and exposure control, as well as recommendations for refreshing your company’s emergency plan.
Peter Koch: Hey there, listeners. Welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. This is Peter Koch, your host, and today, we're going to take on the personal safety thing as it relates to infection control, influenza and the coronavirus. Infection control and prevention is always in the news during flu season, but this year we have a new player that's causing more than a stir in the world. The novel coronavirus COVID-19. There's plenty of statistics and interpretations out there that conflict, causing differing [00:00:30] opinions, understandings that aren't right and just incorrect recommendations. It can be difficult to know what to believe and what recommendations to follow. With me today is Debbie Willard Webb, safety management consultant with MEMIC, Certified Occupational Health Nurse. Today, we're going to lay out what current understanding of COVID-19 is, what parallels it has with influenza standard practices for basic hygiene and exposure control, as well as recommendations for refreshing your company's emergency [00:01:00] plan. Hey, Deb, welcome to the podcast today.
Debra Willard Webb: Thanks, Pete, it's a pleasure to be here, and it sounds like we're going to cover a lot of ground.
Peter Koch: We got a lot of ground to cover today, but I think it'll be OK. We got a we've got an expert on the line today, so we've got a lot of good stuff to do. So, let's just jump right into it. Let's lay out what we know about COVID-19. So, give us like a layman's description of what it is.
Debra Willard Webb: COVID-19 is the newest, novel, coronavirus, [00:01:30] Human coronavirus. Coronaviruses have been around for as long as science has studied viruses and bacteria and coronaviruses are commonplace in our everyday world and also are characteristic of some animal illnesses. So most of our, what we think of as just common colds in winter, are actually coronaviruses, that cause those colds in the first place. There have [00:02:00] been some coronaviruses in the last couple of decades that have been new and that causes concern for science and for citizens because we don't know what new means. Does new mean it's going to get worse, or does new mean it's going to fade away and be just another one of the coronaviruses around us?
Peter Koch: So interesting it's not something that we hear a lot of, especially on the news that the [00:02:30]coronavirus is the group of viruses have been around for a long time and we're exposed to coronaviruses on a regular basis. It's just that these are newer or the newest one is the one we're managing right now. And then what we're trying to figure out is what does this mean for us? What does it mean for a person next door? What does it mean for the people within our family and what does it mean for the people within our workplace? So that seems to be the focus, and what we're hopefully [00:03:00] trying to do today is give us not so much an idea of how to back down from concern, but maybe back down from the panic. So maybe not so much anxiety but understand the urgency behind knowing what we're up against and knowing what we can control. That sound fair?
Debra Willard Webb: Absolutely. I think the unknown creates anxiety for all of us. And just as you said, using that anxiety to mobilize [00:03:30] energy and alertness and that often helps us literally control that anxiety so that it's not immobilizing and distracting to our everyday work and home lives.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Because we have to live with it. We have to live with these viruses that are here. So, we really need to understand what the next piece is like, who is really at risk for contracting this new virus and what does it mean to different populations. So maybe you can speak to that a little bit.
Debra Willard Webb: So [00:04:00] one of the things that new means is that, there are lots of unknowns. New means we don't have great large numbers of people to develop answers to a question about exactly who is at risk and exactly what do those folks need to expect. But the information so far has given us some clues at least into the future. So we see that the older that we are, the more severe our response to the [00:04:30] COVID-19 virus is. Elders are generally the folks who have had deaths as a result of exposure and illness from the virus, this particular virus, and uniquely to coronaviruses, this particular one has not been as prevalent in young people, and children in particular as most coronaviruses are. So, we actually see quite a difference right now [00:05:00] in the death rates for children with coronavirus compared to our annual influenza viruses. So whether that's a trend that sustains as more data comes into the system is not clear. But it is something right now that is probably helpful to families in thinking about who's most vulnerable in this situation.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a really interesting difference between influenza, which we've lived with [00:05:30] for ages it seems. Like growing up I remember my parents talking about the flu, and getting flu shots, and vaccinations and things like that. And there being fatalities from the flu both in the elderly population and the very young population. So that's a difference with the COVID-19 is the data that showing now the more severe reactions that may lead to fatalities are really on the elderly side or older people who have maybe a compromised immune system or [00:06:00] other underlying medical issues. Which is slightly different than what we see with influenza. Because that virus really challenges both the young and the old.
Debra Willard Webb: Correct. The very young and the very old are affected. Certainly, coexisting illnesses and chronic illnesses are part of the picture with influenza. So, folks with other illnesses need to be particularly careful. And those are typically the folks who have higher rates of [00:06:30] immunization for the vaccine. So, part of that is where the concern about the news right now is loaded with discussion about when will the vaccine for COVID-19 be available. And that comes from familiarity with the vaccine, since we know about it for influenza. And folks with chronic illnesses are much more likely to receive those vaccines, to want to receive them and to be encouraged to receive [00:07:00] them by their health care providers.
Peter Koch: Sure, sure. Very true on that end. So we know that for the COVID-19, the population that's most at risk is typically our elderly, but certainly everyone or anyone can contract it. What do we know about how the virus is transmitted these days? What do we know about that?
Debra Willard Webb: So, the virus attaches itself to the fluids in our body and especially our nose and mouth and those fluids when we speak, cough, sneeze [00:07:30] and those activities we spray a little bit of droplet activity around us. Those droplets carry the virus to others around us within generally three feet, although with coronavirus in 2019, they're having us consider the distance to be six feet. So, the droplets are heavy enough that they don't travel much further than that. They don't drift on the breeze down the street or down [00:08:00] the hallway and then they fall to the floor or to a surface. There is some information telling us that the coronavirus 2019 may survive on some surfaces at some temperatures for some period of time. But that information is very limited and so not really very reliable. But that's what leads to the recommendations to be cleaning [00:08:30] surfaces that we touch. Recently saw information that said most of us touch our faces, our hair or our face 20 times an hour. That sounds like a high number. But even if it's half of that 20 times an hour, our hands have been on the doorknob, on a keyboard or light switch and we touch our face. That's a mode of transmission that is possible. The most likely transmission is [00:09:00] the droplet, so person to person. But other possibilities are still being considered and concerned.
Peter Koch: Sure. So that makes sense. What you're describing there, is really good personal hygiene especially when you're in public spaces or even when you're at home and there's a family member who's ill to know that the most typical means of transmission are going to be being coughed or sneezed on. Right. So you think about being in the workplace, if there's someone who does cough or sneeze [00:09:30] or if they've done that and they've touched a doorknob or if they've used a keyboard or a phone. So making sure that you're using good hygiene practices and cleaning those surfaces just to make sure we can address some of the potential transmission methods that are there. We'll talk a little bit more about that a little bit later on as we talk about all of the good hygiene practices would be, your standard hiring practices would be. So how does the [00:10:00] coronavirus, now the COVID-2019, how does that parallel at all to influenza? Because we've heard a lot about COVID-19. And typically, this time of year, we hear a lot about influenza and the challenges that that's bringing to different sections of our population. So what are some parallels and maybe some more differences between the two viruses?
Debra Willard Webb: So transmission is one of the parallels. Influenza is not a [00:10:30] coronavirus. It's a different family, if you will, of viruses, but nonetheless, similar in its effect on us as people. Some of us can have illness from coronavirus 2019 or from influenza and have very mild cases, maybe not even realize that we've had an exposure and an immune system response. So that's a parallel. Both viruses can cause very mild disease and [00:11:00] that's the case for 80 percent of people or more with both viruses are likely to survive and do fine, not need any medical care, not need to miss particularly time from work. We'll talk more about that, too. So the difference is that the severe disease in both cases is different. With coronavirus 2019 it seems to be pneumonia and severe shortness [00:11:30] of breath. That is the primary cause for hospitalization and medical care. And managing that response to the virus is what causes death. For some of the patients who contract. Influenza tends to be more about fever, cough, muscle aches and sort of general fatigue and malaise. So those symptoms are generally more manageable. It does seem that there may be [00:12:00] a higher severe illness rate with coronavirus, but only slightly at this point. And we don't have enough coronavirus in the U.S. to know exactly how our medical health care system will be able to handle responses for patients with patients carrying the new disease.
Peter Koch: Sure. So let's talk a little bit about the differences and maybe some of the parallels between influenza, which we've had for [00:12:30] forever, it seems. And then the COVID-19 virus, the new virus that's in the news and people are starting to have symptoms of. So what are some of the differences? What are some of the parallels between the two?
Debra Willard Webb: Sure. Symptoms, I think an important symptom is to recognize that illness can be very mild and mild can mean that we don't even realize we have the virus on board and our immune system is taking care of it. That's true [00:13:00] in both the new COVID-2019 virus and also with influenza. So part of that is the challenge, because that means while the virus is in, let's say my system, I could be passing it on, I could be transmitting it to other people. But it also means that just because we have a virus onboard, we are not necessarily likely to have severe reactions to that.
Peter Koch: Sure and I [00:13:30] think it highlights the need for what we talked about earlier for vigilant good hygiene practices. So for someone to just understand that, yes, you might have a little sniffle, you might have a cough, and it doesn't matter what the reason is. It's always good to keep it to yourself. So make sure you follow those good hygiene practices. So the similarities, I think, are good. So the same things that you would do to help prevent [00:14:00] the spread of the flu are some of the same things that you would do to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Debra Willard Webb: Absolutely. Which is sort of the good news, because you're right. We already know how to prevent this flu. Are we great at using what we know? Not so great. Maybe this will help reinforce those good practices. So they're better practices for all of us.
Peter Koch: Yeah, absolutely. I thought it was interesting you brought up that the statistic prior to [00:14:30] about we touch our face upwards of 20 times an hour. And I was as we were talking here; I was just thinking about that. And I might reach up and touch my hair or smooth my beard or take my glasses off and rub my eyes. And I could certainly see the ten, fifteen, twenty times an hour, depending on what I'm doing. I can certainly do that. And being in one spot, not a big deal, just having washed my hands are coming back from a break and being able [00:15:00] to be in a clean space. Not a big deal, but if that is in the midst of riding the subway or being in the midst of a meeting that you're there for an hour or so or another area where you're more in a public space or a shared space, then yeah, that that might be a challenging place or a challenging habit for you.
Debra Willard Webb: Absolutely. So we need to become more self-conscious about our habits and think about, social distancing [00:15:30] is the medical description or the epidemiological description of managing that space between you and me? We need to realize that coming in and out of an office room, it's handy to have some hand cleaner around so that, yes, if we're shaking hands and greeting people that we can do that with arms extended. We don't need to do that with a big warm hug with one another and just modify [00:16:00] our practices a little bit. Think about doing our self-grooming and adjusting our glasses after we've washed our hands instead of just before we wash our hands. So being more mindful of our own habits and we'll notice the habits of other people around us as we get better at doing that too, which will be kind of interesting. If you remember back when we all learned to cough into our elbow a [00:16:30] few years back, we were queuing each other for that someone would start coughing into their hand or the back of their hand and someone else would signal to them, your elbow or your elbow. So it's something that we can do with each other and develop best practices that whether COVID-19 stays around or whether it goes away. Influenza is very likely to stay around. So these practices will have lots [00:17:00] of opportunity next year and the year after to be put to good use.
Peter Koch: Yeah, for sure. Talking about the coughing into your elbow. We have a 12 year old at home and just over the years having to teach her how to do that because, you know, all kids will just sneeze or cough and they won't think anything of covering their mouth when that happens. And you can only say, cover your mouth, cover your mouth, cover your mouth so many times. And we've done that, and then we've taught her to cough into her elbow. [00:17:30] But the interesting thing was when she was learning to do that, she would put her elbow up to her chin, but her mouth would still be above the elbow. So it really wouldn't matter. Right. So I felt I had to take a picture and say, no, this is what you look like. That's not what we're asking you to do. So, yeah, interesting. Interesting how sometimes people learn and sometimes people don't. And yeah, the habits that we build can really, really help us with our personal hygiene. [00:18:00] And I like that term. The social distancing to make sure that like, again, we're keeping it to ourselves. Beautiful.
Debra Willard Webb: Right. So handwashing is the most important thing that we can do. We'll talk about masks in a minute. But handwashing really means 20 seconds or more with running water over your hands and a soap product. It doesn't have to be a disinfectant product. [00:18:30] It probably shouldn't be. Just a soap product with running water. So it's not a quick dip and wipe your hands all over the towel. That's going to be a new or it is a new opportunity for us to make an improvement in our hygiene, certainly.
Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about handwashing, because everybody you know, I think people understand wash your hands, wash your hands. But the substitute for washing your hands is kind of dip in your hand and the hand sanitizer rubbing it in a few times and my hands are washed. [00:19:00] So why is washing with soap and water and doing it for a period of time that 20 seconds or 30 seconds or a minute, depending on what information you've had? Why is that more effective than, say, using hand sanitizer?
Debra Willard Webb: Hand sanitizer used effectively means enough on your hands to keep your hands wet, the entire surface of your hands, for 10 to 15 seconds at least, and if you sort [00:19:30] of measure that out the next time you use hand sanitizer. That's quite a dose. And that's 10 or 15 seconds that we are not accustomed to standing still, just wiping our hands. So using hand sanitizer truly effectively is challenging for lots of us. So there's one of the concerns about hand sanitizer. And then the viability of the sanitizer itself, because it has a shelf life like lots of other [00:20:00] products around us. And you want to know that it has the alcohol content that you believe it has looking at the label. So there's a little more range about whether you're really getting what you think you're getting. In hand sanitizer you want a product that's at least 60 percent alcohol. And there are products on the market that are not that. Soap and water, running water, means that you're literally loosening those viruses from the surface of your hand. In addition to [00:20:30] bacteria and other viruses that may be there as well. And they're literally washing down the drain. So they're not just going onto the towel or onto the doorknob. They're washing down the drain. So they're completely disabled. And your hands, then are sanitized.
Peter Koch: So that's an that's an interesting thing to consider here with hand-washing here, actually, if you do it correctly, you're removing the virus from your [00:21:00] hands with the water and the friction and the soap. While with the hand sanitizer, you're disabling the virus. But it may actually still, the dead virus, might still be on, or the disabled virus may still exist on your hands even after you're finished. Is that correct? Does that make sense?
Debra Willard Webb: That makes sense to me. I think both techniques have value. Hand sanitizer [00:21:30] is not a cleaner. So if there is visible soil or if you've picked up tissues that are still wet, then the sanitizer won't be as effective on a volume of material. That's a soap and water job. Hand sanitizer is intended for dry hands that are basically clean that need a layer of protect-ant and sort of sealant over [00:22:00] the viruses and then can disable them with a little bit of time for the alcohol to have its effect.
Peter Koch: I think that's a great definition. So if you're looking to you know, what do you use when. Handwashing is effective all the time, as long as you have access to running water or clean water and soap and then time and some way to dry them off afterwards, even air drying would be fine afterwards. And [00:22:30] then hand sanitizer would be something that you would use only when you have clean hands to start with. So we've talked about handwashing and we've talked about hand sanitizer and we've talked a little bit about cough and sneeze control like not cough in your hands, cough into your elbow. Try to reduce or eliminate the spray of droplets when you're coughing or when you're sneezing. Let's talk a little bit about disinfecting some of the surfaces that we might be working around [00:23:00] or on. So whether it's a desk or maybe it's the lunch table or it's a doorknob or it's the handset of the telephone or the keyboard that you might be using. What are some strategies for disinfecting those surfaces?
Debra Willard Webb: Soap and water.
Peter Koch: I don't think my IT department is going to like if I put soap and water on my computer keyboard, though Deb. But I don't know. But just saying.
Debra Willard Webb: Under 20 seconds running you don't think so.
Peter Koch: It's possible [00:23:30] they might reject that as a viable use of soap and water on their computer. But you never know.
Debra Willard Webb: Ok, well, let's say. So think of soap and water first. And is soap and water reasonable for whatever it is that you're cleaning. Doorknobs, soap and water is great. Desk surfaces, soap and water's fine for lots of our desk surfaces these days, not for all, don't want to ruin the wood grain. So soap and water is most [00:24:00] available and most readily available for us, particularly in businesses and offices where we may not have a sink or a bathroom around the corner. Then we want to start thinking about other resources and the sanitizing sprays are an option. The cloth rag, paper towel, the item that you're using to wipe the surface is important that it be wet enough to literally [00:24:30] wipe the surface, to clean the surface and remove dirt and bacteria and viruses. So that doesn't take scrubbing. Generally, if there are cracks or variations in a surface, then that's going to be a challenge. But it's also if you have a groove and a desktop and viruses in that groove, you're probably not coming in direct contact with it. So that would not be high on my concern radar. The [00:25:00] surface itself, the surface of a keyboard can be sanitized with the wipes. There are some particular wipes that are designed or made for cleaning keyboards, mouses and such that have an alcohol dose in them. It's a stronger alcohol than in hand sanitizer because the keyboard and the mouse can handle a higher level of, higher percentage of alcohol. So [00:25:30] using those products is probably going to keep you in better graces with the I.T. department. Thinking about light switches. Housekeeping and janitorial workers know this like the back of their hand. They are familiar with walking through a space and knowing exactly where those desk people put their hands and wiping those surfaces as they go. Some [00:26:00] of us, the rest of us are not quite so familiar unless we have young children at home. Then we know exactly where hands go. So it's going to vary depending on the space. But all of our spaces, home, cars, the steering wheel in our car, the doorknobs, handles, thinking about gas pumps. I mean, if you start thinking about where to my hands make contact in the course of a day. There are a multitude [00:26:30] of surfaces. Temperature is part of what kills a virus. If temperatures are too high and too low for them to survive easily. So probably the gas pumps in Maine this time of year are not loaded with viable virus of any sort. That's probably not where we're picking up influenza. But the gas pump handles in Florida or Georgia might be a place that those viruses have some survivability. [00:27:00] And if you think of the number of times those handles are contacted in the course of the day, then there's a risk there. And that's when I would think about hand sanitizer in the car so that after you pump gas, get back in the car and use some hand sanitizer before you get your hands back on the steering wheel and adjust the dials. Check your phone.
Peter Koch: Yeah, I was just thinking about that. When you were talking about the different places your hands go. I mean, you could spend your [00:27:30] whole day with a pack of wipes, wiping down every surface before you touch it. But it makes more sense and it's a more functional way to live. To think about, all right, well, I can't control that, but I can control my hands. And I control what my hands either touch or control what I do with my hands after I touch something else. So that option of having hand sanitizer in your car or maybe at your desk or your workspace or in your pocket as you go through the day, just to keep yourself in a place [00:28:00] where, you know, you know you're going to touch things that are contaminated with other things. It's not just what we're talking about here with influenza and COVID-19, but there's other bacteria that are even more prevalent then the two viruses that we're talking about. And the hand sanitizer or washing your hands afterwards is a great way to help reduce the possibility of transmission.
Debra Willard Webb: That's right.
Peter Koch: So just smart things as we start to think about it, because you can and I [00:28:30] think that's one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on to talk about this on the podcast right now is there is a lot of information out there and there seems to be a level of anxiety that's creeping up within the public, within the people that you talk too about what's happening out there. And we forget that we have some control personally over what we do, that it's not the zombie apocalypse that we are able to manage some of this. If we think about [00:29:00] it in a rational way and take some functional precautions as we go. So that's really kind of the tact of today's podcast. We want people to leave with thinking there's something that you can do about what's out there. It's not out of your control to protect yourself and your family from what's happening there or even the workers around you. What we want to talk about next really is. So while you're at work, I mean, there's three things you can do at home. Some of those same things you do at home, you can personally [00:29:30] do at work as well to help reduce the possibility of just any illness from for being at work. We talked about that, cleaning off the keyboard, cleaning off the surfaces, just keeping your desk clean or the space that you work as clean as you can and then falling some general good practices. If someone wanted to look for resources on good hygiene, where would they look? What are some places where someone can go do some research and [00:30:00] find some good solid practices for hygiene transmission prevention?
Debra Willard Webb: CDC.Gov is a great resource for the COVID-19. They are literally providing updated information daily. So every afternoon they will update the statistics in the U.S. about transmission rates and they will include any new or changed information that [00:30:30] will help us know how to take care of ourselves through the course of this situation. So that's a way to help focus on the facts of what is happening about the illness and the. Disease. And we will start to see information. One of the statistics that is referenced is that the percent of patients who contracted the illness and died from that illness is actually decreasing [00:31:00] globally. There was a point that it was 2.3 percent of people who contracted the disease had fatal cases of the illness, and that number is now down to 1.4 percent. That's an important change. And that's based probably largely on the fact that the numbers are bigger and therefore more meaningful. More people are being tested and identified as carriers [00:31:30] of the virus with milder cases. So the numbers are being balanced better. It is a number that still is higher than the influenza death rate. Influenza causes death in less than 1 percent of those in this country, in the US, who contracted, for those who are tested for it. So there's concern around COVID-19. We need to stay alert. But I think it is important [00:32:00] to realize that the numbers are going to continue to change on a daily basis and we have access to those changes. So we don't need to rely on what we hear at the water cooler. We really have a chance to go to the real information. So one of the suggestions I would have for employers is to think about how to provide a focus or maybe an update of information at some particular time of the day [00:32:30] so that employees let go of needing to feel like we have to stay current every moment of the day and find this to be just a huge distraction right now to us in our workday. The reality is most of us are very unlikely to have any contact with anyone who has an exposure to the illness. That can change, but that's today's information. So keeping that in a context and still staying current on any changes that may be provided to us is something we want to contain, and not, as I said, just not have it become a significant distraction and focus for us. And frankly, a change to our productivity day to day. We should be going about our daily work and business and not dwelling on coronavirus [00:33:30] any more than we do dwell on influenza.
Peter Koch: Sure. That's a really good point. And going to the source, the CDC, to provide us with good, accurate statistical information and then good recommendations based on those statistics as they change, whether they the statistics get bigger or the numbers get bigger, the cases get bigger, the cases get more severe, whatever that's going to be, we will know that from the CDC rather than relying on the news [00:34:00] up-feed update that you might get popping up on your smartphone every 15 minutes or 30 minutes. That's going to say there's another case, there’s another case, There's a fatality here. And that can create a lot of anxiety where if you have the opportunity, you know, do it once a day and check out what's happening on the CDC to see what they have for not only statistics, but recommendations. And that's not just from a personal standpoint, but it would be for an employer standpoint too. So as this disease [00:34:30] maybe spreads across the United States, which is certainly possible, there has been predictions out there that it's like influenza. It can make its way across the United States as it goes. But knowing that we are fully capable as a country to manage this, because we've not only learned from the responses of other countries, we've been able to build on those responses and put those responses [00:35:00] into our, not only our health care system, our emergency response plans, and then how we manage things as companies and as individuals here in the states.
Debra Willard Webb: I think the CDC Web site has information for specific populations of people, pregnant women, children, those are obviously concerning categories of folks. The information, the data is very small again, but that information can be viewed [00:35:30] on CDC and will be updated as the data is analyzed and evaluated for what does the data mean? What do the changes in the data mean to us, in the country? So you're right. I think that's a great Web site to tap into. It's important for employers to acknowledge the concern and the virus, I think, and to think through that worst [00:36:00] case scenario. What if the virus changes? And what if this became a more prevalent illness? What would we do? How would you do business? So there are some very significant, I think, opportunities to sit down and rethink those emergency preparedness plans that we worked on and had in place, probably still have in place, on a shelf in [00:36:30] an office. So it's an opportunity to sit down and think through. Is this still current information? Do we need to do some updates to this information? What's different today from when the last outbreak, either in 2012, SARS and MURS, brought some of this to the forefront for us over the last decade and a half, thinking as a business, what does this mean to us?
Peter Koch: Yeah. It's an important place [00:37:00] because, you know, if you haven't touched your emergency action plan since 2012 or 2016 or maybe you haven't touched it since it was created. It's an opportunity for you to go and see if it's viable. Still, does it actually communicate to the right people at the right time? Does it manage for informing employees? Does it manage for business continuation? How does it how does it allow for your business [00:37:30] to address not just fire and environmental disasters or theft, but how does it manage an illness that might affect a number of your employees in different areas of production or different areas of work within your company? It's a great opportunity and even beyond that. So this is a great opportunity to have a conversation with your housekeeping and your cleaning crews. Like, so what are you doing? [00:38:00] Like, how are you helping? How are you helping us manage this a little bit better? So do you have the right tools? Are we cleaning effectively enough? Where are we cleaning? What are we doing? Do we have to do a little bit more? Or maybe not so much more but refocus on some different surfaces. So, yes, we definitely want to have the floors sparkling and looking great for our guests to come in and our clients to use. But what are we doing in some of the other surface areas? How do we need to clean those? It's [00:38:30] a great opportunity to talk not only general emergency action plan, but even looking at your housekeeping and your maintenance activity just to see if they're up to snuff, whether this was the year for COVID-19 or if it's just a severe outbreak of the flu. It's another opportunity.
Debra Willard Webb: Absolutely.
Peter Koch: Very good. So we're kind of coming right down to the end. There's so much more to talk about. But really, we've addressed some of the points we wanted to at the beginning. [00:39:00] We wanted to talk about COVID-19. We wanted to talk about the parallels and differences with influenza. We wanted to talk about some prevention strategies and transmission prevention strategies. And then we also wanted to talk a little bit about the emergency action plan and how to or when to dig it back out and take a look at it to maybe review it. And then last some resources. So having rephrased all that, is there something else that we've [00:39:30] missed that you want to highlight before we close for the podcast today?
Debra Willard Webb: Masks have been a topic of concern and interest for lots of folks have had questions about those come along. Should we be buying masks for employees? Should we be wearing masks? And the short answer, long answer is no, not at this time. So for influenza, we don't wear masks. Wearing masks is not as simple and easy [00:40:00] as it sounds. There's a correct way, an effective way to wear them and an ineffective way. So they would be another level of concern that right now is not indicated. And then the other topic is hand sanitizers. There's a lot of chatter about making our own hand sanitizer since we're hearing that some vendors are having a short supply at different times of the week or the month. So making your [00:40:30] own hand sanitizer is an option. Lots of recipes on the Web. But again, the same thought that it's hard to control the effectiveness of a product that's not prepared under pharmaceutical conditions. So I would caution folks from doing that.
Peter Koch: Yeah, those are two great points. And starting with the hand sanitizer piece. Going back to any chemical that you're going to use, whether it's for your hands or a surface, you have to know how it's designed to be used. So if [00:41:00] it needs to actually stay on a surface, whether that be your hands or the desk, for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, or maybe it's seven or eight minutes depending on the type of sanitizer you're using, if you don't use it in the right way, you're not going to get the intended effect from it. So you're not going to have the protection you think you're going to have from it. And you don't get that from a home remedy all the time. You don't really know, you know, that if you mix these together, it should be effective. But how is it going to be effective, how [00:41:30] will it truly work? So you mentioned a couple of things earlier on that there needs to be a certain percentage of alcohol within the hand sanitizer for it to be effective. And then you need to follow the instructions and directions to use the appropriate amount and let it sit on your hands for an appropriate amount of time before you wipe it off. So there again, going back to a pre-manufactured piece, it might be easier for you to use and then feel comfortable that you're going to get the effect that you [00:42:00] want rather than having something that might be homemade. And then on the mask side of things. That's a very I think it's a very complicated scenario because there are fit factors that have to be considered. What type of mask is it going to be? And really, is it going to help prevent you receiving, or will it help prevent the transmission? So what are you using it for? And I think there's some different recommendations, too, from an employer standpoint for the general [00:42:30] employee the recommendation as you go through the CDC is, no, you shouldn't be going out and buying masks and wearing masks. But if you're in the medical community, there's another set of recommendations, whether you're pre-hospital E.M.S. or whether you are in the hospital system, whether it's long-term short-term care or the emergency room hospital area. There are other recommendations and then processes for you to go through to make sure you've picked the right mask and that it's being used [00:43:00] at the right time. So those are all important pieces. And then going back again, the CDC, the CDC Web site and searching through that to find where the best recommendations, or what those recommendations would be are really key pieces. So thanks for bringing those up. Those are two really key pieces because those are hand sanitizers, homemade hand sanitizers and mask. I mean, think I heard that. I don't know just about every hour listening to the news someone's talking about, [00:43:30] there is a shortage of masks, people are wearing masks, people are paying way too much for masks. And really, are they the most effective way of preventing transmission? Probably not. OK. Well, I think that just about wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast. So I wanted to thank you, Deb, for coming on and sharing some of your expertise in your comments with us today. So I really do appreciate that. So thank you very much.
Debra Willard Webb: You're very welcome. It was fun to be here.
Peter Koch: Excellent. And thanks to everyone else who's listened today. And [00:44:00] if you are looking for additional resources, I want you to check out the MEMIC Safety director at MEMIC.com and the most recent safety net blog on the coronavirus. You'll find a whole bunch of information and lots more links to resources that could help you, not only with COVID-19, but it can help you with your emergency action plan or with other illness-based preparations. And if you have any questions for me or like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast. E-mail podcast [00:44:30] at MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to resources for a deeper dive into this topic. And while you're there, you can check out our podcast archive to listen to past shows like Machine Guarding with Hartley Webb or Seasonal Workforce Safety with Deb Roy. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. If you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it. If you'd like a minute or two [00:45:00] to review us on Stitcher, I-Tunes or whichever podcast service you find us on. And if you've already done that, then thanks because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate, friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC's Safety Experts podcast is good but using what you learned is even better.
Machine Guarding ranks number 9 out of OSHA’s Top 10 Most Frequently Cited Standards, with 1,743 violations in 2019. (https://ehsdailyadvisor.blr.com/2019/09/osha-reveals-latest-top-10-list-of-violations-at-nsc-2019/). According to OSHA’s Machine guarding eTool, there are over 18,000 injuries and 800 deaths each year attributed to worker exposure to unguarded or inadequately guarded machines. Does your workplace have presses, shears, gears, rollers, conveyors, or shafts? How about mixers, jointers, portable power tools, or power saws? What do they have in common? Their moving parts can cause a multitude of serious or life changing injuries like amputations, crushed limbs or digits, and blindness. And all may fall under the machine guarding standard.
In this episode, Peter speaks with Hartley Webb, MEMIC’s expert on machine guarding, about what machine guarding is, hazards of unguarded machines, and common strategies to control worker exposure. Listen in as they discuss different types of guards from fixed to interlocking and self-adjusting, as well as devices like light curtains and two hand controls/trips that protect the worker from moving parts.
Peter Koch: Hello, listeners. Welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast for today's episode, Machine Guarding. I'm speaking with Hartley Webb, Safety Management Consultant for MEMIC, to better understand the impact machine guarding has on us in the workplace. Hartley has been a safety management consultant with MEMIC for over 25 years, almost since its inception, working with all varieties of businesses. He's a frequent speaker for the Maine and New Hampshire Safety Councils, and Hartley is a CSP and a firefighter in his hometown in northern Maine. Hartley joins us today on the phone. And welcome to the podcast, Hartley.
Hartley Webb: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Peter Koch: Fantastic. So happy to have you here. Before we get into this topic, a little bit of talk about machine guarding. Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself and your position here with MEMIC?
Hartley Webb: Well, I graduated with industrial technology degree and I went to work for heavy industrial account work there for a few years and then was offered a job as safety consultant for heavy construction. Spent a few years in that trade. And then the insurance company that was handling the contractors working with asked me to come to work for them. And that got me into the insurance industry. And I was there for about two years when I was able to take a job with MEMIC back in 1993. And I've been with MEMIC ever since.
Peter Koch: Wow. Long, long history and some good work experience to bring you in to MEMIC to be a safety consultant. And certainly so really having that heavy industry experience gives you some insight into machine guarding across the board, whether it be through heavy industry or it could be in the many woodworking shops that we have here in Maine or any of the manufacturing or industrial operations that we have across the England or throughout any of our insureds.
Peter Koch: So, we're to talk a little bit about well, a lot about machine guarding today. And what I'd like to know from you is like, what is the definition? Let's start with that. What's the definition of safeguarding or machine guarding?
Hartley Webb: Well, the idea behind machines safeguarding is to prevent the accidental contact with some hazard operation associated with a piece of machinery. And there's various types of hazards. We'll probably get into discussing, but the whole goal behind it is to prevent that accidental contact with those hazard areas, either while operating machines, servicing a machine or working in proximity to a machine.
Peter Koch: Ok, so accidental contact, obviously, you know, no machine guarding is going to prevent a purposeful contact with a hazard operation of the machine. So accidental contact. Is it designed to have there for normal operations, or for maintenance operations? Does it have to be there all the time? So, is it designed to protect the employee at all times or are there certain times where the machine guard doesn't need to be there?
Hartley Webb: The machine safeguarding should be there at all times. Anytime that safeguard is either removed or bypassed, that would bring about the need for controlling of hazardous energy or using alternative measures in order to protect the employee. Once again, put those same hazard points that the guard was put there to begin with.
Peter Koch: Nice. I think that's a good framework to start with. So, when we look at a machine, we've got to look at where those hazard areas are, where there could be accidental contact and those should always be guarded at all times. And then if we got to remove it, then another process has to be in place to protect the employee. Perfect. So, what industries or job activities need to be aware of or understand machines safeguarding?
Hartley Webb: It's really all industries. It's amazing. The different jobs you could go into where people won't think that there is a need for safeguarding. But I mean, typically we think about the metalworking industry, the woodworking industry. I mean, food processing that I deal a lot with has a lot of need for machine guarding because again, there's a lot of material. I'm sorry, a lot of machinery that's handling product. The printing industry has as a strong need for machines safeguarding course. You have completely different exposures in the agricultural industry, in the forestry industry, and you could even include stuff like even grounds keeping industry where you have a lot of that mobile equipment that still has a lot of requirements for machines safeguarding. But I've helped businesses from, you know, retail, wholesale. I mean, is conveyors in a lot of different businesses. Almost any business has some type of either small power tool or something. It's in the maintenance shop or groundskeepers’ shop or whatever that that could bring about the need for safeguarding.
Peter Koch: Nice. So, every industry, like you said. So, it doesn't matter where you're at. Could be a. Mom and pop business. It could be a multi-national or multi-state corporation that has a lot of different functions, but every industry, if you've got a machine that has moving parts, you've got a more than likely you'll have to have some machine guarding on it, whether you have to install it or there comes that way from the manufacturer. Would that be a fair statement?
Hartley Webb: Yes. Yes. Correct.
Peter Koch: Awesome. Ok. So when we start to look at our machines and especially our older machines, or we found this to actually in the recreation industry, when we're purchasing a piece of equipment from overseas, they don't always have the same safety standards that we do for production. And if you don't know and you know, ask for it, parts may not come guarded to the extent that we expect them to be in the states. So, when we're looking at a piece of machinery, what are we looking for to determine whether or not it needs to be guarded?
Hartley Webb: Again, you're gonna be looking for those common hazard areas to start with. You're gonna do like an assessment. Well, the first one we'll be looking at any rotating motion. Are there any shafts? Are there any surfaces at all that may be rotating where you could either get pulled into some type of day nip point like in running net point, which we can talk about more. Is there any reciprocating kind of motions that are taken place where you could have a struck by or a pinch type exposure? Are there any transverse motions that would be something you would find them like chain drives or belt drives where you would have, you know, transverse motion or, you know, surfaces moving in opposite directions. Anytime that happens, typically you will also create a nip point type hazard. We'd be looking for any like points of operation where you would have a cutting action that would be taking place or punching, shearing or bending kind of action where there's the potential for a part of the body or something deep to get caught into that hazard area.
Peter Koch: Okay. So, you mentioned rotating parts in running nip points, transverse motion like a chain drive point of operation cutting operations. So, as you're assessing your piece of equipment, first of all, you'd be looking for moving parts. What those moving parts are doing, are they rotating? Are they driven by a sprocket or a socket? And then can you touch those points? Right. So, I guess if you can see it, does it mean that you have to guard it, or do you actually have to be able to contact it?
Hartley Webb: Well, no, you don't actually have to come in contact with it because I mean, a lot of those actions that we just spoke about were, you know, hazardous activities that are taking place. But you could also have the potential for falling into walking into or struck by of material, you know, coming off of the machining process due to failure. And there's a lot of equipment that requires just like a debris shield would be required in a lot of pieces of machinery that’s actually classified as a guard. And a simple example, that would be something like a milling machine or a blade where there are rotating motions. Some of those can't be physically guarded on some of the manual type machinery but would have like a barrier debris type a barrier to prevent access, but also a to prevent contact with any debris that may be coming off of the point of operation.
Peter Koch: So, in the…
Hartley Webb: And also, we also didn't include heat would be another one. So, if there's any hot surfaces, I mean, that would be a different type of exposure, but that would also bring about the need for, you know, for safety.
Peter Koch: So, any hazardous energy that you could be exposed to there, looking for it to be guarded from accidental contact, like you said, from for the employee. OK, so a debris shield that be something to look at. Let's go back to those different types of points and let's talk about those in running neck points. I know that's a question that comes up all the time. Describe for me what that in running nip point is and what are the hazards around those?
Hartley Webb: Again, it's probably one of the from my experience, that has been the hazard that has caused them the greatest amount of both severity and frequency of injuries within the industries that I work in, the food products, wholesale warehousing type, where there's conveyors that in running nip point, it can be created in several different areas. But typically, it's like a belt coming in contact with a rotating drive wheel or tension wheel. You're going to find those on a conveyor system. You're going to get those nip points created on any type of conveyor, whether it be a chain conveyor, a belt conveyor or a roller compare to inward moving wheels in opposite directions like you would have on a on a conveyor roller conveyor type thing has that potential. At the end where you could come in, where you get two adjoining. Systems where they could get pulled in. But the most common ones would be a belt and pulley, a conveyor rotating or drive wheel or tension wheel along with the belt. Even in a transverse type of belt, the hazard where again, if part of your clothing party, a body or even a tool or something that you're working with or a piece of the product that's moving on the conveyor that has a possibility or on a machine that has the ability to get caught, which could then inadvertently pull you or injure you if you're standing nearby when that takes place. Those types of hazards would have to be guarded against that occurring.
Peter Koch: Ok, I'm gonna ask you here to give me an example. So, can you frame for us and kind of give us a picture of what type of machine would have an in running nip point and kind of describe for where and how that might expose the worker to that energy?
Hartley Webb: Yeah, probably the best scenarios would be a chain and sprocket. So, where that chain needs that dry sprocket on the in running portion of that, obviously there's no hazard on the outrunning but that in running would have to have protection. So rather it's a belt pulley or a chain sprocket. Typically, would be found on some type of power transmission or derived system that would have to be guarded or that portion would have to be guarded so that you cannot make contact that would draw you into that hazard area.
Peter Koch: Gotcha. Perfect. So that makes sense. So that the section where the sprocket or the drive wheel is coming in contact with the chain or the belt typically really at the bottom as it starts to pull that in where those two pieces come together. That's that in running that point. That's what you're talking about.
Hartley Webb: Correct. And there's almost nobody around that has an experience that was like a bicycle where your pant leg got caught onto that in running neck point of that chain and sprocket on your bike. The only difference is when we're dealing with industrial, we have motors behind that energy. So, the rotation doesn't stop. And that's where you could it could have some serious injury from basically continuing to draw in, you know, the clothing or the body part.
Peter Koch: Sure. That makes a lot of sense. I think that's a great description. That chain and sprocket for the bicycle and I. Yeah, everybody has written a bike has had that. Has that happened before? But the benefit of the bicycle, like you said, is it will stop if you get too much, too much in there or you just fall off. But the machine's not going to stop it until someone pushes the button or until it reaches its maximum tolerance. OK, so in earning the points, we've talked about those another rotating part. You talked about rotating shafts. So, there's a lot of rotating shafts that are out there. What part of that shaft has to be guarded? And what are the guidelines around what has to be guarded for that rotating shaft?
Hartley Webb: Yeah, the if it's a shaft itself. Well, I guess this first we'll talk about the shaft. And so if you take a shaft and connect it to some type of the pulley or a gear or something like that, there's potentially going to be an exposing shaft end like you would find on a like a grinding wheel where you'd have that shaft coming through the center of the wheel. And then on the outside, you would typically have like a hex knot or in that same thing's gonna be in an industrial facility, may or may not have a nut on the end of it. It could just have a set caller on the end of it. It's connected by some type of this that screw with or without maybe a keyway. So that shaft end that has some very specific requirements to it. If it doesn't have any burrs. If it's smooth. If it's less than one half the shaft diameter. What's sticking out of the of the surface that it's uprooting through? So, one half the shaft diameter or less, you can leave it alone and don't have to safeguard it. But if you're going to let more than that stick out, if it has any exposed keyways or if it has a collar with a set screw on it. In that set screw is sticking out so that it might it could come in contact with clothing or be able to catch something that now has to have a guard on it.
Hartley Webb: So, the shaft and is one of the areas you'd want to focus on. Anytime you have any type of the shaft on a piece of machinery, then the shaft itself you would want to be taking a look at to see if it's an extremely slow-moving shaft. And I can't remember exactly the rotation. It is in some letters of interpretation that have been documented. But if it's really slow, I mean, slow enough that you could almost sit on the thing and, you know, get off of it without it moving more. I mean, if it's really moving slow, it's not much of a hazard, but it fits. But if it has any rotation to it, it could accidentally catch clothing or catch material or hair or anything like that. It's going to have to have some type. The shield on it. If it has a keyway in it. Now we have a surface. It can easily catch material that has to have a guard on it. So, if your shaft has an exposed keyway, it's gotta be guarded. If it has any rough surface, it has any anything on it. All set callers or anything that could do again could catch clothing, hair or strike you as it rotates. It's going to have to have a guard on it to prevent contact with that hazard.
Peter Koch: So, a smooth shaft that's greater than one half the diameter of the shaft itself. That that much is sticking out beyond the machine that is protruding from if it's smooth. No keyway. No castle. No. No set screw. Totally smooth. No damage to it. Does that have to be guarded?
Hartley Webb: If it's less than half the shaft diameter total sticking out? No. As far as size and in it in its protrusion. But again, looking at it like you just mentioned, any of those items that could accidentally cause you to get caught on it. Hair, clothing, or even as a struck by if it's coming around, you can catch the body. It's going to have to be safeguarded. So sometimes we'll try to eliminate the need for a safeguard by cutting those shafts back. There’re no exposed keyways, no exposed set screws. So therefore, the shaft can be left unguarded.
Peter Koch: Very good. But if it is longer than half the diameter, then it's gonna have to be guarded regardless or if it has any protrusions from it. Those are all good to remember. OK. So, you're looking at are the rotating shaft ends. Those are some good points as a have something that's going to catch the person, their clothing, their hair, a tool or strike someone as it comes around. Then those have to be guarded. The length is something you have to look at. Any you brought up a good point, too, that you don't have to guard it. If you can make it shorter than half the diameter of the shaft itself. So, you can if it's possible to cut it back, you can cut it back and therefore eliminate the need to do that. So, it's another tool in your box as you're thinking about machine guarding.
Hartley Webb: Correct.
Peter Koch: Excellent.
Hartley Webb: And a good example of that would be like a buffer. Put a buffing wheel on like a bench grinder but use a buffing wheel again. The guards could come on the manufacturers guards can come off because of the buffing wheel and you may need the entire surface. So, if you need the entire surface of the wheel, you can justify the removal of the barrier guard. But you still are gonna be required to guard that and that. And you're still going to be required to guard the shaft. If there's an expose shaft between a motor housing and the buffing wheels. So that stumps a lot of companies that just want to have an open buffing wheel. But they still need to either have a smooth, not smooth cap on the end or they're going to have to come up with ways of guarding the end nut along with the drive shaft.
Peter Koch: So that's another option there. I was thinking that as you described that I'm thinking about the buffing wheel that I've used in some woodturning shops for two to two polished finished products. And some of them have three or four wheels right on the shaft itself that comes out. And at the end of the shaft is machine. So, the last buffing wheel stops right up against this. So, there's nothing sticking out. However, if there was something, stick it out. You can put a smooth cap on the end of that too, then.
Hartley Webb: Correct. Usually that's usually that's a hex nut on that end. And oftentimes my counsel machine, a smooth almost like an acorn nut without any hex fittings on it that will actually get rate over that in fitting or if you're a connection point. And so now that you get a nice smooth shaft, it doesn't stick out more than half the diameter. They can now leave that out there in case they have to use the entire surface of that blast buffing wheel.
Peter Koch: Perfect. Without putting a large guard around that to prevent contact. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, very good. We talked about the ends of shafts. When does a shaft itself need to be guarded?
Hartley Webb: Typically, is when you have access to it. I mean, again, this is going to be every industry is a little bit different, but a lot of places can guard by location, which we can get into. You know, the methods of safeguarding. But if you can't have access to it, you can't you know, if you tried to reach it, you cannot with the full arm's reach, gain access to it. Then, you know, you can have basically administrative procedures and say, look, you need to go in. That area is going to be basically you'd have to control hazards, energy prior to entering. So, it can be guarded by location. Oftentimes what I see is it's where the operator station may be and they have that again, the potential for that accidental contact where clothing or something that could drape like hair, could drape over that rotating chair. And in that case, you're gonna have to guard or put a guard on to prevent contact. I mean, that's gonna be the same as any revolving surface or rotating motion that we talked about initially as a hazard. In the end, a lot of times in our mind, we're thinking of that horizontal shaft. But if you think about rotating motions, the one that most people can reference would be like a chuck on a drill press that has to be protected against accidental contact of that rotating surface. And that's no different than a chef would be.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that makes sense. I was thinking, as you're talking about, that actually a vertical rotating shaft back in my history of employment, working in the recreation industry. We had some large vertical pumps for snowmaking systems and the older pumps had a vertical rotating shaft below the motor that went down to the impeller into the pump pit itself. And that was exposed. So, once it started up, you could easily come in contact with that. And in one of the first places I worked, it wasn't guarded initially. It did get guarded after a while. No one got no one touched it because no one was allowed into that area except the operator during operation. But still, that's the way it came from the manufacturer, or at least that's the way it looked like it came from the manufacturer as a 22-year-old working snow making for the first time.
Hartley Webb: Something like that, there's basically the two most common ways would be to put a fixed guard over it so that you don't have access to it. And some of the most common methods that I see in the woodworking industry is and what actually in a lot of industries. But to put a slip collar over it, which is basically like a piece of TVC pipe, one size larger than that rotating shaft, kind of works like the shaft on a PTO for a like a farm tractor. When you're using an implement behind it, you'll put a slip shaft over that. So, in the event that you accidentally come in contact, land on it, your clothes drape over it, that the shaft, if it is rotating, may actually mean the covering like the TVC pipe. You could actually grab that pipe and the pipe would stop at the shaft but continues to spin inside it. You don't have access to that rotating surface. So, a lot of times I'll see those shafts like that just with a simple slip bag placed over it. And know that works effectively as long as it's installed properly.
Peter Koch: Excellent. That's another really that's another really good point. So, we've been talking about a number of different ways to guard. So. you talked about slip collars. You talked about a fixed guard. You talked about a smooth cap on the end of a rotating shaft. What are some other ways that you can guard some of the machine guarding hazards that we've talked about so far?
Hartley Webb: If you looked at it from a compliance standpoint, the one that they the one that compliance really likes to look is a fixed guard. So, the best guard is an actual fixed, solid fastened down, you know, some type of guard measure that protects you from that hazard area. If so, if you can't put a fixed guard on it, can you put an adjustable? So, an adjustable guard would probably be the next guard. So that's something that maybe manually would have to be adjusted each time a machine or something was used. But again, that would be the next level. So, you've got fixed, you've got adjustable. Then you would go to like self-adjusting. You know, where that would be like in a lot of the machines or saws where you thought of your table saw and you put some of the standard guards at table saws have that's gonna be just self-adjusting guard that just it just itself to the stock as it's being fed in. Obviously, the hazards of that type of guard is if you can continue to, you know, pass a part of your body in there. The guard is going to adjust into whatever is being fed into it will adjust over it. It really just protects you from having that accidental contact coming in from the side or above. But so, you've got fixed, adjustable, self-adjusting, and then the next level would probably be like an interlock type device that would be on some type of a fixed barrier or a door or gate that might be around the hazard area.
Hartley Webb: Then you're then at that point you'd probably be looking at devices and without getting into a lot that we can get into some discussion. But basically, there's like six common devices. There’re those present sensing devices that will sense when you're in the area and stop the machine or prevent access. You've got a safety trip device where again, that's going to trip, he just stops the machine or trip some safety measure that will prevent access to the hazard. You have two-hand control. There’re basically two types of that two-hand trip and then two hand control. So, two-hand trip with the you know, you put your hand somewhere, the machines. But then they let you remove your hands and do something else where a two-hand control, you'd have to leave your hands in place the entire time. The machine's functioning and if you remove your hands, the machine stops. Then there's pull back and restraints, which now I've actually got the employee somehow harnessed where each time the machine cycles, it literally pulls their body out in a way from the hazard each time that machine does a hazardous activity at the point of operation. Or you can have restraint. That's basically just putting the person on a on a tether that prevents them from reaching a hazard area. So, if we go to that, it's fixed, adjustable, self-adjusting, interlocked. You can use your devices than the next one would probably be by location. So, in the world of safeguarding, if it's above seven feet from a walking, working surface, it mostly doesn't need to be safeguarded unless for some reason an employee elevates himself.
Hartley Webb: Then it would have to be addressed or taken in. And then there's some standards about fast moving belt's large belts and stuff where it still protects in the event of the belt breaking over your head. But pretty much you can guard by location and that's kind of a 7-foot rule. Then obviously you could use stuff like robotics and stuff to remove the human out of the hazard area and auto feed type systems, so the employees aren't involved with the hazardous activities. And then it really goes into administrative where that's just using everything we just discussed. But that's including the necessary signage as an awareness, installing some type of, you know, barrier that you would have to go through before you get to even some of the guarding. And that would also include the employee training, training on what the guards are, what the signs are, what the do’s and don'ts are, along with the machine and the use of the guards and the injustice, some the guards. So, it's kind of a little toes were nine kind of key areas. But if you're doing a guarding assessment or if I was to come out and do a guarding assessment on a machine, I'd be basically looking at how many and which one of those nine items could potentially be used to safeguard that piece of machinery.
Peter Koch: Great. There's a lot there. Looking at a piece of machinery from each of those places. But let's talk about some of the benefits of or the drawbacks as well for each of those. So, let's take them kind of in turn. So, the fixed guard you stated the benefit before of the fixed guard is it's fixed. It's in place. It's always there, protects the employee. What's the drawback of having a fixed guard?
Hartley Webb: Well, the only drawback would be it's a fixed guard doesn't work for you. So, in other words, you need to have access. Product has to flow under it or through it, then obviously would be in the way. Or if you have to have visibility, sometimes a fixed guard can be an issue. The other thing with a fixed guard is depending on again your operation, you may not be able to install it. Fixed guy. Due to the hazard. It's just it's not physically possible. Example of that might be. See, you've got a conveyor system and that conveyor is two or three hundred feet long, which you actually install a solid fixed guard for the entire length of the now 200-foot-long conveyor. Or do you just guard the high areas of exposure such as the nip point and stuff, but yet you still have a moving belt system. So then they would let you go to another like a trip kind of device where you'd use like a trip wire or something like that, where if you were outside of those in running nip points and stuff that have physical guards on and that's where you've fixed guards would be located. You'd also be using alternative measures in lieu of completely encasing, you know, the piece of machinery so you can't get access to it.
Peter Koch: So, the trip the trip wire or the trip guard be in addition to having a fixed guard then, is that what you're saying?
Hartley Webb: Correct. Yeah. Because it's interesting because the most commonly not to get into citations is that the most commonly safeguarded violation is the one that says basically a machine needs more often needs more than one type of guard to be safely protected. I can remember exactly how the standard reads, but it's read at the very beginning of the general requirements for machine guards. And in you know, people sometimes just stop at implementing one guard when they really haven't addressed all the hazards of the machine. And it comes back to that point that the entire machine needs to be assessed. And what are there all the potential hazards associated with that given machine. So again, it will oftentimes need more than just one. But the other common one that a lot of accounts that I work with, a fixed guard tends to build up and accumulate debris. So, if you have like conveyor systems or machinery that has the ability to produce a lot of debris. Then those fixed cards can become a hazard because they lead to more maintenance type activities for having to do cleaning, which now is going to expose you to hazardous energy and elevated issues and, you know, elevated fall exposures. So, companies won't go with a fixed guard. They'll tend to go with area guards or barriers that going to keep you away. So, they tend to guard more by location and then allow the machine to run so that it doesn't have as much downtime for cleaning.
Peter Koch: That makes sense. And so, a couple of points that I wanted to highlight from what you just said was that the entire machine has to be assessed and not just from what moving parts it has, but what moving parts does it have, and where will the employees or where might the employees get access to it during the course of normal operations? So, if they have to walk behind it, to walk around it, move above it. Do something with it, even if it's not in the point of operation area for the machine. If, say, the back of a powered press or something. You have access to it because you've got people walking back and forth. That area might need to be guarded just as well. So, in your assessment, you're not just looking at where the operator is, but you're assessing the entire machine. I thought that was a really good point that you brought up there.
Hartley Webb: Correct. And probably almost anybody listening because either you don't care if it's a push mower or more or riding more. But everybody is familiar with like a riding lawn more. Well, if you looked at the guarding that's on that you have guarding on your power transmission. So that drive system that built pulley that has to be guarded. You've got your point of operation. You're cutting deck. The guides that are required on that to keep debris and stuff from being thrown out from the sides, along with the discharge chute in the stickers that are on that lawnmower are riding more from the manufacturer. Those are administrative controls. That signage is part of that guiding requirement. And that's something I often see in the agricultural industry where they'll have older tractors that they've repainted them or they've just from where. And those stickers that are on the rear fenders of the tractor, on the operating controls of the farm tractors that may even be attached to the PTO guarding mechanisms, those stickers have to be on there. They're part of the manufacturer's requirement for the safe use of that guard, and of the tractor. So that becomes part of that guarding that information of what are the hazard points and what to stay away from. Along with the actual physical fixed or adjustable God's.
Peter Koch: Perfect. Perfect. So those stickers or the information parts are a part of their machine guarding requirement to giving instructions. Awesome!
Hartley Webb: Correct.
Peter Koch: Let's talk a little bit then about the pros and cons of those adjustable or self-adjustable guards. You talked a little bit about that. How? There's a couple of cons for the Self-adjusting Guards. But give us a little more insight into the pros and cons of using an adjustable or a self-adjusting guard.
Hartley Webb: Well, the self-adjusting, that's just the maintenance criteria. So that has to basically be maintained so that it's functional and operating in the way that would that it was designed to be adjustable. Good is where I typically would see or we do see a lot of exposure areas because again, that comes back under the training of the employee, which is, you know, one of those administrative requirements. It's also part of the company's safeguarding effort. But there is a guard opening scale. So, it pretty much represents the human arm. So when you're adjusting any of those adjustable guards, they should be adjusted in a manner that in the event that your hand was to pass under that guard, you cannot make contact with that point of operation, with that hazard activity is taking place. So, you know, you can have that opening can become larger and larger the more you come away from the hazard. And once again, it represents really it represents the human hand. I think it goes down as far as a quarter inch. So any type of an adjustable, if you want to think of like a table saw or a band saw, which probably most people have at home or in the work, is that guard can't be graded in a quarter inch from the largest portion of the stock feature that you're feeding into the machine. So, you would want to be adjusting that all the time and keeping that within tolerance of the part. So, again, it comes back to a human requirement and knowledge to keep adjusting that. That's one of the biggest downfalls of that adjustability, is it doesn't get adjusted as much as it probably should.
Peter Koch: Yes, you kind of put it in an either in an average spot, if you adjust it for the largest piece that you're going to have and then you start feeding. Pieces into the machine and you don't adjust it back down. Therefore, exposing the employee to that, that the hazard of the rotating parts of the moving parts inside the machine, that makes sense. So, comebacks that the human factor is the challenge with the adjustable guard. Sure. So, what about interlocks? I know quite a few of the machines that I've worked with before. You open the door. The machine stops. Or you know, you can't operate the machine again until the interlock is closed. Are there any there? There's a really great benefit for that. Like if there is a door that is enclosing all the rotator part, rotating parts or moving parts like a CNC machine. Another piece of machinery, you might have a window where you can see into the operation itself, but in order to access, you have to open the door and then the machine won’t operate until it's close. Great control, great guard. But what are the challenges that we might have with an interlock system as a guard?
Hartley Webb: Well, they're allowed to be used. The biggest thing is, again, maintaining and making sure that they're actually functioning. Unfortunately, they have the ability to be overridden by the employee often times or, you know, shouldn't be, but they can they can make it so that the interlock is no longer functioning, either by turning it off, by putting some type of the mechanism in it that bypasses it. Obviously, that would create a very unsafe situation because now you wouldn't have a secured guard. And basically, it's just it's taking a fixed guard, making it easily removable or allowed to open. The other thing that it brings about the need for, which would be another conversation for another time. But again, once you open that guard, even though it may be interlocked and shut down or stop some functioning part of the machine or the hazard area, you still have to deal with the control of hazardous energy. If what you're about to do is classified as a service or maintenance activity, which typically would be the reason you would have to go beyond that, that guard. So, it's there, too, as a protection measure. But going beyond the interlock brings about the need for control of hazardous energy. At that point, we'd have to say probably ninety nine percent of the time.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. So, we're gonna take a quick break and we will continue with some more discussion with Hartley on the back side. So, we'll see in a moment.
Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast by minute. Today, we're talking with Hartley Webb, safety management consultant at MEMIC. So, let's jump in with some more questions. Part of the break, Hartley, we were talking about the different types of machine guards and they're pros and cons and we talked about fixed, adjustable, self-adjusting and interlocks and now we're onto those devices. So why don't you talk to us about the devices and what the pros and cons are for those devices?
Hartley Webb: Ok. Well, the first one would be the first one that comes to mind would be like a presence sensing type device. And there's a lot of different ones. Some of them there might be a sense mat on the floor. So, a few that can be wired either way say that the they want you that you want the operator to stand in a certain area and not leave that area so that they don't become injured. You can actually put a man on the floor that would be interlocked back to the piece of machinery. But you can have one or two ways. Either somebody steps onto the mat trying to enter into an area that would that would activate safety devices, or you can have it so that the employee literally has the standard or be station in one area in in order for the machine to function. So that's one type of present sensing devices. Other ones would be the most typical one. Probably people are familiar with would be like curtains or some type of barrier interlock where it senses some part of the body entering into an area. And when it does so, once again, it either sets off alarms it could it could stop the piece of machinery. It all depends on what the machine is and how close you are to the hazard area at that point in time. But those are good examples of present sensing some of the downfalls, short sides of those. Once again, they have to be maintained. So, people have to test them. They have to make sure that they're being serviced properly aligned properly, are given on what type of device that they're actually using.
Peter Koch: How often... let me interrupt you for just a second, Hartley, how often do they have to be tested and evaluated, those present sensing devices?
Hartley Webb: Most of it's going to come back. When I usually do that, I usually look for the what the manufacturer's requirements are for like a light curtain. So, in some of that may also be based on how dirty the environment may be. That may affect the sensors or the photo portion of the of the sensors. So usually I go right to the manufacturers literature to find out what they have. I believe OSHA’s got some requirements for like curtains. And I think that's only when used on presses that they do have some requirements. And I want to I want to say that's like a, it's like a pre-check where you'll just verify that the system's working based on its light mechanisms, where it's got a red or green to show you when it's been tripped. As far as maintenance, maintaining them and keeping them within the tolerance that’s required, that will go back in manufacturer's literature and following that requirement.
Peter Koch: Ok, good. And all those can be adjusted based on the machinery. How far away? How big the thing that you want to identify is as it comes into the presence of whatever you're trying to, whatever you're sensing. So, whether it be a light curtain or the mat, all those tolerances can be set. So that can be tuned pretty well for really good safety or in good safety and efficient operation as well. So, you've really got to know what the manufacturer says about how to adjust it, when to test it and how it's supposed to function. Good. Good points there. Thank you. So, from there, from the other devices you had mentioned before, you had mentioned safety trips to hand controls, to hand trips, pull back restraints. So, what are some pros and cons of those different devices?
Hartley Webb: I shouldn't say I've been fortunate of, I’ve been unfortunate, but I've been able to do some accident investigations where they used a safety trip. And once again, the safety trip just it's a two-hand trip. And sometimes you can actually have a one-hand trip if you want to use buttons. So that basically controls either one or both hands. So, you're able to control where the operator’s hands are at the time a piece of machinery starts. The difference between two-hand trip and two-hand control that I spoke about would be the control they would have to leave their hands on those two pressure points doing the entire cycle of the machine. Usually that would be used in the event that they could take a handoff and reach into the machine and still be injured. So sometimes you'll see just a control use just to like to shut a gate. Once the gate closes, you're able to let off the control and the machine can cycle. Other types of trips we had mentioned earlier would be your trip wires. Sometimes those run along the length of something like a conveyor. I also have a lot of industry where they'll use them to surround a piece of machinery such as a roll press, say, in the metal industry where you could be anywhere around that machine, 360 degrees. And if things are going if things aren't going right or there's a hazard anywhere, then you can quickly basically the trip wires down by your foot and allows you to quickly step on the wire on like a roll press that would basically stop that machine immediately or like on a conveyor, you would be able to pull it. So, it has a lot of various is a lot of different type trip devices. It can put out there. It can be out there, but it and it just allow some allow actually another one that's very common is device where you'll see it in a plastic or in the rubber industry, sometimes in the textile industry where if you accidentally get caught in a machine because you have to have the operation has to be open to gain access to the product. But if something happened, then you were to fall forward or you get caught on a product and got pulled towards a machine, you would come in contact with some type of either a swinging overhead bar or there'd be a bar crossed in front of you. That when you make contact with that, it would stop the machine prior to entering. Probably the one that most people would be familiar with that aren't into some of those industries would be if anybody is looked at like a woodchipper, they have one of those bars that would be a trip device where if you get caught on a tree limb and it started pulling you into the chipper, you would just reach up a party of body and hit that bar by the feet you and that would stop the feed mechanism.
Peter Koch: So, it's a change your pants bar, pretty much because you're saying later, if your heart is going a million miles a minute, because you're just moments away from being incorporated into whatever product you have. Holy cow. Yeah.
Peter Koch: So, question I have on those trip wires, though, those by themselves, are they considered an effective guard, a trip wire by itself, or does that have to be used in conjunction with another type of guard? Because it seems to be more of an emergency stop device that I would have to physically trip that. Like I'd have to reach out, I have to touch it. I'd have to kick it, but I could step over it or I could move around it. I don't actually have to touch it. So, can you use it trip wire or as I guess as you stop wire or something like that as an effective guard or would it be used with something else?
Hartley Webb: I've almost never seen it used by itself. I can't think of any machinery where it would be the sole type of safeguarding. Usually it is used along with like an emergency stop button that would probably be at the operators control area. So that would be the primary emergency stop. And in the event that the operator walked away from the control panel. He's got access to that trip wire. That's what you would typically see on like if I go back to that, that roll pressed for steel. Right. But it's you know, if you'll start if you think about it on conveyers, which is probably where it's most predominantly used. Again, I go back to that statement that, you know, more than one method of safeguarding. And if you take here, you know, you take a conveyor. There’re all sorts of houses associated with that that need to be guarded. So, you it's going to have to usually be used along with fake guards, adjustable guards, interlock guards. I mean, every machine's different, but I've never seen it used just solely by itself.
Peter Koch: So, the bottom line that makes a lot of sense. The bottom line is the guard that you have must protect the person from accidental contact of rotating parts or moving parts. So, it must be it could be a single type of guard or more than likely because of the complexity of the machinery. It might be more than one guard. And that example that you used of the riding lawnmower and the number of different guards that it has that has multiple different guards, has it just adjustable guards, has fixed guards and administrative controls on that to help protect the operator. So that's a really good description. I think a good rule of thumb going forward. Don't just think that one guard is going to do the trick. Really do the assessment and evaluate how can that employee common accidental contact with the moving parts that we've identified. In your travels around and again, working for MEMIC for so many years and then being in heavy industry prior to that? Hartley, in your experience. What's the most overlooked guarding exposure that you see?
Hartley Webb: I have a lot of heavy industrial accounts that I tend to service, but it's not necessarily always heavy industrial, but the conveyor which we've talked about is for the most. Serious accidents that I've had to investigate from the frequency associated with people getting caught or injured when there's conveyors in the area. But I mean, I have conveyers in my warehouses to move freight around. I have conveyers in my food processing areas again to move product around. I mean, there's conveyers in the printing industry. There’re conveyers in the agricultural industry again. I mean, I don't really think there's not I don't think there's an industry out there are many that doesn't somewhere have, you know, a conveyor type exposure unless you're maybe the service sector. But I even have those in some of the back storerooms and stuff for a receiving area. So, it happens that conveyor. There's just so many things on that conveyor that have to be addressed as part of that. You know that machine safeguarding assessment.
Peter Koch: That makes a lot of sense. I'm thinking as you're scrolling through all those different industries and I'm looking at some of the industries that I work with tend to be on the softer side of the service, retail, hospitality, recreation. And even there are guards looked back at the house from a food service standpoint. And you have multiple pieces of equipment that might have a conveyor like an automated pizza oven will have a conveyor to bring raw product from one side to cook product on the other side as it moves through. There're other conveyor systems that might move pizza or move dough from one area to another or through a platen machine to flatten it out in the recreation industry. What's becoming very popular to move people from point A to point B are carpets, magic carpets. So, think about an escalator without any steps. Right. So, it's just a basically a conveyor belt for humans. But you still have to maintain it. And there's been numerous injuries for people getting caught either trying to maintain and clear it from snow or debris or they're actually underneath it. And it starts up so a little different from a control of hazardous energy. That's the lockout tagout thing when you're in a maintenance process. But they still have to be guarded. So, you're right, they're all there all over the place. So, don't forget the conveyor.
Hartley Webb: And you're going to have a, yeah, I kind of have a list of, you know, some items that if I'm looking at a conveyor, the first thing I'm looking for is the things you just talked about of those big ones, that that that's what I'm looking for, those fixed guards. So those nip points, those rotating surfaces, where can those where do those areas exist? Typically, on either the beginning of the end of the conveyor, we'll get that in running nip point of some stationary surface in the conveyor or can I get into the conveyor in between the two transverse motions where I can come in contact with those wheels or the drive wheels? You know, the ease or the return mechanisms. So those can be protected by fixed guards. If they do have some emergency stop mechanism, I usually ask that that has some type of a requirement for resetting before any type of resuming of the conveyor operation. So, if somebody does hit an emergency stop, just basically pulling that stop button back out will not restart that equipment. It's going to take some type of manual resetting to occur. I'm usually looking at protection from walkways. You mentioned that earlier. If somebody is going to walk alongside the conveyor, that's when we would look at the trip wires or you use some type of fixed guard if it's a possibility. How about those people that pass under a conveyor or have to pass over a conveyor? Again, if it's over the conveyor now, we would have the need for the fall protection or the railing system to keep access from landing on the conveyor. If you're going to pass under a conveyor, what type of overhead protection exists? Warning signs that we've talked about in the past, it would be on all of those hazard areas of the conveyor. So, is there signage there that explains the hazard? It signifies that in running nip point or whatever there has, it might be warning light stuff's going to either restart, start back up or is in operation. So, people realize it has that potential for either automatic restarts or manual restarts. If there's an opening through walls and floors in a building, you know, then that also has to be, you know, if you have access to those areas, can those create hazards? Do those need to be to be safeguarded either by location with some type of a barrier or whatever may be required? Guarding of star buttons for a compare. So, you don't get an accidental starting. So, it is either the star buttons have covers or the start buttons are recessed or some type of a sequential series of buttons that have to take place in order for a conveyor to start up. It's not just by pushing one single button where you can get accidental start up of the system. So those would be some of the things that I would look at along with his capability of being locked out during servicing or it's to be shut down, what's the process for overloading or jamming and that kind of stuff? So those are just a few of the simple things are the key things that I tend to look for any anytime I see a conveyor in any of those industries.
Peter Koch: Well, I was just trying to keep a list of all those things that you are going to look for. And I couldn't keep up. So, if I'm looking after I listen to this podcast, then I'm looking back out on my factory floor and I'm thinking about, gosh, look at all those machines. We haven't done a machine guarding assessment or maybe we have, but we've changed some of the tooling. We've changed to the machines or the configuration of our shop. What are some resources that we can draw from and what are the standards that drive the requirements for machine guarding? So, let's take standards for. So where can someone find the standards and what are some of those standards that drive the requirements for machine guarding and then we'll talk resources.
Hartley Webb: The best place to go to the standards would be to the most up to date would be to your ANSI standards and stuff. But OSHA has a lot of great publications that that really help out with machine guarding and they've really broken it down. You talked about like conveyers, which I just went over. There's so many different exposures on conveyers. Those are actually specifically addressed in the general industry standards, in the construction industry standards. And I believe they're even individually addressed in the marine standards. But you have it in general, in industry if you wanted to go to the OSHA regulations. Subpart O in your 1910 and your general industry regulations. Subpart O will cover all of your standards for machine guarding in the general industry. And they're very specific. It's very well broken down where they have a they have a section just dealing with the general requirements and then they get specific into all your woodworking tools, your abrasive tools, you know, your steel presses, forging machines and power transmission. So if you're actually looking at a power transmission type exposure, where it goes back into what we talk about, shafts, pulleys, we didn't talk about open flywheels, but if you have an open flywheel, is it a belt running through or even a sprocket maybe part or a chain maybe passing around? Again, you have to protect those openings, or those exposures and you've got a very specific standard so you can go right to the standard and that defines exactly what you can do.
Hartley Webb: Your construction standards, Subpart I. So, in your general industry. Subpart O. and your construction is subpart I. Actually, addresses them with the tools, handheld and power tools and it gets into all again, it talks about almost the same standards for your woodworking, metalworking, power transmission, that kind of stuff. And if you looked at your Marine standard, your 1915, it's also found under this subpart H, but that's also your tools and related equipment and that gets into abrasive and again, some of the tools most commonly found in that industry. So, Subpart O, general industry, Subpart I construction and subpart H for your marine industry.
Peter Koch: Oh, fantastic. So, it's a good place to start to look at the compliance side of things. And I give you the what and the where for. So talk to me a little bit about the different resources that might be available to someone who would want to do a machine guarding assessment or to put a program or a plan in place at their business or work and they turn to for some resources.
Hartley Webb: Once again, I tell most of my accounts or businesses that I'll come in contact with that OSHA has some great resources and they have a they have a lot of what they call E tools. And if you can go right to their Web site and look for E tools and they have them for all of the woodworking and all of the metal working. And they also have a general some general ones that get into your power transmission and conveyor type systems in their great assessment. They're really easy to read. They're in bullet format. You can go right down through. And it kind of describes exactly what the guarding requirements are for those specific pieces of equipment. And they've just taken their standard. But they've actually they just made it easier to read, easier to understand. And some say you can almost use it as an assessment form when looking at a piece of machinery.
Peter Koch: Perfect. So, the OSHA standards for looking at compliance and then the E tools for helping you with the different assessments that that you might need to do. Awesome. Any other resources?
Hartley Webb: I mean, if you're looking at somebody, ask me about a specific machine and that's a machine that has been fabricated. I usually will want them to address or I'll go look at the manufacturers' literature for that machine. So, what does the manufacturer say is required? And you can when you started, you kind of mentioned that early on. That's a good reference point, but it is a lot of documentation by OSHA that is stated. The fact that the manufacturer of that equipment isn't responsible to install all the necessary safeguards. It's the employer of the person who purchases that equipment that has to identify is there an existing hazard? You know, you begin using this piece of equipment that I may need to add additional safeguards to in a great example of that is like a bandsaw. You can go out tomorrow and buy a vertical bandsaw. Yeah, vertical bandsaw. Almost anywhere being bandsaw to cut wood with. And there's no guarding requirements on that bandsaw does not meet the standard requirements. So you would basically you go in to the standard for a vertical bandsaw and it would describe the you need to have a guard on that machine that prohibits access to any part of the blade other than the part that's being used to cut the product. So, but all of those bandsaws are fabricated so that you have access to a lot of the blade above the point of operation. And that has to be protected by the employer prior to putting it out into the workplace. And again, that's so unless it has some ventilation system or lighting system attached to it does not offer that safety mechanism. So, the employer would be responsible to add that as soon as they bought the machine.
Peter Koch: Sure, that's a great point. So, with you have a particular tool, don't rely on the manufacturer to provide everything because like you said, the OSHA standard says the manufacturer is not responsible. The employer is. Do your own assessment, go back to the OSHA standards. Look at subpart H, I or O depending on the industry. Check out the E tools and then I mean you can even reference I know that you specifically Hartley, have developed some resources for MEMIC that have helped our policyholders do machine guarding assessments and address some of the challenges that they have. So where might they find some of those things that MEMIC?
Hartley Webb: I believe all of the forms that you're talking about are on our resource library within the safety director. So, if you go into our website, references safety director and then go to the resource library. We were actually involved in a NIOSH study. MEMIC was we have some great resources for assessing metal work machinery, but some of that does cross over. I mean, a bandsaw is a bandsaw, but it's a very, very detailed. And those go into the NIOSH requirements for machine guarding, which are much more extensive than what you would find in your OSHA regulations.
Peter Koch: Sure. But that could give you a good resource, especially when you might have a more complex machine or you're really looking at something that kind of fits the OSHA standard but might not fit the OSHA standard. And you're looking for or you have a very dangerous operation and you want to make sure that you're protecting your employees, that the NIOSH places is certainly a place to go. And yeah, you're right, we we did participate in that study and there are a lot of good resources out there. So safety director is a good place to stop into.
Hartley Webb: Those resources that we have available for them for the metal working. Like I said, they're detailed, but that's not only looking at fishing guarding, that's also looking at electrical, looking at lighting, looking at personal protective equipment, employee placement. It does a full hazard assessment of the machine, not just the guarding portion. Does they all time to work together with the clothing that the employees wearing, debris protection, access to hazard point. So, there's a there's a lot more being assessed than just the physical hazards and the requirements regarding.
Peter Koch: Yeah, awesome resource for a general hazard assessment for machines, especially those metalworking machines. Well, thanks a lot for sharing all this with us. But we're about at the end of our MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. And I really appreciate that you've shared all this expertise with us. Hartley, but before we close, I've got one final question for you, because this is a safety podcast. Why is safety important to you? Why is it important to you, Hartley?
Hartley Webb: Nobody out. It wants to get hurt or should be getting hurt. And it's easy. I've made it a point in my life to enjoy what I do, be a consultant and try to do the best I can to try to prevent people out there from being injured in the workplace. And it's in their best interest. It's a passion of mine. It's just something that I don't think is ever going to be a driving force. I'm gonna to, you know, give up anytime soon and, um, you know, I just I look forward to it every day. But it it's all about, you know, employees being able to go home to spend time with their families and, you know, enjoy their lives without being at risk while they're in the workplace.
Peter Koch: That's awesome. That moral component of safety is a is a huge part. I can see it working. Having worked with you for the last 12, 19, almost 19 years now for me, that I can definitely see it in the way you apply yourself to the work that you do. So fantastic. I appreciate that, Harley. Thanks a lot.
Peter Koch: So, again, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for joining us today. And to all of our listeners out there. We've been talking with Hartley Webb, safety management consultant with MEMIC, about machine guarding on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. If you have any questions for Hartley or like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast. Email us at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes that MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to resources for a deeper dive into this topic. Check out our website, MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find the podcast archive and find all of the ones that we've recorded prior to today. While you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss out on any articles or safety related news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute to review us on Stitcher i-Tunes or whichever's podcast service you find us on. And if you've already done that, I thank you very much because it helps us out a lot to spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good but using what you learned is even better.
People, Ideas and Articles referenced in the Podcast * MEMIC – https://www.memic.com/ * Peter Koch – https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch * Hartley Webb – https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/hartley-webb * OSHA – https://www.osha.gov/ * ANSI – https://www.ansi.org/ * OSHA E Tools – https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/oshasoft/ * NIOSH – https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/index.htm
On the surface, preventing Slip and Fall events outdoors may seem like a pretty simple topic to address, but unlike preventing slips and falls inside, the outdoor environment adds a level of complexity to the problem. The weather is something that, no matter how we try, we can’t control. Inside a building or at a workstation you know the surfaces and lighting, control the footwear, and anticipate potential contaminates. Outside, the weather is a variable which, while we can predict what it will do, we don’t always understand the magnitude or anticipate the changing conditions or how the forecast conditions will impact the surfaces we have to work on. And when we let our guard down or lose situational awareness, the consequences can be painful. So, what is the best strategy for helping workers stay on their feet in an outdoor environment? There is no magic bullet, or a one size fits all answer. But looking at the problem systematically can help. In this episode Peter discusses 5 Focus areas that can help provide a road map to more effectively preventing slip and falls out of doors. Peter Koch: Hey, listeners, today's episode is an installment of our Fractional Safety series. These are shorter episodes where I take a topic and talk about small steps that you can take to improve a portion of your safety culture or control our particular hazard or exposure. Safety isn't a one size fits all culture, and sometimes doing something small can make big improvements. In today's episode, A Fraction on Friction. I'm going to look at steps you can take to control outdoor slip and fall incidents. And on the surface, it may seem like a pretty simple topic to address. But unlike preventing slip and falls inside, the outdoor environment adds a level of complexity to the problem. The weather is something that no matter how we try, we can't control inside of a building or at a workstation. You know, the surfaces, the lighting, you can control the footwear and anticipate potential contaminants. Outside, however, the weather is a variable which well, we can predict what it will do, but we don't always understand the magnitude or anticipate the changing conditions or how the forecast conditions will impact the surface. We have to work on. I've spent much of my life working in playing out of doors and while being prepared for the conditions is a critical component for staying safe, keeping situational awareness is essential. So, let's face it, when the stakes are high and the risk is high, we tend to make better choices. We tend to keep our focus, take what's around us, and then process it to make decisions for root selection, balance, foot placement, speed and even engagement in the hazard.
Peter Koch: I consider a team summiting Everest or someone traversing glaciated terrain or maybe even carrying a one of a kind object or traversing a slippery surface with an existing and current injury. Slip and fall events in these situations can have significant negative consequences. But because we understand the impact of a mistake or our decision, we tend to pay more attention and our situational awareness goes up and sometimes our risk-taking behavior goes down and we can be successful. Now, there's many reasons why situational awareness can be compromised in these high-risk situations. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that there are no mistakes or improper interpretation of the threat assessment. Unfortunately, not every task or environment, especially at work, can force us to maintain a heightened level of situational awareness. We may become so accustomed to the risk that we are callous to the consequences and we start taking greater risks. Or we may assume that the risk will be managed by someone else like the team or trip leader or the maintenance guys. Even the best of us will lose focus at one point or another. And regardless of the reason when we let our guard down, which is inevitable, slip and falls can happen. So, what's the best strategy for helping workers stay on their feet in an outdoor environment? I haven't been able to find a magic bullet.
Peter Koch: I'll tell you what. So, in it that's no one size fits all answer either. But looking at the problem systematically has helped me in the past and I like to try to break things down into manageable bits or progressions. So, let's think of five focus areas compatibility, lighting, surface obstructions, traction enhancers and environmental impact. So, let's take those five focus areas and break them down. So, first compatibility if you know you're going to be working in the out of doors. So, what is the surface like and how is it compatible with your footwear? Because you have a surface and you've got something on your feet. And if the two things aren't compatible to begin with, you are already at a greater risk of slipping and falling. So, think about it. What does the surface look like? Is it dry pavement or concrete? Is it wet grass or turf? Is it a loose gravel or a sandy surface? Is it icy? Is it oily? Is it. Does it have snow on it? So, what does the surface look like? What are we coming into? What are we going to have to work on that day? And then what does your footwear look like? What do you have? Are they outdoor boots? Are do they have big chunky treads on the bottom? Do they come up above your ankle? Are they really prepared to be out of doors or are they the boots or shoes that you wore from your house to the car and now you're in the parking lot at work and they're really not compatible?
Peter Koch: They're you're inside shoes possibly. Or they're your comfy shoes or maybe they are an outdoor shoe or boot, but they are your comfortable outdoor shoes or boots. And they're pretty played out. There's no soul on them anymore they're. They don't give you a lot of lateral ankle support. How will these two things interact? Will they interact well? Will you be able to step on the surface with your footwear? Will the footwear be able to accept whatever is underneath it, to be able to push it out of the way and get to a stable surface? If it's loose and gravelly, if it's snowy, that needs to be a pretty chunky sole so that the contaminant on the surface can be pushed up into those the grooves of your footwear and be able to get to a stable surface. If it's icy, you need to have a lot of surface contact. So, you might need more surface contact down there. You might need more less chunky, but more a surface that has more and maybe some softer rubber on it. So is there the possibility to even change your footwear so if you know it's going to be a changing environment, you might go from one area to another, you might be on dry pavement or you might be then going to something else, you might need to change your footwear.
Peter Koch: So, do you have that and that? The thing here is to think about compatibility. Is my footwear compatible with the surface that I'm going to walk on and not there's no one footwear that is going to be best on every surface? There are situations in my past when I'm going to work with a client or to be going into a particular situation where I know I have to be outside in a in a winter environment and then I have to go inside. And even then, the shoes that I'm going to wear outside, which might be very compatible for a slippery wintery type surface, are not compatible at all when I get into the inside. So, I might actually have a cocked sole on my shoe. And we'll talk about footwear later. So, I've got some spikes on my shoes, which are great to have when I'm outside. But when I go inside and it's a concrete floor or a tile floor or even a hardwood floor, which is gonna get damage, it's not compatible. So, I might have to change, or I might need to take more caution or be more cognizant of where I am.
Peter Koch: So, compatibility is pretty key. So, knowing what the surface is going to look like and then understanding what footwear that you have available. So that's the first thing to think about. Is it compatible? The second thing to consider is lighting like how are you going to be able to see? And if it's a workplace that you're going to be at for the first time, you might not know the scope of the lighting situation inside and outside. You might have to take it are evaluate it and get an get an idea of where you're gonna be. But if you've been there for a while, you've worked there for a while. You might know what the lighting is. What is the artificial lighting situation? Are there dark areas where you might not be able to see that surface? Very well. You know that it's gonna be outside. It could be slippery. It could be snowy. It could be gravelly. And this area is pretty dark. So that's going to change how you interact with that surface, how fast you go, what you do. So lighting is important. Is it going to be daytime versus nighttime? Do you have to bring something with you to illuminate that area? If it's going to be at nighttime, is it an area where you don't normally have artificial lighting? So you might be working, say, as a security guard and you might be on a campus and there's going to be areas that might be darker than others as you're walking around and through or you might be working a second shift somewhere and you've got to go between buildings and there might be a section of the parking lot or the walkway that isn't as well-lit as it should be.
Peter Koch: Should you have a flashlight? Should you have a headlamp? Should you have something there to be able to enhance the lighting that's there. Flip it around. Bright sunshine does a great job for us to be able to see what's around us. But take that sunlight, put it into a bright, sunny day against the snow. And all of a sudden when I move from that bright area into a shadowed area, that area is even darker because it takes a little bit of time for our eyes to adjust and to be able to see contrast again. So there again, no those areas and be prepared on those bright, sunny days. You might need to have sunglasses to help prepare yourself or to help manage the effect of that bright sun on your eyes so that when you move from one area to another, for a bright area to a dimmer area, you can take those sunglasses off and it will take less time for your eyes to adjust. So lighting, understand how the surface, the area is going to be lit.
Peter Koch: Where are the building lights? Do you need to have a headlamp or a flashlight if you don't have access to those? Is there a time where you might need to have your vehicle lights on? So, say you're delivering packages or you're moving from building to building and dropping things off or you're evaluating the security in a particular space because that's your job and you're driving from area to area. You might need to point your vehicle lights in those areas so that you can see the surface that you're going to be engaging in and walking on. So lighting is that second thing that we have to look at. So, the first one was compatibility of the surface in our footwear. The second is lighting. Third are surface obstructions and general housekeeping. So, what is the surface area? What does it look like? So, it's not just what the environment brings or is it wet? Is it slippery? But what's on it? Are there things that I can actually pick up? If it's snowing, can I have a path shoveled or can I shovel a path in my working out of doors and. I have tools and cords and hoses in the walkway that I have to traverse back and forth from the truck to the worksite. Can I keep that area clean? So, what can I do to manage my work way or my walk path? My walking path making sure that you have good housekeeping practices, that nothing is going to be laid across those walking paths and especially going from one spot, one work area to another work area or from the space that you're working back to where you keep your tools or the truck or the tool crib.
Peter Koch: So, consider that. Do I have clear and consistent walking paths? Can I have good housekeeping or do good housekeeping? And if there are surface obstructions, have a policy and a procedure that it gets cleaned up right away. I mean, think about inside if I'm working inside any particular building that we're gonna be working in. If it's manufacturing or food service or hospitality or health care, if I spill something on the floor, there's typically a spill response process or policy where something gets spilled on the floor, it gets cleaned up right away. And there's two reasons for that. One is an environmental impact and two is a workplace safety impact. So, if I clean it up right away, there's less of a chance that it's going to affect the environment. And two if I clean it up right away, there's less of a chance that an employee will actually engage in that and potentially slip and fall. Out of doors, we tend not to have that same policy.
Peter Koch: Now, certainly if we're working in an environmentally sensitive area and we spill something, especially a chemical by accident, then there is a cleanup process for that. That should happen. But we don't always clean up the workspace to make sure that we're not stepping over things. Companies that have those policies and procedures in place to keep the walkways clear typically have fewer slip trip and fall events. Now, that could be right on the ground or it could be on a platform that you have could be a drill rig platform that you have, could be a set of scaffolding, scaffolding that you have. It could be an elevated deck that you're working on. It doesn't have to be the ground, but it could be the ground. So just think about whatever you're standing on. If you're walking from one place to the other. Can I keep it clear? What's the policy? What's the procedure? And remember, if you see it, it's typically going to be your responsibility to pick it up and move it out of the way. So that's third surface obstructions and general housekeeping. So again, compatibility was first, second was lighting. Third surface obstructions and general housekeeping, so forth. We start looking more at our footwear. So what? What do we have on our feet again? And not if we look at it, is. Is it compatible? And if it's not compatible, is there something that we can do to make it more compatible? Or how do we how do we put something on our feet that will interact well with the surface that I'm going to stand on? So, think about it.
Peter Koch: Do I need traction enhancers on my feet? So, I have a shoe that I'm wearing. It's decent for the out-of-doors, but there's not a lot that's going to keep you upright all the time in a slippery, snowy, icy environment. So, you might need to have ice cleats or traction enhancers on your feet. And there's a ton of different traction enhancers. They have in-step cleats. They have footwear with permanently cocked soles. So, they have spikes that are either manufactured into the soles or they actually manufacture soles where you can insert screws that will allow you to keep traction. They have pull on spikes that just go over the bottom, the entire bottom of your shoe rubber mounted or they could be a full plate that goes over that depending on what you're at. They have overshoes that you can pull over the entire shoe that you have. So, you could actually wear an inside shoe, pullover the overshoe that will have a traction handsaw built into the bottom. There's a ton of different possibilities for traction enhancers. Which ones are the best? Well, it really depends on the environment that you're going to work in.
Peter Koch: If you're a delivery driver, you're an oil delivery driver, a propane driver, oil driver, oil delivery driver, or you're a package delivery driver. And you have to go from your vehicle to the client's house and then back and forth, get back in and then drive away. The overshoe or the pull-on spikes might not be the best because it takes a little bit of time to pull them on and off each time. And if I don't, they might be great for walking, but they're not great for driving. Those pull-on spikes will actually get caught on the brake pedal and the gas pedal. And they're not designed for that. An in-step cleat might be a better choice, but again, it all depends on the environment that you're gonna be in. You might be in northern New England or you might be in Michigan or out in in the northwest somewhere where there's a ton of snow and an in-step cleat is not going to be enough to keep you upright. You might be working out in the forest, so you might need to have something that's got more of a permanently cocked sole on it that's going to allow you to move around in the out-of-doors, yet still operate the equipment that you have. So, my advice is to look at the different types that are out there.
Peter Koch: Try to figure out what might be the best, pick a couple of them and try them, see what your staff like, see what you like. See what works well for you. Because honestly, the best traction enhancer that you have are the ones that are on your feet. If they're not on your feet, or they're in the toolbox someplace or there sitting next to you on that car or they're back at your house. They're not going to help you if you don't have them. You can't wear them. And frankly, if they're that much of a pain to put on and off, the chances that you're going to actually use them when you need them are pretty slim. So, they need to be easy to take on and off if that's what you need to do. And they also have to be functional for the environment that you're going to be in. So, again, what is the best type of traction enhancement that you can have for your shoe? And again, it's going to depend on the environment or the different types of surfaces that you're going to interact with.
Peter Koch: So, first, again, compatibility that we have, second lighting, third surface obstructions. Fourth, traction enhancers for your footwear. And then last, we're looking at environmental impact. How does the environment impact the surface? So, we have a surface. And again, it could be ground, it could be pavement. It could be decking. It could be metal. But how does the environment affect that? What is going to happen that day, either before you get to work, while you're at work, or when you're leaving work? That's going to affect your ability to stay upright. Is it going to snow? Is the temperature going to change enough where it's gonna go from rain to freezing rain? Is it just going to rain? Is it going to be wet pavement? Is there a lot to dew for the grass or is there a lot of dirt and leaves, loose stuff or other contaminants on that surface? What is the environment going to do to change things for you? And then once we know what the potential is, we can make some changes. We can do something that could modify the surface, kind of like our footwear, where we can put a traction enhancer on our footwear. We can do something simple to modify the surface if we know and can be prepared for the type of impact the environment would have. So, sand and salt, or if you're in an environmentally sensitive area, maybe it's just sand or maybe there's another option for you to use to give you some traction beyond what you put on your feet.
Peter Koch: So, what can you put down on the surface that will help increase traction even though it does increase the risk of other injuries like a repetitive motion injury or back or shoulder injuries? It's still a great way to remove or eliminate some of those surface contaminant ice and snow, raking the leaves, moving the loose dirt and rock out of the way if that's going to be in your path. So, what can you do? Can you modify it with sand and salt? Can you modify it with shoveling or can you actually choose a different path? We consider that we tend to like straight lines as human beings, but if we know that this potential surface can get very slippery, if it gets wet, if it if there's freezing rain, if there's snow, if there's something else on it, maybe I should choose a different path. This is the path I always take when I come to work. This is the path I always take going from point A to point B. But today, I might want to go around and take a little longer to get from where I get from where I am to where I want to go because of the environmental impact. But if we're not paying attention, you can't make that choice. We have to have that heightened situational awareness.
Peter Koch: Something else could be a permanent traction enhancement onto that surface.
Peter Koch: They have matting that can be that can be heated, that can actually melt the snow and ice, or there could be a permanent heating unit placed underneath the concrete or the pavement onto the walkways so that it helps to melt the ice and snow in some areas. You just can't keep up with it as a as a maintenance team, if you have 30 doors and maybe 10 miles of sidewalk and other paths that you have to maintain. It's gonna be really hard to do with the small maintenance crews. So sometimes the areas that are more traveled might need to have spaces with permanent solutions. But again, it's not a one size fits all because that permanent solution is quite costly. So that might not be the best solution for a small company that goes from point A to point B. It might mean that they have to address it in other ways. Do I have a bucket of sand and salt with me in the truck? That way, if the homeowner or the other business, then I'm going to hasn't maintained the space. I have something within the vehicle that I bring with me that I could put on the snow or the surface to help maintain it better.
Peter Koch: So, as we think about these five areas of focus, five focus areas, we have our compatibility. We have lighting, surface obstructions, general housekeeping, traction enhancers and then environmental impact. So, some of this must be done before you get to the job. Footwear selection like I need to choose my footwear. Before I get to the job, I have to bring it with me. Traction enhancement devices. I should have those with me headlamps, lighting, enhancement, those should be with me that I have to anticipate what the challenges are going to be and bring them with me, because if I don't have them, I'm not going to use them. So, the chances of one of those being used if I don't have them with me is none. Right? A tool back at the shop or one on the truck does you absolutely no good in the field. So those have to be managed prior to arrival onto the job or interacting with the outdoor environment. Housekeeping and surface modification can be done on the job. So, if we start to look at my surface obstructions and general housekeeping practices as I see something on the job, I can change it. I can pick it up, I can move it, I can modify the surface when I get to the job. You can't do those things beforehand, although you can have a policy or procedure that help that can help guide your staff through that. So, having something in place that tells your staff that they're responsible, they should do some of these things themselves to help modify the surface or pick things up is important.
Peter Koch: But again, if you don't have sand and salt on the truck or a shovel present or a way to mark the best path, then all your efforts are going to be. Go, go to waste. You're not going to be able to manage it. So even then, there has to be some pre preparation. You've got to understand what you need to have on the job in order for those tools to be used. Now, we didn't really talk about this whole lot, but surface assessment. Right. Looking at the environmental impact, how do we know what we're coming into? So, you can do that, obviously. When you get to the job? However, you can do some of that prior to arrival, depending on the technology that's available, like there's so much technology out there now, we can leverage some of that to give our staff some opportunities. So, the most simple thing is check the weather. I can go to weather app on my phone. I can check it out on the television. I can listen to it on the radio and I can get a decent idea, not always accurate, but a decent idea of what the temperature would be and the potential for precipitation in the area where I'm going to go work. That is a great tool. However, it doesn't give you something specific for the work area that that the actual geographic location that you're going to be in.
Peter Koch: But there are some places that have a live webcam that you can sometimes check to see the actual current conditions of what you're coming into or they've had some companies do an alert message that can get sent to workers via text or email informing them about the conditions. So, someone would whether it be security or someone who is in that off shift, they've identified that there is a change or an alert that needs to go out. And this then gets sent out to all of the staff who are coming in or maybe even the ones who are leaving so that they understand what's happening if they've been working inside and now have to go outside. So that's another solution. There's actually companies out there that have an alert system process, an emergency alert system that can be leveraged for some of these environmental challenges, too. So, again, the key is to find a solution that works for your team and the technology that you have available. It's not a one size fits all. So, working through these steps can help us to be prepared if we lose situational awareness, like if I'm not paying attention. But I've got good footwear on, it's going to help keep me upright. If I lose my situational awareness. But I've done some surface preparation. I've moved all the surface obstructions out of the way. I've picked up my mess.
Peter Koch: Then there's less of a chance for me to fall. If I have if I've brought with me lighting, if I have a headlamp or a flashlight or remember to keep the headlights on, if I if something happens to pull my attention away from where my feet are going, I at least have the ability to see better or what's around me. But again, if I don't have it, I can't use it. So, it's really important that we can help maintain situational awareness. But doing some of these things can help us when our situational awareness lags. So, let's just briefly recap here. We've got those five focus areas for outdoor slip and fall prevention. So that first is compatibility. Is your footwear compatible with the anticipated surface and the surface conditions two lighting? What's the lighting going to be like? What can be done to enhance your ability to see at the worksite? Do you need to bring something with you? Are there outdoor lights that are out that need to be repaired? Who gets that information? How can we enhance the lighting at the workplace? Third, housekeeping and surface obstructions. What's your policy? What's your spill cleanup policy? How do we keep our pathways clean and clear? Is that a practice that you have? Or do we just pick up at the end of the day and throughout the day, the area just gets more cluttered and more cluttered and more cluttered.
Peter Koch: Fourth, traction enhancers. What type do you need? One type might not work in every situation. You might need to have a couple of them depending on the type of work that gets done. And then training for your staff to understand really how this is supposed to work. And then last. The environmental impact. How is the weather impacting the surface? And what can you do about it? How do we know about it ahead of time? And then what can we do when we actually encounter it? So being prepared can help us limit the effect of the loss of situational awareness. If we're prepared and are maintaining the surface and wearing compatible footwear, we can see the surface well, if we have the right traction enhancers on, then if we're distracted from the task at hand, there's a good chance we can still stay upright. So that about wraps up this week. Safety Experts podcast. Thanks to everyone who listened today. And if you're looking for additional resources, check out the MEMIC safety director at MEMIC.com for a whole bunch of resources on slip and fall prevention, both indoor and outdoor. And also, if you have any questions or would like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast. Email us at podcast@MEMIC.com.
Peter Koch: Also check out the show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to resources for a deeper dive into outdoor slip and fall prevention. And while you're there at the page, you can check out our podcast archive to listen to some past shows like Winter Driving with Randy Klatt or Indoor Slip and Fall Prevention with Maureen Anderson. And when you're there, sign up for the Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it if you take it a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, i-Tunes or whichever podcast service that you find us on. And if you've already done that, thanks, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned is even better.
Resources, Ideas and People Mentioned in Podcast
- Mount Everest - https://www.britannica.com/place/Mount-Everest
- Traction enhancer examples:
- Mid-sole – https://www.thecuresafety.com/K1_Mid_Sole_Ice_Traction_Cleats_Pair_p/k1mid.htm
- Pull on – https://www.thecuresafety.com/Servus_Non_Slip_Second_Sole_Pair_p/n38sr101.htm
- Overshoe – https://stabil.implus.com/products/job-safety/stabil-overshoes
- Walking Working Surface Assessment Checklist – https://www.memicsafety.com/digital_library/
- Winter Driving Safety with Randy Klatt Podcast - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-experts-podcast#winter_driving_safety_klatt
- Slip, Trip, and Fall Prevention with Maureen Anderson Podcast - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-experts-podcast#slip_trip_fall_prevention
Office ergonomics is not just about your mouse or your keyboard or your chair. It’s an integrated look at all the factors; human, environmental, and equipment, which affect how we work at a desk. For the episode, Ergonomics in the Office, Peter speaks with Maureen Anderson, Certified Professional Ergonomist and Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC. They talk posture, habits, gravity, focal distance, even lighting. Maureen brings a wealth of experience to the table, as she discusses the long- and short-term effects of a poorly designed or set up workstation. Have a great workstation, but still experience aches and pains after a long day in front of the keyboard? They get into how a well-designed workstation isn’t the lone solution for reducing musculoskeletal injuries in the office. What to know more about Office Ergonomics? Check it out at the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. Does your back hurt by noon or the end of the day? Do you get headaches staring at the screen? Does that chair start to hurt you after a while?
Peter Koch: Is the solution to standing workstation or maybe a different chair?
Peter Koch: Well, I can tell you if the answer is yes to the first three of those questions, then the answer to the last is no. And today we're going to dig deep into the topic of ergonomics in the office. The Safety Experts podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leading worker's compensation provider based on the East Coast. A new episode of the podcast drops every two weeks featuring interviews with leaders in the field. Top executives MEMIC staff and other industry experts discussing how safety applies to all aspects of our lives. I'm your host, Peter Koch. And for the past 17 years, I've been working for MEMIC as a safety expert within the hospitality and construction industries. What I realized over that time is that safety impacts every part of each position you have or tasks that you do. So, bear with me. I need to exorcise a demon here. So, who would have figured that simply working at a desk would be so bad for you? We've even talked about the hazards of sitting in a previous episode up your need with Al Brown, so check that out on MEMIC.com/podcast. But what the heck happened to us? Sitting down used to be a break, a relief, a reward at the end of the day. But now for many workers, it's a possible vector for musculoskeletal disorders. Get up, drive to work, sit at work, sit at lunch, drive home, sit down, watch TV. A pain in the back, pain in the neck, down the leg, in the wrist that leads to poor sleep, contributes to poor posture, and the cycle just continues. It's not so much the sitting as how much we do it and how we sit and how our workstation is setup. So, on today's episode, the ergonomics in the office episode, I'm speaking with Maureen Anderson, a safety consultant with MEMIC, to better understand what ergonomics is and how it impacts our business. So, Maureen is a certified professional ergonomist and has been helping businesses get a handle on the workplace risk factors for more than 20 years. So, Maureen, welcome to the podcast.
Maureen Anderson: Thank you. Peter, it's an honor to be here.
Peter Koch: That's awesome. So, we're gonna jump right into it. So, what does it mean to be an Ergonomist?
Maureen Anderson: OK, an ergonomist is not a doctor. It's not a physical therapist. When I go out, I am looking at the environment, the environment the person is working. And what I'm trying to do is trying to match that environment to a person and to see what I can change in the environment to optimize the work of the person. So, when I go in someone says, you know, I have carpal tunnel or something like that, I can't fix their wrist. I'm not a doctor, but I can try to see what I can do in that environment to either prevent them from worsening the condition or allowing them to have time to heal. But I do not physically fix them like a doctor would, I can't prescribe, I can't do that. I am all about the environment.
Peter Koch: Ok, so really, when we look at your certification as an ergonomist and then looking at ergonomics being that study of the person's efficiency within the work environment, and how to fit work to the person.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: What are some of those short-term effects that you see of a poorly designed or poorly fit workstation? So, what are the short-term effects?
Maureen Anderson: Oh, my goodness. Where do you start? So, when I said I'm just looking at the environment, I'm looking at sort of the match between the person and the environment and how the person interacts with the environment. So, when the environment does not fit a person, a person will often adapt what we call awkward postures. Right. They are not working in an optimum way. They're slouching. They're leaning. They're compressing, pressing onto things. So, in the short term, what I'll generally see are aches and pains. Right. That's your body telling you that something is not right. It is a way that your body is complaining to you. And when the problems start to rise, the complaints start out pretty polite. You know, a little bit of discomfort, you know, maybe you're just move your shoulders a little bit. But if you ignore those messages over time, those complaints, those cries for help are going to get louder and louder until you end up with pain. Pain is that scream from the body that you need to do something, and you need to do it quick.
Peter Koch: So that the stiffness that you might feel after sitting at the workstation for a little while, your shoulders get little stiff, your eyes might get a little tired, your wrists get a little sore. That's the short-term effect.
Maureen Anderson: That is the short term. And that's the easiest time to do something either. I don't know if I'm jumping off topic, but, you know, stiffness, if you just get up and move a little bit and get the blood flowing, that's going to help that. OK, that's going to get the blood flowing and really help you, but if you then go right back to a poorly designed situation, those symptoms are probably going to come back. So, if you can fix the environment at the same time, the person listens to your body. You're going to get a much better result, a much better fit.
Peter Koch: Ok. So in that poorly designed workstation, when you have someone who is adapting to that poorly designed workstation and you're looking at the person and you're looking at the environment, what are some of those risk factors that you might be looking for that are going to show up with that complaint later on?
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: The cause of the stiffness possibly.
Maureen Anderson: Probably the first is awkward postures. So, we start out with what is good posture and we usually talk about the neutral posture and that is standing. The ears are in line with the shoulders so that your head is supported. There's no bends in the wrist. OK. So, anything that is away from that becomes an awkward posture. Coupled with that is what our static postures. So even if you had perfect posture and you were standing up and that sort of military upright posture, you know, absolutely wonderful posture, if you do that for a long period of time, that becomes a problem because human beings have evolved to be dynamic, to move. We do not handle being in one position all the time. No changes. So those are probably the two dominant ones, awkward postures and static postures in the office environment.
Peter Koch: Ok. That’s good. So, let's think about neutral posture for a minute, and so take me through how you would put somebody into neutral posture. So, if I'm at the workstation and you describe some of those parts, but what do you do first to get into it, to get to feel what neutral posture would be?
Maureen Anderson: Ok. So right now, you're talking about. If I go and do an office evaluation.
Peter Koch: Well just right now, so let's talk me through.
Maureen Anderson: OK. So right now, you would be a closer to a neutral posture than I am because number one, I'm seated. OK. So, seated takes you out of the neutral posture. You lose some curve in your back. That puts a little more pressure on your back. So, a neutral posture would be standing posture. OK. As I said, the very important to have the ears in line with the shoulders, the head upright. OK. In a neutral posture, your arms are by your side. Your palms are facing inward, OK. Or a slight turn, about a quarter turn to the back. Often when someone is seated at a desk, they're seated. So, we have the back issue and then we put a bend in their arms and then we also twist them. Right.
Peter Koch: Palms down instead of palms...
Maureen Anderson: Yeah, pronate them. Right. We put them pronated. So, we've got a whole bunch of issues going and we talk about the angles and dangles. So now all the muscles, the tendons are all pulling at different angles and that greatly changes the force requirements for doing work.
Peter Koch: Oh sure. So, in a neutral posture, we're supporting more of our body weights through our skeletal system than relying on our muscular system. Which will tire over time.
Maureen Anderson: Right. We are allowing gravity to do its work on our skeleton, our skeletal system. Right.
Peter Koch: Very good. So, in a neutral posture than just thinking about it, if we can kind of take our listeners through this. So, from a standing posture, stand up tall, chin forward, try to keep your fingers and shoulders in line and then shoulders and hips and in line.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. So, we do spend some time talking about the neutral posture. But I have not met anyone who works in the neutral posture at this point. Right.
Peter Koch: It's hard to stay there. And I think part of that feeling, if you could get into neutral postures and even if you're seated listening to this in the car at the dinner table.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Just try to stay in that neutral posture for a while. It can't be tiring.
Maureen Anderson: It's tiring. It is very tiring. And there's things like locking your knees. A lot of experts on say don't lock your knees. But if you ever tried to stand for a long time and not lock your knees? It's exhausting. You wouldn't do it. Everyone locks their knees when they're on their feet for a long period of time. But as I said, no one works in a neutral posture. There's not a lot of call in this world for well-paid jobs, for people just to stand up straight all day. I wish there was. But most people have to perform tasks at work and perform work. And that's OK, because we deal with change really well. So, moving doing tasks like that is great. But the modern office environment, we've done so much now to get people sitting in front of a computer and not moving. And that's where the problem comes up.
Peter Koch: So that's the key piece. That's not just awkward or being in neutral posture. And it's not just being an awkward posture, but it's.
Maureen Anderson: It's the static statics are a problem combined with the awkward posture. I'd rather see someone sitting at their desk, slouching, crossing our legs, fidgeting, leaning on one elbow, but moving rather than the perfect, rigid, upright person, 90-degree angles like you see all the pictures. Someone doing like this and sitting there all day never moving. I'd bet they would probably have more aches and pains than my fidgeter.
Peter Koch: I could see that happening. So, the risk factors that we're looking for in office ergonomics initially are the largest ones for contributors would be static postures or static awkward posture.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: Would be...
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: ...the challenges, but then you also have force and pressure.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. My asking people like leaning on hard edges and compressing, cutting off blood flow, potentially compressing nerves. Usually it's leaning on the hard edge of a desk. We see it sometimes in drivers with leaning elbows onto windows, you know, doing this for a long period of time. Backs of a chair that are digging into the back of a knee and potentially cutting off circulation. So that compression would be another risk factor that would cause problems. Temperature, cold temperatures hinder blood supply. So, people working in very cold environments on Hinds will have issues. Not so much in hot environment, it's more the risk of dehydration, but from an ergonomic perspective, we see more problems probably in the cold. Not usually a problem in most offices, though I will tell you when I go into an office, probably that is one of the most common complaints I hear is the temperature of an office. I'll have two people sitting, you know, cubicles or desk next to each other. And one person is telling me it is frying hot in here and they are sweating all day. And the other person is telling me it is so cold. Their fingers are going numb. They can't feel their fingers. It's so cold. So, temperature is one of those risk factors. That interplay is with a whole bunch of other factors.
Peter Koch: Sure. Because it changes circulation, which causes issues with static postures, and then on and on. How about lighting in the office? Can that be an issue?
Maureen Anderson: That's also another common complaint that I get in the office. The overall trend in office lighting is to less overall light and more task light. You don't need a lot of light to talk to someone. OK, to look someone in the eye, to have a conversation. You really do not need very much light. As many people in the romantic world know. Candlelight is wonderful for that. But to do an office task like if you have to look at small text like a spreadsheet or something. Print out. The finer the task, the lighter you need. So, we try to get offices to put the light where you need it. A lot of people are bothered by really bright lights the whole day long and we are seeing increases in eye fatigue and dry eye. I think the dry eye might be a little bit more complicated. That's a lot newer research coming out about looking at computer screens. We're kind of at the first generation now that has worked in front of a computer screen their whole career.
Peter Koch: All the time. Yeah. Yeah.
Maureen Anderson: So now people have been working with computers, you know, 40 years staring at a screen and we're seeing a lot more dry eye. You blink a lot less when you look at that. It's direct light into your eye. Some people say the blue light spectrums think there's a lot more research that needs to be done there. But just out in the field, I am hearing that.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And is very two dimensional as well, where if you're doing something at a desk, you have the three-dimensional effect of a pen or a pencil, the paper, and you're constantly changing the...
Maureen Anderson: You're changing your focal distance all the time. So, you're looking at close far, you know, small changes. But when people are at a computer screen, you know, it's arm's length away, you know, 20 to 24 inches. And they're looking at that focal distance all day with very little interruption. And that can be very fatiguing to the eyes. And it's interesting because that distance, that arm's length, I would think it's kind of interesting that comes from resting focal distance. If you're to close your eyes in a completely dark room and let your eyes relax and they flick on the lights. That's the distance you would be focused on. No kidding. Yeah. So resting eye accommodation that they think comes from, you know, cavemen, people coming up to attack you. You have to be able to defend yourself at an arm's length.
Peter Koch: So interesting. So not even just to learn peace, but over almost an evolutionary part for us, which is...
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: We are changing, or you know, we've have to think about it. If I'm working at my desk, I'm close to an arm's length if I'm seated in a relaxed posture. Yeah, but if I'm looking at a computer screen, I know I've seen people that are leaning the way in.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. They're trying to get their eyes a lot closer. Yeah. And then we also have in the office world, frankly, most people wear some type of glasses these days, too. Right. So, we have the basics and then we have this other tool that sits in between it. So, you have to accommodate for that, too. A lot of people use readers, drugstore readers, which actually are designed for a focal distance of 10 to 12 inches, like you're holding a book and a computer is a little bit further away. So often what I'll see when people are wearing those, you know, the Dollar Store readers is they are leaning forward either like this or like that, trying to get into that 12-inch focal distance.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Maureen Anderson: They do make computer readers. They're slightly more expensive. You can get them at a lot of dollar stores and drugstores and those have the focal distance of the 22 inches.
Peter Koch: I think it is interesting. So, I have progressive lenses that I wear. Yeah, well I have to because otherwise I have to... Yeah. Well that's a whole other story.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: So, for me to work in front of the computer, I actually have a pair of glasses, prescription glasses for my script that is...
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: ...That computer distance away. So that's interesting. I just thought it was I did it because it was the best way for me to be able to see the whole screen instead of looking through the section of my glasses that are there, which caused me to have awkward posture.
Maureen Anderson: Yes, it's very common. I got my first progressive lenses this year and I couldn't adapt to them. I don't even use that. That's a terrible thing for an ergonomist to say but had to do with astigmatism that they're correcting for, that every time I turn my head, I felt like the whole world was spinning with me. I need to go back and do something about those. But yes, if you wear a progressive's or bifocals, often the monitor has to be lowered and angled because that tool, those glasses, are assuming you're going to be focusing at something down here. Keep your distance vision is right at eye level.
Peter Koch: Excellent. OK. So, we've talked about the risk factors a number of risk factors. So, we have lighting is a risk factor. We have awkward posture, static postures. We have pressure...
Maureen Anderson: Force.
Peter Koch: ...Force and pressure, reaching.
Maureen Anderson: And repetition that often comes up because, gosh, when was it back in the 80s and 90s. Carpal tunnel was a huge thing. And it's interesting that we don't see as much of that anymore, though. It's still out there. People assuming that it was all the repetition in the fingers from typing. Turns out the hands do handle repetition very well. I mean, we can kind of type along fairly well without having problems from repetition. But when you combine it with a bent wrist, increased force deviation like this with the risk, then we don't handle the repetition as much. NIOSH at one point put out some guidelines for repetition that were never really adopted. They kind of died on the vine for political reasons, I think. Saying that, you know, the repetition for hands would be around typing 90 words per minute your hands can handle, it was like, 200 exertions a minute. But when you get into something like your shoulder then it's only like three times per minute before it becomes problematic. Right. So, our shoulders do not handle repetition as much. So, what we're finding often with a computer, sometimes it's not the typing, but sometimes it's that reaching to the mouse. OK, especially, when the mouse is at a distance. So now we're getting some shoulder exertions and elbow exertions that are going on quite frequently, some typing mouse like that. And so, we do see some problems in the elbow and sometimes the shoulder and sometimes even down into the hand.
Peter Koch: Now, that makes a lot of sense. OK, so we have awkward postures at our workstation. We have odd reaching postures, pressure, lighting, and our body tells us that we are having an issue, stiffness, a little bit of pain. But if we ignore those and we just keep on going. So, what are the long-term implications of having those risk factor or engaging in those work factors or risk factors within the workstation?
Maureen Anderson: Ok. So, the long-term effects can be permanent damage to the nerves. OK, muscles heal fairly quickly. So, stiffness and muscles you usually can do something about. But when you don't address it, sometimes you can lead to damage. In the nerves and in the tendons and in the ligaments, ligaments take an awful long time to heal. Nerves essentially do not heal. OK. Once a nerve is damaged it's kind of done. Fortunately, in the human body, we have a great system with so much redundancy that the nerves of the electrical system, they can reroute usually, but you can get to points where you have done so much damage, it cannot be repaired easily with today's technology, which is always changing. So that's really where you're getting into some of the long-term effects. There's other things like from prolonged sitting and lack of movement, you know, your blood chemistry starts to change and that can lead to increased risks for heart disease, even some stroke and things like that, the DBT, the blood clots in the legs and things like that. So those are all long-term effects that you don't want to deal with.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Interesting. So, something as simple as again, sitting at the desk in the office. If we ignore the effects that a poorly designed workstation might have or even if it's a well-designed workstation and we're engaging in it poorly because of our habits.
Maureen Anderson: Right. There's always that. You have the environment and you have the person and you have the behavior. So, you can have the perfect environment. You can have the perfect five-thousand-dollar office chair. If you sit there all day and never move, you're going to end up with some problems.
Peter Koch: Have you seen that? Have you seen a really well-designed workstation and the person's just still having issues at it because of just the habits, the postural habits that they've learned over time?
Maureen Anderson: Yes, I do. I see people with a lot of habits. I'm seeing actually sometimes people don't have the issues yet. And that's always a hard thing for me to deal with. I'll see generally a younger person I'm gonna pick on a young male that I worked with once who tells me he is perfectly comfortable, and he is working what I call kind of the gaming posture. Hard to demonstrate in this chair, slouched back like this as if they are gaming on their computer and they tell me that this is the most comfortable way for them to work. They're not having any issues. And if I try to make them sit up, they say this is uncomfortable. I can't work that way. And that's a really hard thing to do because I feel I work in the prevention business. I want to prevent injuries. So, when you go when you see someone like that, I'm thinking, no, you're not having any problems because you're 22 years old. You do this for another, even 10 years in your early 30s, you're going to be feeling it. Probably the first place is gonna be up on their neck because there, when they're doing that, they have poor head posture. So, yeah, that's the issue.
Peter Koch: Let me just describe that that gaming posture that you had there. So, it's not a typical office posture that you might have, but we do see it. We see it all the time in offices now. Yeah. It's become more and more prevalent because of the habits that they have when they're outside of the office, so they are bringing that in. So that gaming posture that you describe as slouched down low in the chair, hips very forward on the seat pan that they have.
Maureen Anderson: Arms up high.
Peter and Maureen: Arms are up high, neck forward and dense and...
Maureen Anderson: Sometimes support and sometimes not.
Peter and Maureen: Yeah.
Maureen Anderson: I think sometimes people do that not only from gaming, but also because of laptops. And I think in schools, in college, a lot of people are using laptops only. And so, when you have that monitor so low and the keyboard there, they're sort of adapting to it by get either going like this or going like that.
Peter Koch: Sure. So, hunching forward or leaning backwards.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah. And in an office environment, we like to say we're a little bit more evolved. We have docking stations or external monitors, external keyboards so that we can adjust more to the human body, how it's designed.
Peter Koch: And so very interesting, too. So, the habits that people bring with them can really even overcome good workplace design.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yes. Certainly. Behavior is Huge. And how people choose to use it.
Peter Koch: So, I think going back and just considering that in that the first item we discussed was neutral posture. So, understanding neutral, not necessarily being able to work in neutral posture, but understanding what neutral posture looks like and then how far you deviate from neutral posture in your work posture can then help you understand the effects of that work posture over time. Because if neutral posture is going to be the best overall, not from a fatigue standpoint, but actually from a support standpoint.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Using the body dynamics and structure as it was designed, then I can look at it. And so, if I work out of neutral, I need to make sure that I only do that for so long before I change the posture into another posture that could again be neutral.
Maureen Anderson: We always say around 20 minutes; you should be changing your posture every 20 minutes. And so often in an office environment I try to set people up to neutral as close to neutral as I can get in a seated posture as the kind of starting posture, so you get people, give the people opportunity to have that posture, and then if they choose to slouch, to go back, to change it, at least in theory, they will come back to that neutral in between those other postures. We often talk about comfort postures, things like people crossing their legs. And, you know, a lot of research will tell you, oh, people shouldn't cross their legs. That's not good for the circulation in the legs. But I can tell you, there's almost no way you were going to change those comfort postures, especially when people are stressed, they revert to them. They're going to cross their legs. You know, they're going to chew on their fingers. They're going to do what they're going to do. So, I would much rather tell people it's OK to do that limit it to 20 minutes and then switch to a different posture. So, if you're gonna cross your leg, that's OK, but you only do it for 20 minutes. The dreaded one is people sitting on one leg, which is more common amongst women. That they'll kind of curl one leg under them and sit on one leg and it's usually always the same leg. So, I tell them again, 20 minutes, then you've got to switch to something else.
Peter Koch: Interesting. So, let's think about this. So, before we get into how to change the workstation, let's talk about what someone can do besides changing the workstation. So, if I if my body's telling me that, like I'm stiff and I'm a little sore or I'm tired, I'm fatigued, what can a person do at their workstation to combat some of that besides changing it?
Maureen Anderson: Right. So, the movement is probably the biggest one is to change your posture, to probably stand up, perhaps reset your back by going into a slight back extension. I mean, we love it if people do stretch programs, but it almost doesn't matter which stretch you do in a lot of ways. I think it's the fact that you bring that attention back to yourself. You've thought about your posture because that's what you're thinking about when you stretch it almost to sort of just resets the person. So, I also believe in compromise. A lot of times people say we don't have time to stretch. And I'm like, well, you might have time to do five shoulder rolls. You know, that's five seconds. And you can be talking on the phone at the same time. You can be thinking about what you're doing, but you could do five shoulder rolls, and something is infinitely better than nothing.
Peter Koch: Yeah, very true.
Maureen Anderson: So, to do some kind of movement, it's probably the number one thing that you can do.
Peter Koch: Ok, so, yeah shoulder rolls would be a good one, even just standing up if you have to answer the phone instead of staying seated while you answer the phone.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yes. We used to give that advice. We still do sometimes that, you know, if you can just stand when you answer the phone to say hello. Hello, Maureen. This is Maureen at MEMIC. And then you can sit right back down. Even that couple of seconds can really be good. But also, just standing and sort of gently taking your back into extension, that can be really good for the back.
Peter Koch: Excellent.
Peter and Maureen: Yeah.
Peter Koch: So, any kind of movement and activity at the workstation can help combat, maybe not overcome, but they can combat some of those awkward postures from starting postures.
Maureen Anderson: In ergonomics we talk about reengineering as the change. And then what you can't change, then how do you sort of adjust to accommodate it? And that's usually what we're talking about in movement. So, if you can't change your workstation, you know, then you can change your habits, your behaviors. Add a little bit of movement. Stand up. Talk to somebody. You know, I love to see water bottles on people's desks or big coffee mugs because I know they have to get up to get the water in. They have to get up to get the water out. So that's going to promote some motion. There's a movement in the office place just by having that.
Peter Koch: And certainly, hydration overall.
Maureen Anderson: Yes, hydration is good. Yes.
Peter Koch: Very. And even outside the ergonomic part, hydration helps with cognition, helps with focus. Helps you. Helps your brain activity in your body activity. So, hydration and health go hand-in-hand. So...
Maureen Anderson: And so, does movement. I mean, they've done research. I think it was on rats navigating mazes. And if they put the rat on a little exercise wheel for, I don't know how long it was, I forget all the details, but like 20 seconds, then they would navigate the maze more than 20 seconds faster. Right. So would make up for that little bit of motion.
Peter Koch: Interesting. So...
Maureen Anderson: Not that we're rats in mazes, but...
Peter Koch: No, but when we think about it. So, brain activity, which is essential for all of our work, no matter how monotonous it is or how high stress that job might be, brain function is critical to all of that. And hydration and nutrition motion, blood flow...
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: All help with that. I was listening to or I read a study somewhere that said that the brain consumes somewhere around 50 percent of. The calories taken in during the day just for brain activity. I might be a little off on that, but a lot more than you would think, considering that it is a very small part of the overall body mass. But it consumes a lot of energy.
Maureen Anderson: A lot of resources.
Peter Koch: A lot of resources.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: So, if I'm just static sitting there, it's kind of like standing with your legs locked.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: A neutral posture for a long time. I'm burning a lot of calories to stay in that position, but I don't have a lot of demand for oxygen. So therefore, I'm not as efficient doing it.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yes. And I was just going to talk about when people talk about dynamic workstations and standing. We do know in the applied world that if you're doing real heavy cognitive lifting, really difficult tasks, most people will prefer to sit because I think their brain needs a little bit. So, I tell people when they're first moving into dynamic workstations, make sure you use it for all those routine tasks. That's why I tell people sometimes leave it in the up position when they go home, because usually when people come to work, the first 15, 20 minutes are, you know, firing up the computer, checking the e-mail, checking the schedules, all those routine tasks. And if you can stand during that, that's usually pretty easy. But if you're doing really tough, difficult tasks and what's difficult for one person, it's not difficult for another person. And when people are starting a job and learning, everything is difficult. So, all those things are going to change over time.
Peter Koch: Very good. Hey, we're going to take a quick break. So, we're going to continue with more discussion here with Maureen, but we'll take a short break and we'll be back in just a moment.
Maureen Anderson: Ok.
Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Maureen Anderson, safety consultant and certified ergonomist at MEMIC. So, let's jump back into more questions, Maureen. So earlier we were discussing how your workstation, or your desk setup can affect you, those short-term effects, some of those risk factors. And we also talked a little bit about what you can do at your workstation to combat some of those risk factors or those early warning signs that your body's providing you with. To tell you, to start moving. But let's talk about what you can do to change your workstation. So, as you come into an office and you're looking at an office setup, what do you look for in the setup itself and how the person's interacting and what things might you change in that workstation?
Maureen Anderson: Ok. I'll sort of walk you through how I do a workstation evaluation and everyone or other ergonomists might do it slightly different. So, when I go in, what I like to do is take a picture of their posture. OK. The first thing I'd like to do is I say, show me your how you would send an email. OK. And then I take a picture. Now, a couple of things happen with that, is one, whenever you put a camera on someone. They show you what they think they want to show you. And that may not always be the truth. So, I will generally, though, start with that picture and then I'll ask them what's going on. And the other thing I've learned from people over time is they're going to tell me what they want to tell me, whether I let them or not. So, it's best just to get it out in the open right away. So, someone might say everything in here is fine, but this rug is really bothering me. And if I don't let them get that, we are gonna be stuck on the rug the whole evaluation. So, it's best just to let people have their little free for all. Tell me what's going on. They often do know what's going on better than I can know in a few minutes of watching. So, they will give me a lot of good information. When I first started doing evaluations, I would use a checklist method to do an evaluation. The wonderful thing about a checklist, it makes it very thorough. It reminds you of all those things, so you don't skip a task.
Maureen Anderson: So, I would use a checklist and I would go through and would measure the height of their tasks, the distance of their monitor, information like that. Generally, I might note about if height was an issue. For instance, I evaluated a woman who is four foot nine yesterday. So, I would note that in my notes and then I would try to get all the measurements of that person.
Maureen Anderson: I might look at their seated elbow height. That's when their feet are flat on the floor. So, I adjust the chair, so their feet are flat on the floor. And then I would measure from the floor to the bottom of their elbow to get that height. I do that without looking at the computer because it may be different than how they are set up when they're at the computer.
Peter Koch: So why is that important, that seated elbow? How do you how does that factor in?
Maureen Anderson: Because your elbow height should be approximately the same height as your keyboard. OK. So, if I get a seated elbow height, let's say it's 26 inches and then I have them turn and go back to the computer, but I already know their desk is 29 inches. I know that there's a disconnect there, and so then I want to see how they're adjusting for it. It can be either they're hunching their shoulders up to get their elbows higher or it could be that they're pushing things further away. Because when you extend your reach, your elbows come up. So, I like to have that information because I already know that there's a disconnect there between the two heights, but I want to see how they're adjusting to it.
Peter Koch: So, you're looking at... initially you're looking at the person and how...
Maureen Anderson: They're interacting with their environment.
Peter Koch: How they're interacting with their environment before you actually look at the environment to see how it affects them.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yes. So, I usually start with the person get sort of a basic overview of the person. And then I'm starting to look at their environment, getting the lay of the land, so to speak, and then also the whole time we're sort of talking and sharing information about what they do. For instance, often there's some physical complaint. They may say that, I don't know, their shoulders are really achy. Only on one side, let's say their right side. So, you know, I may ask are you righthanded or lefthanded? You know, what else do you do in your day? They may say that they are scanning documents and feeding pieces of paper into a feeder for three hours a day. And they're doing one every second or something like that. So, I'll try to find out what else they do in their day, because those are also contributing factors. My job is to look at the work environment, but sometimes they will share information about what they do outside of work. Sometimes that's just more of an FYI, if we're looking at something that may be a repetitive issue and they tell me there are into competitive crochet or something like that, that's highly repetitive, I may note that down. But generally, that's not really a concern of mine. What they're doing outside of the job, I'm looking at the workplace.
Peter Koch: Sure. But it might even make what they're doing outside of work. My highlight for you to them how important it is for them to move more to keep it set up more correctly, because the risk factors outside of work can challenge the risk factors that work.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yes.
Peter and Maureen: Enhance them or make them worse.
Maureen Anderson: I will tell a little amusing anecdote about a gentleman I evaluated once and he had really terrible posture leaning on to his elbows like a 45-degree forward bend, really onto his elbow, everything down low. And I was like, wow, you know, this is interesting. Why do you do this? And he said, well, he was a triathlete and he used aero bars on his bike where he's really hunched forward like that. And he said he's training himself at work to hold that posture for a long time to help his triathlon performance. I was like, well, I really don't think that's going to help. I think it's actually probably going to hurt you to be in that posture for hours and hours a day and then to get on your bike and continue to do that awkward posture all that time. And I said it's different when you're on a bike, you're pedaling, you're moving. You have a lot of other things going on. So, I felt that was a little bit misguided of him. But we had a little chat and I'm not convinced that he's probably still not doing that. But that gets back to behavior. I only can do what I can do. I can make recommendations. I don't have a whip. I don't use a cattle prod to zap people when they are doing things they shouldn't be doing.
Peter Koch: Certainly. But in a just a brief Segway, though, you hit on a really important point, that post evaluation, when the recommendations come back and whether it's a change in the workstation or it's a change in behavior that the employer has to hold accountable the employees for doing this, because I mean, it happens often that people will try to do things at work that will, in their mind, help them in personal activities. And that's sort of an extreme example you brought up, but I think it can be applied in other areas. So if the recommendation is to change your posture frequently at your workstation, then the employer's supervision has to be there to help hold those people accountable to do that, because at some point in time, those static postures, regardless of when you do it, will be harmful to you over time.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yes. I don't know how you could... a lot of this we are talking about people changing behavior, and that is the hardest thing to change. And I don't know from a worker's comp perspective, even how you hold people entirely responsible for behaviors. For instance, someone who does static posture all day and then is convinced that they're so busy that they need to eat lunch at their desk while doing tasks. Right. So, they're not ever taking any breaks. You know, there's a personal side to this. They really do need to take those breaks. Their employer needs to set up an environment, I think, where they're encouraged to take those breaks. But I'm not sure. As an employer, how you would force someone, do you take away their chair from twelve to one every day?
Peter Koch: No, but I think you did hit on the three components that are in any performance management formula. Even when you look at it and you start to think in order to have some sort of performance, you have to have motivation, opportunity and ability. So as the employer you can affect motivation by education.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: You can affect opportunity like here at MEMIC inside the office, there's a stretch break that happens. It gets announced. And from a supervision standpoint, I know when I was working more in the office instead of out in the field, that when this the supervisors and the management team got up at the stretch break.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: And we all got up with them. But if they didn't, we didn't all tend to come out of our cubicles. So, it's an interesting piece of there's a little bit of motivation, opportunity provided, an expectation provided by the employer.
Peter and Maureen: The expectation that, you know, that they get up in the cafeteria or eat in the break room or don't sit during all day and never take any breaks, because people think that that's going to make them seem like they're working harder. But it's really not a good way to be.
Peter Koch: Very good.
Peter Koch: So, let's continue on with the workstation evaluations.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: You were looking at the person. You had that seated elbow height measurement.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: Which then is important because it is in how it interacts with...
Maureen Anderson: The keyboard.
Peter Koch: The keyboard and the desk that they have in the mouse and then everything else that's on it. So, after the seated elbow height measurements and you're starting to get information about what they do, how they do it, how often they do it complaints that they already have. Where else do you look?
Maureen Anderson: I look at the monitor height. The top of the monitor should be approximately eye level. OK, unless they are wearing glasses like progressive's or bifocals and then it may be lower. The distance should be about, we say, arm's length. But again, everyone's vision is different. And I have had people who like it a lot closer. I've had people who have it to me what seems freakishly far away. But they insist that that is the distance that works best for them. And they want what they are showing me is basic good head posture. So, I have to, you know, believe them.
Peter Koch: And they're not having complaints that would associate distance...
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: For that complaint as being one of those factors that would cause something.
Maureen Anderson: Right. I look at their wrists. I'm trying to get as close as I can to sort of a straight wrist. No bends up or down or deviating off to the sides. Then, I look at the mouse use. The mouse is one of the evilest devices ever invented by people, I think, as it causes so many problems. I'm looking at the mouse placement, the mouse over time and often will walk further away. I don't know why that is, but I'll see people with a very long reach to their mouse. So, I'm trying to keep that mouse kind of in close. What we're trying to do is most frequent tasks go to sort of the windshield wiper zone in front of them, about 10 to 12 inches away from their torso. Trying...
Peter Koch: So, if you think about that, if I am standing at my desk from the sort of the center of my torso, I should come out 10 to 12 inches in an arc...
Maureen Anderson: In an arc, right.
Maureen Anderson: So, it allows you to do your motion while keeping your upper arms kind of close to your body.
Peter Koch: And so that would that 10 or 12 inches would be where with my elbow right down on my side.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: Reaching out to my desk. And then if I move my hands to the side, that's that arc that we're looking at.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah, the windshield wiper. Now, I will say there are some slight changes for that. I do see for women with large chests often that 10 to 12 inches is too close. So, they may need to be a little bit further. It's just the way they're built...
Peter Koch: Or men with large torsos as well, women with large torsos depending on stature.
Maureen Anderson: Yup. Differences in stature, that may not work. That is a rough guideline. You know, in rough guidelines that are always meant to be adapted or changed a little bit. So I'm looking sort of for the hand posture and I'm looking at the shoulders distance, the reach distances, I'm looking at head posture a lot and really trying to keep people to keep their head in a good posture because that causes such havoc up and to the neck and shoulders. Often when I see people using the telephone and they do what we call cradling, they're trying to hold the telephone between the ear and the shoulder to use both hands on the computer. That, if you do that for more than two minutes at a time, that's considered a risk factor for neck and shoulder pain.
Peter Koch: How come?
Maureen Anderson: Well, you have the mass of your head that 12 to 14 pounds, which is tilted off its axis, and that's a problem. You're hitching your shoulder up, which takes a lot of muscle activity, and then you have a hard piece of plastic pressing into the soft tissue of your shoulders. So, it's just kind of wrong, wrong, wrong. Usually it causes problems on that side of the shoulder, but sometimes on the neck, on the opposite side can be affected.
Peter Koch: And then you're trying to do fine motions either with keyboard or pencil at the same time.
Maureen Anderson: Yes, at the same time. And so that can carry all the way down through your hand, down into your hand and into your fingers. So, yeah, it can cause a lot of problems.
Peter Koch: And of course, if you do it once, not a huge issue, but it's doing it multiple times throughout the day.
Maureen Anderson: And I will have people tell me, oh, I do that for, you know, an hour when I'm on the phone for an hour. And basically, I can tell you there's no way you could hold that posture in a static way for an hour. I don't think a human is capable of that. So, what they're doing is they're doing that and then they're having either to switch it to the other side or they're going to have to take it out. But that is a big risk factor. So, when people do that, I tell them you need to use the telephone headset. And some people are very adverse to a telephone headset because of the quality of sound. And I will tell people the quality of sound has improved, or they're just not used to the whole, I don't even know how to explain it. With a telephone headset sometimes, people can't tell and they're talking on the phone, and they're dealing with a lot of other people interrupting, and they haven't developed sort of the body language to I tell people I'm on the phone, please don't interrupt. Though, they do make little, you know, light up tools to alert people. So, I tell people to use a telephone headset or use speaker phone or just use the phone and hold it in their hand.
Peter Koch: So that's interesting. I know one of the, well the local automotive shop that we use the receptionist as you walk in the door, the receptionist is right to the right and she has a little light on the counter and there's a sign that says if the light is lit, I'm on the phone.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: And it helps her because she's got a headset and five or six years ago, she was one of those that would cradle the phone between her shoulder and her head and then they ended up getting her the headset and she's much happier.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: But it was a habit changing piece and the reason that she struggled with it was just what you said was there is that demand between productivity and the quality of service that she wants to provide both to the customer on the phone and the customers in there.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah, and the other issue often is whether they're wireless or not, whether they're tethered, because some people are just so used to jumping out of their desk and running over to here, and if you've got that leash on you, that can take a while to get used to. But even at MEMIC, you know, not receptionists, a lot of people where telephone headsets. And when you walk up behind them, depending on how, you're never sure if they're on the phone or not. Right? So, you're always it makes you very tentative, you know, are you on the phone, you know, trying to figure it out. But most people master, you know, putting their hand up in some signal to say, you know, please don't interrupt me.
Peter Koch: Yeah, interesting.
Maureen Anderson: So, it takes a little while to get used to. But that's a great, great office tool. And certainly, with cell phones, we're going that way that people should be using headsets or hand free for everything.
Peter Koch: For everything, for sure. Talk to me a little bit more about how evil the mouse is.
Maureen Anderson: Evil mouse. Well, I already talked about neutral posture. So, when you bring your hand up to use the mouse and you pronate it down to use the mouse...
Peter Koch: Palm down.
Maureen Anderson: Palm down, right. A lot of mice, some of them are very small and people use a lot of grip to hold them. They will often grip it between their thumb and their pinky, which can be a very fatiguing grip for the hands. And then also couple that with the external rotation in the shoulder. So, they're kind of reaching off to the side and trying to use their mouse. So, it's almost as if their arm is held way out to the side to use their mouse. Ideally, that mouse is used as a straight line from your shoulder, okay? It's partially it's the design of the keyboard. We have those, the ASDF keys, all the alphabetic keys, which are right in front of you, and if you took high school typing, those central keys should be lined up with your belly button. But the design of the modern keyboard, you have the keyboard, then you have a numeric keypad and then you have your mouse. So that mouse ends up being way off to the side. So sometimes we'll recommend people using their non dominant hand, usually they're use the mouse with their left hand, and most people find that very difficult unless they're in pain. Pain is an incredible motivator for people to change. I myself have tried to left mouse and I could never stick with it. It interrupts your whole cognitive flow. It takes so much attention to use the mouse. It's like I can't think about what I'm trying to mouse to. So, I have a keyboard where the numeric keypad is on the other side. It's called a mouse friendly keyboard. And that allows me to have the keys directly in front of me and my mouse a lot closer. It was easy for myself to train myself to use the numbers with my left hand, already type with my left hand. I can type, touch, type with my left hand. It's a task I can do. So that's one way to approach it. Or some of the keyboards have a detachable numeric keypad and then you can put the mouse and then the numbers way off out at a reach. If you don't use the numbers that often or you can move the numbers either away, if you don't use numeric keypad, or off to the left.
Peter Koch: Sure, sure.
Maureen Anderson: So, there's ways to do it. Or there is a bar device that goes in front of the keyboard called the Contour RollerMouse, which replaces the mouse. And we've had a lot of great success stories with that task. It's pricey, though, so a lot of companies don't like to go there. They only go there as a last resort.
Peter Koch: And with anything else, that change takes time to incorporate into your workflow.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: So, the mouse being challenging because it causes you have to use… or many people will use increase pressure because of the side, which puts that static posture again.
Maureen Anderson: They'll hover a finger sometimes over the top button, so they'll be hovering, and so they're sort of holding that finger in contraction for long periods of time. They don't realize it. If you're not doing something with the mouse, you really don't need to be hovering your fingers, you know, at full attention.
Peter Koch: I was in an office setting at one time walking in for a meeting, and it was silent in the office space. Everyone was pretty focused and all you could hear were the keyboard actuations and then mouse clicks and the volume of the mouse click, I thought it just struck me as being very loud - louder than I thought it should be because and if I think about it, even my own, as I get focused on my own task, many times I'm clicking that mouse button pretty forcefully.
Maureen Anderson: Well, people like to have feedback when they do a task. And there's actually an interesting trend going on in keyboards right now. Back towards mechanical keyboards are digital keyboards they're making smaller and the height of the keys is less and they're very quiet, and sometimes you can't even tell when you hit a key. So, there's been a movement. It's actually come from the gaming community back towards mechanical keyboards, which are rather old fashioned, and they have a real clicky feel. But people like that.
Peter Koch: Yeah there's a lot of tactile feedback.
Maureen Anderson: Lot of tactile feedback as they're working along, they know what they've done.
Peter Koch: And I find that, too, when I'm typing. So, I have a keyboard for my iPad, which is electronic. So, it's just a button actuate and it's not a mechanical actuation and then I have a mechanical keyboard at home that I use with my desktop and I type much harder, the keystrokes are much more forceful on my iPad because of that physical feedback.
Maureen Anderson: Yes, and they've done a lot of work, like with an iPad. If you're using the on screen keyboard to make like a little sound or a little bloop to give you to give you some feedback, because without the feedback it's you have to keep checking like did I, did I do it? You know what happened here.
Peter Koch: Do it right.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: Interesting. OK, so let's go through and recap. If I were to have a workstation set up appropriately, what would it look like?
Maureen Anderson: Ok. So as an ergonomist, I like things to be highly adjustable. I love the new dynamic workstations. You know, electric desks that can go up and down. The converters on top are OK for some people, not for other people. We haven't even talked about dynamic workstations. So much to talk about today! But I like to see people that are working their elbow height is about the same as their keyboard height, the monitor is about eye level, arm's length. These are all sort of just your basic starting points. If what you do needs to be different, then we can, you can adapt to that. But that should really be it. So, elbow height, good head posture, the ears over the shoulder. Generally, we say some back support. It's good to have some back support because it is difficult to sit all day without any back support.
Peter Koch: So generally, whether it's standing or seated for a workstation. My elbows should be at my keyboard height.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: The monitor top of the text should be about I height for the monitor.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: So, I shouldn't look up or down. But is it dependent upon glasses?
Maureen Anderson: Glasses are often a big factor. Yes.
Peter Koch: It should be approximately an arm's length away. And then my mouse should be on the same plane as the keyboard?
Maureen Anderson: Same plain as the keyboard, right. So, we're not doing any excessive reaching as it should be as close to you as possible to reduce the reaches. Again, to get a little off track. What I see in the real world, often, is when I go into an office, people have pushed their keyboard and mouse far away in order to have papers close to them.
Peter Koch: And so, the important part there is we really want to switch that around. We want to have the keyboard closer or whatever you're using closer.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. We try to get the keyboard and the mouse closer and then we get like an inline copy holder to get the papers a little bit further away.
Peter Koch: That's a good key point right there.
Maureen Anderson: It really depends, though, on what you're doing when it comes to handwriting, that's really the issue because people say, well, I need the papers close because I do a lot of handwriting. And so, then I try to probe. Do they do more handwriting in the day or are they doing more keying? And for most people, it's more keyboard and mouse than it is for writing. Very few people will write long, long parts with a paper and pen. What they're doing is just writing down a phone number. They're just writing down a quick note. They're checking something off. They're not really writing.
Peter Koch: Or they might be keying. So that numeric keypad and the mouse so your paper can be here in front of you. The numeric pad that could be separated from the keyboard could be on the left-hand side and your mouse to adjust the cell if you could be on the right. So, but still, everything is within that...
Maureen Anderson: Should be close.
Peter Koch: Windshield wiper plane, nice and close to you?
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: Good.
Maureen Anderson: But you have to look at what a person does. And as I said, when I go in, they usually are changing their behavior for me because, right. They're going to sit up straighter.
Peter Koch: They want to get a good grade.
Maureen Anderson: They want to get a good grade. So sometimes I will look at their co-workers actually not them to see what everyone else is doing, because that's sometimes, you know, we have sort of a herd mentality. So, if I see everyone else has things pushed way far away, then I start to suspect, you know, maybe they do. Or I'll see wear and tear on the desk. I'll see worn spots in their chair. Maybe I'll see really ripped up arms. So, I know that chair is banging into the desk. So, I'm looking for other hints as to where things are. You can you know, you can almost see dust patterns from where their stuff usually is, and I can tell they've moved it just for me.
Peter Koch: So, do you have or are there any tips for - because we're seeing this a lot more in the workplace now, for multiple monitors?
Maureen Anderson: Oh yeah.
Peter Koch: Let's look at like a two-monitor setup. Where should they be in relationship to like the center plane of the person?
Maureen Anderson: I did have one person with six monitors once and I was like, that is a lot of information to be looking at.
Peter Koch: They win.
Maureen Anderson: Right? They won. Right. We take whatever they look at most of the time, that is their dominant monitor. We like to have that front and center. OK. The secondary or tertiary and I don't even know what you call it when it's six your, “sixtiary” one. You can have arrayed around you, trying to minimize a static neck twist. So, you don't want to be looking for an hour with your head twisted off to one side. That's why we say the primary one is directly in front of you. Most common now I see is two monitors. So, if you use them equally, then we would have them sort of centered in front of you. But it's all about head posture, trying to get you in the best head posture. I do see a lot of situations where people have one monitor in front of you, in front of them, and then they'll have a small monitor like on a laptop or an iPad. And so, I really have to you know, if they're just looking over at that because it's their calendar, and that's all they're doing, then it's, you know, I'm OK with it. But if they're looking down and typing on that one, then I'm saying, well, maybe that's your primary monitor and we need to get that in a better location.
Peter Koch: So those key points would go back to the multiple monitor setup. So, whatever you're doing primarily should be in that center line. So.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: Your body center line, your keyboard should be in the center. Your primary monitor should be in the center.
Maureen Anderson: Should be in the primary. Yep.
Peter Koch: The things that you do most frequently should be closer, use most frequently should be closest to your body.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: And then the things that you do intermittently, whether it's like stapling or printing or whatever those are. Move them farther away, so it forces you to actually get up and move.
Maureen Anderson: And that's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up. It's somewhat counterintuitive. But like printers, sometimes people try to have that printer in close because they're reaching to it all the time. Really, they're probably not reaching to it all the time. And sometimes we do we say move that further away. That's a technique to get people out of their chairs or if they're in a dynamic workstation and they're standing to take a couple of extra steps to get that movement back in their day.
Peter Koch: Awesome.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: So, as we come to a close here. Think about, are there maybe a couple, three or four key points that you'd like to leave us with from our workstation setup or how to work safely in an office setting?
Maureen Anderson: Right. So first of all, I would say everyone is different. So, you have to adjust that workstation for the person. Right. So, if they're very short, their keyboards are going to need to be lower. Their monitors are going to be lower if they're very tall. You know, we're gonna need to change that. Most workstations are designed to hit kind of 90 percent of the population. But having said that, there are plenty of people who are below 5 foot 2 or above 6 foot 2 because that 90 percent is about 5' 2" to 6' 2". So, people at those other ends may not work well with the off the shelf equipment. They may need some special things.
Peter Koch: So.
Maureen Anderson: So again, yeah.
Peter Koch: From an onboarding standpoint, if I'm bringing people in to work in an office, knowing that if I'm going to have workstations that fit these people, I might be hiring somebody that's outside of the design parameters for that workstation.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: I have to look at the person and the workstations.
Maureen Anderson: And the workstation. And that.
Peter Koch: So, it should be adjustable.
Maureen Anderson: Right. One of the great things I love about the dynamic workstations is even if people aren't using it as much as they should. And I'm always telling them they should be changing. At least I know when a new person comes into that workstation, if they're a lot different stature from the previous person, you know, with a couple of hand cranks or a push of a button, you can adjust it to their needs, which is great.
Peter Koch: Workstation adjustability would be key, it helps not only to get the person to move, but it also helps the company to allow the workstation to be adjusted to the stature of a person.
Maureen Anderson: Right. And for their changing needs and staff, to make those changes. And the other one is behavior, right? It's to change the workstation, to be adjustable for the person, but to encourage the behavior where people are going to move and change their posture during the day. You talked about giving opportunities, things like there is a place to eat away from their desk. There are plenty of opportunities for people to get up and move. And so, you know, in the culture, sometimes people don't like to see people away from their desks. You know where it may be better if you have an issue to get up and walk down the hall and talk to that person rather than sending them an email. Whatever, whatever it is in that work environment. And to also understand that most people have a job to do. I understand that, they are focused on getting their job done, which is usually a short term. They're not thinking about how their body is going to be 30 years down the pike after they've been sitting at that desk for so long and for education on that issue. You have to educate and educate and educate and educate. You know, you have to constantly be reminding people.
Peter Koch: So, on the education point, can you suggest some resources that people could access to help educate staff about workplace ergonomics or office?
Maureen Anderson: Sure. We have the Safety Director at MEMIC for all our policy holders and we have a huge library of videos that they can stream with sort of the Netflix of safety videos that people can stream. It's nice to give people training when they're new to set the expectation that their workstation can be adjusted, who they can go to if they need something different. But then also yearly, it's nice to give a little bit of a refresher or, you know, more than that. It's nice to have stretch posters and things like that out there where people are reminded. And then just the constant culture stretching works really well at some organizations where they do it together because of kind of the peer or the herd mentality that goes with it. Other places that does not work so well. So, it really depends on the organization.
Peter Koch: Yeah, sure. And then from a managerial standpoint, if I'm going to look into a workstation and look at a workstation, we have some resources that could help like with a checklist...
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: That they can use to evaluate a workstation.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah. MEMIC, we have some simple checklist or at least I think they're pretty simple. But I do this all day. The ten tips for the office fit where you can go through and just gives you 10 things that you check yes or no. And pretty simple ways to address them.
Peter Koch: Yeah. So, if it's not this, it should be this. And then you can adjust so it looks like that.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yeah.
Peter and Maureen: There are a lot of top ten tips in and.
Peter Koch: I think there's one on chairs as well.
Maureen Anderson: Yep. There's some handouts on chairs. Chairs are difficult. Chairs are very difficult. I will say this about chairs. You know, in some ways you get what you pay for. So sometimes a really inexpensive chair is only going to last about a year or two. They're just not built to last. Rough guideline, they say its warranty plus, two, I think for a chair. So, if you're buying a chair that only has a one-year warranty, you really only can expect to get...
Peter Koch: Maybe three.
Maureen Anderson: Three years out of it. But if you get a good quality chair, they're going to have like a five- or seven-year warranty. So, we get a lot more out of it. I have seen chairs that are being used older than the person sitting in them. So that tells you something. They're not meant to last forever. I think, in my own opinion, the new crop of chairs that's out, I don't think are as good as sort of the last generation. They've kind of combined a lot of adjustments. There's not as much adjustability. The chair manufacturers will tell you that the market wants it so.
Peter Koch: Well and if people are utilizing a dynamic workstation.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Where they're not spending as much time in their chair than that might be a beneficial thing.
Maureen Anderson: Right. Right.
Peter Koch: Time will tell. So that's - those are all real - those are really great points.
Maureen Anderson: All issues that are will work themselves out over the next few years. I think.
Peter Koch: Great. Well, thanks very much, Maureen I really appreciate you being here today. So that kind of wraps up this portion of this week safety experts podcast. So, thanks for sharing your expertise with us. Do you have any final comments that you like to leave with our listeners?
Maureen Anderson: No, I don't. I think knowing that MEMIC is very committed to preventing some of the workplace injuries that can happen over a long period of time from set up in the office and I know I love going out and doing workstation evaluations because sometimes it's so simple and I get such great feedback from people. It's a simple change. And they're like, wow.
Peter Koch: Perfect. That always feels good to make someone feel good.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: It's great.
Maureen Anderson: It does.
Peter Koch: Well, perfect. Well, thanks again for joining us today. And to all of our listeners out there, if you have any questions for our guests, or would like to hear more about a particular topic or a certain person on our podcast E-mail us at podcast@MEMIC.com. This podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leader in workers compensation insurance and a company committed to the health and safety of all workers. To learn more about how MEMIC can help your business, visit MEMIC.com. Don't forget about our upcoming workshops and webinars and for dates about those, you can also find them on MEMIC.com. When you want to hear more from the Safety Experts, you can find us on iTunes or right here at MEMIC.com. And if you have a smart speaker, you can tell it to play the Safety Experts podcast and you can pick today's episode or even a previous one. You can also enable the Safety Experts podcast skill on Alexa to receive safety tips and advice from any of our episodes. We really appreciate you listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know that they can find it on their favorite podcast player by searching for the Safety Experts. And thanks again for tuning in to the Safety Experts podcast. And remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast.
Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast
- MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/
- Peter Koch - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch
- Maureen Anderson - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/maureen-anderson
- NIOSH - https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/index.htm
- Contour RollerMouse - https://www.contourdesign.com/product-category/rollermouse/
- MEMIC’s Safety Director - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety
Employee engagement is not happiness or even job satisfaction. It is the emotional commitment an employee has to the organization and its goals. It means they care about the work. And when someone cares about the work they do and the company they work for, a safety culture can prosper. For the episode, Engaging Safety, Peter speaks with Lorraine Serva, the leader of the Human Resource Team at Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurants about the different techniques and tools they use to help keep employees engaged in safety across their 16 locations. They talk mascots, Learning Management Systems, Micro Learning, contests, and committees as they explore how Iron Hill engages employees in safety. No matter how big or small the company, Lorraine shows us how leveraging branding, technology, data collection, and commitment can help create and sustain a culture of safety. Want to get engaged? Check it out at the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. Peter Koch: Hello there, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. There have been countless articles, books and even TED Talks created about employee engagement. Some talk about importance of engagement and how employees are engaged. Employees will actively work towards the betterment of the company and themselves. Many, however, express the cost of disengaged employees and how these employees can break down culture and drain productivity. They all pause at a possible connection between a successful business and how that business engages its employees. Today, we're going to look at how one company uses employee engagement to help manage workplace safety in multiple locations across different states. But before we get there, let's define engaged versus disengage, because that'll help us a little bit as we start to think about what we can do to engage employees and what truly does a disengaged employee, how does that a disengaged employee affect us? So, employee engagement, by definition is not really happiness or satisfaction with a job. Employee engagement is really an emotional commitment that the employee has to its organization or their organization and its goals. So, it means that they really care about the work that they're doing and the company that they're working for. So, this emotional commitment means that that engage employee cares about the work in their company. And when they care, they can put in what is termed discretionary effort. They'll go the extra mile and put in some extra effort regardless of who is watching or without the guarantee of recognition or even compensation for the individual effort. So overall, that engaged employee will have the will have the drive to do more just because. So, they're totally engaged, and that disengaged employee will not, they won't have that emotional connection. And actually, many employees are not really engaged in their work and they're just there for the paycheck and they're going to only do what they have to do so that they can stay employed. And then on the other side of the scale, you have disengaged employees that really almost actively work against the company. They're not going to go the extra mile they might be they might even work to break down culture and to even make productivity less. So, with that, I wanted to introduce today who I'm speaking with on the phone. So today we're going to talk with Lorraine Serva with Iron Hill Brewing. And Lorraine leads up the human resource team at Iron Hill Brewery in restaurants. It's a regional company with sixteen hundred employees across, I think 20 locations now in Pennsylvania, Georgia, South Carolina, Delaware and even New Jersey. They have a pretty diverse set of exposures, cultures and tasks. So, Lorraine, welcome to the podcast.
Lorraine Serva: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Peter & Lorraine: Excellent. So that I hit it, right? Do we 20 locations now? Yeah. So tell me a little bit.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah. We currently have 16 locations. We've announced four more for next year. So that's where you got the 20. And so, by the end of next year, we'll end up with about 2,000 employees.
Peter Koch: Wow. That's huge. And you are relatively new, 25 years, I think, since the starting of it. Somewhere around there.
Lorraine Serva: Exactly 23 years yup.
Peter Koch: 23 years. And you're looking for to almost 2,000 employees in 2020. That sets a pretty gigantic run up. That's a lot of a lot of a lot of success there. That's a lot of success.
Lorraine Serva: You know, we're really pleased with how it's going.
Peter Koch: Fantastic. So, I'm thinking about employee engagement today. Obviously, that was we're here to talk about and employee safety since MEMIC as a workplace safety company. That's really where it's tying in. So, can you tell me some more about Iron Hill Brewery and how safety became really an integral part of its operation across the company?
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, that's a great question. So, at Iron Hill Brewery and restaurants, we when I started, there were eight locations and there was a safety committee that met once a month and did absolutely nothing, nothing ever got accomplished. And in fact, one of the most engaged members quit the month after I started because he was like, this committee's going nowhere. Nothing is getting accomplished. And I'm like, but it will, it will, I promise you, will get on track. But he was gone. So, yeah, I know. It was so sad. And so, the first thing I did was actually set some goals for the committee and bring those goals to the leadership team so that there was visibility on what we were trying to accomplish. And so, I got some agreement from the director of operations specifically, and she agreed that safety was important and agreed to some of the things that we wanted to accomplish. And then, you know, over time, basically, I worked it into various different things, being in human resources. I worked it into performance appraisals, job descriptions. I got the leadership team to agree to put it as part of the manager's goals. So, the managers had quarterly goals. And based in three areas based on our core values: people, profit, product. And the people goal was based on two things safety and employee relations. So like surveys of employees and originally it was only employee surveys. But I got them to add the safety piece. So, a chunk of the managers quarterly bonus was based on achieving safety goals. And these were things more like time loss, right? So, there was a sliding scale. So, if you had zero-time loss and zero modified duty days, then you could get the maximum bonus. And it was a slight sliding scale from there to a certain point where there was no bonus. So, once it became part of their actual compensation, managers became much, much more interested in safety. So, I think that was a huge piece of getting it into the culture.
Peter Koch: Sure. So, what gets inspected really gets expected. So, as you start to look at those safety goals, that's a really great way. And it's really interesting that you started right at the safety committee and saw that that was going to be a good tool or could be a good tool. And unfortunately, had that most engaged member leave. I've had that experience happened before and actually had been I was that engaged member at one point in time that left because the committee or the organization that I was volunteering for at that point time was wasn't functioning. But again, because I felt I wanted to be engaged, but I couldn't be engaged. And so you took some great steps by having goals, making it visible, getting it, getting commitment from the C-suite, from the executive team to actually make it important for that safety committee and then integrated it, it sounds like, across all aspects of our safety goals, across all aspects of the company.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah. And you know, from that point, we've certainly done a lot more to integrate it into the company, but that's kind of where I started.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And I think a lot of companies actually start there as well. So, they have they see an opportunity whether that might be coming from the human resource side like you started or might be operations. And you have someone with vision that sees safety as a means to become more productive and a better company. And they develop the safety committee. They write some goals; they do some things. They might even get some commitments. But it kind of falls flat. They might spike for a little while. They do really well for a year or two and then it falls flat again and then right back into the injury patterns that they've had in the past. So, what are some of the things that you've done that has been able to maintain that engagement of the supervisor and the manager and then also the engagement of the employee to maintain safety throughout their workday and throughout the year?
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, that's a great question. One of the things that I do with the managers is make sure they understand the importance of safety in dollars and cents, because sometimes that's what speaks to the manager. So, in Delaware, we can get a discount for having a safe workplace and same thing in Pennsylvania for having the Certified Safety Committee. We can get discounts on workers comp. And so those dollars directly impact our business and managers can understand that. And then as far as establishing a safety culture in the business, we there's so many things that we've done. But one of the things that I'm really proud of is we have a safety mascot. And for years, I was trying to find someone with drawing skills who would understand the vision and create a safety mascot for me because I don't have the skills. And so, I tried to explain it to them. I'm like, it's got to be like Yogi Bear, like, you know, Yogi Bear belongs in the woods and he cares about fires in the woods because he's a bear in the woods. You know, it took it all just makes sense. Whereas sometimes people would come up with they'll be like, oh, we could have Slippy the Seal because their slips, trips and falls in restaurants. And I'm like, okay, but what if seals have to do with restaurants? And so, it was just really difficult to actually help someone understand what I was looking for. And a couple years ago, I had an intern in human resources who happened to be an artist on the side. And I told him the vision. And somehow this part-time intern understood what I was looking for. And drew me a knife that is a chef. And I named him Eighty-Six. Because in the restaurant industry, when you when something comes off the menu, you Eighty-Six, you get rid of it. So, we went to Eighty-Six all unsafe behaviors, Eighty-Six all accidents. So, his name is Eighty-Six and he's a knife, which in the restaurant industry, our top three injuries are cuts, burns and slips, trips, falls. So that's, you know, one of our top three. And of course, we're kitchen. So, the knife makes sense. And he's in a little chef coat. So, you immediately when you look at him, you know, you already understand some things about what we're trying to accomplish from a safety perspective. But this mascot, he does a lot of things for us. One is that safety can be very preachy. Please don't do that. Please wear this. Please do. You know, it can be preachy. And it also tends to be very obvious things. You need to wear your non-slip shoes. You need to wear your cut glove. You need to you know; it tends to be obvious things that people know that you're trying to remind them of all the time. Well, because he's a cartoon character. This is a life he can be super goofy and say things that would just people would roll their eyes if I kept seeing them to them. But this little knife can say them, and he can be super goofy and deliver these messages and people actually look forward to him. One person actually asked me about getting a tattoo. I don't know if she ever did, but she asked me whether I'd be okay with her tattooing Eighty-Six. I'm like, yes, that's amazing. I was. You know that. That's when you kind of know you have a buy in, and people look forward to stories and they read up on what his latest antics are. And so, it's more of a fun kind of aspect. And so, yes, I'm reminding them of safety things, but in a fun kind of way.
Peter Koch: Oh, that's great. So, what a fantastic idea. What made you come up with that in the first place? Like, how did you ever get to the point where you're thinking, I need a safety mascot? I mean, in the midst of all of the challenges, that you have in H.R. How did you. What drove you to safety mascot? Like, what was that thing for you?
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, I really wanted something that would perpetuate the culture and it had to be something fun. You know, I have a very young population being in the restaurant industry and so I wanted it to be something fun. But I wanted the message to always be out there. And I also wanted them to be able to recognize whenever they saw a poster, a flyer, that it was immediately just looking at it. It was safety. And so, safety is always top of mind. And even if they don't read the poster, they saw that it was a safety poster, which I'm thinking subconsciously probably reminds them to do something safe, to do something unsafe in the workplace.
Peter Koch: That's right. So, you've effectively branded safety for Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurants with Eighty-Six. That's fantastic. So anytime you see it, it's almost like a company logo that you would see that immediately brings to mind for something or someone a memory or a thought or a message that the brand is carrying. That's awesome. So that encompasses Eighty-Six sort of embodies the safety process that you have for Iron Hill. That's great.
Lorraine Serva: And he could be over the top around safety. Right. So, you know, some of his messages you like. I just love safety. And he goes through a whole list of safety. I love safety goggles. I love safety gloves that, you know, he could just be super goofy and just mentioned all of the PPE. And normally, you know what? You're not going to make a list of PPE that your employees need to remember to wear. But he can be super goofy and remind people, you know, and waste it to wear this.
Peter Koch: Yeah, sort of takes that. Like you said before, safety can be very preachy. It can almost be condescending in some ways, especially when you have someone who's worked for you for quite a while or like you said, in a younger population who know everything to remind them of something so simple. It can be repetitive, it can be can feel like your mom or dad is talking to you. So that always goes right over very well. So, this is a great way to really get that message ingrained into the culture there.
Lorraine Serva: He is so, you know, now I have Eighty-Six on mugs, I have him on different things so that again, it keeps perpetuating through the organization and I now have it. I'm on a second artist because my intern didn't stay with me forever. And so, kind of like, you know, Mickey Mouse went through different designer's drawers. I now have a different artist for Eighty-Six, but she does a great job. And so, I'll send her an idea of the safety committee comes up with ideas of things that messages that we might want to send out and I will send out to her and she'll draw something up. So, you know, and every recent example was we wanted to remind employees not to try to catch glasses as they were falling. So, we had her draw Eighty-Six as Elsa in Let It Go. You know the movie. She's beautiful. Yes. And you know, you can just hear him singing Let it go, whatever to let the glass go. So, again, you know, just this fun, goofy way of communicating the message.
Peter Koch: Oh, it's fantastic. So, the safety committee helps to come up with the messages for Eighty-Six and then those messages get placed in posters. And how else do people get to see Eighty-Six around the different look restaurant locations besides posters?
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, so the safety committee is always looking at trends. And so, when they see a trend of accidents, that's typically when they want a message to go out to the different restaurants to remind them of something or they see a particularly bad accident. And so, they want to remind everyone not to have that particular type of accident. And so that's how they kind of come up with the ideas. And, Eighty-Six is in orientation, Eighty-Six is in our safety class that all new hires have to take. There’re posters of Eighty-Six. Eighty-Six is in our learning management system. So, you know, there's legacy's on mugs. So, he's just in various spots.
Peter Koch: Great. What a great idea. And it sounds like he's being very successful for you and in perpetuating the safety message out there as well. So, I imagine that where you're going to you're going to continue him. You have any plans for having like an 87 or an 89?
Lorraine Serva: No, just an, Eighty-Six.
Peter Koch: An Eighty-Six. Nice work.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, just an Eighty-Six. But yeah, I mean, I even got stickers of him so that we could put him in different places and even cut him out and put him on a pole so people could take pictures. Just takes I mean. Yeah. Kind of that flat Stanley idea, you know, Eighty-Six could travel around and see what was going on. But yeah, he kind of makes cameo appearances and. Yeah. They just have fun with him.
Peter Koch: What a great idea. It's a fantastic idea. And again, sort of in that throve employee engagement, making sure part of engaging employees is to get them interested in all aspects of their job and understand the importance of it. And it sounds like Eighty-Six is there to be able to help with the education and the repetitiveness and get the message out about safety for all your employees. That's excellent.
Lorraine Serva: Exactly right.
Peter Koch: So. Can you talk a little bit more about the safety committee itself? And aside from looking at trends and identifying places to be able to pull from to get a message out. What else do they do to help perpetuate the message and how is it formed is it is there a safety committee at each of the locations? Or is it a safety committee for the company overall?
Lorraine Serva: Yeah. Right now, we're small enough that we have a safety committee for the entire company. And we tend to do a couple meetings each quarter that are by phone and then at least one that's in person. Now, of course, our really remote locations still have to call in. But at least they get to see each other on an ongoing basis. So, they get to know each other and perhaps have a friend to call if they're having a particular issue in their location. They have someone they can call. Hey, what have you done about this? And, you know, how would I solve this safety issue? So, yes, they meet on a monthly basis and the hours their time is actually comes out of the human resources budget. So, their pay for being at the committee is actually charged to my team instead of to the restaurant. So, there's like no reason not to send your safety committee member because HR is taking care of the cost. So, you know, very low barrier to entry here for managers. You just have to pick someone and send them to the committee. And then there's lots of incentives for the safety committee member because again, we know that they're going to be they're going to have some tasks to do in all this. So, they get a dollar more per hour while they're doing safety committee work. They have to do quarterly inspections in their restaurants. They have to follow up on any open safety issues. They're kind of the face of safety in their location. Sometimes they'll be the ones that do the safety drawing. I don't think I mentioned this yet, but we have every month in every single location. We do a safety drawing and we have these. Thanks for working safely cards that anyone can give out when they find someone doing something safe. So, if I catch you cutting a box away from yourself instead of towards yourself to open it, if I catch you getting a ladder instead of standing on a chair. The safety committee help me publish 101 reasons to give out a thanks for working safely card.
Peter Koch: Oh, nice
Lorraine Serva: So that managers. Yeah. So, managers would have no excuse not to come out. Thanks for working safely cards. So, they're put in the bucket in the box and we do a drawing every single month in every single location for a prize. And it might be a $25 visa gift card, or it might be a coveted Iron Hill hat, or it might be, you know, any kind of small gift that they can win. And then, of course, Safety Month, we do hundred cash in every location. Somebody in every location wins one hundred dollars during safety month.
Peter Koch: And those are all proactive. They're doing something safety. It's not reactive, like, oh, you didn't have injuries. So, we're gonna do a drawing, but it is actually for rewards for doing something safe. I think that's a really great way to incentivize people or to remind people that safety is important. And, you know, we will reward you for doing those things if we see it.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, I'm trying to keep safety is part of the ongoing everyday conversation. And so, you see, my message is if you're trying to reward people for their safe behaviors and of course every employee wants to know that they're doing a good job. And I would say that the kitchen is harder to reward than the front of the house. The front of the house has contested all the time. Whoever sells the most, whatever, you know, participates in a contest. It's a lot easier for contests in the front of the House. But the safety works really well for a contest for the kitchen. And so, you know, for that reason, it can be popular with the chefs.
Peter Koch: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And there's so many opportunities, too, to be able to reward somebody for doing something safely because there are so many shortcuts that you can take in the kitchen. That's where I started my well, I guess my work. I worked all through college and in food service and restaurants. And I learned the hard way that there's a lot of different shortcuts that you really shouldn't take. But many people do, because if you're not looking for it or if no one's watching, you might as well do the more productive thing. So, keeping that safety message that in that ongoing everyday conversation by being able to say, hey, atta boy, I watched you make a good choice today. That's a fantastic way to help people really remember that safety should be the first thing that they think about. And that's always productivity.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah. And you know, the safety committee, I'm always telling them you don't want to be the safety police like you want to create the safety culture in your restaurant. You want to perpetuate safety. You want to talk about safety, but you don't want to be the safety police. So even when they're doing their quarterly inspections, I want them to invite the department head. So, if you're if you're inspecting the kitchen, invite the chefs to do the inspection with you. So, you're not doing it to him. You're doing it with him. And oftentimes, if you do the inspection with the chef, he will correct things as you go through the kitchen. Anything you find, he'll start assigning to you. Hey, could you help me with this? And, you know, he'll solve a lot of the issues as you're going through the inspection. So, again, I think it's all about creating a positive less of the punitive. More of the positive so that people are thinking positively of safety.
Peter Koch: Yeah that great, great ideas. So, one safety committee for the entire company, you have representatives from the different locations they meet quarterly, sometimes by phone.
Lorraine Serva: They meet monthly.
Peter Koch: Monthly. Excuse me, they meet monthly and then they're doing workplace inspections. And you're looking for them to really set the safety culture at within their location or at least help perpetuate the safety culture within their locations.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah the best ones, I would say, come to be known as the safety person, and everyone knows they are and everyone knows they love safety and, you know, they kind of get a real persona around being the safety person in their in their restaurant and have fun with it. Some of the others, I think, are a little more low key. And really, it's more the manager's responsibility. But they can still they can still help with communicating about safety and they could give out those prizes, the monthly prizes, do the drawing. So, there's various ways they could help.
Peter Koch: Excellent. So, with all the employees and I know from a hospitality standpoint there you have a fairly robust hiring process because you don't always have the same people in the same position all the time. You have people coming and going. How do you integrate safety into your hiring process and what do you do for ongoing education as that person continues their career with Iron Hill?
Lorraine Serva: So, when someone is hired, we do have some required safety classes that they need to take. And one of them right now is in person. So, it is an hour-long class. Kind of a general overview of safety and that's taught by the human resources team out in each location. And that covers, you know, kind of like I say more of a broad view, but there's a pretty big focus on back injury prevention for all the lifting and slips, trips and falls and that kind of thing that might be in a in a restaurant. And then they also have a bunch of online classes our learning management system. We have created a bunch of short mobile learning classes that can be taken on your smartphone and with our population in restaurants. There's typically about maybe three computers and a hundred people in a restaurant. So, I can't have computer-based classes for employees to take. And then one human resource business partner currently has eight locations, eight hundred employees. So, we have to have other ways for the message to get to get out there for them to get training. So, we developed these short and sweet mobile classes on various topics for safety. And then I got the regional team to agree to the required classes. And so, the safety classes are in the required classes that all employees have to take. And this is an interesting, an interesting tidbit, and that is that I think that these classes kind of show our culture a little bit where I told you it's very young and fun. And one of the classes is called The Vomit class. And people are like can you change the name, but it's very memorable. So, have you taken The Vomit class. It's actually it's you know; it's actually cleaning up bodily fluids and spills. And you can think in a restaurant you might have people throwing up or whatever. So that's The Vomit class. And we also have a class called Yuck, Wash Your Hands, since washing hands is so important in the restaurant industry. But these some of these classes are five minutes. It's just really how to wash your hands, you know, the importance of it and how to do it correctly. And some of them are 10 minutes or less, but they're very short and sweet with just one focus. The main thing that we want them to learn about that particular topic.
Peter Koch: And video based, and you can access it by phone. And so, it's incredibly accessible to all the employees. Whoever has a phone and everyone, it's ubiquitous today. Everyone has a phone. You can pull it right up online, watch the class or watch the series of classes. Do they have a set amount of time in order to complete the required classes or do they get to do it as they wish?
Lorraine Serva: Yes, so we might set it up saying, you know, there's certain classes that have to be completed within 30 days or first 60 days or first 90 days. So that is set up in the learning management system.
Peter Koch: Great. You can take that learning process and key it in to what they need to know right off the bat and what they need to know as they get more familiar with their jobs and their tasks and maybe even set it up. So, before they get assigned to a particular task that has a particular exposure, they would have to go and take that particular class. That's such a powerful tool for you.
Lorraine Serva: Yes, exactly. So, the learning management system is set up to assign certain classes to certain positions. So, if you are promoted, then the learning management system knows you have a new title and it might, oh, you need the ladder safety class because of your new positions. You need the driving safety class because of your new position. So, yes, it is smart enough to assign classes and there's certain classes that have to be repeated like forklift. That class has to be repeated. And of course. Learning management system can track that. And let us know when they're coming due for taking that class again.
Peter Koch: For the repeat class. Great. Or bloodborne pathogens, which might be an every year class or in other annual training. That's fantastic, too. So, and all of your employees are keyed into the learning management system or is that just for your supervisor and manager level?
Lorraine Serva: All employees. There are some different classes for managers than there are for hourly, but it's for all employees.
Peter Koch: That's great. And so, it's a combination of courses that you developed yourself within your team and other content that you've brought in from outside sources, or is it all created internally?
Lorraine Serva: So almost all of it is created internally, occasionally in the learning management system, we can put instructor lead classes in there and actually MEMIC teaches some safety classes for us. The forklift class that I mentioned is one taught by MEMIC or confined spaces, is taught by our MEMIC consultants. And so, we can track those in the LMS. But they don't actually take them through. They don't take them online; they take them in person.
Peter Koch: Gotcha. So, it's a way to track their attendance at those classes that there might be instructor led. So great, LMS. It's one of the things that I'm pretty near and dear to my heart. We do a lot of work with learning management systems, and I'm glad to see that you've used it in such an integrated way within your training, especially on the safety side. But I imagine there's more and there there's probably leadership classes in there as well as someone moves up to be a supervisor or manager, there's other whether it's H.R. related or promotional related stuff that they would have to take. Fantastic.
Lorraine Serva: Yes. There’re all sorts of classes in there. You know, there's over a hundred classes in there. Yes.
Peter Koch: All right. So, it is we were looking at other stuff, too. We talked about the management system, the we talked about micro learning with the courses, the really short courses that you have. What are some other ways that that you promote engaging employees in safety, using technology these days? I mean, you talked about the LMS and the ability to take a class on a smartphone, but are there other ways that you use technology to engage employees in the safety effort?
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the fun things that I've done is in the back injury prevention class that you can take online, because since we have people all different shifts, sometimes they can't take the in-person class, they need to take it online and in order to see whether they actually learned what I wanted them to learn. I have them send me a video of them lifting something in the correct way. And so randomly I'll video, you know, could be on a Saturday, could be at 10 o'clock at night. Whatever. I'll get a random video. I'll look at it. And it is one of my new employees demonstrating how to properly lift. So that's how put spoke. But it's a great way for me to check and see if they actually learned it. And I can then respond back and say, okay, well, here's what I would tweak. Here's what I would do slightly differently. Or Great job. You did it perfectly. You know, so that that's a cool way to use technology.
Peter Koch: That's totally cool. Yeah, it is. That's totally cool. So just with the back safety or are there other there are other topics that you use that that same video feedback loop to engage the employees.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, another one that I'm thinking of, it's not a safety class. We do beer tasters and they have to sell the beer tasters to the guests. And so, they tape themselves doing a beer taster conversation with the guest and they can send it to the brewer for the brewer to see whether they actually understand and are explaining the beers correctly. So, yeah, we can use it in different ways.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's so many implications. That's fantastic on that.
Lorraine Serva: Another thing that we have done is before I had the learning management system, I would use QR codes and put stickers of QR codes in various places for people to see, for example. I had a QR code in the brewery and if you scanned it, it would pull up the entire lock out, tag out or Confined Spaces program so that right there in the buggy, then I have to have a huge book. They could just pull up the information that they might need. Another example is the stickers on the forklift trucks, and if you scan the sticker, it tells you who are the actual certified people to drive that forklift so that we don't just have random people driving the forklift. So QR codes is one way that I offer that I've used for training or for information.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's another fantastic way to engage. And again, leveraging the technology that everyone has and looking at the age of your staff and how they will interact. We've had this conversation multiple times that MEMIC like how do people consume information? And there's it's no longer just through the through writing. Like many people won't sit down and read something that you even hand them in a class. But if you put a video in there, they're gonna watch the video or if you put it onto an audio, they're gonna do the audio if there is a way for them to pull it up on their phone. Using technology, they're more likely to read through something on their screen if it's done in small bullets and in a consumable chunk than if you hand them the entire book on lock out, tag out or confined spaces or trying to go through a directory of people to figure out who the forklift trainer or who the certified forklift operators are. That's a great way to leverage technology. That's the first time I've actually heard them being done, specially within the hospitality side of things. It's been done in manufacturing more from a quality control standpoint, but certainly not on the hospitality side. Fantastic use of technology on that.
Lorraine Serva: So, another thing that we've put into the learning management system is our SDS binder. So, all employees have access to the learning management system 24/7 via their phone. No matter where they are. And so instead of having to find the binder, update the binder. Is it current? Has someone removed anything from the binder? We can anytime we update the binder, we do it online and immediately it's accessible to all 20 locations wherever they are.
Peter Koch: Wow.
Lorraine Serva: So SDS binder online.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Now can they. Sorry, I might be asking too much of the system, but are they able to scan like the barcode on the chemical that they're using to actually pull up the SDS sheet or do they still have to search by like chemical name or manufacturer name?
Lorraine Serva: Hashtag new goals. That sounds awesome. Can’t do it today.
Peter Koch: Cool.
Lorraine Serva: Another technology that we use is I auditor and I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but that also is available on smartphones and we use that for audits in the restaurants. The thing that I like about it is we can set up the audit. We can take pictures. So, if they're in the restaurant doing an audit and they see something that they think might be wrong or they know what's wrong. Either way, they can take a picture of it and it'll be incorporated into the audit. We also could include pictures in the audit of something that we want. So, for example, we have the map of each locations, fire extinguishers are embedded into our audit so they can look that up and see if they're fire extinguishers are present. And, you know, good. What I like is when they finish the audit and upload it, you know, I have again, I'm soon to have 20 locations. I can just scan down the audit. And in red is anything that was a problem. So, if they said that it was on task, you know that there was not a problem. It's in green if it's in red. I can go right to it and their regional manager can go right to it. And their general manager can go right to it. So, anyone can really easily see where any of the problems came up in the inspection and know what to work on.
Peter Koch: Oh, fantastic. And it can roll up for all for all locations. And then the like you said, each individual location can see their own piece. And I imagine that it would also it'll also track, or you can set goals for when abatements should be completed in the auditing process as well.
Lorraine Serva: That is correct. Yes. So, and that's part of what the safety committee does this track, whether or not it's been abated.
Peter Koch: Ok, great. So, the safety committee that's part of their job is to not only do the audits, but then track to make sure that the audits have been done because it might not be their responsibility to actually fix the problem that they found. It might be the manager or the supervisor or it might be something larger like it might be a capital improvement that has to happen in order to make the fix permanent.
Lorraine Serva: Yes, exactly right. Yeah. And so, we also give them a list of who to escalate to. So, if it's a kitchen issue and you're not getting traction, escalate your general manager. If you're not getting traction with your GM, go to your regional manager. You're not getting traction with that person, coach. You know, we keep going up the line. And I am I'm in that list where if they are not getting traction, they can escalate to me.
Peter Koch: Wow, so this is really integrated across all aspects to really keep, keep, keep safety at the forefront, starting with starting with Eighty-Six and getting the message out there and in a fun way to keep it perpetuated through giving, giving people or your safety committee the tools to do audits to make sure that things are the way they're supposed to be from a facility standpoint. And then also the training that you've incorporated through the learning management system. So really trying to hit employees at all those different touch points so that they're never, never without a resource or never without a tool for safety there. You've talked about so many different tools that as an employee, it be fantastic to be able to have access to that. If I find a problem of frame, if I am confused. I know from my own personal experience as I talk to employees across the board some of the challenges that they have, you ask. So why did you do that? How come you stood on the chairs that have going to get the stool? Well, I didn't know where it was, or I didn't have access to this or I didn't have that. And it really seems that you have put together a system that provides a lot of information right at the tip of the employee's fingers or the manager's fingers of the supervisor’s fingers that they use, kind of remove that excuse. So now is just doing what they're supposed to do. Not finding out what they're supposed to do. That's great. Really great.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah. You know, to your point, we in orientation and I've done all new orientations when we open a restaurant and so we're hiring 130 people. I do all their orientations to get them started. And, you know, I think it's powerful when I say, look, as the head of human resources, I'm telling you, I want you to take the time to go find that ladder. I know it's quicker and we have it on a slide that we show. Do you think people doing things wrong, like standing on a metal ladder, in water, doing electric work?
Peter Koch: Sure.
Lorraine Serva: You know, it's a different thing. People doing crazy things unlike. Okay. Do you think these people don't know that this is dangerous? Do you think they're just, you know, stupid people? Do you think. And they're like, no what? What do you think it is? It's because they're just trying to get the job done in a hurry. You know, they just want to get it done. And this was the closest thing to that. They didn't know where the other ladder was. They just grabbed this one or whatever. And so, we ask them, please don't do that. Your you know, your safety is worth more than that. And we're allowing you to be safe. We're asking you to be safe. We're asking you to take that extra time to find the item you need to work safely.
Peter Koch: So, you're not only giving them permission to put safety first, but you're giving them the tools to do that as well. You're giving them not just permission. You're giving them in order to do that. Pretty much like this is this is something that you feel very, or the company feels very strongly about. Which is an important thing.
Lorraine Serva: Again, lines, really well with our culture.
Peter Koch: Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. So, talking about culture. Do you find that you have to tweak the message at all for cultural differences across the board if you have locations across numerous different states? I would imagine that there's some cultural differences within those just within those locations, whether it be in a state itself or across state lines.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, there certainly are differences. It seems like each restaurant has its own culture based on the management team. And yeah. So, I think they're definitely are differences. Some are really into safety. And you know want all the bells and whistles. Others just want it to be fine. There are different messages. Some are more concerned about something because they've seen a particular type of accident before. So, they're really, really concerned about burns, but not as concerned about cuts. I don't know. So, yes, definitely see differences across different locations. And, you know, we tried it. We tried to change it up. So even when we do, safety contests will often oftentimes give them a choice. And like we did a couple of months ago; we had a contest of dice where we bought dice given to the restaurants and had them roll the dice. And if they got a five, they won. So, five see fingers because it was reminding them to wear their cut gloves. So, they rolled a 5, 4, 5 safe fingers. Then they got in, they got something small and then they got it to a bigger drawing for a much bigger prize. And some of the restaurants were all into it and they wanted their people to win. They wanted that big prize. There's a first, second, third prize, you know, and they wanted their people to win those prizes. And then other restaurants were like. Not so much, but like I'm thinking of this other restaurant where what he wanted was, he just wanted me to purchase these people cut gloves. Look, it's I don't want to use this out of my own budget, my own restaurant budget. I just want the cut gloves. Okay, great. If you're if you're gonna use them, then you don't need a contest to use them. All you want is the gloves. Done. You know. That's easy.
Peter Koch: Perfect.
Lorraine Serva: So, yeah, I do see different things in different locations.
Peter Koch: Yeah. And you're able to support the different needs and make sure that you can support the culture within that different area. So still you're not looking at it from a perspective.
Peter Koch: So, you're talking about culture and the differences, the different based on the management style or the employees that are there and how you end up. You will support whatever initiative that particular manager wants or has, regardless of the I guess the contest or the effort that's being made across the company. But the focus has to be as like if they're gonna if they want to be safe, you're going to support them in being safe. They don't need to always follow the system. I guess then not the system. That's not the right word. But they don't always need to follow the… they don't need to take the program that you're putting out there for that particular time. If they see they could use it in a different way, you'll support them in that way, too.
Lorraine Serva: You know, I think that it works best when the manager believes in whatever it is that we're rolling out. And so, if they want to individualize it so that it works for them, that's great. So, I had one chef who all she wanted was she wanted those lottery scratch off cards like the dollar scratch off card.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Yeah.
Lorraine Serva: And so. Yes. So instead of spending money on, I don't know whatever else I was offering at the time, I'm like, absolutely, I'll buy you a stack of these cards and you can just hand them out when you catch people doing things safe. Done. If that's you know, if that's what she thinks will work and she wants to use. That's great. Right. And then, you know, might have been too much effort for her to do the rolled the dice thing, whatever. She just wanted to pass out scratch off card. So that that's great. Now we have a recent one. Oh, go ahead.
Peter Koch: No, that's fine. Keep going.
Lorraine Serva: A recent one that I rolled and I think two restaurant only two restaurants took me up on it was we're trying to get the cooks to wear their cut gloves every single time they're doing something where they could injure their hand. So, whether it's the mandolin, the slicer, the knife, whatever to where you're cut glove and it's harder than you would think because for some reason cooks I don't know the culture, whatever, they don't like wearing cut gloves.
Peter Koch: They do not, no they don’t.
Lorraine Serva: Maybe, some strange reason. They do not. So, we've been working on that. The latest one that I rolled was a bingo card. And if the manager catches you wearing a cut glove, you get to put your mark on the bingo card. But if the manager catches you not wearing the cut glove, the manager puts their mark. So, you're trying to get bingo before. I'm say I'm saying bingo. Tic tac toe. You're trying to get tic tac toe before the manager gets tic tac toe. So, you know, I'm sorry I said that wrong. But.
Peter Koch: No, no, it's a great idea. So, tic tac toe card. And if the manager watches you wear the cut glove, then you get to put your mark in a spot. And if the manager watches you using a knife or a sharp item that you should be wearing the cut glove on, they put theirs in there. And then whoever gets tic tac toe first, then then wins it. If that works, Loraine.
Lorraine Serva: That's right.
Peter Koch: Wow. That'll be because that singular problem right there in the kitchen of getting chefs doesn't matter if you're the head chef, the sous chef, the prep cook, the kid who's cutting bagels for breakfast, wearing a cut glove seems to be the bane of every restaurant that's out there. Because chefs and cooks don't want to do that. And that is really easily that attitude is really easy. Perpet - easily perpetuated through the rest of the kitchen. So, some of that works. Keep me posted because that'll be you should trademark that and put that out there.
Lorraine Serva: Well, you know, and again, I you know, I think you've seen as we're talking that I kind of attack things from all different angles. So, at the same time, I have been talking to the leadership team and I have the director of operations agreeing that this is important. The head of culinary agreeing that this is important and agreeing to push this in this initiative. So, you know, I'm looking at it from many, many angles. Of course, Eighty-Six has some messages out there about cut gloves and how he's a knife, but he doesn't like to injure people. And he just needs you to wear your cut gloves so that he won't hurt you. You know all this kind of stuff. So, we're attacking it from a lot of a lot of different angles. But yeah, the um, the tic tac toe thing, the reason why I was interested to see if that might work is because I don't want them just catching the person once. And the tic-tac-toe requires it over time. Right. So, you have to catch them multiple times doing it correctly. And so, I thought, well maybe a little bit slightly longer sustained effort than just catching them once and giving them a prize. So that's why I kind of went with that one.
Peter Koch: No, I think that's a great idea because it is one of those habits that has to happen over and over and over again to be able to be sustained within the kitchen. It's almost like spill cleanup. It's the same sort of deal because it's so much easier just to walk past the wet floor than it is to take the time to get the mop and the bucket or whatever you have for spill cleanup, because I've got to get the hot stuff out of the oven or I've got to get the boil bag out of this or I've got something cooking over here or we've got we've got a big group that just came in and I'll get right back to it. Same thing with the cut glove. It's always easier to not put it on. And there's so many different excuses to not use it. But if you get it in cultivated into the into the back of the house system, into the process that it had, it will happen over time and people will get used to it. So, you look at two different two different locations or two different restaurants and you'll find one group that they will not leave a wet floor or a wet space or spilled food or spilled grease in a particular area. It will be cleaned up and then go to another one. And it's just not their habit to do it. You talked to the first group and years went by before it became habit for them to do it. And now it's just second nature. They will always do it. I think the same thing will happen with the cut glove because like you said, catching them multiple times, doing it right will help to perpetuate and build that habit. That's great.
Lorraine Serva: And, you know, in the end, it really is all about the managers, the managers who are there every single day with them and whether they buy in and support this, this effort, because again, I have almost 20 locations. Me alone, I can't do anything. I have to rely on everyone else. The people that are in the restaurants all the time. You mentioned at the beginning of the podcast about engagement. And one of the things that I look at to see whether I believe that there's engagement in a particular location. Is their number of incidents and are they following along with this? So, are they wearing their cut gloves? Are they cleaning up spills? So, I look at safety. I think it is an indicator of engagement.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Think that's a great way to look at it, too. Because if they are being safe, if they are doing those proactive things. So, you have all these programs out there through the LMS and the different contests that you have out there and the messages that are there, are you getting videos back from their staff because they've watched certain things. So as all those tools are being used, those are all proactive. The leading indicators of safety, which are I really do think the results of engagement or it's almost the chicken and the egg, does it come to people, get engaged because of those things? Are they engaged first then they are using all those things as tools to keep everyone else engaged? So, it has to happen with those things. And it's a great that you're looking at safety as being an indicator of engagement. Are they really engaged in the process? Because if we just look at the injuries, the lagging indicators, then we're already behind the eight ball. It's already happened. By the time it rolls up into the trend, it's the habit. The bad habits already been built. So, it's always best to look at.
Lorraine Serva: Right.
Peter Koch: All of these leading indicators. And you've really built a system here where you can see. Engagement through the use of those tools, and I think that's a unique perspective as well. Many companies when they look at safety programs and they look at all of the incentives, quote unquote, for their people to work safely, they just look at it as an incentive. We're going to give you an incentive. But what you're saying to me is you're using these tools to look to see how they're being used, if they're being used to really look at the engagement. And it should probably will reflect over time those lagging indicators, because if there's not a lot of engagement, meaning they're not using the tools that you're providing them to help perpetuate safety within the location, at some point in time, the injury numbers will catch up with them.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, and I you know, I agree with you, and I think that if they are engaged, then they're much more likely to go along with the programs that we implement, including safety programs. So that's why I you know, I do think that it is an indicator.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Fantastic. And at the beginning you, you talked about the three P's, right? People, profit and product. And we're talking a lot about people and safety, of course. But that again, that's those core values of having people, whether it be the employees there or the guest that's coming into the restaurant and the. Being able to be sustainable as a company, which is the profit and having a quality product. All those things go together to be successful. But none of that can happen unless you're engaged into the program that's being offered by the company. So in order to be successful, you have to be engaged with like you said, we started that at the beginning of the podcast talking about how it's really that emotional commitment for that employee to engage in the program to go the extra mile to be able to scan the QR code, to do the tic tac toe card to utilize the systems that are there. And I think that that goes a long way. I had the opportunity when I was down in in Lancaster for a number of years ago to eat at one of the Iron Hill Brewery there. And I had a phenomenal meal. The servers were fantastic. I didn't see any safety issues. I didn't get that opportunity go to the back of the house when I was there.
Lorraine Serva: Oh, thank goodness!
Peter Koch: But everything was fantastic. And so.
Lorraine Serva: That's great.
Peter Koch: I think from an engagement standpoint, you think about, again, those three P's. They the people that engaged me and my family that was down there, they were they were truly engaged in the system. They were Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurant staff all the way. They weren't disengaged. They were they were interested. They knew the product. They knew what they were supposed to do. And, yeah, they did the things that I thought was important to want me to come back, like if I live more locally. Definitely be back there. And it's not just because the beers tasty. So, it's awesome.
Lorraine Serva: So, you know, I think that you're that you're exactly right. And when I did a survey of our employees to really, I was trying to define our culture. And one of the things that came up over and over again was how proud our employees are to work for Iron Hill. And, you know, like you say, that shows in their engagement if they really are proud to work for this company. One of my favorite stories, my son, when he was in college, he worked for our Wilmington location and he came home to me on his second day and he said, Mom, I have to get non-slip shoes. And I'm like, I know you do. You know, you can't work until you have non-slip shoes. I know, but everyone's calling me sneaks because I'm wearing my sneakers. And I was like, that's so awesome. You know, they were doing it in a fun way, calling him sneaks, but like, he got the point from the other employees. And these are just other hourly employees, servers or whatever that were calling him sneaks because he wasn't in non-slips. And that's kind of you know, that's that engagement where they're truly bought in so much so that they're not going to let a new guy get away with wearing sneakers when they know he needs to wear non-slips.
Peter Koch: That's Fantastic. What a great story. And, you know, I'm sure that your son took it good naturedly and it was meant good naturedly in that way for that to happen. But for you to be able to hear that that must have been such a win moment to not only have your son come back and say, I need something safety related because, hey, cool, he's out in the workforce and you know, he's looking out for himself. But two, for the company that you that you work for and that you've put so much time into creating a safety culture with your team to have it. To see the success coming through in that manner had to be a really great moment for you.
Lorraine Serva: Yeah, I do love to see when others in the organization take up the safety mantle for me, and it's not just me pushing it through the company.
Peter Koch: Yeah, totally, totally. So, we talked about a lot of stuff. There’re is so many things here I wanted to maybe talk a little bit about the survey that you just mentioned. I know a lot of companies. Well, some companies are afraid to do surveys because they don't really want to know. Some car companies want to do a survey, but they're not really sure what type of survey to do. And you said you were using the survey to help define the culture so well. What made you decide to do a survey to help define the culture? And what sort of things did you did the survey look at?
Lorraine Serva: Yeah. It was a couple of years ago when in 2018 we open four locations and prior to that we had been opening maybe one restaurant every 18 to 24 months, something like that. So, in 2018 we were about to open four restaurants in one year for the first time. And so, I was looking at, yeah it was a lot. So, I was looking at any way that I could help us be more successful in doing that. So how could I make the train - How can I improve the training so that people would get up to speed faster, sooner and be effective? You know, and I think one of the areas that we saw people failing at some time was our culture, not understanding how to work within Iron Hill. And, you know, most people can learn how to cook, or they can learn how to serve or whatever. It tended to be more of the cultural issues that got them into trouble. So, I was really trying to define what are these aspects? And then could I teach people what they were so that they early on could understand better? This is acceptable or not acceptable at Iron Hill, so they could be more successful as we were about to go into these four openings. So that's why I’m engaged in that survey process.
Peter Koch: That's a really great insight to look at the enormous challenge of opening four locations all at once and then think about, oh, well, how are we going to, how are we going to manage or pre-empt again, the challenges that you've had and some of the other locations, like how do we make sure that it goes more smoothly and you're just going to quadruple all the challenges if you don't figure out what some of the solutions are ahead of time. So that survey is it is a great idea for that. And from an engagement standpoint, I think that survey part is a good way to once in a while check in, because you've got a lot of systems, you've got a lot of processes in place. But a well, tooled survey. Can provide some great indications about how the culture is functioning within your company. And I think it's a great tool and should be used as part of your overall employee engagement process or part of your safety management process. Because it's hard to know, especially when you have such a diverse set of locations or even if you only have one location with a number of employees, a survey is a great way to be able to kind of take the temperature of your company to see where you are and look at change. They first survey is going to tell you something, but the second survey is going to tell you even more when you get to compare them.
Lorraine Serva: We do a lot of surveys. We do new hire surveys. We do exit interview surveys. We do annual engagement surveys. We have apparently liked our surveys. I think the only reason to the only reason to do them is if you're actually going to do something about it. And so, we've always required our restaurants to form action plans after the survey on their top issues. You can't fix every single thing. You don't want to fix everything that people bring up because sometimes you disagree with what they say, but they're required to take a look at it and make decisions and then implement solutions for the top issues. And the survey does include a safety section where it asks them if they're trained as new hires on safety. For example, in the new hire interview, they're asked if they're trained on safety for their position. And it asks, is there manager care about safety? You know, it does ask about various I don't know, an exact wording, but it does ask various questions about safety in that survey. So that, again, over time, as you mentioned, I can see whether there's an uptrend or downtrend stay the same. You know, I can take a look at why that why those changes might have occurred.
Peter Koch: Yeah, it'll it definitely helps give the regional manager or the location manager and the supervisory team and then yourself some insight into what's happening, because many times you're so close to it, especially if you're the manager of a particular location, you might not see all of the good and the bad. More the even just the stasis that might happen. So that survey is a good piece and it allows you to provide then targeted resources based on the action plan that the manager comes up with and what the survey in general says. So, it can give you some guidance for the whole company as well as those individual locations. Great, great. Great tool. Great. Exactly. Excellent. Is there is there anything else that we've that you want to highlight that we might have missed in our discussion about employee engagement on the safety side of things?
Lorraine Serva: Wow. You know, I think we talked about a lot of the stuff, the training and the engagement, just trying to make it fun using technology. Safety Committee, I mean, the safety committee is a large piece trying to keep them engaged. But no, I don't. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head that that I need to share with you.
Peter Koch: Yeah, I think we hit on we certainly done all that all the big points to be able to keep employees engaged. So, it's not a one size fits all process in order to keep your employees engaged in safety. And you've done it through creating a mascot, creating a message, having the safety committee be the driver of the messages and the process at each of the individual locations, providing them support globally through technology, through your learning management system and the QR code scanning and having it delivered in a format that's accessible. Throughout the company at a moment, so you don't have to have a bank of computers for somebody to sit down to do some e-learning. The, and then we talked about the survey and the drawings and the different contests to be able to keep the employees engaged. So overall, it's a very robust process. Now, this didn't happen overnight. I would imagine so. You've been working on this process and adding more parts and pieces. If there was one part. So if there's a company out there that's looking to more fully engage their employees, and if there is one thing through that you've learned through your experience of engaging employees in the safety process, the safety culture process at Iron Hill, what would it be? What would the one thing be that they should focus on first in order to start moving employee engagement in a positive direction?
Lorraine Serva: Focus on something that matters to the employees. So, pick a safety issue that really speaks to the employees and find something, you know some fun way to get at that whether it's a contest or a mascot or whatever, but pick something that matters to them.
Peter Koch: That's an excellent insight. I'm not sure that someone that a company would think of that. So usually it's a big program or it's something that they have to purchase. But really go back to what matters to the employees. What's going to help them feel safe? What's the challenges that they're having and work on that and come up with a solution that helps them work more safely or be engaged in that particular part of the process. Excellent insight. I really appreciate that.
Lorraine Serva: When, you know, I think the thing is, is that they need to know that we care and if they think that we're doing safety because we truly care about them and their safety, then they're much more likely to go along with it. And so that's why saying pick something that's important to them, because then they know that you're doing it because you care and then they're more likely to go along with it.
Peter Koch: Awesome. OK. So, I think that just about wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast. Thanks for sharing your expertise with us today, Lorraine. I really appreciate it.
Lorraine Serva: Thanks for inviting me.
Peter Koch: Fantastic. So, and thank you to our listeners. And today I've been speaking with Lorraine Serva, who heads up the human resource team for Iron Hill Brewery and restaurants about employee engagement and its effect on workplace safety here on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. So, if you have any questions for Lorraine or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. Email me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to resources for a deeper dive into this topic. Check out our Web site, MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find our podcast archive. And while you’re there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d really appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, i-Tunes or whichever podcast service that you find us on. And if you’ve already done that, thank you very much, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good but using what you learned here is even better.
Resources, Articles and People Mentioned in Podcast
- MEMIC – https://www.memic.com/
- Peter Koch – https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch
- Lorraine Serva – Director, Human Resources at Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant
- Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant – https://www.ironhillbrewery.com/
- Ted Talks – https://www.ted.com/talks
- Certified Safety Committee – https://www.dli.pa.gov/Businesses/swif/Safety/Pages/Certified-Safety-Committee-Information.aspx
- Safety Month – https://www.nsc.org/work-safety/get-involved/national-safety-month
- Learning Management Systems (LMS) – https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/video-lending-library/safety-academy-online-lms
- Safety Data Sheets (SDS) – https://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3514.html
Do you sit all, or most of the day? Are you more tired, and sore after getting out of your office chair than you are after a workout? MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics, Allan Brown, introduces listeners to the concept of how non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) can increase your overall health and improve safety on the job. Brown asks, “When you get to that elevator, do you really have to push that button, or can you walk up?” In this episode, host Pete Koch and Allan Brown explore how basic activities like walking, standing, stretching and even chewing gum can improve workplace ergonomics and employee well-being. Pete Koch: Hello listeners, and welcome to The Safety Experts podcast. Do you sit all day? Are you more tired and sore after getting out of your office chair than you are after a workout? On today's episode, we're going to discover the secrets of NEAT and how to make friends with your seat again. The Safety Experts podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leading worker's compensation provider based here on the East Coast. A new episode of the podcast drops every two weeks featuring interviews with leaders in the field, top executives, MEMIC staff and other industry experts. We discuss how safety applies to all aspects of our lives. I'm your host, Peter Koch, and for the past 17 years, I've been working for MEMIC as a safety expert within the hospitality and construction industries. What I realize is that safety impacts every part of each position that you have or even the tasks that you do. And from one perspective, safety can be seen as not doing something that can be dangerous. Simple cause and effect. If it hurts or it can hurt, then don't do it. This can be pretty easy, if the choice of the for the effect. This can be pretty easy, if the choice for the effect is immediate and the cause is obvious. The burner on the gas stove is on the fire's hot, don't touch the stove. However, we don't often recognize the effect a behavior can have on us, or that we are too susceptible to the effect of that behavior. So, another perspective on safety could be as an active choice to do something walk at lunch, use protective gear, learn more about the hazards you're exposed to, or stand instead of sitting for part of your day. These simple choices can positively impact you at work and at home. So, for today's episode, make friends with your chair again up your NEAT. How non-exercise activity thermogenesis can help you make friends with your chair again. I'm speaking here with Al Brown, Chief Ergonomist at MEMIC to better understand NEAT how to turn it on and the negative effect sitting has on us. Al's been with MEMIC for 15 years and has helped hundreds of businesses get a handle on ergonomics and the benefits of activity in the workplace. Al, welcome to the podcast.
Al Brown: Thank you, Peter. Appreciate being here.
Pete Koch: Very good.
Al Brown: Correction there. I'm actually the Director of Ergonomics. I got a promotion.
Pete Koch: Very good. The Director of Ergonomics. Moving from Chief Ergonomist to Director of Ergonomics, that's even better. Even better. But before we dig into that and figure out how our NEAT, how not NEAT our chairs are. So, tell me a little bit more about you at MEMIC and how you got to where you are, and how ergonomics fits in with your place here.
Al Brown: Sure. Actually, I'm a physical therapist and that's an unusual person to find, probably in the insurance industry.
Pete Koch: It is.
Al Brown: In early on in my life as a physical therapist worked on site at industry, Bath Ironworks, L.L. Bean. And one of the one of the things we would do is if someone were injured, we'd walk back to the workspace and take a look at it and look to see if we could change, modify the job, reengineer it. Then we'd start treatment. It was a natural transition to a place like MEMIC, where they focus on workplace safety, specifically ergonomics. So, I became part of the team here and that's what I do now as I actually partner with industry. Go out, take a look at if they've got risks and exposures. Help them see those. Help them understand what might create or cause injury and things they might do to change those things.
Pete Koch: Very cool. So that's it's an interesting path to get here, being a physical therapist. But I do see that's a great tie in to be able to take what you would find when you saw your clients as a physical therapist and see the connection back actually in the workplace now that you're here, at MEMIC some of the cause and effect; what you see as the presentation of the patient versus how where it came from, possibly in the workplace and how work and the non-work life contribute to some of the aches and pains that might be there.
Al Brown: Oh, sure, it's a continuum. Rarely is it just something that occurs just at work and then it shuts off and punches out at that point and the person goes home. It's a different life. It's a continuum from work right through. So repeated behaviors unconscious behavior are things that are repeated 24 hours a day.
Pete Koch: Yeah. And they can kind of catch up with us. Which kind of moves right into our topic today with that concept of NEAT. And so that the where I heard about it first is actually from a book that you turned me on to by Dr. James Levine titled "Get Up and Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It". And you told me prior to the podcast that you had had the opportunity to see Dr. Levine speak at a conference on this topic. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what NEAT is and why should we care?
Al Brown: Sure. Yeah, no it was one of those moments. I'm at a conference that was in Las Vegas at the National Ergonomics Conference, and James Levine was one of the presenters. He's an endocrinologist with the Mayo Clinic, had great credentials, has done a lot of research in this area, pretty extensive. You should when you look at the book and you go and you read through, what exactly did they really controlled for a lot of variables. But his premise was that he looked at non-exercise activity, thermogenesis. When you look at life, about 60 percent of our day is basal activity. Sleeping, sitting in a chair, really not moving much and that accounts for not much NEAT non-exercise activity thermogenesis. You're not burning much fuel doing those things. For example, sitting in a chair, it's only about 300 calories per day to do something like that. Then you have about 10 percent, which is the thermal activity from just eating. So, when you eat, your body actually burns fuel because it's digesting. So that gives you the last 30 percent of the day, which is this non-exercise activity thermogenesis which it can vary between people. You and I might have a 2,000 calorie per day difference. Just because you might be very active walking around, you're a farmer, you’re or you are a housekeeper, you are a manual material handler, you are a brick layer, whatever the case may be. And I might be sitting in front of a computer. And they've discovered that, you know, when you look at trying to control diet and all that kind of stuff, it really doesn't work that well when you're looking at folks that have type 2 diabetes and all those kinds of things, that's what sort of stimulated this research. And they realize it was more related to this need, this non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So, I began thinking, here we are in a world of technology that has crept into our lives and you know, what do we do less now?
Pete Koch: Stand, act, be active, walk around.
Al Brown: We don't move as much as we used to. So, if you think about it, those little micro movements throughout the day are part of that NEAT. And now we've decreased our NEAT. So, we begin to impact our health.
Pete Koch: Yeah, I totally can see that. So that concept of, and even us standing when we did, we made a conscious choice to stand here today. And while we're standing, there's a lot of movement back and forth, side to side, one foot to the other. Moving our hands, moving our arms. But if you swap that out and you sit down at the table for dinner or you sit on the couch to watch television or stream Netflix or something, play a game, whatever that is. There's a lot less of that micro movement that would happen. So, you're burning fewer calories throughout the day. What's the connection between better health and burning more calories?
Al Brown: Well, you're processing the food. So, when you consume food, it's kind of like think of a credit card. I always use a credit card analogy where you can use a credit card. You can eat but you got to pay it back.
Pete Koch: At some point in time.
Al Brown: And if you don't pay it back. You accumulate interest on that credit card, and it gets expensive and sometimes it can run away and get away from you. Eating. You can eat. But as long as the intake and the outcome are, are negated, you're fine. You can eat whatever you want as long as the activity level matches that. If the activity level is less than the intake, then you're going to accumulate interest, which is body fat. Things of that nature. And then with that, we know that there are risk factors related to it. Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, all those things that come along with higher risk factors which come along with obesity.
Pete Koch: You definitely see that. And then there is also a health benefit in there. As I get to burn more calories, I'm more active, there's more blood flowing, oxygen moving around in my body. I'm going to be healthier overall because like any machine, the human machine, the more we can move and work, the better off we'll be in the long run. Things will stay tuned, we'll be mentally sharper, we'll be physically sharper throughout the day. So that helps us not only at home, but at work and play, whatever we end up doing.
Al Brown: Well, yeah. You'll actually find, for example, you know, an example for the listening audience if you take a walk.
Pete Koch: Yeah.
Al Brown: And when you come back from the walk, you will have a bit of a euphoric feel, you'll feel good. You've released a little bit of an endorphin, probably not the level you would maybe if you were running or lifting, but you still get that endorphin plus you get that filtering of the systems in your body. You know, your heart runs a lot of the pressure within our body, so it moves a lot of your, your blood flow throughout. And again, if you think about it, we live in a world of gravity. So, everything always wants to go down to the feet. So, you need that return. And the return occurs by the heart, creating this positive pressure. However your muscles also contract when you're walking and moving, so your venous system which returns the blood flow back up to your heart from your feet are a system of one way valves and those valves open as the pressure pushes back up and pushes the fluid back up towards your heart and close as the fluid tries to move back down. So, the heart continues the pressure and there's a strain if you're not walking, but if you're out walking, the muscle contraction actually assists the heart. So, you’re actually cleaning the body. And when you clean the body, you get rid of a lot of the impurities. All the nasty stuff that when you sit just sits in your body. Think of it again, you know, I like analogies. You know me.
Pete Koch: They're all good.
Al Brown: And think of a swimming pool. Your body is like a swimming pool. The water in the pool is kind of like the blood your blood system. And think about the filter not running but having a lot of people swimming in it. And there's a lot of bacteria, dirt, all kinds of things accumulating in the pool, but it's not being cleaned out. And that's because things are static in the pool. That's very much like being static, sitting at your desk, standing at a workstation where you're not moving. Just lying down to get up and move or to, to change position, walk around, whatever the case may be is like turning that filter on and cleaning the pool out.
Pete Koch: Right.
Al Brown: So you get rid of those impurities. So that's what your blood system does. That's what your lymphatic system does. And your lymphatic system really does depend on you just moving. It doesn't really have a heart connected, a pump, so to speak. The pump is you.
Pete Koch: Moving stuff around, cleaning it out. So, there is a connection in there, not only to overall health, but we can make a connection to even work productivity. Sharper thinking. Feeling better. Moving. Being able to move more freely throughout the day. Not being maybe as sore from repetitive activities. If I can clean the product of work out of the body through movement.
Al Brown: Yeah, oh absolutely. Just getting up and moving is, think of that, here's another thing. If eating, if you eat, eat and have dinner, your blood glucose levels go up, you know. But if you go take a walk right after dinner, you can drop that glucose level. It's kind of like stirring it a little bit, like stirring the circuit a little bit. It's not all accumulated on the bottom. And you can drop your blood glucose levels by about 20 percent just by taking that walk. Yeah.
Pete Koch: Yeah. Because you're using the fuel. You put fuel in, if I, if your body's in storage mode is just going to store it. If you're active and you go out to use the fuel that you put in as it's being processed, then you don't need to store it. You're actually burning through it.
Al Brown: Correct.
Pete Koch: Awesome. So, let's talk about the issue that Dr. Levine is targeting here. Is sitting, being the biggest, or one of the biggest challenges to health overall in the United States and a big challenge to our workers. So, I'm going to ask you the question here, is sitting really as big a deal as Dr. Levine makes it out to be?
Al Brown: The short answer is yes. The longer answer, which I always will have, is the when we use the number 11 hours, 11 hours of sitting. And the question is, do you sit for 11 hours a day cumulatively? So collectively over the day. If you think of your day, do you spend eleven hours sitting? If you do, your risk factors, your health risk factors go up exponentially. You begin to have the same risks and exposures as someone who smokes fairly heavily.
Pete Koch: Wow.
Al Brown: And we're talking not only type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and those types of things, we're even talking about breast cancer. So, the risks go up if you sit, if you start to close in on 11 hours a day. So, what can you do to make differences? So, you know, in this technology creep that we're looking and I call it technology creep, because what happens is more and more things we do are related to the computer from, you know, shopping, getting your media content, setting up meetings. I don't have to go down and talk to someone at MEMIC, I can send them an e-mail, or I can text them. So, we, you know, we move less. So, with that technology, we sit more, and we creep towards that 11 hours of inactivity.
Pete Koch: Sure. So a lot of the times, you know, you go back 20, 30 years and sitting wasn't as, it was common, it was something that we looked to for more relief to get kind of take a break, get off our feet. But we sit more than we think. So, within the book, there was an interesting set of questions, a quiz that Dr. Levine posed the sitting that the chair quiz to see how comfortable you are with your chair.
Al Brown: Did you pull it out of the book?
Pete Koch: I did, I pulled it right out of the book. So, we're going to take that quiz, right, So I'm going to ask the question. And then we're both going to keep track in our head of yes and no questions.
Al Brown: OK.
Pete Koch: So if you answer yes, you get a point. If you answer no, you get no points.
Al Brown: Okay. Low score wins, right?
Pete Koch: Low score wins.
Al Brown: This is a game of golf.
Pete Koch Kind of and I'm really bad at golf.
Al Brown: But that ups your NEAT, if you don't take the cart, walk around.
Pete Koch Yeah. All right.
Al Brown: Opportunities.
Pete Koch: It does. OK. So, the first question.
Pete Koch: Number one, do you work seated at a chair?
Al Brown: Oh.
Pete Koch: Got it.
Al Brown: I do.
Pete Koch: All right. So, I think I'm going to have to give me a one there.
Al Brown: Aha, me too.
Pete Koch: Most of what I do, although a lot of what I do is standing whether I'm doing a training or I'm going to do, I try to have sometimes meetings with people when I get to get up and walk around. But a lot of the work that I do is going to be in a chair.
Al Brown: So you find opportunities to up your NEAT?
Pete Koch: I do. I try.
Al Brown: Because you're cognizant of that sitting. Yeah and driving. We drive a lot.
Pete Koch: Oh, my gosh. We drive all the time. And that's another place where, you know, if I go back before I worked for MEMIC, the job I had wasn't travel based. So, I spent a lot more time on my feet in the transition between that and a more sedentary job was very challenging for me. I mean, it's taken me quite a while to sort of overcome that and figure it out. So, number one is the, have you worked seated in a chair? I'm going to give myself a one for that. So, number two is, have you ever shopped on the Internet?
Pete & Al: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I have. Yeah. Guilty. I have to give us a one on that one there.
Pete Koch: So do you watch, number three: Do you watch TV or a streaming service while seated for an hour or more a day?
Al Brown: Oh, geez. Yes. I watched Netflix last night.
Pete & Al: Netflix, Amazon Prime. Also, YouTube. Holy cow. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you get there on and only watch it for a little bit. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You got to turn the auto play off. That's right. Yeah. And then you're the you know, the cliffhanger. You got to go to the next episode and all a sudden, it's three hours later. Right. Yeah. But I pull the plug at two hours sometimes. Yes.
Pete Koch: OK. Number four. Do you ever eat while watching TV or in the car.
Pete & Al: Oh yes. Yes. Yeah. So, I'm going to have to I'll say no to the television, but I'm going to have to say yes to the car just because the car for me. Television we don't snack or, you know, maybe a cup of tea, coffee. Sure. That's it. Have, have you ever Internet dated.
Al Brown: Interstate dated?
Pete & Al: Internet dated. Internet, no. I'm going to have to give us both a 0, A big 0. Sure. Computer didn't exist when I met my wife.
Pete Koch: Yeah. Number six, I think. Do you own a recliner?
Pete & Al: No, I do not. I don't either own recliner. Very good.
Pete Koch: If you go to a party, do you seek out a chair or a stool? No. Is that because you don't go to parties or because you don't seek out chairs or stools?
Al Brown: I'm typically not invited to parties. No, I don't. I tend to stand just because you end up, you get engaged in the conversation. It will be like this where I am probably more comfortable standing and talking.
Pete Koch: Yeah. So, me to. I'm the same, same there as well. So that's going to be a zero. And then at if you look at your sofa, does it have an imprint of your butt in it.
Al Brown: No.
Pete Koch: Is that because it's new?
Al Brown: No it's old, and it doesn't have an imprint. Doesn't, I don't spend a lot of time there. And change position all the time. Swap the cushions. Right, go back and forth. Depends on whoever wants the light to do an activity while watching TV, they get that side.
Pete Koch: So this, this question might apply more to millennials than you and me, but I still think it's an important question to ask, especially in this day and age. So, do you spend more time with friends electronically than in real life?
Pete & Al: No, I do not facetime, text, and all that. I talk directly to them. Try to go see him. Yeah.
Pete Koch: And the last question. Have you ever fantasized about just sitting?
Al Brown: I was on top of Katahdin once and I was been walking for 8 hours. I guess you could say I was fantasizing about just sitting sown just sitting down to give my hips and legs a break. But no, not typically.
Pete Koch: Yeah. Not typically either. All right. So, let's total them up. So, we've got one, two, three, four. So, we have four totals. And then the possible last one could be five. So if we total this up in one point for each answer and for those of you who are, who are doing this quiz with us on online here, for if you have zero, then you don't need to read Dr. Levine's book. You're good. You don't have a great relationship with your chair. And you can just keep on going. If you got two, one to two, you are considered a chair pre-addict. Hmm. Three to five. He gives us a Chair Addict. So we are, we are smack dab in Chair Addiction Al, because we're at 4.
Al Brown: Time for rehab.
Pete Koch: Yeah, and six to eight, then you're in the Chair Imprisoned. And if you have hit 9 or 10, you are a Chair-a-holic. Yeah.
Al Brown: Ouch.
Pete Koch: Yeah, ouch. Wow okay. So relationship with your chair, we've talked some about like the body's response to not sitting at a biological level, so the cellular level, how the heart works in cleaning it out, and our endocrine system. But what do you see when you start talking to other workers or go into different businesses about the physical effects of sitting in those people? So, what do you see?
Al Brown: Well, you know, I see musculoskeletal changes, you know, changes in their, in their body. Muscle length, muscle tightness. For example, when you sit down your hip flexor, the muscle on the front side of your thigh. And it starts at the front side of your thigh, kind of right at the bottom where your pocket is, and it passes through your pelvis and attaches to your lumbar spine. So, it kind of goes right through your pelvis. In a sitting position that muscle is in a shortened position. So, if you sit for an extended period time and what happens to muscles if they are in a position for a long period of time is they begin to adapt or if they're short, they shorten to that position. If you ever stretch something, it'll overstretch in the other direction. But in this particular case, your hip flexors, your hamstrings, which are the muscles on the back side of your thigh because your knees are bent will also shorten. You will oftentimes when you're sitting, you will tend to, the head will come forward a bit. Or you may recline. But in any case, you'll shut off your core muscles, particularly the front core muscles, your abdominal area, your back muscles will actually, your upper shoulder area, will get overstretched and lengthened. If they're chronically lengthened and overstretched, that can lead to a condition called fibromyalgia or myofascial discomfort, which is connective tissue that is constantly under strain. Very difficult to recover from that simply because you have to either you have to shorten it, but that means contracting this irritated tissue. So, it's a very difficult thing to kind of change back. So those, those muscles in your body and to your chest area tends to close down because everything's in front of us. So, you, and those impact us. So, when we go to stand back up and those muscles are short, they change the mechanics of standing. So, if you think of us as a game of Jenga, we begin to start knocking some of those blocks out of position. And instead of a nice stout stack of blocks that are well-organized, the tight muscles begin to pull us forward or begin to flatten our back. We begin to lose our lumbar curve. We begin to have shortened hamstrings with knee pain. And that's all because of that prolonged static sitting posture.
Pete Koch: So there's a musculoskeletal change that happens from sitting all the time. And when that occurs. So, what does that what does that look like, like when you talked about it, it changes the mechanics of how we stand back up. But if you've been sitting for a long time, that's your habit. Let's say that you took the quiz and you're in that chair imprisoned or chair-a-holic. Like most of the stuff that you do, I sit at work. I spend a long time in the car commuting back and forth or on the bus or in a plane. And then I'm at home and I am doing work at a computer at home, or I'm exhausted when I get home. So, I just like to sit on the couch and play a video game or stream movies. So, I'm seated for eleven hours or more a day. What is it? What does it look like in a person? Like, what do you physically look like?
Al Brown: Well, you, you know, one of the things I didn't mention in that that little list on the front side is the, you will tend to lose some of your muscle mass around your buttock area, your gluteus medius, gluteus maximus. Those are sort of your hip area. So, things you'll see, you'll see sort of a forward posture flattened back. But when during a gait, if someone's walking, you will see what we call in the medical world a Trendelenburg gait and the Trendelenburg gait, you have to realize that when you stand on your right hip, you weight bear on your right leg, your muscles on the right side of your hip contract tighten and they lift your pelvis to keep your belt, let's use the belt as a reference point, level with, with the earth or slightly elevate it. The left side so that the left leg can move through. And then when you weight bear on the left side, the left side contracts, lifts and brings your right leg through. So, your upper core, your upper body stays pretty vertical. When you've been sitting for a long time and you've lost that muscle mass on those hips, you will see people wobble. So, you'll see their head when they weight bear on the right, their head will shift over on the right hip to assist that muscle that's weak and bring their leg through. So it's sort of a wobbling gait when they're walking and you realize that person probably has got a lot of weakness in their hip areas, which will eventually lead to hip pain, which will probably eventually lead to total hip replacement, which really doesn't solve the problem.
Pete Koch: It doesn't.
Al Brown: Because we're just taking care of the joint. We haven't taken care of the strength of the core and the pelvic floor and that hip musculature.
Pete Koch: So it's really a long-term effect. Like we could have some short-term acute effects. Like well for example, when I get out of a car, if I've been sitting in a car for two, sometimes three hours, though I try not to do that anymore. I'm sore like my hip flexors are tight, my low back is tight, my shoulders are tight, and it's because within the car I am like you said, my hamstrings are shortened, and my hip fractures are shortened and head forward in my posture. And I'm in that single position for a lot of that time. Even if I do try to move, I can't move as much as I want to or should, and I'm sore. So that acute change for us or the acute effect is some short-term pain which can be alleviated with movement. But the long-term effects is what you're describing is that there could be the long term effects of that constant sitting is loss of muscle mass and eventually some degradation into the joints that will support because we're not ergonomically functioning the way we're supposed to anymore.
Al Brown: Correct. And you know, again, it's that if you go back to the premise of art or talk today, which is NEAT, we suddenly begin to change or reduce that NEAT. And it does have those cardiovascular impacts that we talked about earlier button. But the physical effects are also right there. So, and then those two tend to feed off each other. And if you think about it, we really depend on independent movement of our body around the earth, so to speak. So, we're slowly painting ourselves back in a corner of inactivity. If you've ever seen the word the movie, Wall-E.
Pete Koch: Yes.
Al Brown: You know, where humans basically were chair bound and they really had no course. They couldn't stand up. And the little robots had to do everything for them. Think about that. And where we're heading.
Pete & Al: We're getting there. We're developing robots. Yeah. Help us do those things right now. Yeah, sure. Yeah.
Pete Koch: Okay, so lots of effects there for long-term sitting. And we've, we went through the quiz. We've talked some about what we already do. What are some, you know, when you go to a workplace, what are some areas where you find people seated for, for long periods of time?
Al Brown: Well, we try to one first introduce this concept of because again, not everybody understands NEAT and understands the basis for, I might come in and say, you know, let's do job rotation or, or let's take a stretch break. And people think of that as "stretch breaks don't work" and, or let's collaborate, let's in an office setting might encourage folks to go and receive somebody that's come to the front office that they're going to meet with back as opposed to just, you know, "send 'em in" type thing. So, you're encouraging that movement, but you have to get them to understand that foundation on the front side of why we're doing this. If you look at the transition of our office over the last five to six years, you've seen an office that was static, cubicle driven. Stay inside that cubicle. You had a six or a 10 by 10 space and that was your space. And typically, you didn't leave it to more open space, more collaborative space. Rooms that you can go to, desks that go up and down. So, we try to encourage industry to look at those kinds of solutions where you're encouraging movement throughout the day. It's funny because one of the when James Levine was down in Vegas doing this presentation, there were about 400 vendors and probably 350 of those were dynamic desks. Or as we may know, most people know them as standing desks. So, the perception was that, oh, let's just stand up at work. And in fact, that's, that's an OK thing. And it's great because it takes those sore muscles like you dealt with in the car, and it allows you in the office to change frequently and again, if you look at Harvard, the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Jack Dennerlein, Nicolaas Pronk, a lot of those folks that have done some of the work down there, they you know every 30 minutes stand up, 30 minutes sit down. And about half the day up, half the day down. It doesn't solve the physiological issues that Levine is talking about. And he's not saying stand up and that'll fix the problem. That is, I call it a three-legged stool. And we look at wellness. One is you sitting. We're going to have to sit. That's here. Computers are here. We're not going to change that. Two, given the opportunity to change position by, and allowing, like you in the car. Let you get up, stand, move, different position, put the muscles, reset the body. And then three of that stools, that third leg is “Go Move”. Don't work through the stretch break. Don't eat at your desk and continue the work. You take a walk. Same thing even in a manufacturing facility. Some folks will get up, but they'll go and sit down in the cafeteria and eat and then go back and sit right back down and do what they're doing. This, an example this morning, just myself personally, I realized this conversation is coming up today and I said, Gee I get my cup of coffee. I go out. I sit in the chair and I look out at the lawn. And today I said, no, I'm going to walk around the lawn drinking my coffee. So that's what I did. So, I just took that opportunity to up my NEAT. So, we try to find those wind, but you really have to educate folks on the front side why we're doing this.
Pete Koch: I would agree with that totally, that the why around movement is important. And I think also identifying all of the, all of the times when we're not active like, well, we're almost either required by a particular task or by a job or we are requiring ourselves through habit to stay in one position and helping people identify those, those times throughout the day when you might be approaching 11 hours in the chair or even eight hours in the chair is quite a bit of time to think about that throughout our day and then the more we can be active. I like that connection, that three-legged stool, stool, sit, stand, move. So basically, you can have two different positions that you need to swap between the two all day. But even if you're just sitting and standing and changing your position at your desk for eight hours, it's not going to be as beneficial to you if you get up and move through a break to do something else.And the standing piece too, just as a sidebar. The fidgeter is going to have a higher NEAT level than the non-fidgeter. And you yourself know, are you a fidget or not a fidgeter? You know, I mean, you wiggle back, and I mean, we're here having a conversation.
Pete Koch: I'm totally a fidgeter.
Al Brown: And I'm on the right hip, then I'm over on the left hip. So we're fidgeting. And when folks stand, we really try to encourage them that when you're standing, don't just stand, you know, move back and forth, bend your leg. Do toe raises, you know, do anything that kind of creates actual contraction muscle movement in the lower stretches. Because, again, remember, it assists that feedback loop of bringing fluids back up to the heart and filtering the system. So, anything you can do along those lines are going to be beneficial.
Pete Koch: Yeah, that's great. So, we're going to take a quick break and we'll come back with Al to talk a little bit more about NEAT and then discuss some potential solutions that we have and our ideas for the workplace. But we'll take a break and we'll be right back.
Pete Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Al Brown, director of ergonomics at MEMIC. So, let's jump back in with more questions right away. So, let's get back to I have a sedentary job. I'm going to drive a lot. I'm going to sit at my job, and I enjoy at home just being still. So fine, I’m going to sit there, but I'm going to try to work out. So, I'm going to after work, I might go to the gym and work out for an hour. High intensity workout. Going to sweat a lot to get a lot of steps in and get my heart rate up. I feel really good afterwards. But how much is that really combating the long term sitting for that day?
Al Brown: Unfortunately, it's not combating it much. They actually coined the term, I think it was in Australia or New Zealand, the active couch potato. And I'm just as guilty as you because necessity sometimes dictates my life in terms of drive a certain distance to do my job. And then, you know, generate reports or whatever the case may be. So, I'm sedentary. So same, I feel like I need something. So that pill I take is the walk, the run, the lift. And unfortunately, we do that in a short window of time. And in that short window of time, we you know sweat like you said. But then when we're done, what do you do? We sit down for dinner or then Netflix or whatever TV.
Pete & Al: Fantasize about that chair. I just want to sit down. I'm tired.
Al Brown: So it doesn't, it negates. Now, granted, you are creating a good muscular musculoskeletal system. You're strengthening your muscle tone and you're getting some muscle memory back. All those things are good. So, don't stop your workout. That's important. What you want to do is find strategies to add activity throughout the day. If you go back to James Levine's research and I encourage you all to kind of go back and look at that, because, you know, it's interesting. When he did his presentation out at the National Ergonomics Conference, he never stood still. He moved constantly and he did it purposely. And we're talking, you know, a room with 200 people and that he just raced around the whole time making his point. But what you want to do is in his research, he looked at folks that were lean, that had low risk factors actually moved, and again this was a very comprehensive study, two and a half hour, two and a half hours more a day. And that's not I'm going to go out and run for an hour. And then I'm going to go work out for another hour and then do something for a half hour. These were little tiny increments. These were 10-minute increments throughout the day where I'm going to walk down and go get a cup of coffee at the corner. I'm going to walk over and get some lunch. I'm going to walk here and collaborate. So collectively, and those things to a certain extent are unconscious for a lot of folks. You have a lot of folks that will not leave their chair, and that's unconscious, too. They don't rule our subconscious. They just don't realize they don't move. So, you have to try to find strategies that get you, and again, there's apps and all that kind of good stuff, but it's a behavior change. So, if you are locked in and you don't really think about, it's easy to push that button for the elevator and skip the stairs. Going "I don't want to do the stairs", nobody's watching and no one really cares. It's your body, it's you. It's your physiology. You would think you should care.
Pete Koch: Yeah.
Al Brown: Because it's the quality of life down the road. So, you begin to try to find those strategies that get you to move more. Park across the parking lot. Don't park close. But park far away. When you go to the store in the weekend, park further away, protect the car doors. Don't get into the whole mess. I got to get close to the door. I have to laugh, we have a large outdoor retail store up in the Freeport area and I see a lot of people circling, trying to get as close to the door, and meanwhile, it says "Outdoor hiking, camping, store" I'm thinking.
Pete Koch: Yeah, exactly.
Al Brown: Park further away!
Pete Koch: You can do it! You can do it!
Al Brown: So it's one of those things that you have to find those opportunities, be it at work. And again, management has to support that, too.
Pete Koch: Sure.
Al Brown: You know, if you have a management style that says if you're not at your desk, you're not working everything else is going to fail. You need that support at the upper management level that says, "I want folks to move and change." And what they have to realize is by allowing that you re-oxygenate the body, you rejuvenate the body. Instead of getting that 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon "logy-ness", you come back, and you know, you produce a letter or you know manufacturing, you don't stick your finger someplace where it shouldn't be. You're fresher. So again, I go back to the analogy of, you know, if I had, if I drove a truck for work and I said I don't have time to rotate the tires and change the oil and I make more money if I just keep going. Eventually I'm going to see the engine sort of burst into smoke and the tires fall off and major repairs. Oh, my gosh. Where if I take that time to actually do preventative maintenance and service it, I just keep chugging along and keep producing. So same thing with a human being. We're no different. We're a mechanical system within the world of gravity that we need to take time and sort of refresh ourselves, reset ourselves, and the benefits outweigh themselves from, you know, from staying at the desk. I mean, get out. You move around. You've come back actually are much better at what you do.
Pete Koch: Those are really good points. And in some cases, I think it could be easier for someone that has a job at a desk or has a job in a place where they are allowed to get up. What about some of those positions, like a truck driver, like someone in manufacturing who literally is measured on production. I've got to get X amount of pieces out per day or I'm order picking or I'm doing something else. What are some strategies for someone who has a job that's based on the amount of time that they can actually do the job? What are some things that they can do to up their NEAT?
Pete & Al: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Now in order pickers got probably a lot of NEAT. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Al Brown: It's like a mail person that, you know, walks and delivers mail. I think, I always thought the fantasy job would be to do that because you are, you're shooting the breeze, you're talking to people and you're walking and you're delivering mail. Of course, you're hanging it off one shoulder, so you have to change it every so often. But for those folks like the truck driver, again senior management has to support, let me pull off and take a stretch break occasionally. But, even then, truck driving is one of those tough things that you just, it's time, money and get down the road and you can't get up out of the seat to, to move around. So, when you do get out of the truck, first of all, I have to be very careful, because when you're getting out, you don't want to jump down. A lot has changed physiologically like you and I talked about earlier in the cast. So, you have to get yourself down safely. But when you're on the ground, then you reset and then you take time and opportunity to kind of move around 10, 15, 20 minutes. Don't just go and sit down somewhere else. Actually, take a walk around the rest stop, take a walk around the truck, give yourself some time to kind of recover. Then back into the truck and then next stop, same thing. Find those 10 to 15-minute opportunities to just walk around and lengthen your body and kind of get things going. And you certainly should be someone that when you get home, you go for the walk. And go, don't rush it. Just take your time.
Pete Koch: Nice and easy.
Al Brown: A nice, slow walk through the woods is better than a quick run.
Pete Koch: Yup.
Al Brown: Because again, it's going to be that slow burn that's kind of important. You know, in, in Maine, you know, we have long summer days, you know. So instead of our mindset sometimes is, oh, it's, it's four o'clock end of the day, or four-thirty or five o'clock end of the day and we tend to get home, you know, where we still have sunlight.
Pete & Al: Habits. Yeah. Its habits.
Al Brown: So extend that time, extend that time. Go out and do something, mow the lawn, go out and garden, go out and find those opportunities where if, you know, you're restricted like a truck driver, you have to find those on the other side. Now, if it's manufacturing or something like that, again, getting folks out to take a walk at lunch, take a, you know, get them to understand the value of resetting. Job rotation. You know, have them go move to a different job. Pods, if they have a pod and they have three machines, I worked with an auto manufacturing, that you know they're at this pod and then they move over to this pod. So, it's allowing them to move and use different muscle groups. But they're moving. It's again, it's that sort of getting the body to move.
Pete Koch: And that can fit into the lean manufacturing concept. And also, really, when we're thinking about the workplace, regardless whether it's truck driving or whether it's manufacturing or if it's the office space or it doesn't matter what it is, we're looking at that concept of as a, as an employer, I need to look at my workplace from a productivity standpoint. But also, to maximize the productivity, I also have to keep in mind how well my employees can move within the workplace to up their NEAT in order to maintain their productivity. Because a worker that is able to move more freely throughout the day, to, to bring more blood and oxygen to those muscles and those muscle groups will be more productive throughout the day, not just in the morning when they get there or in the evening when they first get to work depending on their shift.
Al Brown: Correct, yes.
Pete Koch: So it's a more, not so much a holistic concept of it, but it's really looking at how we, we take the workplace and we can help the worker be healthier within the workplace. Yeah, those are all interesting concepts.
Al Brown: Plus lower injury rates, too. I mean, because, again, that static, not moving posture, you know, and doing repeated tasks, you know, those are where we see high injury rates. So, the movement within this does improve the wellness of the worker, but it also reduces the risk and exposure to those types of injuries we see in a work environment.
Pete Koch: Sure. Now, how about the fidgeting part? Like so I you know I was thinking about that truck driver. When you were talking about the truck driver and I've you know, I've got a long road to go, heavy traffic sometimes. There’re not many places, depending on where you're traveling, that you can pull off a big rig someplace safely and get out and wander around so I can fidget help within?
Al Brown: I think, I think it was Levine's book. He said chewing gum is, you burn more calories chewing gum than you do actually sitting at a computer. So, if you're driving, chew some gum.
Pete Koch: Chew some gum.
Al Brown: Yeah, those types of things. You know, I have a gripper that I keep in my vehicle that I'm actually sitting. And I'm constantly working on gripping because my hands, you know, I used to do a lot of manual work and I lost a lot of my hand strength. So, I said, I've got to improve my hand strength. So, I just picked up a little gripper that I keep. And when I get to a stoplight, you know, instead of looking at my text or phone, I don't do that. I pick up my gripper and I, I do a couple repetitions. So, exercise bands, they sell those nowadays. You know, great, you can throw them in your suitcase if you travel or you're in the truck. It doesn't take a lot of space. You can take them out, do a little exercise. We're working with a company now that does every time, they get to their third stop, they come out and do three movements and three stretches, three sets or one set. So, it's sort of integrated into one, their job performance they're expected to do it. And two, you know, they that it just becomes almost routine or habit for them. So those are the kinds of things you want to do is sort of change. Really have to take a critical look at your, it's like anything else, a critical look at your behaviors. You know, it's like money. Again, if you go back to if you don't know where you're spending your money, then you'll be struggling with money for a long time. You really have to look and be critical of where I spend every dime. And OK, now I'm going to start doing these things to save money. Same thing with your NEAT, which is even more important because I am going to tell you, your health is more important than your money. And you know, so you really need to take a critical look and be honest with yourself. And then also when your kind of trying to up that NEAT, be honest with yourself. When you get to that elevator, what do you really have to push that button, or can you walk up? And it's going to be harder. But in the long run by up in your NEAT and lowering your risk factors, you're going to feel a lot better later on and compressing your comorbidities and life, those aches and pains and cardiovascular type things.
Pete Koch: Those are all really great points Al for that. And I think the bottom line for us as we close out the podcast today is that kind of understanding first, looking at our habits, understanding where our NEAT level is right now, and then what are we going to actively do to increase that throughout the day? So, the overall, like you said, the slow burn movements that we have. So, don't stop those high intensity activities that you might have outside of work or outside of your relaxation or other activities. But look towards what can I do to increase my activity in between or during some of those more sedentary tasks or jobs that we have.
Al Brown: Exactly.
Pete Koch: Awesome. So, thanks again today. And to all the listeners out there, really appreciate that. If you have any questions for our guests or we'd like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast, you should email podcast at MEMIC.com. Get out there. So, we really appreciate that. So, we're wrapping up today's podcast here with Al Brown, Director of Ergonomics at MEMIC. I really appreciate you sharing your expertise with us today. Any final comments for our listeners out there today?
Al Brown: Pete? No, thank you for the invitation. It's one of those things, you know, find those opportunities to improve, improve your NEAT. I'm an exerciser. I'm an active couch potato. And I still need to find those areas, places where I can improve my NEAT. You were very good today by, I was walking towards the elevator and you said, "Aren't you going to take the stairs?" And so, the fact that we did this whole podcast standing up, which is a great thing. The time flew by and we feel better. We're probably looking forward to sitting down now.
Pete & Al: At some point reacquaint ourselves with our chair. There we go.
Al Brown: But not spend too much time there.
Pete Koch: I'm not fantasizing about it, for sure.
Al Brown: No neither am I.
Pete Koch: Excellent. So, this podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leader in the competitive worker's comp market and committed to health and safety of all workers. To learn more about how MEMIC can help your business, visit MEMIC.com. And don't forget about our upcoming workshops and webinars. And you can also visit MEMIC.com for dates and topics. When you want to hear more from the Safety Experts. You can find us on iTunes or right here at MEMIC.com. And if you have a smart speaker, tell it to play the safety experts podcast and you can pick up today's episode or a previous episode. You can also enable the Safety Experts podcast skill on Alexa to receive safety tips and advice from any of our episodes. So, we really appreciate your listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know that you can find it on their favorite podcast player by searching for the Safety Experts. Thanks again for tuning into the Safety Experts podcast. And remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast. Thanks for listening.
Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast
- MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/
- Peter Koch - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch
- Allan Brown - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/allan-brown
- Bath Iron Works - https://www.gd.com/en/our-businesses/marine-systems/bath-iron-works
- L.Bean - https://www.llbean.com/?&qs=3147769&Matchtype=e&msclkid=2d14580265a515a69b3d05b3fa8a9a0c&gclid=CPHZjtv4tOUCFRDcswod0iMO2A&gclsrc=ds
- Mayo Clinic - https://www.mayoclinic.org/
- “Get Up: Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It” by Dr. James Levine - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/get-up-james-a-levine/1118661250
- James Levine - https://doctor.webmd.com/doctor/james-levine-9fee2b4b-e59b-427b-a3c2-5e6d2ead739b-overview
- National Ergonomics Conference - https://www.ergoexpo.com/
- Wall-E - https://movies.disney.com/wall-e
- Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/
- Jack Dennerlein - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/jack-dennerlein/
- Nicolaas Pronk, PhD - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ecpe/faculty/nicolaas-pronk/
Take your center of mass and put it outside your base of support and what do you get?? Well, you could get better acquainted with the ground at best, and at worst you could have a life altering fall. Preventing slip and fall events is more than just signage, giving people slip resistant footwear, or mopping up a spill. There has to be a strategy that deals with all aspects of the slip and fall cause – the surface, the awareness of the worker, their footwear and its compatibility with the surface, and finally the environment the surface and employee are in. A great solution for one space might be a total failure in another. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, Peter talks with Maureen Anderson, Safety Management Consultant with MEMIC about slip and fall prevention. They exchange personal experiences investigating slip and fall events, discuss the cost of slips and falls, and share different approaches to slip and fall prevention such as SAFE and the hierarchy of controls. Explore possible solutions to the slip and fall problem. Peter Koch: Hello listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. We've all been there getting from one point to another, having a conversation, starting a task, walking back from lunch when all of a sudden, your foot or both feet slip out from underneath you and you go down. Sometimes you get back up and shake it off and you're right back at it. Other times, you might not be as lucky. And the results can be life changing. Today, we're going to unpack the cause and effect of slip and fall events on the Safety Experts podcast. And this podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leading worker's compensation provider based on the East Coast. New episode of the podcast drops every two weeks featuring interviews with leaders in the field, top executives MEMIC staff and other industry experts discussing how safety applies to all aspects of our lives. I'm your host, Peter Koch. And for the past 17 years, I've been working for MEMIC as a safety expert within the hospitality and construction industries. What I realize is that safety impacts every part of each position that you have or the tasks that you do. Things as simple as cleaning up a spill, replacing a map, reporting damaged flooring instead of thinking it's someone else's responsibility or recognizing poor lighting are all active choices that we can make throughout our day. For today's episode, the cause and effect of slip and falls, I'm speaking with Maureen Anderson, a safety consultant here with MEMIC, who has a specialty in slip and fall prevention. To better understand slip and fall events, how they impact our business and strategies for prevention. Maureen is a certified professional ergonomist and has been helping businesses get a handle on workplace risk factors for more than 20 years. Maureen, welcome to the podcast.
Maureen Anderson: Thank you. I'm very honored to be here.
Peter Koch: Fantastic. So, before we slide into the topic, your education and certification are an ergonomics.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: How did you get involved with slip and fall prevention?
Maureen Anderson: Well, the approach is very similar in ergonomics. I'm looking at the environment and I'm looking at a person and how they interact with it. In slips, trips and falls, we have a person and we have an environment, but we have an event, usually the slip, trip and fall. So, it's a very similar approach. Things like the environment, behavior becomes an issue. So, it was a very similar approach, an approach that I felt comfortable going down.
Peter Koch: Cool. So, you're really looking at the environment that the person works and what changes you can make to that environment. And then the person themselves.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: And what can you do about behavior and what can you do about what the person actually is wearing or doing that interacts with that invite?
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yeah. So, some very easy changes can be made that are not costly, but they can have a huge impact. And sometimes they are very costly changes that you have to make. But it runs the gamut.
Peter Koch: It sure does. So, slips and falls, statistically, they are the second most frequent type of injury that we see here, a cause of injury that we see here or MEMIC. And it's ubiquitous. It goes across every industry. Doesn't matter what it is. It could be an office environment, could be construction, could be hospitality, could be manufacturing, slip and falls happen in every industry.
Maureen Anderson: But they also say that the majority of them are never reported because they don't result in injuries, that there are lots of slips, someone just momentarily slips, maybe they don't fall, and they just carry on with their day. Or maybe they do fall, but they just bounce up and they go on with their day. Maybe they just have a skinned knee or something and they never tell anyone. So, we know that there is a lot out there that we could do if we knew about all those near misses that we think we could probably approach the problem and prevent a lot of these injuries.
Peter Koch: Yes, statistically, it would point us closer towards where we need to focus.
Maureen Anderson: Where we need to focus, exactly. If we could find out where all these slips, trips and falls are happening under what conditions. Yeah.
Peter Koch: Sure. And it could be based on like you said, it could be a surface issue or a big financial investment that you have to make for the change. Or it might be something super simple.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Or you can just change the path of where someone goes.
Peter Koch: Right.
Peter Koch: In order to make sure or the cleaning or whatever it is.
Maureen Anderson: Cleaning or the lighting sometimes.
Peter Koch: Those are all great things. Do you in the companies that you work with, do you remember any specific events like slip and fall events that were relatively significant that you might tell us about?
Maureen Anderson: Sure. We see, I work with a lot of small businesses in a large business that when someone gets hurt, if they are out of work for a while, it does have an impact on their co-workers who have to fill in for those duties to get it done. But in some small businesses, especially a lot of family owned businesses, it is a huge hole that is not easily filled. I know I worked with one small plumbing outfit and it was a woman who worked in the back office, like doing all their accounting and things like that. She had a fall. Their office had been up on the second floor. She could no longer get there. So, I was working with them from an ergonomics perspective about what they were going to have to do to accommodate her, to get her space decked out on the first floor. But she was not something that you could just hire a temp to fill in and her duties as she was a key part of this family business.
Peter Koch: Wow. So that one simple slip and fall then had a fairly significant impact on the individual.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: There is obviously an injury there, but those unintended consequences of the business that worked fine with the office on the second floor. But now all of a sudden, the injury from that slip and fall caused that person to not be able to access it. So, it might change their workflow.
Maureen Anderson: Changed, yeah, it changed everything and everything for this woman. Yeah. I was just gonna say sometimes there's all these other unintended consequences about running their business when they moved it to the first floor. Things that she had never really seen or thought about. It was changing everything.
Peter Koch: It changes a lot of stuff.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: Wow. So significant impact just from that simple slip and fall. There is a story and there's you. There’re tons of slip and fall stories that are out there. But there is one that sticks with me specifically from one of my early accident investigations that I had to do with MEMIC. And it was from a hospitality, it was in a restaurant. There was some broken flooring in the back. The business had identified it and they were… the fix was to replace the tile. They couldn't replace the tile because the sub floor was rotten. In order to replace the sub floor, they had to remove all the kitchen equipment, remove the floor. So, they had to do that big capital investment for the floor replacement at a time where they shut down. So, they were gonna put it off until their shoulder season. In the interim, their solution was to put a mat over the broken tile so that people wouldn't trip over, and the mat would get cleaned every evening with the rest of the mats and would dry on the loading dock. So, people would come in in the morning for startup. They'd put the mats down. That one mat would be placed in the right spot to cover that area. One day it got forgotten and it didn't get put down. Then the shift gets busy. Lunchtime happens. People are scrambling back and forth. One of the servers who had been working there for a long time was carrying a full bus tray full of dishes into the back. Tripped on that one, broken piece of tile, spun, didn't drop the bus tray because he didn't want to drop the full tray full of dishes, spun and actually hit the back of his head on the corner of the stainless steel prep table that was outlining the path that he was taking back to the dish room. And initially, they didn't think it was a huge issue. You know, they treated him for a concussion and he definitely had a wound and a fracture back there. But they thought he would recover. But there have been and now it's been probably 15 years since this happened. There are still permanent changes that affect that particular individual. So, there's cognition issues. He has balance issues. He has challenges interacting in stressful situations. That he didn't have before. So, you might not know it if you looked at him now, but people that knew him prior to the incident and know him now will definitely notice the difference. So, a lifetime changes for a simple slip and fall.
Maureen Anderson: Life altering consequences of a simple problem that could have been prevented. Hate to hear stories like that. But everyone in this field, I mean, that's why we're in it. We don't like to see injuries.
Peter Koch: We don't. And then to your point, before we have multiple events that occurred, a particular area that people don't have the same event or the same effect from. So in the accident analysis, if you would go back and talk to people prior to putting the mat down, there are multiple slip and fall, trip and fall areas on that in the space where that tile was broken and some were just a trip, loss of balance, but a no fall situation and some were a fall. The person got back up and continued their job, you know, never got reported. So maybe had they known the significance of this, they would have put a more permanent solution in place prior to. And I think that's the challenge that we're going to talk about here today, is prevention from for a slip and fall piece is much more important than trying to reduce the effect of the hazard itself.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: You want to prevent that potential slip and fall.
Maureen Anderson: Right. We want to prevent it.
Peter Koch: So, if we think about that, what can we do to prevent a slip and fall event. I'm not going to call it a slip and fall injury because the injury happens from the impact. But what do we do to prevent a slip and fall event?
Maureen Anderson: Well, that's the million-dollar question. You can look at the environment and see what changes we can make in the environment. We always say engineer out the risk. Right. That's to make the changes to the environment so that it is less likely that that slip trip and fall will happen. In all reality, you probably can't engineer out every risk. So, then we also talk about the behavior and the person. What can we change on that side? Making people more aware. You know, teaching them techniques if they have to walk on ice or in a slippery environment or make sure they have the right footwear, all of those issues that we can address. So, it's really it has to be sort of a multi-faceted approach.
Peter Koch: Sure. So where do you start? So, if you're going to come into a business and they've had some slip and fall events and maybe it's in one particular place, where do you look at first?
Maureen Anderson: I look at the whole environment. Generally, I would start with the floor because that's probably one of the biggest problems that I'm looking at. I'm looking at the type of floor. Is it appropriate for that situation? You know, if you're in an environment where we know there's going to be wet, slippery items like water or grease, the floor needs to be designed for that. So, it would be slip resistant. And then you have to look at the maintenance of that environment. Certainly, with cleaning of floors, we know that that's a big issue. I worked once with a fast food restaurant and they had a fryolator. So that's a high grease splattering of grease environment. But their cleaning regimen left a lot to be desired because what they were doing during the day was, they were just taking a wet mop. I don't even think with any product on it. And they were just mopping the area. So, what they were effectively doing was what we call painting. They were pushing the grease from that area to all other areas. So now that if they went to the back room to pick up some more cups to fill the dispenser, they wouldn't think that they were in a greasy environment, but they might be hitting a very slippery environment. So.
Peter Koch: That's interesting.
Maureen Anderson: They were really pushing it apart. What's interesting in that place, they had very high standards for wherever a customer was - the other side of the counter. They did a wonderful job of cleaning out there. But back in the very busy kitchen where the employees were, which is where our concern is, their standards were not quite up to snuff. I would say.
Peter Koch: It may be well-intentioned. So, they did have a cleaning practice, that.
Maureen Anderson: They did have a cleaning practice, but it was it was sort of based on visual. So, if they saw, you know, enough cut up, lettuce that ended on the floor, they would say, oh, time to clean. And they would just get out the mop and give it a quick mop. But it was really not adequate. And they were making it worse in some situations. Their intention was good, but what they were doing was not very good.
Peter Koch: Sure. And that painting practice that you mentioned there unintentionally, because they might not know, they think they're asked cleaning what they're supposed to. But that connection that I'm actually moving the hazard from right where I would expect it to, where I am not going to expect it. So that's an interesting part to that.
Maureen Anderson: And we see that a lot with mats actually coming into a building. Right. They put a walk off mat. But if it is not the adequately sized, the person might be taking some dirt, some ice off, but it may continue on beyond it. So, the hazard used to be within the first two feet of entering the building. Now they've put a walk off mat that maybe is only six feet, but they've moved that risk now to the end of the mat. They've just really pushed the problem down.
Peter Koch: So, them thinking the mat would be adequate to remove the contaminant from the outside, but it's not really long enough for wide enough for a robust enough to do the job for the traffic.
Maureen Anderson: Might do a great job at the summer months, which are dry and maybe it's just some dust and dirt that are coming in. But in the wet seasons they're bringing in a lot more water. And if the mat is not properly sized or designed, they may just be pushing the risk factor further in.
Peter Koch: So that's an interesting thought. I wonder how many of our businesses or our listeners here have mats at their entrances as you come in and how long they are, and do they know if it's doing the right job?
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: It'd be interesting.
Maureen Anderson: They need to ask those questions when they get the mats.
Peter Koch: They do.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: And your mat companies, your suppliers should be able to help you in a general way. But they don't always know your traffic patterns.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: How many people will be coming in and out?
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: So, you have to do some work to figure that out, too.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: And I think the telltale sign. And especially if you're looking at either a wet contamination from water, ice or snow or sand or dirt, is what is the floor look like immediately after the mat? Within the next three to four feet,
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Does it stay relatively clean and dry. Or does it get tracked up?
Maureen Anderson: Right. Right. There's usually some visual indication that there's the risk ha - you know, has been moved along.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: Yeah. So, you're looking at the environment or the surface specifically. And you reference earlier that the flooring or the surface should be having some sort of non-skid or non-slip factor to it.
Maureen Anderson: Right. It should.
Peter Koch: So how do you know?
Maureen Anderson: So, some floors, flooring materials. When you purchase them, will have specified what the coefficient of friction is or whatever. So, they will have some indication on them whether they're adequate for that location. It should be designed as flooring material. So sometimes you'll see people will use wall tile on a floor or something like that, that is completely inadequate. So, it needs to have real flooring materials down, they're properly installed, properly cleaned.
Peter Koch: So that's a great point. So, thinking about if you're looking to replace a floor or you're you know, maybe you're fortunate enough to build a new facility or to renovate an older facility to work with your supplier.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: And not just think about it from how does it look in the space, but how will it function in the space?
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yeah. That used to be a big problem with some financial institutions that wanted to present this sort of image of, you know, marble. Let's say they wanted the marble floors, which are notoriously slippery because they wanted the look. So, but there are some aftermarket products that you can put on some sort of anti-skid products that will add a little almost like grit to it. There are products you can put on aftermarket to help if you have inadequate flooring, but it's best right from the get-go to plan for the right flooring in the right situation.
Peter Koch: So, if you have the opportunity plan for it, install the appropriate flooring. But if you don't and you're looking at it retrospectively. So, it's already installed.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: You're coming in as a new maintenance person and it's not in there forever. Maybe go back to the manufacturer and find out.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: Is this the right surface?
Maureen Anderson: Is this the right surface for this situation?
Peter Koch: And then how long has it been there? Because where will also have an effect on how slip resistant the surface is.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. So, a slip resistant surface when it first goes in may be adequate, but over time, the roughness on it could be worn down. You know, if you're taking heavy carts over it like that and wearing grooves into it, that can be a lot of other problems that happen to a surface over time. So, you do need to look at that.
Peter Koch: So that condition of the surface is a great key thing to be able to take a look at when you're in there.
Maureen Anderson: And that's why we are talking about, mats before. Mats have a limited life. They're not meant to last hundreds of years or whatever. But you have to look at the mat to make sure it doesn't have curling edges, that it's not worn through. So, you have to look at all those issues. And sometimes actually the issue with mats with our aging population, you don't want something that is going to stop people short. So, a lot of older people do a more shuffling step. So sometimes something that's too grippy or too thick of a pile can actually cause a tripping hazard for an older population.
Peter Koch: Interesting.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: So, knowing not only what surface is necessary and then thinking at it, I need the most non-skid surface or non-slip surface I could have. But then tempering that with who and what they're going to be doing.
Maureen Anderson: What they're going to be doing.
Peter Koch: That's a great thought. So, there is some public safety in there as well if you have guests coming to your facility as well as the employee side of the safety.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Very good. Very good. And I think too with that match change out part, a lot of the suppliers they're going to have as part of the lease process for those mats. Have a change out and you can vary how often it happens based on the traffic that goes through there.
Maureen Anderson: And you should have a plan for that for maintenance. But, you know, to switch it over a little bit to office ergonomics, because I do a lot of office, ergo evals and I've seen a big increase in anti-fatigue mats being used in dynamic workstations. You know, they're nice, they're cushy. But it's interesting that the chairs generally don't roll over them too well and they provide almost an increased slip, trip hazard. Right. Because they're beveled a little bit to help, but it's a different surface. And so sometimes you do see people sort of tripping over those so sometimes we do something trying to fix one problem and we inadvertently create a whole new problem, one that we didn't foresee.
Peter Koch: Yeah. So that's interesting. So how that surface is going to again affect what you're doing in that particular area.
Maureen Anderson: Or in that office, you know, because they have the mat and the chair doesn't roll over it. They've pushed the chair aside, creating an obstacle for other people walking by. Yeah.
Peter Koch: So, another thing to look at, too, is that transition between materials surface and the surface type.
Maureen Anderson: Anytime you have a transition from one surface to another, you're at an increased risk for slip, trip and fall. Because we walk, we sort of - you don't even think about it, but you're the length of your stride. How you walk. You kind of figure it out and you switch to a different surface. And momentarily, you know, it's a change. And if you're not thinking about it, you're busy thinking about other things. You could be at an increased risk for a fall. So, if you're walking, I'd say on carpet and then you switch to that greasy floor you're walking very comfortably on the carpet, you're gonna hit that greasy floor and you're gonna slip, trip and fall.
Peter Koch: You're expecting a particular motion or movement of the foot.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: Increases or decreases based on that.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: Interesting. And that's going to increase or decrease based on the footwear that you have as well.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: So, you've talked about before that polished marble tile in the middle of the bank or…
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: The attorney’s firm because it connotes a particular.
Maureen Anderson: Look and feel that the architects love. Right.
Peter Koch: And you want to come in. But if I'm coming in with a patent leather shoe with a hard leather soul.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: And it's been raining outside. That that could be a very slippery place to be.
Maureen Anderson: It could be a very slippery place to be. And I mean, you have some control over footwear. Certainly, if you have a footwear policy within a company, you can dictate what people should be wearing at work. It gets a little harder, I think, in a professional environment, like an accounting firm or a law firm. It's very tough to dictate that everyone has to wear flat black shoes. You know, that might not go over too well.
Peter Koch: Sure. But again, there is a lot there's been a ton of change in the technology of footwear out there as well.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yes.
Peter Koch: So, you may be able to find something that looks very much like a high end.
Maureen Anderson: very professional. Yeah.
Peter Koch: Yeah. But has a lot of slip resistant qualities.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yeah. And it's true.
Peter Koch: So, on the footwear side, education may be beneficial for the employees that are there. So, getting to think outside the box a little bit, not just to go to this one either brand or supplier, but there's other things out there. See what's there that might help you.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Stay upright.
Maureen Anderson: Different styles of shoes. But certainly, things like, you know, making sure the heel is secured in women's shoes, know not flip flop or mules or whatever you call those shoes that people are more likely to tip out of.
Peter Koch: Or crocs. I mean, people wear crocs often, or at least they used to.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: Wear them a lot. In many different areas and.
Maureen Anderson: I think they're coming back in style again. I think they've got another time this summer. So.
Peter Koch: They are super comfy, but they're not always the best from a slip and fall or a support standpoint.
Maureen Anderson: Right. Right.
Peter Koch: If you think about the footwear now, we talked a little bit about the environment and the surface that we're looking at. What are some of the other things about the environment that could impact the? The slip and fall risk factors?
Maureen Anderson: Certainly, the lighting, right. And poor lighting. You can't often see a hazard. So that can be a big factor, especially outdoors. Right. Which the lighting is going to change outdoors. But even indoors, if there's slippery spots or worn spots or whatever. If you have poor lighting, people can't see the risk factor. They might not. You know, if you have poor lighting, you often can't detect changes in elevation. So little lips on between flooring surfaces, slight steps, one step up. All of those become huge.
Peter Koch: And that interaction between poor lighting and our aging workforce in America.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: As you get older, you have more challenges seeing contrast.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: So, in a dimly lit area where a 20-year-old might be very easily are able to see the transition, the 60-year-old might have a very challenging time seeing the transition. So, lighting can be a big, big piece in raising the awareness of our workforce about some of the challenges or the potential slip, trip and fall hazards.
Maureen Anderson: And glare is also a part in lighting as people get older. Glare tends to cause more problem and can impact what they see also.
Peter Koch: So how it interacts, how lighting interacts with the surface so great. We went from a dimly lit area to a. Hugely lit area.
Maureen Anderson: Right. Overly bright.
Peter Koch: More light than you need, and it's now you have a polished concrete floor that everyone can see that reflects the sun.
Maureen Anderson: Right. Right. So, we can get some glare problems there. And so, it's not easy.
Peter Koch: Unintended consequences sometimes. So, thanks, Maureen. And we'll continue with more discussion with Maureen in just a moment. But now it's time to take a short break. We'll be right back.
Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Maureen Anderson, safety consultant at MEMIC. So, let's jump back in with some more questions. Maureen, we've been discussing how to prevent slip and fall events. And we've talked about all sorts of things. We've talked about the surface. We've talked about how the person interacts with that surface, many different things. What are some tools that a business owner or maybe even a supervisor might have to assess their workplace to identify slip and fall hazards?
Maureen Anderson: Well, MEMIC has some great tools. The Safety Director, which is our website for these types of checklists and other items, we have a wonderful checklist that a person could use to evaluate. It can be used in two situations when they know they have a problem. Let's say they've had people get injured from falling. They can use this checklist to help focus where they need to take action. But even if you're not in that environment, maybe you've had some near misses. You've noticed some people slipping and tripping and falling or you've heard people complain about it. You can use the checklists like this to go through and help bring some focus to where you need to look at a problem.
Peter Koch: That's cool. So, you can use that checklist. If you are trying to evaluate a space that you have known slip and fall problems. So can help dial you into what you might need to change. Can you, and I think what I heard you say too is, you can also use the checklist to determine if there are any challenges in your workplace, even if you haven't had a slip and fall.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. And actually, that's where I would love to see people focus is before you have the injuries. Right. To know if you if you go through a checklist and you're looking at things and you see that, you know, your mats are inadequate or they're worn, you know, maybe in the back of your mind you were thinking about that. But when you sometimes use a checklist, you see it in black and white. You're like, huh, this is a problem waiting. You know, this is a risk factor that's going to we're gonna have an injury and we could take care of it in a very low cost, easy method. Now, before we have the problem.
Peter Koch: So that's a great way to use that checklist. So, talk to me a little bit more about the checklist. So, what are the areas that it looks at and how does it help us point towards a solution?
Maureen Anderson: Okay. So, we call it S.A.F.E, which is an acronym S.A.F.E Surface Awareness Footwear Environment. So essentially the checklist goes through those four areas and it has, you know, maybe a dozen or so questions in each area so that you can look at each one.
Peter Koch: Cool. What would it be looking for? If you're looking at the surface section of it. So, what are some examples of that the checklist points you towards?
Maureen Anderson: So, a lot of it, Right. And we've sort of talked about it a little bit when we're talking about the condition of the surface. We're talking about the cleaning. We're talking about obstacles, you know, clutter and the environment. You know, if those office chairs are all pushed out into, you know, a hallway or, you know, the space between cubicles and that's providing a place that people could trip up on. So
Peter Koch: OK, so great. So, it's really trying to break down the surface into some particular components that you might be able to address. So, you know, we talked about this, too, but maybe it's contamination. What might be on the floor?
Maureen Anderson: What's on the floor? Exactly.
Peter Koch: Could be the surface itself is it does. Did it actually start as a slip resistant flooring or did it start as a wall tile? That looked nice. And we just put we just put it in place.
Maureen Anderson: Because it looked nice. Yeah.
Peter Koch: So, trying to look at what are the potential hazards based on the type of flooring or type of surface. The condition is at worn and is it broken?
Maureen Anderson: But it also goes into some other interesting areas just, you know, like ramps and stairways and the condition of those.
Peter Koch: Nice. And so, you would actually look at ramps and stairways as the same way you would look at a flat floor.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: Because you still have to look at the condition. You have to look at what's might be on it. Is it slip resistant tread on?
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: On the stair or is it a coating on the ramp? And how are we using it?
Maureen Anderson: Exactly.
Peter Koch: Neat. That's pretty cool. So that gives us a place to focus. And then if you're checking it off, it's given you the that it's satisfactory or it's unsatisfactory.
Maureen Anderson: Exactly. Yeah.
Peter Koch: Great.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah. And if you don't know how to approach fixing the problem, you can always contact someone at MEMIC. We have many safety consultants here who would love to work with our policyholders because that's where our passion is on preventing injuries. And if we can get to that and help people implement something that might prevent an injury, we would be more than happy to do that.
Peter Koch: So, this would be a great place to start. Like to go through the checklist and look at what the issues are and then maybe contact your lost control consultant or contact MEMIC for some suggestions of what to do with these factors.
Maureen Anderson: So, to help focus so you're not just coming to MEMIC and saying, you know, I think that there's a problem, but I don't know what the problem is. You know, or I want to prevent injuries, but I don't know how. So, it would give you a place to start and you'd be a lot more focused.
Peter Koch: That's great. Let's take another one of those four areas. We talked a little bit about surface when it looks at awareness. What are the things that... because awareness is a really big word, and so it's very inclusive of a lot of things? So, what is it looking for this, the checklist looking for when it's focusing us towards awareness?
Maureen Anderson: So, right, it is a big area, we're talking about awareness. There are certain tools you can use to help people become aware of risk factors like slippery when wet signs. Right. Something like that. If you have a temporary problem with the floor, visible barriers, if you're trying to block things off, if you're trying to prevent a person from walking over that broken tile, you know, that is trying to bring awareness to the problem. Leading edges of stairs, sort of the nose is on stairs sometimes might be painted a different color to bring awareness to a potential risk factor there. So those are all things that you could put in to help bring awareness to a situation where you want someone to be paying more attention to the floor.
Peter Koch: Great. So, it looks at the area and how the company is what the company is doing to help heighten the awareness of the worker in those spaces.
Maureen Anderson: Right. Exactly. A lot of those are temporary use. Though you have to be careful because you can't keep people on 100 percent high awareness, emergency awareness all the time. Our brain just doesn't work that way. Right. So, we, if you are always warning people that the floor is slippery when wet, they tend to ignore it after a while, because in a way we all know that floors are slippery when wet. So, you have to be careful that you don't over warn people to the point where they get that fatigue and they just tune it all out.
Peter Koch: Right. That's a really great point on the signage side. So, using signage to make people aware is not a solution to the problem.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: So, it's one aspect of looking at it and really signage is temporary. So, it should only be present when the hazard.
Maureen Anderson: When the hazard is there.
Peter Koch: Yeah.
Peter Koch: And if the hazard is always present, then you really have to look at some other solutions to adjust.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Pete Koch: Hazard.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. I had one great example. It was a hospital and they had had some slips, trips and falls in their parking lot for their employees when they came in, often early in the morning here in New England, we get a freeze and thaw thing going on. Right. That's very difficult to always be on top of. And so, they had these signs that tell you when we're in freezing conditions. Right. That there might be a hazard, but they didn't keep them out there all the time. And I think they had for the employee parking lot to two signs, I think. But they had six different post. Posts or cheap signs were a little bit more expensive and they would randomly move them around. And that kind of prevented people from getting that fatigue. The sign fatigue that, you know, it's always slippery when wet. It's always, you know, slippery when it's freezing out. So, they would kind of move things around. And I thought that was a great solution. And they did see a decrease in the amount of slips that they had out in that parking lot, an employee parking lot.
Peter Koch: Just a little reminder sometimes goes a long way.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. And I've had people do things like e-mails. I know I worked with one school where someone in their office would randomly sort of blast out a note in certain conditions.
Peter Koch: Nice.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: Yeah. So, I think that's especially when you're working inside all day.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: The weather is one way in the morning.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: Then something else in the evening. You leave for work or the afternoon when you leave for lunch. So, when are people coming and going? What's the, how is the environment going to affect you, and how can we raise or heighten your awareness about a potential hazard?
Maureen Anderson: But you just have to be careful you don't overdo it. Right. So, you can't keep people always in that state of heightened emergency. Our brains just don't work that way.
Peter Koch: Yeah, totally not. So great, so we've got surface and then we've touched on awareness. So, what are the other the last two areas we are looking at.
Maureen Anderson: So, footwear is something that is easily changed. And in the grand scheme of things, footwear is not very expensive. Generally, everyone in our culture here in the United States wears footwear to work. I know when other cultures, other parts of the world, that may not be true, but generally people always have some type of footwear on. So, you want to make sure that the footwear is appropriate for the environment and for the task. So that's probably the biggest thing we can say right there. Slip resistant shoes are highly recommended in environments that we know are going to have slip, trip and fall hazards like kitchens, hospitals, certainly schools have that aspect to it. The footwear has to be appropriate for the for the environment.
Peter Koch: So how do you know if an item of footwear is slip resistant or not?
Maureen Anderson: Well, it should say that it's slip-resistant. When you purchase it, if it is designed for that environment.
Peter Koch: Okay. So that should be on the tag box or maybe there is a standard. I think like an ANSI standard maybe. Or...
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: ASTM standard for slip resistance as well.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. Yeah.
Peter Koch: Awesome. So, when we're looking at it, it actually goes right back to understanding the job and how it affects the person to be able to identify what type of footwear is going to be appropriate for the job that's being done.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Because the outdoor shoe is not always appropriate for indoor work.
Maureen Anderson: That is true. Yes. And again, especially in environments where there is ice and snow...
Peter Koch: Or even slippery kitchens as well.
Maureen Anderson: Yes, Yeah. To have the appropriate footwear. I think it's often probably or it can be a problem in the office environment where we generally don't think of people needing slip resistant shoes and people dress often more for fashion than for safety. That that can be difficult.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Fashion versus function. And I know a recommendation in some of the companies that I work with that are primarily office wanting to help keep people safe on their way into work and then back out if they're going for lunch or even at the end of the day, the recommendation is to have two pair of shoes. So, one that you wear from your car to the office and then you'll have a pair of office appropriate shoes. You're not wearing your winter boots all day.
Maureen Anderson: Exactly.
Peter Koch: Because that's uncomfortable.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: And I know one company had more success in that because they actually had a place then for people to store their shoes.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: Because I don't know about you but having a closed office space with a bunch of stinky winter boots is not always a pleasant environment. So.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: They were able to have a place for employees to go, change their shoes, put them in a locker, and then had them then come to their workstation afterwards.
Maureen Anderson: That's a great idea.
Peter Koch: They were really thoughtful in that whole process.
Maureen Anderson: That's wonderful, too, to allow people that flexibility.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Do you think condition of footwear has anything to do with the slip and fall prevention?
Maureen Anderson: Well, it can certainly shoes do not last forever. And when they get in poor repair, sometimes they will lose their slip resistance. They'll be scuffed out. Right. They don't have that traction anymore. That can be an issue. And then the general condition. If they're loose and not secure to your feet, for a while, there was a fashion of people not tying their sneakers and things like that. Those issues could have a big impact on how the weather, the footwear can perform as designed and whether it's going to work as advertised.
Peter Koch: Sure. Yeah. And that's a hard one, I think, for companies to manage the condition of people's footwear. And it might go to education, just having getting people to understand that even though this might be a super comfortable pair of shoes right now. Because it's 10 years old and there's really no support left to them.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: They're not going to help you stay on your feet all day and stay upright when you're moving from place to place.
Maureen Anderson: Right. And as a woman, I can attest that I do not always wear flat shoes that are… you know, black lace up flat shoes with highly slip resistant soles. I do dress for fashion sometimes. So that is an issue. But I think as a company, you could insist that they are secured at the ankle. Right. That that no loose ankle. And if you saw shoes that were just, you know, a clear hazard. I think that the company could guide a person to a better choice of footwear.
Peter Koch: Yes. Going back to job appropriateness. So, looking at the job and the requirements of the job. So maybe it's a closed toed shoe with a secured heel, provide support maybe above the ankle or below the ankle depending on what you're doing and slip resistance is recommended. Those could all be guidelines for your general footwear policy.
Maureen Anderson: The general footwear policy. Yeah, I think, you know, in specific situations where you need steel toe or things like that, I think it's much clearer to have a very specific footwear policy issue, but even a general footwear policy. I think every organization should have a general footwear policy.
Peter Koch: Just stating that it needs to be appropriate for the environment. And then when you get into like a mixed task business that you have an office area, you might have manufacturing the background or something else that's happening around that. The general footwear covers policy, covers the entirety of the business. And then you can have specific requirements based on task, actually.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah, exactly.
Peter Koch: Awesome. So, then what's the last one? Because environments and an interesting one to address as well.
Maureen Anderson: The environment often gets tough. Kind of how we maintain the environment, what we can change within the environment. Some things are within our control. Some things are not within our control. So, we look at things like ice melt chemicals, whether it's shoveled and cleared and things like that. Outside of that, whether there are cords running across the walkway and whether there's other obstacles and clutter comes under that environment. I have seen some situations where offices are so cluttered, I don't know how people are getting through their workday without having...
Peter Koch: Sure.
Maureen Anderson: ...Lots of problems.
Peter Koch: So that might look at. It sounds like it's looking at housekeeping.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: It's looking at your maintenance practices and policies. If you have a weather event, when do the areas get maintained, which could be challenging because if you've contracted that out with someone to shovel or to plow to salt or sand, depending on where you are, when does that happen? Does it happen when your employees are coming in or does it happen two hours after they get there?
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: So that could be a fairly sizable challenge. So, looking at how the environment is affected by your maintenance practices and are the practices adequate for the environment that you have?
Maureen Anderson: I had a situation with schools, with a school bus driver who come in quite early and the guideline was actually the same time they were doing the plowing in the lots. So, they were coming to work sometimes before the lot was completely cleared out. Yeah. So that was an issue that they were trying to address to get it down to when do bus drivers arrive and has the lot been cleared and sanded or whatever before the bus drivers get there.
Peter Koch: Sure, that that's interesting, too. It's almost a time study that you would be doing. For what entrances and exits are your employees using?
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: When are they coming and going? And are we maintaining those areas appropriately? And if you're finding that there's some areas that people are using either frequently or infrequently and they're not being maintained during that time frame, then you have to change your practices. So, it sounds like that checklist will help point you towards some of the deficiencies or on the other side. Look at where you're doing really well, because that's also a tool that you can use in the ultimate prevention when I'm looking at my business.
Maureen Anderson: Mm hmm.
Peter Koch: And I haven't had a lot of issues. The question always is why? Because you want to be able to replicate that over time. So, this might be able to help not only look at the deficiencies but look at a successful business and find out what areas they're doing well in and how can I take those practices and bring them to another part of my company. Or maybe I purchase a new business or...
Maureen Anderson: Have multiple locations. We you know, we run into that where it's higher, all the injuries happening at one location and not the other location and trying to really break it down and dig down deep and figure out why.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's fantastic.
Maureen Anderson: I was just going to say that sometimes a person at a place may be working. I'm thinking of schools in particular where you have some of the facilities staff where they're working outside, they're working inside and the constant and then they're driving. So, they have a lot of different environments and trying to find footwear that works. And all of those environments have been really difficult.
Peter Koch: Very challenging, yeah, it's very challenging. So, I know there's a lot of products out there that you can use that are really designed either for someone who's working outside all the time or someone who is working inside all the time. And there are some that are that can be mixed use. But have you found any tools that are out there that can be used?
Maureen Anderson: Well, the gripper is that you put on your shoes or boots. They generally go, they're kind of elastic and you put on over the heels your shoe to provide increased traction. Those have been wonderful and have really helped a lot and they have different versions of them. Some are made so that you can drive because sometimes they if you don't get those ones, then it can actually be an increased risk for drivers because your foot will stick on the gas or stick on the brake. That can be a problem. There’re the ones that sort of rotate over and I've forgotten it's a one...
Peter Koch: That's right. The K1 mid soul, ice cleats.
Maureen Anderson: Yes. And those have been used with some success at some schools because you rotate the device to the top or to the bottom of your soul depending on what you're doing. And that has been helpful for schools where they're working outside and they come in, but they don't want to track like over their beautiful gym floor, parquet gym floor. They can't damage that, though. So, a device like that can be used in a lot of different environments.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a great solution when we start to think about when we find deficiencies or challenges. So, we know that we've got a surface issue because we're working outdoors, and we also have a footwear challenge because we have to work outside and inside.
Maureen Anderson: Inside. Right.
Peter Koch: You've got to have great lighting. We've got good maintenance practices, but we have to be able to be in both areas.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Finding a solution that someone can use and have on their person.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: When it's necessary.
Maureen Anderson: And not feel such a burden between switching, because that was some of the older solutions we had. And we find out from the facilities people I don't want to have to sit down and, you know, change my shoes every time I come in and out because I'm only in for a few minutes and then I'm going back out. If you make the solution so burdensome, they will not use it.
Peter Koch: Yeah. That's it. That's a really great point. So, I think it does highlight that even though footwear is an easy place to focus, you didn't really have a great footwear policy. You might even bring to have a partnership with a footwear provider that you're helping provide discounted good footwear to your staff. It's not always the best place to put all of your efforts. You'll have...
Maureen Anderson: It's part of the solution.
Peter Koch: Yes. You'll have a greater success if you address the surface first.
Maureen Anderson: Yes.
Peter Koch: And have appropriate footwear to when you interact with the surface, allow for good awareness when the surface changes and then have great maintenance practices for when you have environmental issues right there.
Maureen Anderson: It's gonna be a whole deal, the whole package. You have to look at it all. There are no easy solutions.
Peter Koch: So, what's the acronym again that we're using to identify all these things.
Maureen Anderson: SAFE. S A F E, which stands for surface, awareness, footwear and environment.
Peter Koch: Pretty cool. So, we can look at all four of those things and really break down a process of how we can not only identify but focus in on those areas that we have to fix.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Or that we're doing well with.
Maureen Anderson: Right.
Peter Koch: Very good. So, I really appreciate all your insight, Maureen. That's great. Thank you very much for being here today. We're about to wrap up this week's Safety Experts podcast. Do you have any final comments or thoughts for our listeners?
Maureen Anderson: I'm still learning so much. And that's the amazing thing. It's the world is pretty complicated. And I'm always coming up against new situations that I had never thought about. So that makes it very interesting for me, for businesses. I'm sure you're always coming up with different situations. Love to continue the conversation with people.
Peter Koch: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a great thing, too, to leave our listeners with, is that it's a constantly changing environment that we work in and that we live in. So, the assessment process with one of the checklists or just observations of what's happening are getting input and feedback from your staff are key, are all keyways to help keep on top of this.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah. And a lot of times, you know, people say, oh, you're the safety experts, and we are the safety experts, but we're not the experts in your business. And the policy holder’s business. And a lot of times they may have reasons for doing things a certain way that we really have to dig at to make sure that we come up with a solution that's going to work.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Maureen Anderson: I work from a safety perspective, but work in their business.
Peter Koch: I always tell people that I can keep you safe.
Maureen Anderson: Yeah.
Peter Koch: You do what I tell you. No one will ever get hurt, but you'll never get any work done.
Maureen Anderson: Exactly, right.
Peter Koch: You need to work together to figure out the solution that's going to best balance safety quality.
Maureen Anderson: Exactly.
Peter Koch: Beautiful. Well, thanks again, Maureen, for joining us today. And to all of our listeners out there, if you have any questions for our guests or like to hear more about a particular topic from a certain person on our podcast, please e-mail us at podcast@memic.com. This podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leader in workers compensation insurance and a company committed to health and safety of all workers. To learn more about how MEMIC can help your business, please visit MEMIC.com. Don't forget about our upcoming workshops and webinars and to look at where those dates are and what those topics are. Also, go to MEMIC.com when you want to hear more from the safety experts, you can find us on iTunes or right here at MEMIC.com. And if you have a smart speaker, you can tell it the play The Safety Experts podcast and you can pick today's episode or a previous one. You can also enable the Safety Experts podcast skill on Alexa to receive safety tips and advice from any of our episodes. We really appreciate you listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know that they can find it on their favorite podcast player by searching for Safety Experts. Thanks again for tuning in to the Safety Experts podcast. And remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast.
Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast
- MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/
- Peter Koch - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch
- Maureen Anderson - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/maureen-anderson
- A.F.E - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-net-blog/2018/january/slip-and-fall-prevention-the-safe-way-part-1
- Temperature Indicator Postmount Signs - https://www.accuform.com/safety-sign/freezing-temperature-when-blue-MSTF525
- ANSI, America National Standards Institute - https://www.ansi.org/
- ASTM - https://www.astm.org/
- K1 Mid Sole Ice Cleats - https://geroline.com/
Every time winter comes around, the number of traffic accidents increases. MEMIC Loss Control Director Randy Klatt shares how you can drive to save lives, time and money, despite the conditions around you and the actions of others. Since his experiences in emergency medicine and as an active duty Navy pilot and aircraft crash investigator, Klatt has been on a mission to prevent the tragic consequences of unsafe attitudes and behavior. “As a 20-year-old paramedic responding to calls for help, I quickly realized that human failure is behind the majority of injuries,” says Klatt. “As a safety professional I know there are no accidents, only predictable outcomes. No one wants to be hurt, but many do not understand how preventable injuries really are. Peter Koch: Hello listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. Winter driving can be a big challenge and we see an increase in the number of traffic accidents every winter. So today we're going to dig deep into what it takes to be a safe driver this winter. For today's episode, Winter Driving Safety. I'm speaking with Randy Klatt, director of Region II Loss Control at MEMIC to be a better driver this winter. Randy has over 40 years of experience working in industries where safety is critical to success. His career spans emergency medicine, active duty Navy pilot, commercial airline pilot and an aviation safety instructor at the university level. Randy has worked with MEMIC since 2003 and is the current director of Region II at Loss Control, leading a team of consultants serving the Central and Southern Maine area. Randy, welcome to the podcast today.
Randy Klatt: Thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure to be here.
Peter Koch: Fantastic. So, we're gonna jump right into it. So, I appreciate you being here, but we're gonna throw a question at you right off the bat.
Randy Klatt: Okay.
Peter Koch: Does the environment actually cause traffic accidents, driving accidents?
Randy Klatt: No.
Peter Koch: Thank you very much. Randy, I appreciate you coming today.
Randy Klatt: That's all I have to say for today.
Peter Koch: Why not? Cause you see it all there all the time like people talk about, well, it was the snow, or it was the fog, or it was the rain. I hydroplaned. I skidded. I did this and the car flipped over. I hit the car in front of me. Whatever happened there, there's always a this before that.
Randy Klatt: Yeah, there always is. And I see claims injuries like that all the time. Often there's verbiage in the claims description that says something like the car left the roadway, the car flipped over, the car skidded on the ice. And of course, my immediate thought is I don't think the car does those things without the driver putting it in that position. So, some people would say that, oh, this is an unreasonable expectation that I'm being way too hard on people. Well, from my perspective, no, weather does not cause accidents. In fact, we don't call them accidents. Some people do. I prefer to call them predictable outcomes if you are not driving for the conditions, it's almost inevitable that we're going to have some problems. So, I grant you that we are human beings. Humans make mistakes. I could make a mistake. I could end up in a fender bender this winter because I made a mistake. And so, I'm not looking for blame. I'm not saying that people who are in traffic accidents in the wintertime are, are less than capable of driving, or that I blame them for all the problems. That's not really the point. The point is that it is preventable if we do the right things and that driving, especially in the winter, is very hazardous. There's, there's no doubt about that. The weather does make road conditions more challenging. It does present a hazard that isn't there in the summertime. But if we address it and if we do something about it, we're much, much more likely to get to where we're going and get home safely without any incidents. So, my answer is, and this is the way I would like people to look at it overall, really for any injury, any accident, any incident that occurs, it's preventable. And if I look at it that way, it's a preventable situation. That means that I have to take responsibility to do the prevention piece. And if I do that, I'm much more likely to be safe throughout all my activities. If I look at it as "Awe gee, it is raining or it's snowing today, the roads icy, I'm probably going to get in an accident today. It's inevitable." Then I'm much more likely to do just that. So, let's look at it as all preventable and that will go a long way towards actually driving safely. So that's my very long answer to a very short question, but it's a very fundamental question to our topic today. Weather doesn't cause it. People do.
Peter Koch: Yeah, I think that's a really good point and a great start. So, would you say, and if we think about driving overall, and we're talking about environment now as a contributor, not as the cause, but a potential contributor to an accident. And in that light, could you say that driving is a series of conscious and unconscious decisions that we make to get from point A to point B?
Randy Klatt: I would say that's an accurate description. I would hope that most things are conscious. But yes, we get into a mindset of we've done this a million times. We know how to drive. If you're an experienced driver that's certainly true. So, some of our behaviors are, I think you could say they are subconscious or almost autonomous. We don't really think so much about what we're doing. So, if you've ever missed your exit, you've driven there 100 times, but suddenly you drive by and you go, oh gee whiz, I suppose to get off there. That's should tell you that you're driving autonomously there. You were you weren't really driving, actually, Sir Isaac Newton was in the driver's seat at that moment, and you were just along for the ride. So, we do a good portion of that. And if you happen to be doing that when the road conditions aren't very good. Now we've given up our responsibility as the driver. We've succumbed to the conditions and basically said, "Well, if it happens, it happens." And that's certainly not a philosophy that I would like any driver to adopt because I don't want him hitting me either. So, we really have to engage more carefully in driving overall. Just look at the numbers. 40,000 people a year dying in traffic accidents in this country, 13 million crashes each year, about half of those resulting in police reporting and about almost 2 million people who are injured in traffic accidents every year. So, this is something that costs society over $250 billion dollars every year. It's ridiculous that in today's day and age, we haven't gotten a handle on this. And when you add weather into it, the tendency is just to say, well, it was weather. That's what caused it. And you usurp your own responsibility. And that's not right.
Peter Koch: No, not at all. Not at all. So, if weather isn't the problem but the person's the problem is the answer just autonomous vehicles should we just take the driver right out of it? Or what are the responsibilities that a driver would have in order to keep that vehicle going forward?
Randy Klatt: Now, very good point. I think remember Randy said this in 2000, whatever this is now, that yes, autonomous vehicles are probably going to be the predominant vehicle on the road and in the future, I don't know when that's going to be, I don't know how many years it'll be, but that's the way we are going, clearly. And if an autonomous vehicle takes the person out of the out of the formula, out of the equation, we are going to have safer roadways. There's no doubt about that. If everybody is in an autonomous vehicle. So, the way I usually do that analogy is I come from aviation. That was my background. I flew in the military for a long time. I flew commercial airlines. And knowing aviation safety like I do, I know that, oh take World War II for example, we lost almost as many pilots in crashes as we did in combat. Aviation had not developed into a very sophisticated science even at that point. We're only talking 60, 70 years ago. Look at aviation today. We have almost no crashes. I would challenge anyone listening here to tell me when the last airline crash was in the United States from a U.S. carrier. And you're going to find, hmmmm I don't really remember. We've lost three people in 10 years in major airline crashes in the United States, and one was a freight carrier. Both pilots perished and the other was Asiana Airlines in San Francisco. So, we've made and that was a fatality, unfortunately, on the ground. A person was hit by the fire truck as they evacuated the aircraft. So, when we look at those numbers you know, the millions and millions of people that fly every year, and we've made that industry extremely safe. We've, we've done that through for the most part through automation, through technology. And I can see the same thing happening in driving that we have now developed adaptive cruise control and blind spot monitoring systems and an automatic emergency braking system and all these things that are in theory making our driving safer. And I think they are to a point. But what I don't want to see happen is that the driver starts to give up their responsibility as a driver because they know the technology will take care of them. And so, when we do see airplane crashes today, it's because that's exactly what's happened. I flew 737s. I didn't fly the Max 8, but I flew the 500 model. And I can tell you that a pilot who knows what he's doing, is well trained, would not fly that thing into the ground no matter what the system was doing. So today, when we have drivers who are relying on technology in the same way, we're gonna have problems. Fatality numbers are actually going up. The last three or four years, they've gone up every year. Yet technology is getting better. So, there's something else going on there and it has to do with the driver. And we still have to focus on the driver. So, until we can get to a completely autonomous vehicles almost to the point like what we have in autonomous airplanes. There's still a pilot in the seat. But you can, if you can pull back on the yoke and get the airplane off the ground and push a button, you can be an airline pilot. I shouldn't say that, that'll probably offend some of our audience and maybe alarm others who are on airplanes right now. But we've become computer monitors more than we have than we are pilots. And it makes it very safe because they're very dependable airplanes. But until we get to that point with cars, we have to depend on that driver. And of course, this day and age, we are very dependent. And so that driver has to take that all very seriously. And if you put on your adaptive cruise control and just sit back and relax. But the weather isn't very good. The car doesn't know what the road conditions are. It'll turn itself off if visibility is and isn't high enough. But if the road is, you know, it's thirty-four degrees outside and there are places where it's just at freezing and there's a little fog or mist and the roads a little icy. The car does not know that. That's a perfect condition for setting you up to crash. And because you took yourself out of the equation and you're going to say that it was the ice that caused it. And that's just not right.
Peter Koch: So, a lot of it comes down to the awareness of the driver of the surroundings and that adaptive cruise control example that you brought up, I think is fascinating. I have it in one of the vehicles that I drive, and you could be on the highway travelling at highway speeds right within the speed limit, set the cruise control. And before you know it, you're behind someone who is going 10 miles an hour below the speed limit. And you never even knew that the car slowed down. You're just maintaining the distance. But people in the passing lane are zipping past you, and then all of a sudden you go, he's going too slow. So, what do you do? You pull out. You go around them, and you override that regardless sometimes of the conditions. Because if you're focused on a conversation that made you not pay attention to what the vehicle is doing and how it's engaging with the road, you probably haven't paid enough attention to your environmental surroundings to know that how fast you're pulling out is actually good for the environmental conditions that you're there. So that technology is super helpful, but it can lull us into that sense of safety that we still have responsibility for, ultimate responsibility for still lies within the driver, which is a great point that you made before.
Absolutely right. So, it always comes down to, as we've said many times in history, it's the nut behind the wheel. It's the driver of the vehicle. You are responsible. And it's an awesome responsibility. Now, in this country in particular, we take it for granted. Everybody does everything in their cars and most families have multiple cars. And we see generally one person in every car on the highway. And we it's just the society that we have. We're big on cars. And that's what is convenient. And that's I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that, except that we do take it for granted the responsibility of actually operating the vehicle. So, I think about your average adult is 30 years old. How much driver training has he actually gotten? Probably went through driver's ed training at 16 to get his permit. And once he got that license, the training stopped with the exception of the OJT that we get every day. And you just hope that the mistakes you make don't result in something horrible. And that's probably not a very good way to run a system. I was actually talking to another consultant just yesterday who lived in Germany for 16 years. You got the Autobahn, right? We have no speed limits. Their fatality rate is actually fairly high on the Autobahn. But overall, better than United States. And we figured, well, gee, what's the deal there? And he explained very carefully, said it's the driver training. It's the training they have to go through to get a license. You have to be 18 before you can even apply for a license. And it's very rigorous and it costs a lot of money. So, people are very appreciative of the license once they get it. And they're very well-trained as opposed to the United States, where we see it more as an innate right. And of course, you're gonna drive. And if you're 18 in the United States and all we have to do is pass that written test and convince that, inspector, for that 10-minute drive that you're not going to kill anybody. You got a license. You don't really need any training. You know, what's a yellow light do? That's about all you need to know. And that's just not right. And now we put him out there in a snowstorm and expect them to drive well. I think the realistic expectation is that we're going to have some problems with that unless we really focus on it.
Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about how that how the road conditions, the winter road conditions specifically will affect the driver and the choices that they'll have to make in order to keep the vehicle going at a steady rate and making it happen safely.
Randy Klatt: Well, we can always look to the hierarchy of safety controls, which might be another podcast topic of in and of themselves. But the first thing in the hierarchy is always to eliminate the hazard. So why would I go out in a snowstorm if I don't have to? That's the number one. I can best control my car if it's in the garage. I don't I don't have to worry about those conditions. Now, I understand that's not always a possibility. And that people do have to be places at times. And so, I don't mean to make a joke out of that by saying we can all stay home. But at least in the northeast where we live, where snow is expected and it's common and it often comes heavy, we have darn good snow clearance systems out there. And that if you wait an hour or an hour and a half, you'll have a much better environment to drive in than you would have if you just went out your normal time. So maybe you need to need to delay your trip for a little while. Maybe it's work from home for a few for an hour and then head in later, you know, something like that. So, look to eliminate that hazard in the first place. Inevitably, we'll find ourselves out in the bad weather. So, then what are you going to do? Well, speed is the number one cause of all accidents, and it's certainly going to be magnified when you have poor road conditions. When you think about tires and road surface contact, the tire on the road is the only thing that's touching the road, we hope, of your vehicle. So, if the road is contaminated, so we have ice, we have snow, standing water, whatever it is, we're gonna have less control of that vehicle. That's just inevitable. And if that's the case, then I darn well better slow down because if I'm driving 60 in a normal day, dry pavement, I better be backing that down somewhat in winter conditions because I know that I'm not going to be able to control my vehicle either in maneuvering, cornering, turning or accelerating or stopping. All those are affected adversely by adverse road conditions. So, number one avoid the hazard. Number two slow down. Why are we all in such a hurry? Number three would be increase that following distance, increase that safety cushion that you have around you. Because inevitably you will take longer to stop. Other drivers are not going to be so attentive. They are going to take longer to stop. Let's just give ourselves a little bit more room so that we have more time and the car's gonna be able to react a little bit better, have more time to, more space around to react. So those are my three top things. Avoid it. Slow down. Increase your following.
Peter Koch: That's fantastic. How does, let's talk a little bit about the sort of the dynamics of that only part, the only part of the road, at least we hope. The only part of the vehicle, at least we hope that is touching the ground are the tires. And how do the winter road conditions affect the tires and maybe a little bit about the different types of tires that are out there?
Randy Klatt: Sure. So, I think it's pretty clear to everyone that that road surface contact with the rubber of your tire is what is going to control the vehicle. That's the coefficient of friction that we need to accelerate and to stop and to control it in a turn. And all those things. So as that changes, if you add even something as little as a twenty fifth of an inch of water to the surface of a roadway. Now we don't have nearly the tire contact with the road that we do on a dry surface. So, if you make that little bit of water ice, well, now of course, we have even a lower coefficient of friction. We have less control over what's gonna happen between those two surfaces. So, contamination on the road is a critical element in being able to control my vehicle. And so, then we can, since we can't necessarily control the conditions of the roadway. Now, I did say earlier that if we just wait a little while, the road will probably be better. I always think that if you find yourself out on the road following a snowplow or right behind it or right in front of it, you're probably out there at the wrong time. Let them do their job first and then go out there. That's probably a better way to go. All right, so given that limitation, we can't really control the roadway. So, the only thing I can control then from a contact standpoint, from tire road topic, which is what we're on right now, is the tire itself. So vast majority of vehicles these days we're using all season radial tires. An all-season tire, just as it implies, is designed for all seasons. It has some performance in hot weather. It has some performance in wet and has some performance in cold or freezing snow conditions. It's not ideal for any one of those. By definition, it's an all-season tire. So, for those climates where we see minimal snow a couple times a year, you might get a little bit of this or that. All season tires is probably appropriate. But for those areas of the country where we see a lot of snow or we see a winter, that can be severe. You might see ice. Now we're probably talking a winter tire, a snow tire, something that's designed for those conditions. And they are vastly different. And we can talk about those differences, if you'd like.
Peter Koch: Yeah, I think that would be good. Touch it a little bit about the difference in construction and design of that all-season tire versus the winter tire. And what makes the winter tire a better choice when you know that you're going to encounter these environments more frequently?
Randy Klatt: Sure. So, there are innate differences in tread design, but also in material choice and in the rubber compounds that are used. So again, that all season tire is designed to last a long time. It's fairly harder compound. It is designed also though, for comfort because we want our car, you know, we're selling a new car and I want it to be quiet. If I'm riding in a car, if I buy a new car, I want it to be ride comfortably and quiet. And a lot of that depends on your tires. So, they are designed to last quite a while, to be OK in performance in all conditions and to provide comfort and quiet. Whereas a winter tire is really designed for just that. It's designed for worse conditions. So, it's going to have different tread block design. It will have more, more tread blocks that are separated by more space so that we can help avoid hydroplaning so that there's more clearance for snow and water to be dissipated. So, we have tread contact with the surface. There's going to be more siping on the tires all the way around to almost not to the sidewalls, but to the outer portion of the tires and siping. Are those small cuts in the tread blocks that you see? They look like cuts. There are little slits, so that they, they as the tire rolls around and contacts the surface, those Sipes allow the tread block to actually separate slightly and almost grip the road a little bit more. It's ah, imagine an animal that separates its toes and grips in a more efficient way. That's really what that siping does for a tire and a snow tire. And that's going to help increase that contact with the roadway. And then, so we got wider blocks, more tread depth, probably as typical winter tire will come with 10 to 13 thirty-seconds of tread depth to start with. So that's a significant amount of tread. And then lastly, it's a different metal or a different, excuse me, rubber compound. Like I said earlier, it's a softer compound. It's designed to be more supple in cold weather. Your all-season tire is going to harden up when it becomes really cold outside, becomes less flexible. So, less ability to actually stay supple when it contacts the roadway. So, a winter tire will do that for you, which is a great advantage. The reason we don't use those all year, of course, is for those things converse of what I said earlier about they all season tire. A winter tire is not going to last as long, it's a softer compound. So, it's going to wear out faster. You put a rubber tire, or a winter tire on your car in the summertime, it'll wear out very quickly. It's also louder, less comfortable. It's more like driving an all-terrain vehicle or something where you, you don't have nearly the comfort or the ride. So, the compromises that are made with the all-season tire are fine until you get to bad weather. Then I would definitely recommend going to a winter tire that is designed for just that.
Peter Koch: And keeping on that line of technology and we have the tires that are the contact between the vehicle on the road and keeps us there. How does vehicle technology and all-wheel drive, smart technology for vehicles like that? How does that help keep that car on the road?
Peter Koch: Well, certainly all, I think we all know all wheel drive, or four wheel drive is certainly an advantage in poor weather, but really only an acceleration in gripping the roadway as you're trying to accelerate or to move out to gain traction because you're separating the amount of friction that you need to develop. You're gaining from all four tires now so you can do the math by the square inches of tire contact and divide that by four instead of by two. So, we can really accelerate better you so you can get your car moving better, gets out of parking spots or up little hills or things like that in a more efficient fashion. So, all wheel drive's certainly an advantage in the wintertime. What it doesn't do is help you stop any quicker. So, what vehicle do you typically see in the median or, you know, down the hillside driving down the highway in the wintertime? It's generally a four-wheel drive of some kind. Because some driver just thought I've got a four-wheel drive, I'm going. And yeah, they go, they just don't stop. So that's an overconfidence feature that sometimes comes with all-wheel drive. It will get going better, but we're not going to stop any better. The other feature we could talk about is antilock brakes. So, ABS systems are standard now and do a fantastic job of stopping a vehicle. They're very efficient, especially on dry pavement. They'll stop you darn quick. But what they really do. Of course, the real design feature, the purpose of them is to keep those front wheels or steering wheels rolling. So, if I stand on that brake pedal for a panic stop, I'm going to feel the vibration of the pedal. I'm probably going to hear some awful sounding noise. And that's the computer system modulating the flow of brake fluid and preventing those front tires from locking up. They will come to a point where they almost stop and then they'll continue to roll. And then they'll almost stop, and they'll continue. So, they, the modulation of that is really important. That allows those front wheels to continue to turn so that I continue to have steering control. What it doesn't do is help you break any quicker. So, if I'm on a little downhill slope with snow and I step on the brake pedal, I'm going to feel like I'm not stopping because I'm gonna feel that vibration. The car is going to continue to roll and I feel like, oh, my gosh, the speed brakes don't work. I'm not stopping it. Well, you're not stopping any quicker. But what you do have is control of your steering. So, you're remaining in control of your vehicle rather than having it skid into a spin of some kind. So, control is the real advantage to the anti-lock brakes systems, but it will not necessarily help you stop quicker. So that's really important to know. The days when, when I was trained how to drive back a few years ago in driver's training, they would tell us to pump the brake pedal. That's what we used to do. You don't do that anymore. Do not do that when it comes down to anti-lock brakes. You can stand on the brake pedal and that, those front tires will continue to turn. So, you continue to have steering control.
Peter Koch: So, I think it's really interesting as we talk about tire technology, tread and construction, all-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, anti-lock brakes, the different systems and the newer vehicles that are designed to help us be safer in any environment. They are really there to help us maintain control of the vehicle. But in order to really do that, you have to understand the vehicle's limitations in the environment that you're trying to apply them. So, a winter tire versus an all-terrain tire, anti-lock brakes versus computer-assisted or all-wheel drive versus front wheel drive versus rear wheel drive versus four-wheel drive. And how do those things all interact? So, knowledge of the tool that you're using, as well as knowledge of the environment that you're using it in. And then the piece that we typically miss is the understanding our own limitations and how to apply those. And how fast we react and all those different things. So, it comes right back to the person, the driver, the understanding, and the knowledge, the responsibility of the driver to be able to maintain control of that car. And essentially, those are you know, that is what is going to make us better drivers ultimately in the wintertime. So, let's talk again or a little bit more about those personal things that the driver needs to take into consideration when they are making choices out there on the road. So, what are some things, that are a disadvantage to the driver and maybe an advantage to the driver?
Randy Klatt: Well, I would start with this... I was thinking of this as you were speaking just a minute ago here, Peter, about I would ask the question, when was the last time you as a driver actually read your owner's manual? And I can I can see your listeners right now rolling their eyes and saying, what owner's manual? And I ask that question because these cars are not, they're not my '57 Chevy where you just get in and go, because it really isn't a whole lot to it. We do have all this technology, which is fabulous. But you do have to know how to use it and what it will do and what it won't do. Ummm, I actually had a person tell me recently they turned off all of this because it was bugging them. And I said, well, what was going on? And the person said, it just continued to beep at me. And I couldn't, I didn't know what it was, so I turned it off. I thought, OK well, perhaps the answer might have been, why don't you look it up in your manual and actually figure out why it's doing what it's doing. And if you want to turn it off, that's certainly a choice you make as a driver. But understand what it's going to do for you and why you might want to leave it on.
Peter Koch: It's funny you mentioned that. If I could just interject for a moment.
Randy Klatt: Please.
Peter Koch: So, my parents are getting on in age. They're in their 80s. My mom's not quite 80 yet, so she won't be happy when I say that, but yet she's still doing great. She still drives. And a couple of years ago, she got a brand-new car. Well, a leased car. First time ever and it had all the bells and whistles. So, you know, it had the adaptive cruise control and it had the lane avoidance. And so, we got in the car for the first time with her. And she, she kept saying, why is that beeping? Why is it beeping? Why? How do you shut it off? Same thing. She had no idea. And I was like, well, Mom, that's the indicator that you're crossing over the line. So, she was constantly with a tire on or over the white line, or then she would drift over to the center line and she wouldn't notice that because she'd be moving back and forth within the lane. So, once she figured that out, that that was an indicator, now it's she actually does a much better job staying within the lane and concentrating on that. But it took her a little while to get there. And I think we find that we have many older drivers these days. You have many of our parents, in order to stay to stay independent, want to maintain their license and they get a new car. And the last new car that they had and even that could be a used car. The last new car they had was made in the 80s or the 90s, and it had none of that. So, they don't know. And they'll just push the button to turn it off or they'll call, they'll call the dealership and ask him to turn off all those annoying buzzers. And of course, the dealership won't train them. They might just turn it off because that's the request from the customer.
Randy Klatt: Absolutely right.
Peter Koch: Before I move on from the story with my mom, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk more about how those, those items of technology in the car can assist us maintaining control in the wintertime.
Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Randy Klatt, Director of Region 2 Loss Control at MEMIC. So, let's jump right back in with more questions. Before the break, we're talking about winter driving and vehicle technology. And we're just going through a story about how vehicle technology could be misunderstood, sometimes shut off because it's misunderstood, or it can actually be a benefit to those who can pay attention to it and understand what it's saying. So, let's talk a little bit more about the vehicle technology and how some of that adaptive technology can help us.
Randy Klatt: You made a really good point there, Peter, referring to your mom. I'm afraid that's what sometimes the typical driver will do if you don't understand it. Turn it off and then it won't bother you, me anymore. And of course, then we're just defeating the advanced technology that we have. So, if cars are getting safer, we have to use what makes them safer. So, this is actually a user interface kind of discussion. Cars are safer with crumple zones and anti-lock brakes and, you know, and all those other technologies that are keeping us safer in a crash. But what can I really affect every day? What can I actually do to make my driving safer? And that might be include technology that's available to me as a user, as a driver. And for example, my car that I drive frequently has two levels of lane control assist. The first one will do just as you describe with your mother. It will beep at me and it will show an indicator on the dash that tells me I'm getting too close to the either side stripe of the road or to the centerline. And so that's the first step. That should tell me enough that should tell me all I need to know. That things should never go off. But if it does. Oh, my goodness. I got to get back to the center of the lane. The second thing that it would do if I continued to drift is it would actually control, control my car. It would actually turn my steering wheel back to the center of the lane. So, if you do really become distracted for an extended period of time, the car should be smarter than you are and should turn you back into the lane. And it will actually do that twice. It will control it once. And then if you don't touch the wheel and you start to drift away again, it'll control it a second time. And then if it becomes a third time, it will actually turn itself off and say, I'm sorry, I give up. You're beyond help. So, I like parts of that. I really enjoy, I appreciate the alert when it occurs. Ninety nine percent of time it's because I know that's where I am. I've moved over for some reason or I'm starting to change lanes on the highway, and I neglected to turn on my turn signal. Turn on your turn signal that it's not going to correct you, of course. What I have actually turned off is the auto control back into the lane, though. I've done it for a purposeful reason. What I found was if I am approaching, for instance, a pedestrian or a cyclist on the shoulder, I want to move over for that person and I'm not going to jerk the wheel over and zip into a lane. I'm going to let the car drift slightly wider and I'm going to let them have more room as I think is appropriate. And assuming there's no car coming the other direction, I might actually approach that center line or even cross it slightly to give room for this pedestrian. Well, when I was doing that and I had the control system on, it steered me back into the lane because it didn't know there was a pedestrian there or trash cans on the side of the road, or whatever it is. So, I found it hard. It was taking me places I didn't really want it to go. So, I turned that teacher off. But I did it knowingly and consciously and for a reason and not because it just annoyed me. So, use your technology. Again, read that owner's manual, understand what it is trying to do for you and use it to your advantage. And if you don't like it for a specific reason, a logical reason, not just because I don't like that thing. I don't like being beeped at. Well, then certainly consider adjusting it. Something like adaptive cruise control can be a change. There are settings for how far behind the vehicle in front of you are. So set your following distance. Course, what we always recommend is the standard three-second rule. You see the car in front of you pass a sign or a pothole or stripe on the road or something. Count to yourself. One. One thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. You shouldn't be to that same point, that hole in the road or whatever before three seconds. That means you've got that three seconds of following distance behind that car in front of you, and that's really that cushion that you need. When we talk about the reaction times of the human being, it typically to perceive a hazard, understand what it is and then react to it. In other words, move your foot from the accelerator, the brake. Those two actions about a second to a second and a half for most people. If you're at highway speed that's 100, 150 feet you've just traveled, and you haven't done anything to stop your car yet. And if you're in winter conditions where the roadway surface might not be perfect, you've traveled that same distance, but now you're breaking, efficiency is gonna be reduced. So, you're stopping distance is far longer. So, we have to give extra room. So, in the wintertime, I might set that cruise control. Actually, let me take that back. If the road conditions are not very good. Shouldn't use cruise control because again, the car doesn't know that the road conditions aren't very good so it can get you into trouble. But what I will do is back off from that car in front of me and allow that extra following distance because I know I'm not going to be able to stop as quickly. So use the technology to help you if you choose to turn off some of it, you can do so, but don't ever give up your responsibility as a driver to understand what's in front of you, what's behind you and control your car despite the conditions around you. If we look at the definition of defensive driving from the National Safety Council, it's to drive to save lives, time and money despite the conditions and the actions of others. I can't control the drivers. I can't control the weather, but I can control my car.
Peter Koch: Those are great points and really thinking about it. If you do drive defensively and not aggressively and there's been tons of studies out there, Mythbusters have done studies out there. The NTSB has done studies out there. Individual car companies have done studies out there about distracted driving, about aggressive driving. How it doesn't actually save time. It doesn't save money. It doesn't save productivity. And it certainly doesn't put you in a safe position to react to a mistake that another driver might make. And if we all reacted defensively or drove defensively, then there would be less mistakes to react to, which would be pretty amazing how efficient the system might actually work. And considering that for a second. Have you ever had the experience driving down the highway where all of a sudden you're driving at the speed limit 65, 70 miles an hour, wherever you are, whatever it is, and you go from there to 30 or 25 and you crawl around for 10 minutes, 15 minutes and you're still moving and you're expecting at some point time to see the reason why there has been a slowdown and all of a sudden traffic opens up and you're back to speed limits. And there's been no accident. There's been no road change. There's been no nothing else. And what's happened are people aren't driving defensively. They're reacting to the problems around you. And if you see brake lights in front of you and you're going really fast, you don't have a good cushion in front of you. You're applying your brake lights, which means the person behind you are applying their brake lights. And it just keeps backing up. And all of a sudden, there's a mile worth of slow down.
Randy Klatt: Yes, a mile worth of hurry up and wait. It doesn't make a lot of sense. I see it all the time. When I'm in the right-hand lane, I'm looking down the roadway as everyone should. I'm trying to not just focus on that car in front of me, which is important for following distance, but I'm also looking well down the roadway, so I know what to expect. So, I see brake lights in the distance. I'm, of course, going to back off a little bit. I'm just going to start to slow down. And then there's the driver in the left-hand lane that zips by me going faster than the speed limit was in the first place. And there, you know, here we are a couple hundred yards later and he's jamming on his brakes because now he realizes that he's almost going to hit the car in front of him. I worked with a truck driving company that the owner of the company had 2 million accident free miles in his logbook, very experienced. And he would like he told me that with his new drivers, what he'd like to do is he would drive from Maine down through New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut, down to New York, where they went for a lot of their stops. And he told that student driver and the new driver that he thought he bet that he could drive right through that whole area and never touch his brakes. And of course, none of the guys believed him that that could be possible. And he said he did it all the time because he understood flow. He understands traffic in front of them. He understands speed. He's not going to get there any quicker any way. So why accelerate brake, accelerate brake, if you can just very carefully maneuver through the through the roadway. Keep your following distances. You get there the same time you're beating up your car or your vehicle a lot less. You're using less gas. It just makes good sense. It's also less stressful because when everybody's in a hurry and they're all angry about delays and what might go on ahead of them, then they're angry at each other. And then we have road rage and just, just relax. It's OK. I'll get there about the same time you are anyway. And if you beat me by 30 seconds.
Peter Koch: So be it.
Randy Klatt: OK. You won the race. That's OK. I'm going to get there, and I will have saved some money and I'll be a lot better mood when I get where I'm going. So, and when it comes to winter driving. Oh, my gosh. Now, now, let's add that road, those road conditions. So, all of that that I just described, you know, let's multiply that several times for winter driving because we're going to take longer to stop because we might have less visibility. It just makes sense that I'm going to back off a little bit more.
Peter Koch: And that that behavior of accelerate brake, accelerate brake, accelerate brake, which happens often whether it's highway driving, primary road driving, secondary road driving really increases your chances of coming unstuck from the roadway. When I step on the gas, there's a higher demand in order to keep the tires in place or to keep the tire's grip. There's a higher demand for a coefficient of friction when I brake and I have to brake hard, it's the same thing. So, road conditions have, could have road conditions could significantly affect the behavior of the car when the driver behaves in that accelerate brake accelerate brake pattern.
Randy Klatt: Exactly right. If you think back to February of 2015, we had a collision on I-95 in the Bangor area in Maine. We ended up with almost 100 cars in that pileup.
Peter Koch: I remember that.
Randy Klatt: Inconceivable. Not really. There it was. So why did that occur? Well, you read all the reports and take a look at what the state police had to say. And clearly, they would say, all right well, weather was probably a contributing factor. And we know it was because it was poor weather. It was February. It was snowing. But had the people driving through that area been driving for the conditions, the flashing lights on the interstate. We know when those say 45 miles an hour. Now, that's advisory only. Well, had people slowed down some and increased their following distance, we never would have had that occur and we might have had a collision. So whatever caused that in the very beginning or the first vehicle was to lose control, hit somebody else, that might have been it because everyone else behind, had they been driving appropriately for the conditions, they should have been able to avoid that pileup. But then you get two and three and then you get four and you get five. And then before you know it, you're stuck in the middle because you actually driving well, you had plenty of following distance. You could stop, but the driver behind you couldn't. So now you end up in the middle of this, too. So again, we can't influence the driver behind other than increase my following distance in front of me so that if I have to stop, I can do it more gradually. I don't have to jam on my brakes in a panic. Therefore, the driver behind me will have more time to be able to stop. So even if they're tailgating me, I'm hopeful that my actions can help prevent him from hitting me. So, it just fundamental driving safely, driving defensively, especially in winter conditions.
Peter Koch: But you might say, Randy. But, Randy, if I increase my following distance, what's going to happen? Someone will pull right in front of me. So, I might just as well keep my speed so that I don't give enough room for someone else to make it more challenging for me. So, what do you say to that?
Randy Klatt: Sure. Yeah, I've had people tell me ahhh, if I did that, I'd be driving backwards because everybody would be pulling in front of me. The truth of the matter is that doesn't happen. It does happen that people will pull in front of you and fill that space throughout your driving time. At sometimes they will. So, at sometimes, if you are providing 3 minute, 3 seconds of following distance and someone pulls in front of you, you've lost your three seconds. But I'd be willing to bet that if you're following the speed limits or even less if the conditions are worse, that that space will open right back up in front of you again pretty quickly, because the person that passed you is probably one of those people that's in a hurry. They're going to get by no matter what. They'll pull in front of you. They'll accelerate. And you'll have your three seconds back in a matter of seconds. There are times when it might be two. There might be one. And as long as you're aware, you go Oh my gosh. Okay. I got to slow down a little bit more now. I gotta increase it. OK. Now I've got it back to two. There's two and a, there's three. Now I can continue on my way. It'll be it'll be fine. And I've done this for years and I drive all through the Northeast. So that includes Connecticut and New York and Massachusetts and down to Washington, D.C. and all the traffic areas that you can imagine where everyone is in a hurry. And I've never found it to be a hindrance to me. I've never found that I'm causing any real problems. If I was driving 55 on the interstate when everyone else wants, should be driving 70 or is driving 70 now, I'm a hazard that I would not recommend. But simply maintain speed limit. I'll give you a couple miles over if you really feel important. That's OK. But I'm going to maintain that following distance no matter what. And everybody else will be driving faster anyway. So, my time will get back.
Peter Koch: I've had that same experience and having a conversation with you about that a number of years ago. Testing that out actually coming out of Washington, D.C. to go see one of one of my accounts down there. So, coming out of the airport, driving through heavy traffic and staying at the speed limit for the conditions. And it was summertime. So, the road conditions were great. Heavy traffic. And if I stayed at the speed limit and drove defensively, kept that cushion, people would pull in front of me. And within a few seconds, I'd have that cushion back and people would just keep falling and in front of me. And you would essentially catch up with someone later on down the road, because there was going to be a traffic congestion that caused a slowdown. And you could see him up 10, 15, 20, 30 cars up ahead. But they weren't miles and miles and miles and miles ahead of you.
Randy Klatt: No, they weren't. And especially in the northeast where, you know, there's tollbooth every couple of miles. So, you know what the heck you know that you're gonna be right behind that person that just passed you in such a hurry and disappears down the hill in a mile, you know, because you're if you're from the area particularly, you think, OK, well, there's a tollbooth in about three miles. I know who's gonna be right in front of me. It just it doesn't make any sense to try to fight it. Another consultant that taught driving overseas, talking about doing that with his students. And, you know, when you drive to work tomorrow and drive the way you always do and write down your time and then the next day, drive following every rule, follow the speed limit, give your distance, blah, blah, blah and then write down the time and then tell me what the difference is. For him and that experience over the years, it was only a couple of minutes, even by the math the difference between fifty-five miles an hour and seventy-five miles an hour on a ten-mile trip is only four minutes difference. And that assumes constant speed, which you'll never be able to do anyway. So, in the winter, this becomes even more important. We should not have ninety-five or one hundred cars piled up in a collision like that. If people are driving the way, they should be driving.
Peter Koch: And a lot of that is preparation. You talk about that the individual who wants to gain a little bit of time is going to get a little bit of a little bit faster. Chances are they made that decision when they left the house that morning. And grant that it might not have been their decision, but they made the decision to try to make up for that time, whether it because they got up late, because they had a problem at home, because there was something else going on, they chose to make up that time in the most dangerous thing that we're gonna do any day, which is getting a car drive. And if we think about all of the decisions that have to keep us on the road. Right. So that the tools that the car gives us are tires and technology, we still have to have a pilot. And that pilot in there is that essential piece that has to make thousands upon thousands of decisions every minute in order to keep that vehicle on the road safely. The more distractions that we have, the more challenges that we have to our ability to pay attention and those decisions that we make will inevitably cause us to have issues. Cause the tools that we have within the car to exceed their limitations. And then we're gonna have an accident.
Randy Klatt: Absolutely right. We would be remiss if we didn't mention distracted driving in any topic around driving. Certainly, most important, when the weather conditions are poor. Just remember, the human brain can only make so many decisions in so many times, in so much time. And really, we're only doing one thing at a time. So that distraction that takes your eyes or your brain off the roadway, off the conditions, off the traffic simply allows again, Sir Isaac Newton to be in the driver's seat, taking you where he will and not where you necessarily want to go. So, you're just gonna set yourself up for those problems that you find yourself in a position where you can't do anything about it. You can no longer stop in time based on this amount of space that you have. And if road conditions are bad, you're going to need more space. So, the collision is almost inevitable based on where you found yourself. So, let's back that chain of events up, back to where we now have control and we'll leave that extra space in front of us so that we can avoid those situations completely.
Peter Koch: Sure. Just consider back to that initial example that you gave, having the experience of missing your exit on the highway. So, I'm distracted to some point and I didn't pay attention to where I was on the road. I see the exit in the corner of my eye as I blow past it. My initial reaction is, oh, no. And I have a choice in that particular moment to take my foot off the accelerator and hit the brake or just keep going to the next exit and maintaining that speed and that driving distance. But that initial reaction is to be able to slow down. And if the weather conditions are challenging, if the road is wet, if it's raining, if it's snowing, if it's that there's ice or even if there's a buildup of winter sand on the side of the road, again, you don't have the traction.
Randy Klatt: No, you don't. And keep in mind, the legal tread depth for a tire for almost every state, for most states is two thirty-seconds of an inch. Why the government can't reduce fractions? I don't, I don't know. It's a sixteenth of an inch. But, you know, two thirty-seconds of an inch of tread depth is legal. That's for D.O.T. as well. Steering tires four thirty-seconds of an inch. So, if we've got winter tires on our vehicle that are designed for snow that have the snowflake symbol with the Twin Peaks on it tells us that that tires supposed to perform 10 percent better than your other tires. That's a great safety feature. But if the tread depth is worn down to six thirty-seconds, we have lost a huge percentage of our performance, more than 50 percent of our performance. So, it's a tire that is legal. It's six thirty-seconds tread depth as compared to the legal limit of two. But it's not nearly as well-performing as it was when it was newer. So, I see so many people that they go to their state inspection. The tires are close. Well, OK it passed, but you really should get new ones and they say, OK. And then they say, well, now I've got another year. WooHoo! Well, no, you don't. Those tires are not going to perform nearly as well. And true too of snow tires. So do the rotation like you should put the winter tires on at the time of season when you need them, but take them off when you don't, especially studded tires. Those really aren't doing you much good except on really hard packed snow and ice. But for a lot of states, well, I think every state there are time limits where you have to have those off your vehicle. So be careful of those times and understand what the wear on those tires really are. And you may have to replace winter tires quicker than you might otherwise. Otherwise, you're losing the performance that you paid for.
Peter Koch: Excellent. Randy. Those are that's a really good thought about having the proper really the proper shoes on your vehicle for the season. That's the type of thing you're not going to hike up a mountain someplace in sandals or you're not going to go to the opera in steel-toed boots. So, it's having the right tool for the job, for the right the right conditions. So, let's recap here and just kind of put together sort of those list of tips and things that folks can do to be better or safer drivers in the winter. And I'm going to start with the first one was going to be make sure your vehicle is properly maintained and understand its limitations. We've talked about a bunch of those things. So, understanding what has or how your vehicle will operate in the adverse conditions, what technology is in place for it to alert you to different challenges and how it's limited and make sure it's properly maintained. What else would you suggest for tips for our listeners to keep safe while winter driving?
Randy Klatt: Well, again, fall back to the fundamental. If I don't have to go somewhere, I'm not going to go. So, let's wait an hour. Let's wait till later this afternoon, maybe even tomorrow if it's something I'm doing for pleasure or just a grocery store trip that I can I can get by. Let's do that. Let's let the snowplows get out there, do their job, clear the roads is certainly in states that see snow frequently within hours after the snow has stopped falling, you're gonna have pretty clear roads to use. So, let's do that first. Secondly, give yourself a little extra time. Slow down on the roadway. Let everybody else be in a hurry and risk themselves if that's gonna be the case, because you can't control that, but you are in control of your vehicle. Give yourself that extra space in front of you so that you have extra time to react and extra time for that vehicle to stop if that has to occur. And overall, always understand your vehicle, the technology, what's going to help you, what's not. Make sure those tires are in good condition as they are the only thing that touches the road. Know how to use all the whiz bang features that you might have and understand ultimately that you are responsible. It's so easy to say the weather caused it. When I did crash investigation in the Navy for aircraft crashes, we could not use weather as a causal factor. It was prohibited by this, by the rules. Imagine that. Pilot flies into a thunderstorm and a thunderstorm brings him down. Certainly, that's the weather's probably fault. And no, the answer is it was the pilot's fault for flying into it. So, use that overall guiding philosophy. You're in charge of that vehicle. You're responsible for your life. Anyone in your vehicle and all those people around you. Drive to save lives, time and money, despite the conditions around you and the actions of others.
Peter Koch: I think that's fantastic. Randy, those are all excellent points and I think our listeners will be able to take that with them as we come into this winter season. So that about wraps up this week safety podcast. I appreciate everything that you've provided for us today, Randy, and all of our listeners out there who have followed us through this podcast. So today we've been speaking with Randy Klatt, director of Region II Loss Control with MEMIC about winter driving safety. And if you have any questions for our guest or like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast. Email us at podcast@MEMIC.com
Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast
- MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/
- Peter Koch - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch
- Randy Klatt - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/randy-klatt
- Sir Isaac Newton - https://www.biography.com/scientist/isaac-newton
- Hierarchy of Safety Controls - https://www.creativesafetysupply.com/glossary/hierarchy-of-controls/
- ABS Systems - https://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-parts/brakes/brake-types/anti-lock-brake1.htm
- National Safety Council - https://www.nsc.org/
- Mythbusters - https://go.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters
- National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) - https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/default.aspx
- 2015 Bangor, ME: I-95 Pile-Up - https://bangordailynews.com/2015/03/11/news/bangor/police-i-95-pileup-involved-more-than-100-vehicles-no-charges-expected/
- Department of Transportation (DOT) - https://www.transportation.gov/
Every holiday season, EMS teams respond to hundreds of house fires, electrical burns, falls from height, and decorating or party related problems. Holiday decoration and Christmas tree fires are more damaging than other fires, resulting in twice the injuries and five times the fatalities per fire as the average winter holiday home fire. Follow MEMIC Safety Management Consultant Hartley Webb’s advice on the proper use of electrical cords and appliances so you aren’t putting your friends and family in danger. Plus, listen to the end of the episode for gift ideas to keep your loved ones safe. Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. So, let's set the stage. It's winter. The air is well below freezing and there's a bunch of youth standing out around the flagpole in the schoolyard. One of them says to the other. Are you kidding? Stick my tongue on that stupid pole. That's dumb. The response from his friend. I triple dog dare you. So, you may recall those immortal words from a Christmas story when Flik is about to stick his tongue on a metal flagpole in the schoolyard on the dare of his friend. Well peer pressure is a real thing. Even beyond the schoolyard, every Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons or no matter what holiday it is. E.M.S. teams respond to hundreds of house fires. Electrical burns, fall from a height, and decorating or party related problems that arise from people trying to perpetuate holiday cheer. And many of these problems arise from the improper use of electrical cords or appliances. We're going to talk about some of that today. I'm your host, Peter Koch and for the past 17 years, I've been working for MEMIC as a safety expert within the hospitality and construction industries. What I realize is that safety impacts every part of each position or tasks that you do even during the holidays. For today's episode, Holiday Safety Fails and Fixes. I'm speaking with Hartley Webb safety management consultant with MEMIC to better understand what safety challenges the holidays bring and what we can do to address them. Hartley has been a safety management consultant with MEMIC for 27 years, almost since its inception and working with a variety of businesses. He's a frequent speaker for the main in New Hampshire Safety Councils and is the chairperson for the Board of Occupational Safety and Health in Maine. Hartley achieved his CSP in 2005 is an and is a captain in his local fire department in his hometown in northern Maine. Hartley. Welcome to the podcast today.
Hartley Webb: Thank you. It's a pleasure being here.
Peter Koch: Excellent. I really appreciate it. So, let's jump right into this thing. We're going to talk about safety for the holidays, but we've. Before we see the solutions of how we can be safe. Let's talk about some of the results about how people try to persevere, and holiday cheer and they aren't always successful. So, do you have any examples that you've come across in your time?
Hartley Webb: For electrical safety, doing the holidays? A lot of that stems from people being in a hurry, not having the right material, equipment maybe growing, you know, starting out small and then getting larger each year, but not taking into account of what they're doing or even understanding how to do it correctly.
Peter Koch: Sure. Maybe start with just a few Christmas lights here and then your neighbor puts up more Christmas lights and you put it more Christmas lights and all of a sudden, you're like you half the use of CMP for the month that that time, right?
Hartley Webb: Correct. And there's still tapping off the same outlet they did when they started.
Peter Koch: Yeah, sure. So, when someone does that, like, what's the what's the possible result of that happening?
Hartley Webb: Again, some of that understanding is just having a basic understanding of how much can a single outlet handle for for wattage and amperage. And, you know, and not overdoing it and creating an issue at the home that could be hazardous to themselves or to the to, you know, children, family.
Peter Koch: Sure. Sure. And if I overload that outlet too much, what are the consequences?
Hartley Webb: Well, this is basically going to be the damage to equipment or damage to the structure, which worst-case would-be fire potential.
Peter Koch: Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, you see it in the paper often where someone's plugged in too many things or it could be a Christmas tree or something else and the heat catches something on fire or there's a spark. It catches on fire. And all of a sudden, it's a total loss for the house. So, it makes a sad and tragic outcome sometimes.
Hartley Webb: Yeah. You see a lot of it, especially in the residential, a lot of the fires, even commercial. A lot of that. When you hear them. They usually just use the term it was electrical in nature. But a lot of that is misuse of of extension cords or overloading of circuits. And people just not understanding what those risk factors are, how they even come to the point where they've created a hazard.
Peter Koch: Sure. Sure. So, let's think about some of those risk factors. Let's start with the house first and not what you plug into it, but like when you are looking at your facility, whether it's a commercial facility or it's going to be your home, what are some of the things that you're looking at from hardwiring in your house that would cause you to make some changes, possibly in how you decorate your home?
Hartley Webb: Well, you I mean, it's it's understanding what you're plugging into it. So, you take a typical you take a typical circuit house that's gonna be there, a 15- or 20-amp circuit. And without getting too technical, if you looked at that's 120 volts, that's basically that circuit has the capability of supplying about 1,800 watts. So, if you start if you look at your typical light bulb, you say you've got a lot of 60 watt bulbs, you start adding how many bulbs are in that display. Once you get to eighteen hundred, you have you know in total wattage. You've actually maxed out that circuit. You shouldn't even be running at that potential you should be running less so. It doesn't take long. But who sits there and adds that up? Usually, they'll, they'll, you know, configure their decorations to the point where the circuit breaker now trips. Well, why did that happen? Well, you just keep resetting that circuit that can lead to problems down the road. Stuff is obviously running hot cause heat is what causes that to occur.
Peter Koch: Sure. So, when you're looking to plug something in, there's usually some other thing is tied into that circuit already. And like you have a refrigerator or the other lights or other appliances. And when you tie in Christmas lights or other decorations, things to shine on your house, lights to make the outside lit. Other things like that, you're adding to the load that that circuit is being demanded of.
Hartley Webb: Right. And you’re typically a typical residential circuit will have usually five to six receptacles on a circuit. So, you know, unless you really, truly understand the houses electrical system. You've got to figure out, OK, what what outlets go back to that one circuit and then start tracing. Everything that’s plugged into that circuit. So, you just tap into a garage outlet. What else is in that garage that's running and and hopefully they didn't, but they probably fed in another adjacent room, maybe onto that circuit. So, you could start chasing a lot to see what it is that's drawing power off of that that single circuit.
Peter Koch: Sure. So just because I have multiple outlets within one room or on one side of my house doesn't mean that they're all tied to separate circuit breakers. They could all be on the same circuit breaker.
Hartley Webb: Correct. They shouldn't have more than six outlets on a given circuit. But again, who's who's added on put additions on tapped in? That can change over time.
Peter Koch: Sure. And it might not have been a certified or qualified electrician doing the work either.
Hartley Webb: Correct.
Peter Koch: Especially on residential. On the residential side commercial side, it should be much different. But the residential side, which is where a lot of the issues are going to happen, you're going to find homeowners doing a lot of their own work.
Hartley Webb: Yes, you're correct.
Peter Koch: Yes. Excellent.
Hartley Webb: Or getting a friend.
Peter Koch: Or getting a friend to do it. Right. I can do that. Absolutely. Are there any other safety factors when you think about setting up temporary lighting or temporary decorations?
Hartley Webb: Well, the biggest one from a from the hardwire, rather, it's being hardwire, but the supply system should be, you know, don't set up a display without including a ground-fault circuit interrupter is probably the most important thing you can do, especially if that's an outdoor system. So, if you're running anything outdoors, we're exposed to the elements, exposed to moisture, having a ground fault circuit outlet. And that could be either. That could be well, it could be an outlet itself’ s typical to what you'd find in your bathroom. Got your set reset button on it could be a circuit. Most homeowners aren't typically going to have a circuit breaker unless it goes to the garage or out to a pool where a circuit breaker itself has the ground-fault built into it, but it could start at the circuit breaker panel. It probably is at the outlet. If it's feeding outdoors somewhere or if you don't know, then put one in-line as a pigtail or part of an extension cord. And then that will protect that will protect the human. The everything else is protecting the property. But if you actually want to keep the person from having a shock potential, then the only thing that's going to do that is going to be a ground-fault circuit interrupter.
Peter Koch: So, let's let's just touch briefly on that. What's the difference between the circuit breaker in your in your circuit panel down in your basement or in your closet versus that GFCI outlet or the GFCI pigtail that you might use to plug your stuff into?
Hartley Webb: That's a great question. Is a lot of people think that they may get a false sense of security, thinking that the breaker that's in the circuit panel is going to protect them when again, that's a 15, the smallest is going to be a 15-amp breaker. So, if you start talking milliamps, which is one thousandths of a single amp, 20 milliamps, so twenty one thousandths of an amp is going to be dangerous to the human. You know, if they're coming in contact with that kind of amperage yet it'll take basically 15000 milliamps worth of worth of its heat that'll trip that circuit breaker. So, the circuit breaker is really there for property protection. The ground-fault circuit interrupters are designed to trip out at 5 milliamps when they're new. And again, it's mechanical. So but it when they're new, they should be tripping out at 5 milliamps, which will only give the slightest of even a a tingle to the human body and it will trip that circuit out in one fortieth of a second and preventing the human being from from suffering a shock. So only that will protect the human. The others, the circuit breakers only for property protection only.
Peter Koch: So, the circuit breaker detects the overload. I'm overloading to a particular point, but I mean you could be you know, you could plug into that 15 amp circuit breaker that has been in the house for 30 years and it might not function the way it's supposed to either.
Hartley Webb: Correct. Or you're human. He doesn't draw the full amperage.
Peter Koch: True.
Hartley Webb: Now, you could be passing, you know, 10 amps through the human body and that circuit breaker will not stop providing power. So and that's where you'll see the people when they get a human gets a hold of a circuit where they, you know, they can't let go because it's taken over the muscles in the body and they end up being part of that circuit until somebody kills the electricity. They're not drawing the full 15 amps, or the breaker never trips. But yet the body suffered severe burns as a result of the shock that they've encountered.
Peter Koch: Sure. So therefore, that GFCI that the ground-fault circuit interrupter is going to be a is the only tool that you can use for personal protection.
Hartley Webb: Correct. And it should be a must anytime anybody sets up any type of holidays display.
Peter Koch: Yeah. So that's a great idea. If you don't have one in your circuit panel and you're not plugging in to a circuit that's or outlet that's already GFCI, then purchase something that you can plug your your holiday decorations into then.
Hartley Webb: Correct. Yes.
Peter Koch: Now with those if you're going to use one of those, anything that you need to take into consideration?
Hartley Webb: Again, ground-fault is going to sense any loss of amperage. So, you're going to make sure now that every all of your connections and everything are all gonna be dry. You're not going to have any faulty wiring. I mean, it's going to tell you what kind of quality of a of a circuit you've put in place, because if it if that circuit has the ability to have any faults in it, the ground-fault is gonna do its job, which may become frustrating. But you don't want to be bypassing it because you're putting people at risk that are downstream from that electrical current.
Peter Koch: Sure. I that's interesting. You bring that up. I had a friend once who was installing Christmas lights and on recommendation, he installed the GFCI pigtail in there and it kept popping. The pigtail kept popping pop and every time. So, what did he do? He pulled the pigtail out and just plugged that right directly into the wall. And of course, he didn't have any problems anymore. So, the issue in his mind was the pigtail is faulty. But what you found later on was there was some damage actually in the cordage that he was using, which was causing the leakage, which kept tripping everything. Now, no one got hurt in that particular case. But still, like you said, it's a great indication if the GFCI trips, you want to make sure you're looking downstream for the problem and not just assume that it's a bad GFCI.
Hartley Webb: Correct. Yeah. And then you want to also make sure that everything on the other side of that GFCI, because now we're dealing with flexible temporary cords and everything from that point on should be of the quality. That's required as listed and labeled for how you're actually using it. And that's a that's a whole different area, but probably one of the bigger exposure areas that I see at businesses, at homes. And when they start setting up these holiday decorations, they're just not using the electrical cords that they should be and in the manner that they should be. And if you typically had a GFCI in the circuit, you're probably going to be tripping that out. But if you want to, we can go through what I see commonly as some of those temporary electrical or your extension cord issues.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Let's talk about some of those. I think those are be great examples for you to bring out. I guarantee you that someone listening to this is going, oh, that's in my house or I saw that in my place of business.
Hartley Webb: The first one to look at is the type if you're going to use extension cords is the type of cord indoor use. They're gonna be listed in label for indoor use. Those are typically your two wire two prong extension cords. Once you get to a three prong three wire that has the ground pin on the plug end, those are listed as outdoor cords and they should be if you ever looked at the cord closely without getting into a lot of technical detail. It should have a listing embossed or stamped or written on to the to the core casing. And you want to be looking for the letters either S, W, J, and O, which will all kind of come in there together. But that's telling you it's a flexible cord, S would. If you see the letter W on it, that's got to be a cord rated for outdoor wet conditions. So those will typically be three wire cords and you're looking for the J. That's your that's that's a good quality hard service, junior hard service type, you know, extension cord. So that's gonna be like a 12, it can be 12 to 16 gauge. But again, those are some of the things that you should also be looking at is how long you're running cords shouldn't be hooking them together in a series really exceeding 100 feet would be maximum on like a on your 12 gauge. So again, is a little weird, but just the higher the lower the number, the bigger the cord. So.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Hartley Webb: You know typically your smallest cord you should you should ever use on a holiday display would be a 16.
Peter Koch: And is that going to show right on the jacket of the cord?
Hartley Webb: Should be on the jacket of the cord. So, if you have a 16 that's about as small as you should go. They do sell 18, some of them called ribbon cord. They've also got a nickname, zip cord and a fire service, which is a sound they make when they get overheated, because that's the last sound you hear before that cord literally turns into looking like a toaster element because typically those are 13 amp rating cords being provided by a 15 amp outlet, which means that the cord will turn in to basically looking like two toaster elements in. But the breaker panel will still provide you power because it needs 15 amps to overheat while the cord can only tolerate 13. So, you'll actually disintegrate the cord while the breaker still provides power so.
Peter Koch: It just keeps feeding it.
Hartley Webb: That is a common in that zip cord in the fire service is probably one of the leading causes of house fires because people try to run their stereo systems off it with big amps. Still try to run a, you know, for holiday decorations it would be those are your typical brown and white really thin. They get a little three-way box on the end of it. So, you use them as extension cords. They're designed for lamps. They're illegal for commercial use, which should tell you that they probably shouldn't be in the residential, but they sell them in every store. They're inexpensive. They're not supposed to be hooked together in a series because it'll cause significant heat again from overloading and loss. You know, Ohm's Law will kick in as more of those you start plugging together.
Peter Koch: So, you should never use the zip cord. You always want to use something that's 16 gauge or greater.
Hartley Webb: Correct.
Peter Koch: And really, that's designed or not so much designed, but the cord you purchase should be based on the location, the but the length of run that you're going to have and what you're going to plug into it.
Hartley Webb: Correct. You know, rule of thumb, if you if you read into a lot of the literature on it, if you own 16-gauge extension cords, they should not be run out to length greater than 50 feet. And at 50 feet, a 16-gauge core can only tolerate 13 amps. So, it can't really even tolerate what the circuits providing. So even use in 16-gauge cords, I mean around my home ribbon cords definitely are not allowed in in my home or any of my family's homes. If I find them, I usually remove them because I know they're the leading cause. House fires. 16-gauge extension cords really should spend the money and and get a 14 or a 12. And those should be the extension cord you see outdoors, you know, in the in the in the environments for these for these, you know, decorative displays just so they can handle the load safely. And they shouldn't still go over 100 hundred feet even for a 12-gauge. They say you should not have more than one hundred feet in total length and still be able to provide that circuit load of protection. And again, if you go longer lengths, circuit is still going to provide it. But now you're going to be creating heat, which was going to be causing an issue down line either with with the cords or with the decorative displays. And something is going to be running hot in that circuit, so.
Peter Koch: Sure. So, then the more heat, the more possibility there is for for a fault, some place to melt the cord, damage the appliance or to cause a fire. Because many times you're running those cords around the baseboard or back behind a display somewhere around a bookshelf someplace or especially around the holidays, you're always moving things around. And there's there's combustible material that you're running those things around and through.
Hartley Webb: Correct. And if it is so for overall, if I get asked to come in and look at a decorative display from a safety perspective, again, I'm usually standing at the outlet receptacle, making sure it's in good condition, free from damage. Has a cover plate on it. There's no exposures and the receptacle itself is not broken. Then I take a look at the extension cords that make you see that there's a ground-fault in the system. So, it's either in the outlet or it's it's in the circuit, somewhere in the cord or or at the breaker. Then I'm inspecting the cords. How many how much are they using? What's the length? Is it a good listed and labeled cord? So, it's either listed either has UL, underwriting laboratories, which is what we would use here in America, or there's a Canadian listing and labeling also that's equivalent to. But it's just it's a listed and labeled cord is not something has been picked up. So, and that it goes for the holiday decorations too, that they're all have that same UL listing somewhere on that decorative display. And and then the extension cords that are running them, free from damage, free from nicks, any of the junctions where you would plug two together being kept dry out of the moisture. So, they're not sitting in a puddle frozen in the snow.
Peter Koch: So, let me let me roll you back just a moment and let's talk a little bit about that UL listing or the Canadian certification. So why is that important for the purchaser to to assure that that appliance or that cord has that listing?
Hartley Webb: If it if it's listed as if you're looking for something this labeled as the outdoor use like I talked about, so you're looking for that. They're the ones that have proved that listing. So those letters we talked about looking for that J is a junior hard that's going to have a good outer cording. Typically, if you see a J on your chord, it's going to tolerate the freezing temperatures that we'll experience here in the northeast. So, it's going to be able to handle that without damage breaking of the chords. So underwriting laboratories is the one that's done that testing behind the scene and has approved that cord under all of these conditions. So, you know, it's gonna have the W for the wet. It's gonna it's gonna have the if it has an O on it that means it's tolerable to, you know, an oil type environment. J gonna be your junior usage. So, you really look for that, J in the O for outdoor display type.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Hartley Webb: And so, you're relying on that agency to to make sure that it passed those tests before it could be sold.
Peter Koch: So, they've done the testing to assure that it meets at least a minimum standard. So you know that if you're going to purchase something with that listing and it's going to have the qualifications for location and type of use and amperage that you can then use that as the minimum correct in order to figure out how this could be used or even if it should be used in your display planning.
Hartley Webb: Right. They're just telling you it's approved for how you want to use it. Now, you have to have some basic knowledge of say, okay, how am I using this? And I don't overuse it.
Peter Koch: Sure.
Hartley Webb: Like connecting too many together. Another common exposure. I see a lot in the in both residential and commercial. Is the use of the computer power strip. I mean, if you read that, it's not an extension cord. I can't remember actually how it's listed and labeled, but is a term that it, but you can't plug an extension cord into a power strip. You also can't plug a power strip into an extension cord based on the listing and labelling is just not allowed because of the potential overloading of that circuit. So, you can't plug two together. She can't start stringing these power cords along these computer strips to try to give yourself more outlets because again, there's more potential now. So, the manufacturers are like, no, you know, I'm going to give you six additional outlets. You're already plugging those into a six-receptacle circuit. You're looking at 12 potential, you know, places to plug stuff in now, and they, and they just don't want to continue that. So, again, you can't pigtail those together again, you can't run them off extension cords and you can't run extension cords off of the computer strips. So that's commonly we'll see those on the displays because, you know, you have 50 displays on your front lawn, where are you plug in these all in?
Peter Koch: Yeah. And you see it, too, like you're going to run a 50-foot extension cord or 100 foot extension cord out from the garage to your front yard and you're gonna have a power strip that connects your lights to it. You're blow up snowman, your video display or whatever you're going to have out in your front yard. That's all plugged into that power strip. And you have no idea how much that's drawing. But we've seen it, especially here in the wintertime where you after its snowed. And if it snows early, people put their displays out after it snows, and they start running those displays. You'll see the cord melt down through the snow because it's generating enough heat to be able to do that. Interesting. Yeah. So, we talked about cords. We talked about some about cords. What are other what other mistakes? Do people make that you see using extension cords or power strips in the home?
Hartley Webb: One of them is causing them to be damaged based on how they're being used. So, you know, you're really not supposed to run them out windows where your windows are being closed on them and causing impact, don't put them under carpets or that type of stuff or areas where weight could be distributed onto them because it has ability, again, at those points to be creating heat and causing a little additional resistance. The garage doors and then allowing the garage door to continually to close on it or worst case is to put it on a hinge door or throughway hinge door where every time that door opens and closes, it has the potential to continually damage and pinch that cord, let alone I've seen them run across driveways, walking surfaces being hung by staples and other conductive material that have not only the potential to damage the external casing of the cord, but may inadvertently, you know, penetrate the cord. Now, now there's the potential to again create a shock hazard by somebody coming in contact and in bringing that electricity outside of the enclosure that it should be inside the cord.
Peter Koch: Sure, sure. Yeah. So not not hanging. So how would you hang an extension cord if you needed to get it up off the ground and you had the potential to do that. How could you hang a cord?
Hartley Webb: Yeah, they actually if if for Christmas type displays or holiday displays. If you have a roof type thing, they actually have clips that will go on not only metal rules, but will also go on shingled roofs that are nonconductive. They actually caused no roof penetration. So, saves you actually putting penetrations and holes in your house. If you do have to hang them. Recommend not stapling them, it would be better to staple like a zip tie to the building and then attach the cord with the zip ties. So, you've got something nonconductive that's literally you know that the cord is hung by. Anytime you have a drop from overhead, where there would there be a lot of weight resistance or stress placed that should be taken up by some type of, you know, don't cause that type of stress. Don't hang a lot of stuff where you're causing a lot of weight and pull onto the cords. They're just not designed for that. And they'll have the potential to be damaged, especially if exposed to, you know, the environmental cold conditions. And for long periods of time, wind, that's the type of stuff that may cause movement. But again, using using the zip ties, using they make, not conductive clips. If you're going to use staples, they have insulated staples. So again, you don't have the potential to damage and then penetrate the protective casing of the cord.
Peter Koch: Right. So that sounds great. So, don't damage the outside. Don't hang out with something conductive. Make sure that you're not hanging. The weight of the appliance or whatever you are tying into from the cord itself have something else to take up the strain, right?
Hartley Webb: Yeah. And if you gotta run them across a walking working on surfaces, try to run over doors and stuff but if you've got to run them across, bridge them, protect them somehow so that traffic, people shoveling aren't going to come in contact with them. Vehicles are driving over them, that kind of stuff. Where you've got a high potential for damage.
Peter Koch: Catch them in the snow blower.
Hartley Webb: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Get them off the ground. In this climate, because when you put him down, everything's usually exposed. But within three or four weeks, next thing you know, you're you can't find it when the season's done. So, you're either leaving it till spring or you're pulling it up and it's frozen into the ground.
Peter Koch: And no doubt. No doubt. Okay. Excellent. So, cords let's see the we talked about the length of course we've talked about the UL listing of the cords. We've talked about making sure that we're not going to overload the circuit by plugging too many cords and the use of of those of the power strips and trying not to use or not using those power strips as an extension of the extension cord. But, you know, using that to plug directly into the into the outlet.
Peter Koch: So, if you had to figure out how much you could plug in to an extension cord, how would what would you do? How would you do it?
Hartley Webb: Well, like I mentioned, your typical circuit. It's 120-volt circuit. So, in a 15 amp, 120 volt circuit can handle 1800 watts. So, one way of doing that is figuring out all your wattage. So, every one of your displays, your LCD displays, or your incandescent bulbs will have a wattage. So, if you buy a string of lights, it's going to tell you on that box what wattage that light string takes. So how many light strings can you plug together in a series? If you read most of manufacturers of the incandescent lights, the ones that have the filament, the old style, not the new L.E.Ds, but the incandescent ones, they all, most manufacturers won't allow you to put more than three of those strings together in a series. They've got a plug on each end. So ideally, I get, you know, some people tend to just go to infinity until they run out of money of buying lights. But again, the manufacturer doesn't want more than three of those because, again, what's the wattage of that individual string? And so, you would be adding that up to try to say, OK, I can't go to 1800 and 1800 is the maximum that should be placed on a circuit. So, you should be a little shy of that. And then also be aware if you're running that on an extension cord, that may not you know, again, if you're buying the 16 gauge cords, you're going to make sure you've got some really short lengths like 25, anything over 25 feet doesn't necessarily have the potential to supply that fully eighteen hundred. So again, you would want a good quality extension cord. But as far as determining that that would be one way of doing that would be to just figure out what you have for load. And you mentioned it earlier, but you've also got to look at what else is plugged onto that series before it gets to the outlet you're using, because if you're running refrigerators and anything else, freezers that may be in the garage, before you tap into that garage outlet for your outside Christmas display you want, or you've get hot tubs and other things that maybe things that are tapped into that circuit. You want to be including those.
Peter Koch: Sure. Because you could have the holiday party happening. You could have people coming over and you. Plug in your display. It might work great until the refrigerator kicks on and then your whole house goes dead and you start putting the hot appliance, anything that has heaters involved with it out in the garage where you might have a, you know, a table set up and you've got the crockpot going and anything that's got a heating element is drawing a lot of wattage.
Peter Koch: Let's take a quick break and we'll be back in just a moment for more discussion with Hartley and the holiday safety fails and fixes.
Peter Koch: Ever cringe when watching someone, you know, take on a task or wonder how they survived the last project they started? Or maybe you've thought the next time I do this; I really need one of those. Well, just in time for the holiday gift buying season. The team here, MEMIC, has put together a gift giving guide for the safety minded and some ideas for gifts for those friends and family that you want to keep around after the holidays. Check out the list and a surprise gift giveaway at the end of this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast.
Peter Koch: Welcome back to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Hartley Webb, safety management consultant at MEMIC. So, let's jump right in with some more electrical safety questions regarding the holidays. Before we broke, we were talking about electrical cord safety and had looked into different components of what might make a system fail. Well, what are some of the separate fixes that you might have for it? Overall, if we're looking at setting up a display for the holidays, whether it's going to be Thanksgiving, Christmas or a winter holiday or really any holiday, what are some of the good operational safety practices that you can follow for electrical purposes?
Hartley Webb: First thing I would do is when you when you bring your electrical appliances out, whether be decorations, hot pots, the computer power strips, the whatever it is you're going to set up for your electrical supply and for the equipment you're using inspect it. I mean, look at the plug ends. Make sure they're in good condition, free from damage if it is an appliance or a cord that does have. It's a three-wire outdoor listed cord. It should have three prongs. Make sure the ground pin, pin exists, cause that ground is there for your protection. So if there is a fault in any of the appliances or devices, it has a path for that current to flow back out of the piece of equipment or the other or the appliance or whatever it is that you're using and put it back safely to ground.
Peter Koch: So, let me hold you there for just one second. If I have a three-pin cord coming from my appliance. Hypothetically, let's just say that I'm trying to plug it into a two-space receptacle, whether that be an outlet on the wall or even an extension cord. I shouldn't break the ground pin off to make it fit?
Hartley Webb: You shouldn't. And don't use one of the adapters that converts your three prong into a two prong. Better known as a suicide adapter, because that's just about what you're attempting to do. You're getting rid of that. That's there for your safety and that needs to function. So, you don't want to be putting that into the outlet. If you do use one of those, it can legally be used on an outlet to convert. But you have to verify because now you still need ground. So those little adapter plugs have the ability to use the center screw on your receptacle plate as a ground, but you have to verify that that center screw is grounded. So, if it's not grounded, it serves no purpose. So just don't use it, and that and that brings back the whole ground-fault circuit interrupter again. Again, because if your cord has a ground fault in it, because if you're still looking at a two wired outlet receptacle in the wall, I can pretty much guarantee you it doesn't have a ground fault on the breaker. So, if you got if you got old wiring in the house, forget the ground-fault. You're going to have to add that in a cord, a GFCI will function on a two-wire circuit. So that doesn't give you permission or you should, still shouldn't use a three-wire extension cord missing a ground pin. If you're missing that ground pin, either have somebody properly fix the cord or replace the cord. But you really want to use, because again, you're you want to have a ground pin on your extension cords. I really wouldn't bother buying in an indoor rated two wire cord.
Peter Koch: Extension cords can get pretty pricey. And while many homeowners or business owners will be looking to save a little money here and there so they go and purchase those small two wire extension cords in the long run, you really want to have the tool that's going to protect your investment in the property and decorations, but also the people that are going to be using it or sharing in the holiday cheer that you're going to be presenting, is that correct?
Hartley Webb: Correct. Correct. And then again, to get back to the original question there, I would inspect it. So, make sure it's got the ground pin on it. Look at the entire length of the cord. Make sure there's no damage cuts or anything in the protective casing of that of those cords, whether they be on the appliance or an extension cord. If there is damage, don't tape it. Don't try to make any, if you've got really good shrink tubing, but then you've got to take the ends off to fix it. Just don't try and makeshift because wrapping tape around it doesn't really do much but, it allows moisture to get in, allows moisture to be trapped. Doesn't really give you the protection you really want, if you've got a lot of damage to the cord you want to be replacing the cords. It's really the only safe way to go home. And it is your friends and family that we're looking at. So.
Peter Koch: So inspect all the appliances that you're going to be plugging in, inspect the outlets that you're going to be plugging the appliance into, and then inspect the cords that you're going to be using to get some distance away from those wall outlets as well.
Hartley Webb: Yep. Correct.
Peter Koch: Great. So, replace anything that has obvious damage to it or doesn't look functional. So, let's talk a little bit about how you can go about protecting yourself and your property from damage or from harm.
Hartley Webb: Figure out, make sure or try not to overload. And to give a good example, if we just wanted to look at holiday lighting, one of the biggest. You see a lot of people converting from incandescent to the L.E.D. and a good example of that would be if you had your typical 15-amp circuit. Although we have said that that 15-amp circuit can handle the the 1800 watts. Ideally, they don't want more than 1400 watts on that 15 amp. So, if we looked at 1440 is what they want. So, 1440 watts. What does that mean? Well a string of L.E.D lights. You literally could plug in 105 strings of lights. Of L.E.D lights because your typical L.E.D. string only has 12 watts. So that's that's 105 strings of lights on one circuit. If you're using L.E.D, on the other hand, if you bought the old incandescent bulbs, the holiday display bulbs that are incandescent, those are typically 60-watt strings. The ones that I looked up; you could only have 24 strings to max out that same circuit. So, 24 strings of incandescent compared to a hundred and five strings of L.E.D. So if you're looking at these monster displays, then you know where you want to have a lot of lights, it is going to behoove you to go to the L.E.D or you're going to have to use a lot of circuits within your house in order to supply it. You're not going to be able to try to draw off that one outlet on the side of the garage because it's just not going to tolerate it. And again, remembering what else is plugged into that circuit.
Peter Koch: Because in order to safely plug in the one 105 L.E.D strings or 60 incandescent strings, you've got to know what else is tapping into that circuit. Correct. They may have to be a dedicated circuit if the holiday decorations will draw more than what the circuit can handle.
Hartley Webb: And the manufacturers of those incandescent are telling you, don't put more than three in a series because that's a thin 18-gauge wire that only has 7 amps of capability. So, they don't want more than 3 of their own plugged in because that has the potential now to begin heating itself.
Peter Koch: So, the farther away you get from the source, the more that you draw, the more heat you're going to have and the less voltage is available at the end of the line.
Hartley Webb: Right. And you're going to have a lot of voltage drop across that fine wire. So, it's creating heat in itself. So that's why they don't want more than 3 any 3 strings hooked together. So, you know, it would take you a lot of strings to have 24 strings at 3 strings to an extension cord.
Peter Koch: And am I correct that the solution is not to go and get a bigger breaker?
Hartley Webb: Yep.
Peter Koch: So, my business code or building code would drive that, but it could also be affected by who did the installation and what they had on hand to do it.
Hartley Webb: Correct.
Peter Koch: So really, again, knowledge about your system and its limitations is important for both property and personal protection, but really talking about personal protection. Another way to ensure functional personal protection is having that ground-fault circuit interrupter. You can find them integrated into a circuit breaker or receptacle or a power strip or pigtail. So, if I'm buying a pigtail and I want to put it in my circuit, where do I put it in relationship to the tool? And why?
Hartley Webb: You want to get it as close to the supply as possible. So, you should if you're going to buy a one that plugs in, it needs to be rated the receptacle. So, if you happen to buy one, that is a 3 way pigtail type so you can put 3 appliances on the end of it or three additional cords on the end of it. You want that on the wall end you don't want to go out with an extension cord and put it out on the far end and then start plugging stuff in. So, you want it as close. You want to protect as much of the temporary wiring circuit that you've created as possible. So, your GFCI should be right at the receptacle.
Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about the benefits of moving from incandescent to L.E.D., it seems to be a good solution, especially with larger displays or a more fragile system, because it seems to lower the load on the system and the potential for additional heat and therefore failure someplace else within the circuit.
Hartley Webb: Right. And with that being said, don't get a false sense security, which a lot do. Cause they'll start wrapping the L.E.D. around the live displays of your bows and your wreaths, your trees or whatever you may have. L.E.D. still produce heat. So again, keeping stuff watered, keeping stuff moist. You know, you still have to be concerned that, it is not going to create anywhere near as much heat. But they still can run warm. They still can create heat. And probably the biggest thing from a fire, I see with heat is gonna be your spotlight. So, any type of a spotlight display, because, again, those are going to be your 250, 500, 1000 watt lights. They're going to create a tremendous amount of heat. So, again, keeping stuff away from them, that's combustible for whatever you have for displays at your home at that time. You're using the spotlights.
Peter Koch: Sure. And and in the winter season, even in areas that don't have snow, people have displays around the holidays and those spotlights are becoming more popular. And the grass at that time of year can be dry and brittle. They could be buried in a shrub or someplace to keep it hidden from people to see. And that typical incandescent or halogen light may generate enough heat to create a fire hazard.
Hartley Webb: Correct. And the biggest things that a lot of things that tell homeowners from, from the fire perspective or my fire department background is invest in the timers. Number one, you don't want any of these displays or any of these items that you've plugged in for for a dinner holiday party or even if every nightly display, you do not want that stuff running after you've gone to bed. So, you want to make sure that stuff is on timers. You never want any type of display to be operating any of this temporary electrical stuff has been set up once you've gone to bed. I mean, it's just it's creating too much exposure to to be asleep in the house with this stuff all creating heat, all creating load and you just don't want it. So a lot of times I'll ask them to have timer's if you want, if you're willing to have the money, you can invest in a timer that will cycle off for 30 minutes and then stay on for a set period of time. So you can actually allow like if you get a lot of incandescent displays, you can actually set those newer timers for the for the holiday festivities to actually have that stuff go out for like a 30 minute time or go out for 5 minutes every 30 minutes to allow that stuff to cool back off and then heat back up again. So, anything that may have contact with combustible material gives it a chance to cool. And so, they do sell those now and again. It's just having the people that recognize it. Or, you know, or be willing to purchase and set those up.
Peter Koch: Well, that's a great suggestion. Timers can help us shut the lights off automatically. But I'm assuming that the timers will have the same limitations that the cords and everything else does. They only seem to be designed as for a certain amount of amperage or voltage. Correct?
Hartley Webb: Yep. And you want to make sure there's a lot of the timers. Again, indoor rated, so they're only gonna be a two-wire capability. So, don't be bypassing you need to buy timers that are designed for outdoor use. And again, you can set those for as often as you want them to go on and off. The general rule of thumb that the underwriting laboratories and stuff from what I've referenced for the electrical standards is saying 3 hours on, 30 minutes off. That's their cycle time they want for incandescent lighting displays.
Peter Koch: That's a great rule of thumb. So, using a timer and setting it so your display will be on for 3 hours and then off for 30 minutes will allow the fixture and power supplies to cool off and reducing that potential for overheating and a possible fire.
Hartley Webb: And again, if it's if it's a display while you're in your home, you do not want that lit up while you're in bed, while you're asleep. So, it needs to go out during the hours in which you're which you're sleeping because that's not when you want something to go wrong in the house.
Peter Koch: So, let's just talk about that a little bit. It's not exactly about electrical safety. But tell me about the things that you should have in your house or place of business in the event that something does go wrong and catches on fire. You've done your inspection. You've got your L.E.D. lights. You've got the proper wiring. But there's a fault somewhere or something happens and then there's a fire. So, what should you have in place to help protect lives and property?
Hartley Webb: Well, to top of that list is going to be a smoke detector. I mean, and not just having one, but where are they located, and can they be heard from the bedroom? And there's a one near the bedroom. So, again, you in any of your fire departments can help you with a probably, probably not only providing if you can't afford one, but properly setting them up within the house. Where should they be? There's a lot of agencies and stuff that can help with that. But having the smoke detector working, having a carbon monoxide detector, which is a little bit differently, but again, you're overseeing a heating season usually depending on where you're from if you're up here. It's heavy heating season. So again, having a carbon monoxide detector also should be a working fire extinguisher. Again, me coming from my background. I have one hanging in my bedroom. I mean, that's the door I'm going out. If the smoke detectors off and it's not going to do me any good to be and down the hallway to get to my my doors leading from my house without having an extinguisher in my hand if I get a smoke detector going off. So, I have one hung in my bedroom wall, fairly large one. And then I have one at the base of my stairs. You know, not something my wife really wanted with her décor, but she's got an extinguisher at the top of the stairs. So, in the event that that's the direction that I may decide to head, given the conditions, I mean, again, overall, you want out. So if you have young kids have a fire plan, they know how to get out of the house, not by the hallway only, but if they can't, they know exactly what you want them to do in the event they cannot get out of their bedroom, you know, safely. The biggest thing I've pretty much taught my kids and my family, you know, sleep with your door closed, you know, keep the door closed, because, again, we usually show the children in our community. You know, each and every year they get an understanding, you know, how fast a house can can fill with smoke. And you don't want you know, when you hear that smoke detector go off. You only have seconds. And if the door's open, you're going to start to impinge on that sleeping quarters, which is black to begin with. Dark. So now, you know, you want to be, you know, give me given you a chance. So, you know, keep the doors closed, keep a smoke detector there. You know, have a fire extinguisher on hand, have an emergency plan for the family. Once they get out. Know what to do, where to go. Because again, you've got to be thinking about temperatures. You gotta, you know, where are the neighbors? How close are they? Who's accessible for help? You know, and so everybody, you know, get a head count, get help on the way, get a place safe for the family to go get warm. Those types of things. Now's the time to be thinking about those before before an incident ever does happen.
Peter Koch: All excellent suggestions. And in addition, a lot of people, because of an insurance plan or building code, already have the fire extinguisher or smoke detector. However, how do we know that those tools we expect to help us in the event of a problem will work as we expect? You mentioned this before. Testing these tools for function should be a key part of household and workplace safety. It matters if the alarm goes off, but it also matters that the people affected by the alarm can hear the alarm.
Hartley Webb: Yeah. Correct. And it doesn't hurt. You know, try it some evening. Just go test the thing after everybody’s gone to sleep and just see how everybody reacts. And it's an eye opener because, you know, I had my children aren’t home anymore, but I have 2 kids that would pop right out of bed and do what was required. And then I have, you know, my youngest boy who, you know, you could set everyone off in the house and he won't even roll over in bed. So, you know you, that you have to know that beforehand and prepare for that cause somebody’s got to go get him, because the smoke detector, he won't even know because they've gone off. But I've got backdraft on the woodstove or something. And, you know, every mine are all wired. So, when one goes off, the whole house goes off. And I've had the whole house go off and my son wasn't even aware. You know, they were going off for like 10, 15 minutes. So, they you've you've got to be able to, you know, plan for that in the event that that happens, because somebody's got to go get him.
Peter Koch: Yes, that's a great point. So even if you've tested them, make sure they're all functional. Can people who need to hear them actually hear them? Do you have an emergency plan that covers all the people or positions necessary? Cause if you think about it, we're not just talking about normal, everyday operations. If you're adding a big display, then you might be adding a lot of electrical load and equipment to that house or business. So, if you're adding or increasing the potential for problems, you need to make sure that everything is working appropriately. The smoke detectors and fire extinguishers all need to be there, and they all need to be inspected and top-of-the-line so that they're going to work when you need them to work.
Hartley Webb: And we've been talking a lot about electrical here with these displays. But one of the things that I see that's more common now is a lot of the live live candle type displays interior for the holiday and that goes the same thing. You know, again, have some type of routine, but do not go to sleep. Do not go to bed while those things are still lit.
Peter Koch: Great plan. Fantastic. Well, I think that just about wraps up this week's Safety expert podcast brought to you by MEMIC. I really appreciate you sharing all your expertise with us, Hartley. You have any final comments or tips that you want to leave with our listeners?
Hartley Webb: When the holiday is all done. Probably the most important thing you can do when you put the displays away, pack them neatly, pack them organized. Cause a lot of times a lot of the damage from a lot of the electrical a lot of that is done during the during the packaging for the off season. So, take the time, pack it in a manner that's going to prevent damage for the following year. Other than that, just hope everybody has safe holidays and enjoys the season.
Peter Koch: Fantastic. I really appreciate that. Hartley, thanks for joining us today. And to all of our listeners out there. We've been speaking with Hartley Web safety management consultant with MEMIC about Holiday Safety Fales and Fixes. If you have any questions for our guests or would like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast, email us at podcast@MEMIC.com. This podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leader in workers compensation insurance and a company committed to the health and safety of all workers. To learn more about MEMIC and how we can help your business. Visit MEMIC.com. Don't forget about our upcoming workshops or webinars and for upcoming dates and for what topics are out there. Visit MEMIC.com and check out our Safety Academy. You can find the podcast here on i-Tunes or right here at MEMIC.com. If you have a smart speaker, you can tell it to play the safety experts podcast and you can pick today's episode or even a previous episode. You can also enable the Safety Experts podcast skill on Alexa to receive safety tips and advice from our any of our episodes. We appreciate you listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know that they can find it on their favorite podcast player by searching for safety experts. Thanks for tuning in to the Safety Experts podcast brought to you by MEMIC. Remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast.
Peter Koch: Hey, this is Peter Kotch, host of the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, wishing everyone a safe and healthy holiday season. And in order to help you along the way, the team here MEMIC has put together a list of safety related gifts which can help your friends and family members arrive at the next family gathering or holiday party cast free and with whatever parts they still have intact. It's the time of year again when we start projects, decorate the house for the holidays, clean our walking paths, make gifts, cook and generally make ready for good cheer that accompanies the holidays. At work, our employers help us to stay safe by providing equipment that helps to reduce our exposure to workplace hazards. However, at home we don't have that, and that could put us at risk by our own choices. And I bet if you haven't yourself, you know someone who has cleared snow from a roof without fall protection or cleaned out the chute of a snow blower by hand without shutting it down first, or worn your indoor shoes across an icy driveway because it will only be this just once, or you've run stock through a table saw without the guard or had your ears ring after using a leaf blower, a mower, or some other power tool for a while, or maybe cut your finger prepping food for a holiday meal or jump the car battery for a friend without safety glasses. Really pick a task, any task. And there is a piece of kit that you can and probably should use to help protect yourself from the inevitable. So, I asked our team here at MEMIC to give me some of their favorite possibilities for safety related gifts. And here's what they came up with.
Guest Caller: Hey Pete, this is Richard. Idea for a safety gift, would be cut resistant gloves, to protect your hands.
Guest Caller: Hi Pete, it's Natalie. My idea for a safety gear is a push stick to use with a table saw.
Guest Caller: Hi Pete, it's Mike. My suggestion is the microjig push-blocks for table saws. From a personal experience, my father recently sustained four stitches in his finger because he got his fingers too close to his table saw. So, this was my gift to him.
Guest Caller: Hi, Pete, this is Tony. My idea of a safety gift is a set of safety chaps for the chainsaw operators.
Guest Caller: Hi, Pete, this is Tom. My idea for safety gift is an A.B.C. rated fire extinguisher for home use.
Guest Caller: Hi, Pete. This is Rob. My idea for a safety gift is a pair of ice cleats that don't have to be taken off when I walk inside.
Guest Caller: Yeah, Hi, Pete, this is Greg. My idea for a safety gift, which is actually an ergonomic gift, would be an economically priced vertical mouse for anybody that might be starting to develop a little bit of tennis elbow or a lateral epicondylitis.
Guest Caller: Hi, Pete, this is Jason. My idea for a safety gift is a roof rake to allow snow to be removed from your roof safely. Another great idea for a safety gift that I hope to receive this Christmas is a pair of traction devices to be worn with my winter boots to ensure that I maintain good traction.
Guest Caller: Hey, Peter, it's Barrett. I'd really like one of those fancy awesome ski helmets like you wear for Christmas to keep my head safe on the slopes.
Guest Caller: Hi, Peter. This is Esther Murray and I'm calling to give you my safety idea. Number one, we need to have a small collapsible step stool. Those cost in the neighborhood of $20. The second tool, called the Handy Bar. It fits right into the strike on the car door. And you can help your elderly parent into the car by having them grab onto the Handy Bar. Those two tools may make it easier to take and transfer our elderly parents hither and yon.
Guest Caller: Hi, Pete. It's Dave Darnley in Buffalo, New York. My idea for a safety gift. It's a winter car safety kit.
Guest Caller: Hi, Pete, this is Susan. This has to do with winter driving and things that you should put in a safety kit for your car. Number twelve, a pair of boots. Eleven, a change of socks. Ten, a first aid kit. Nine, jumper cables. Eight, flashlight and batteries. Seven, cell phone chargers. Six, hats and gloves. Five, roadside flairs. Four, a warm blanket. Three, bag of salt. Two, ice cleats, and an ergonomic shovel for snow. Happy holidays.
Peter Koch: Links to information on some of these items can be found in the show notes for this episode. Check them out. If you're looking for some great gift ideas. Last, if you go to MEMIC.com/podcast and enter your email to sign up for podcast updates before December 23rd, 2019. You'll be entered into a drawing for a set of in-step ice cleats. Winners will be chosen after December. 23rd. And announced in the first MEMIC Safety Experts podcast episode of 2020. Tune in then to find out if you've won. Good luck. And from all of us here at MEMIC, be safe this holiday season.
Resources, Ideas and People Mentioned in Podcast
- Hartley Webb, Safety Management Consultant - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/hartley-webb
- MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/
- MEMIC’s Safety Experts Podcast - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-experts-podcast
- MEMIC Safety Net Blog - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-net-blog
- A Christmas Story - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/
- National Safety Council of Northern New England - https://www.nscnne.org/
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) - https://www.osha.gov/
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP) - https://www.bcsp.org/CSP
- Central Maine Power (CMP) - https://www.cmpco.com/wps/portal/cmp/home/!ut/p/z1/hY7LDoIwEEW_hQVbOqSo4I4YhBDQGF_YjQFTC6ZQUir8vo0aExMfs5u5554MIihDpMn7iuWqEk3O9X4g4yO20yByZrBwU8eDlYOTbRjuYO7ZaP8PIDqGL-OD7pM78jIs1zHWBifYRHaI7XjyBH44YkQYF8XjXb8psMsQkfRMJZXWVepzqVTbTU0wYRgGiwnBOLVOojbhU6UUnULZO4naOoPLiPeJbxg3t9mK_g!!/dz/d5/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh/
- Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) - https://www.google.com/search?q=ground+fault+circuit+interrupter&ie=&oe=
- Ohm’s Law - https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/dccircuits/dcp_2.html
- UL Listed - https://marks.ul.com/about/ul-listing-and-classification-marks/promotion-and-advertising-guidelines/specific-guidelines-and-rules/
- Canadian Standards Association (CSA) - https://www.csagroup.org/testing-certification/product-listing/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
- Safety Gift Ideas:
- Cut Resistant Gloves - https://www.google.com/search?q=Cut+resistant+gloves&ie=&oe=
- Push-Stick for Table Saw - https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNQW4P8BfQ46fNIqcYzULHc1w6R6KQ%3A1574455269788&ei=5UfYXcTUL-KyggeOvJ2oCQ&q=push+stick+for+table+saw&oq=push+stick+for+&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0l9j0i333.35801.37644..39834...0.3..0.236.2502.0j14j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71j35i39j0i273j0i131j0i20i263.L8IlbYWVn5A
- Microjig Push Blocks - https://www.microjig.com/content/push-blocks
- Chainsaw Chaps - https://www.google.com/search?q=chainsaw+chaps&ie=&oe=
- A B C Extinguisher - https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNTwOS4u-KoldhO8T7AXsaaGmLnTCQ%3A1574455397206&ei=ZUjYXcyJDIfH_Qbpg5PQCw&q=abc+extinguisher&oq=abc+extinguisher&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i7i30l10.7455.7953..8556...0.1..0.216.595.0j1j2......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71.-Psm1iO_VFs&ved=0ahUKEwiM0Ki11_7lAhWHY98KHenBBLoQ4dUDCAo&uact=5
- Ice Cleats - https://www.thecuresafety.com/K1_Mid_Sole_Ice_Traction_Cleats_Pair_p/k1mid.htm
- Vertical Mouse - https://www.google.com/search?q=vertical+mouse&ie=&oe=
- Roof Rake - https://www.google.com/search?q=roof+rake&ie=&oe=
- Ski Helmet - https://www.google.com/search?q=ski+helmet&ie=&oe=
- Small Collapsible Step-Stool - https://www.google.com/search?q=small+colapsable+step-stool&ie=&oe=
- Handy Bar - https://stander.com/product/3001-handybar/
- More gift ideas - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-net-blog/2017/december/memics-safe-gift-guide
Does your back hurt? Is work literally a pain in your neck? Find out from MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics Allan Brown if workplace ergonomics could be the culprit to some of your most common aches and pains. Good ergonomics is fitting the work to the worker, not the other way around. If you sit down at a workstation or desk or sit in a new vehicle and you don’t adjust anything, then you have to adapt yourself to the machine or tool. If you don’t make adjustments, then you may be exposing yourself to unsafe situations and blind spots. Pete Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. Does your back hurt? Is work literally a pain in your neck? On today's episode, we're gonna find out if workplace ergonomics could be the culprit to some of your most common aches and pains. The Safety Expert podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leading worker's compensation provider based on the East Coast. A new episode of the podcast drops every two weeks featuring interviews with leaders in the field, top executives, MEMIC staff and other industry experts discussing how safety applies to all aspects of our lives. I'm your host, Peter Koch. And for the past 17 years, I've been working for MEMIC as a safety expert within the hospitality and construction industries. What I realized is safety impacts every part of each position that you have or tasks that you do. Yeah, sure, you can get lucky, but there's just no way to be successful in the long term without safety. There was a time when I believed that safety was important, but it was something extra that had to be done for those most dangerous jobs and in some cases an unnecessary concern that would slow you down. The realization that a safe job is also a productive job is when it came when I was clearing ice from towers here one winter in New England. The tools that I had to keep me from falling also allowed me to work hands free in a better position and with a lot less fatigue during the shift than some of my co-workers. So, as the shifts rolled on, I got more done. I didn't go any faster. I didn't just slow down as fast and was able to move more confidently in the environment. And it was a few years later that I realized that if we had the same tools and training, that level of productivity could have been multiplied. So, for today's episode of putting the person at the center of work or industrial ergonomics, I'm going to speak with Al Brown, the director of ergonomics at MEMIC, to better understand what ergonomics is and how it impacts our business. Al has been with MEMIC for more than a decade and helping hundreds of businesses get a handle on ergonomics in the workplace. So, Al, welcome to the podcast today.
Al Brown: Thank you Pete. Happy to be here.
Pete Koch: Awesome. I really appreciate you coming down. Today we wanted to focus on ergonomics in the industrial environment. So manual material handling, order picking and even housekeeping. But before we get into all those topics and unpack ergonomics, I want you to just give us a little bit of your history here at MEMIC and how you got to where you are as the Director of Ergonomics.
Al Brown: Sure, Pete, thanks. I'm actually a physical therapist with a safety background and started onsite industry prior to being at MEMIC, which we when we were at industry, we would often go and they were manual material handling industries, mostly shipyards, retail, distribution centers. And the clinic was there. And if someone had an injury, we would often walk back with the person to the job to look at where they felt they were having problems. So sometimes we would re-engineer and we would analyze it and then re-engineer out that particular task or modify it or educate the person a better way to do it then we'd do the treatment. It was very successful, and it seemed to be a win, win, win for everybody involved. That led me to Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Company and who partners with industry, and I felt the skills that I had learned in my previous life as an onsite physical therapist were well tailored for this type of industry. And it's great because we do partner with industry and we do get to go into industry. Look at, you know, there might be high exposure in particular area and we just have a different set of eyes. So, I tend to look at things from a physiological standpoint. We have a lot of safety professionals onboard. Sometimes I have to defer to them about safety issues, but I tend to look more at the human being and the ergonomics of work environments. And that's what has led me to where I am today.
Pete Koch: To where you are right here today at the podcast. So, you talked about ergonomics. Let's define ergonomics. So, what is it? And then can ergonomics be tied to worker discomfort or pain in the workplace?
Al Brown: Sure. I mean, ergonomics, the term ergo it's looking at work and the mechanics of work from the human perspective. What are the tolerances of a human being? What are the reach distances? When you look at, for example, human beings, probably 5'1" to 6'2" represent about 90 percent of the population. Anything outside that becomes an outlier and so design a lot of times within the workplace is for that range of folks. Look at clothing, you know, you get outside that range and it becomes extra tall or petite. Look at anything, look at door design in terms of people going in and out. Old homes have very short doors because there wasn't really a standard. Now there's a standard so that the majority, 99.9 percent of the population can go through the door without ducking. So, this has been it actually started with Department of Defense looking at tool and equipment and aircraft design because of issues they had, and it has morphed into more things. Another example is going down the interstate, you'll see a green and silver sign because that's the best unlit colors for the human eye to see. So again, these are all a little subtle inroad of ergonomics, but we tend to overlay it within the industry where we look at what are the tasks at hand, what are the critical demands of that job? How do we measure those and are things that are they outside the range of tolerance for the human being? And we understand that tolerance with human beings and there are things we can do to bring it back inside the tolerance level, be it automating or just changing the process.
Pete Koch: So really the effect on the job, on the human person, and then how to redesign the job or the task or the environment they're in to fit that person.
Al Brown: Right. We're trying to fit good ergonomics, is fitting the work to the worker, not the other way around. Oftentimes, you know, you sit down at the desk, you sit down in a manufacturing plant, you sit in a car. If you don't adjust anything, then you the worker has to adapt to the machine or the tool or whatever and often creates awkward postures, awkward reaches. Where in fact, good ergonomics, that tool should be fit to you, just like in your car. You adjust the seat, you adjust the mirror, you prepare yourself to drive so that you can safely see and drive and reach the gas pedals in a comfortable position.
Pete Koch: So, when we look at the design, either designing the task or environment specific to the person who's doing it or providing adjustments to allow the worker to make those adjustments real time, like the car that you would.
Al Brown: With adjustments, you can meet a greater range of people.
Pete Koch: Yes.
Al Brown: Unfortunately, like in the old manufacturing plants, the tool and die.
Pete Koch: One size fits all.
Al Brown: 1940 equipment, it's one size fits all. So, it's a bit more of a challenge when you deal with older tooling. Modern day tooling, we tend to see a lot more of that adjustability to adapt to different statured workers.
Pete Koch: Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up. One of my first jobs back when I was 14 years old, I was working in a manufacturing facility and my job was to bring the dyes from the dye room onto the factory floors, to switch the dyes out for the metal stamping process. And so, all the machines, it's one size fits all, but it wasn't one-person size. So, you had someone like yourself who's more than 6' standing at a particular task and the work is down by their belt. And then you've got the little old lady who is there; who is 5'6" or 4'6" right, just there. And her shoulders, I remember this specifically cause it just a wonderful woman. Really kind of was friendly to me, which was not what most of the people were when the little 14-year-old kid is tooling around the factory floor. But her shoulders were at the level where the tooling was happening. So her arms were basically, she spent most of her day with her hands at shoulder level. I didn't realize then what an issue that could be. But now I can't even imagine spending even half an hour or 15 minutes, 10 minutes with your arms at that level. There'll be a lot of fatigue and challenge with it.
Al Brown: Energy expenditure for her was exponentially much higher than someone where the tooling or the work area was at elbow level.
Pete Koch: And that wasn't all that long ago even. So, there's been leaps and bounds made in a lot of the new machines that are out there. But we still find a lot of tools, a lot of machines that have been built in the ‘50s or the ‘60s or the ‘70s and even in the ‘80s where they're not as adjustable. So we're gonna get into some of those pieces. So, let's talk about risk factors, because without understanding risk factors, I think it's hard to understand how a particular machine or a task would affect the worker negatively. So, what are some of the risk factors that can cause or, if you can notice them, predict future discomfort?
Al Brown: Risk factors can range. You know, there's exertion. Heavy lifting that one is obvious. And the perception is that's the cause for a lot of things. And in fact, as we go through this podcast you may discover that everything is not what it appears, that it's not necessarily always the heavy lift, but exertion, repetition. How often am I doing this task, how often is it repeated? In the manufacturing world it's not one widget, it can be a thousand widgets an hour. So just repeated motions, so that you create fatigue and exhaustion, muscle tendons, ligaments. So, it's exertion, repetition.
Pete Koch: Force was there.
Al Brown: Yes, kind of exertion. Awkward posture, yes. So extended awkward reaches, just like the person you were talking about earlier in the podcast where it was an extended awkward reach. So, when the body is in those awkward positions, you can have a considerable reduction in the ability to generate force. So that shoulder on that the woman you were talking about earlier, she's going to have to generate a lot more force or a lot a greater percentage of her force that she can generate in that awkward position in order to do the task compared to the person that was standing in more of a working neutral position. So, the force requirements or the percentage of force required is much greater for her. So, she's almost maxing out every time she does something at that level. So, you're looking at exertion, awkward postures, repetition. Those seem to be the high sort of risk factors that we are looking at when we look at a work environment.
Pete Koch: So, when I look at my job as I'm looking through a whole cycle of the tasks that I'm going to do. So, start to finish. I'm looking at so where are the person's position versus where the work is positioned? How many times they have to do that? How much force do I have to exert in order to get it done, whether it be pressing a button or moving a raw material into a machine, removing the raw material from or produce machine material from the machine into something else. All those pieces that you're looking at.
Al Brown: All those pieces you're looking at, you know, where's the workflow? Where is it? You know, we try to get folks to keep work between knee and shoulder.
Pete Koch: Okay.
Al Brown: And we'll probably get into that a little bit later on. But you try to keep that sort of your power zone. That's where when we look at a lot of the research that's been done out there, trying to keep that work in that area is of greater benefit. When you start to go beyond that, for example anything, I always go into industry and say, "Don't put anything on the ground that you don't have to." Placing it on the ground, particularly if it's a light thing, our perception is no big deal. I'll throw it on the ground, and I'll bend over to pick it up. And bending over to pick it up, oftentimes it's a bend at the waist, a reach down and a pickup with the hand. And you, when if you can visualize this, the buttock and the head end up on the same plane for the reach down to that object. And we refer to that as the butthead maneuver because the forces on the back often exceed what the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health deems sort of a safe limit. And all you're doing is picking up a small object. It might be a pen, piece of paper, the scrubbing bubbles if you're in housekeeping, whatever the case may be. That you don't realize it's the little things that cause a lot of the increased force on the low back.
Pete Koch: And that movement to the ground to pick something up from the ground is habitual, really. That movement, the bend from the waist to lift something from the ground comes more from habit. Because if we were going to lift something that was very heavy. So you take that piece of paper or the squirt bottle or the spray bottle, that might weigh a pound more or less. That's a pretty easy pick. But, if I'm going to pick up 60 pounds of concrete or one hundred and twenty pounds of something, or a bag of whatever from the ground, I'm going to do more because I have to exert more force to do that. But what you're saying is that you can exert just as much force on your back picking up something small when you've got the butthead effect going on. So, your head and your butt are in line and I go to lift something light up, I'm putting a lot of force on the lower portion of my back and all I'm doing is picking up that one piece. And I'm doing it from habit. So heavy thing I might think about more, but that little thing that I don't think about that I'm going to bend over at my waist to pick up is what's really going to cause the bigger problem, especially over time, is that correct?.
Al Brown: Right. And again, we're always searching for that big thing. And your perception's right that typically when there's a big thing to lift, people are more cautious about lifting because in their mind, it's a heavy object. So, I have to be careful how I do this. Not everybody is good at proper lifting technique. But we all pause when we look at that thing and say that's gonna be heavy. And we either choose to lift it and we get pretty close to using good technique or we get help, or we use a device to lift it. The little object where everybody is guilty of just bending over to pick that up. Think of this. How many times when you're making a bed? Do you think a housekeeper just takes some sort of reaches out with her arm to sling the sheet out over like a double, or a queen, or king-sized bed instead of walking around the other side? It's just really quick and easy. But that's a huge load on the back and the shoulder, because you know what? In today's work environment, we probably see backs and shoulders kind of lead the way in regard to injuries. So, both of them are exposed to these awkward heavy loads; shoulder more, you know, when you're working overhead, backs, the little things.
Pete Koch: Mm hmm. And statistically, shoulders and backs from a soft tissue injury are not only leading the way from a frequency standpoint, but they also are quite expensive over time for our clients and also for the individual and not so much expensive from a cost perspective. But it could have an expense on the pain side for someone and not just at work, but it could be a home. If my back hurts all the time, my quality of life starts to change substantially. I know a number of my friends have sustained back injuries, whether it be through work or play, and they've gone through periods where they've had chronic back pain for weeks or months at a time. And it changes personality, it changes how they work or their job and how they can work at their job. But it also changes what they like to do outside of work as well. So I think it's important to understand these risk factors and not just because it's a workplace thing, but it's because if we can protect what we have, we can do more for longer with what we have and the things that we enjoy, whether it be being outdoors hiking, whether it be something active or even inactive. If you have low back pain, sitting in a chair watching a movie can be excruciating over the long term.
Al Brown: It's funny, you know, you talk about back pain and again, going back to that, little things can cause back pain. Education is so important when it comes to those types of injuries, shoulders and back. And again, that's kind of one of the key elements of when we go into industry, we try to work with industry to understand that, you know, for example, a back injury, you sitting will place more force on a back than you and I standing right now. And it can be up to 50 percent more force on a back in terms of disk pressure, if we were to measure that. If you look at some of the studies done by Al Makinson and the folks in the past, they actually have documented that, you know, sitting places more force on the back. So, you going home with a sore back and thinking, I'm going to sit down and watch a show -- "Oh, my back hurts worse." If you don't understand those nuances, you can actually make things worse.
Pete Koch: Yeah, because that that connection between if it hurts, rest it, I mean, it's been driven in our heads for years and years. So, it's good that you go to the doctor. Something hurts. Oh, so take some time, rest, come see me, take some ibuprofen or whatever that is, and the rest is going to be good for you. But many times the rest that he's talking about or she's talking about as a doctor is not that my back hurts after work and when I go spend the rest of the day seated to take the load off, because what we're you're actually saying is that if it's a back issue and it's a disc issue, you're putting more force on your back sitting in that chair, or sitting on that sofa, or on that couch, or in that movie theater seat than you would be standing or even walking.
Al Brown: 30 to 40 years ago the treatment of choice was, you know, if you had a rupture or herniated disc was to put you to bed for two weeks. And the problem was that, you know, again, we live in a world of gravity and you take muscle tissue, tendons, ligaments and all those structures in your body and they actually begin to decondition. So, after two weeks, the core musculature, which actually gives our body stability and the back stability have become weakened. So, if you can think of a radio tower and these tethered wires that stabilize it, we've actually loosened those all up, so we've actually made the back more prone to further injury or recurring injury down the road. So today we've gotten smarter and people are much more active, and they begin to understand that, you know, the mechanism of injury and the things that kind of help improve health and start to allow for the rehabilitative process.
Pete Koch: Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about lifting. Because lifting is a task that gets done in every job. It doesn't matter what it is. You could be seated at a desk and you will lift something. It could be the telephone, it could be the stapler, it could be the mouse, whatever it is. It could be a book off a shelf. Or you might be in manufacturing and you're lifting material or you're in housekeeping and your lifting laundry or product or whatever. There's lifting everywhere. So, you'd mentioned before that there are possibly safe lifting limits that one could follow, but depending on how you lift, it might not be quite so safe. So, can you speak to that a little bit, what those safe lifting limits might be and how it all works.
Al Brown: Right. Sure. I mean, it's based on science. Tom Waters back in '91 with a host of other folks, Vern Putz and then some contributing from the folks at University of Michigan, Chaffin, Tom Chaffin, Armstrong collaboratively put together what's called the NIOSH lifting equation. And about 3 years later, they had the modified NIOSH lifting equation. It's an equation you can go online and Google NIOSH lifting equation, but it's based on science and in that equation there's 51 pounds, which is the load constant that is started. And I don't to want to get too deep into the weeds on the science here, but, as industry out there has kind of grabbed on to that number and said that's a safe amount of weight for workers to lift. And here's the deal. It's the load constant that starts the equation. And they figured that that was 99 percent of male, 75 percent of female could safely handle that if these particular factors exist and those factors without, again, getting too deep in the weeds. It's a perfect lift. It's only 10 inches from our center of gravity. It only goes up or down 10 inches. There's no rotation, there's good coupling blah blah blah. That doesn't exist in industry. So, the way the equation works is we begin to look at the other factors. Where's the starting of the lift? Where's the termination of the lift? Is there good coupling, is there rotation in the body? What's the distance? Vertical distance? Horizontal distance? So how far my travelling with it. How far out am I placing it. You know, think about reaching across a pallet and placing something way across a pallet. Well, that's going to be a 20 to 25 inch reach across a pallet to lay a box down. With those increase in critical demands or those increase in exposure, you begin to take that 51 pounds and chisel away at it. And they do that by, they have multipliers. So, it's something less than one. And obviously the higher the critical demand, the smaller that multiplier and it starts cutting that number down so that we can actually look at a job task, put it through the NIOSH lifting equation. And, you know, it might be a 35-pound object. But really, when we get done with the equation, it says that lift is only safe for 99 percent of males and 75 percent of females if it's 14 pounds.
Pete Koch: Wow.
Al Brown: So, if you think of the 51 pounds, it's probably not a good indicator of what everybody can do within a working environment. You know, NIOSH has actually come out and looked at the healthcare industry and said, "Let's call it 35 pounds." And again, I'm not totally happy. I mean that's a great number. And you know, a good way to feel that is to go out and buy a bag of cat litter or dog food that's in and around that and have people handle it so they can get a sense of what 35 pounds is. It's still Pete, if you think about it, when we go back to that butthead maneuver, that was just a pencil that we were picking. So, it had nothing to do with the weight. So sometimes we get locked in on this weight, but it's those other factors that will impact what is a safe limit. So, you know, just a rule of thumb for industry is to think about nothing below your knees, nothing above the shoulders and 35 pounds. But still, there are other issues you have to think about within those ranges. How far is a person reaching when they're putting things down, that kind of stuff.
Pete Koch: So, it comes really it comes down, what affects that 50 pounds or a safe lifting? 51 pounds for safe lifting is all about posture. And it seems that the more awkward the posture is, the harder or the less weight that you are able to lift safely for that 99 percent of males and 75 percent of females. Can you look at it as simply is that? Like the more awkward the posture is, the less weight you're gonna be able to do move safely?
Al Brown: Yeah, that's probably it. You know, and again, it's better to keep it simple when you're thinking about it. So, the more awkward the lift, the less force, the less mass, the less weight that that person can safely handle. And you know, you begin to look at, if you're a, an owner of a company, you know, a quick walk or just a walk through and start looking at the job tasks within your industry, as you know, who's what stuff are you putting on the ground? You know? And that's a good start. And then how much is that stuff that I'm putting on the ground? What weight is it? And can I raise that thing up? And it might be simple as instead of having a single pallet on the ground, you double the pallet. So now instead of four to six inches, we're eight to 12 inches, you might triple the pallet so that it actually gets up into that 15 inch about knee height. That's a cheap, easy way to do it. Obviously looking at pallet lifts or a more automated way. But, you know, you start to look for those exposures within industry.
Pete Koch: So that concept of keep it off the ground, keep it below your shoulders in that lift. So, I'm looking at lifts between my knees and my shoulders is a good, again, simplistic way to try to limit some of the awkwardness of the posture and how things are going to function. So that's two good pieces. But it's not always the lift from low or high, but it's the reach out that can also cause some of the challenges. So how far can I reach? Where's my, where's my reach to keep it safe?
Al Brown: Yeah. I mean, if you think of the primary power zone, we actually have a resource in a chart that actually shows kind of a power zone. You can actually go online too and just Google manual material power zone and you'll actually see it's a graphic. But when you're looking at it arm extended, so staying within that 10 inches from your core out to where your hands are approximated on the thing that you're holding. That's kind of the real power zone. You can extend beyond that maybe out to 15 or so inches. But again, it depends on the mass and weight that you're handling. So, staying within that power, almost elbows at your side is probably the safe zone. So, think about just flexing your elbows and coming to your shoulders or extending down to your knees where your elbows kind of stay in close to your core. That's your safe zone to work. Soon as you go out a little further, it turns into a yellow zone. And then finally, you get out to the no go zone, which is the red zone.
Pete Koch: How does, and I might be getting a slightly off topic here, but how does posture, human posture, affect that? So, you know, if I have that forward head posture or I have a slouched posture, how does posture affect my ability to safely lift that that load?
Al Brown: Well, think of it this way. You see a forward head posture. For example, if you take your head, which weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 to 15 pounds for every 10 degrees, you tip your head forward. So think about looking at your eye, your cell phone. And we all tend to look down at our cell phones. So, for every 10 degrees, you tip your head forward, you add 10 more pounds of force. So with a head that's tipped forward, 30 degrees, which is kind of almost like your chin down on your chest a little bit, looking down at something instead of 13 pounds, we now have 43 pounds of force that we are adding to our axial skeleton and our ability to hold. So now we've loaded our back up with that head position. And then if we round our shoulders and bring our core forward, we add that much more force and we haven't even initiated a lift. So again, going back to just body posture and where you're located, you can create a huge load on your back just from your body position. Think of a kitchen. Go to the kitchen, and if you look at the bottom of your cabinet in the kitchen, there's a toe kick space and I'm not sure where that was invented, but the toe kick space allows you to almost belly up to the counter and your toes can go in that extra three to four to five inches. And that allows you to stay upright as long as the counter fits you. If it didn't exist, you would have to lean in on that counter. And you've already loaded your back up simply because of that minor little difference. So toe kicks, have a significant role in the world of happy back in the kitchen.
Pete Koch: And you can take that into the industrial kitchen also. And I know going into some industrial kitchens, so I have my prep table and I've never been in a kitchen that has enough space. To put things so sometimes you find things that are actually stored at floor level, so you can't get that close because that toe kick space is being filled with something. Stuff.
Al Brown: Stuff. If we go, even at a workbench people end up using that area underneath for storage and all of a sudden, they have no toe kick space. So just because of that storing of things there, you've already loaded your back up simply because you have to lean forward into the job.
Pete Koch: And that's a pretty interesting part to think about, like most people wouldn't think. They always think about height, like what's the height of the workplace that I have to work at and how close I can get to it makes a big difference, too. Because it will change my ability to stand up straight versus just that little forward posture and even just a few degrees forward as you mentioned, you know, how many pounds of force was it again if I tip my head for again?
Al Brown: For every 10 degrees, it's 10 pounds of force, just for the head. We haven't talked about the weight of the core, because those measurements are taken, if you go back and look at the Natkinson research those forces are taken at like L5, S1, the low back area. So, anything that you tip forward of your pelvis, above your pelvis, impacts that disc pressure and like I said it will go up exponentially because we live in a world of gravity, so it's not a one to one relationship. It's like a game of Jenga. The further out you start moving those blocks, the more unstable the stack. And sooner or later, it's going to fall over.
Pete Koch: Yeah, that's interesting. If you think about it that way, you're really working like a machine, like a crane, and you take a skilled crane operator, he's always or she's always, take into consideration how far out do I have to have the stick? What's the weight of my load? Where does it have to swing to and move to so that they stay within the capacity of their crane or their machine? And we as humans don't often think about all those pieces. We just think about how heavy is it? Not so much where it's located first. how do I muckle onto it? How high do I have to lift it? How far do I have to go with it? We just take for granted that our body can do it because we might have done it before. But as we get older and I think across the nation where we're finding that our workforce is aging, we are as we get older, we struggle to do the same amount of things or lift the same amount or recover faster from doing something incorrectly that we might have been able to do before.
Al Brown: Our physiology's slower. And it's as we as we age, we also bring along comorbidities to define that term those are the aches and pains. That's the sprained knee from hiking the hill. That was the old football injury. That was the cheerleading, "Oh I hurt myself." So those aches and pains that kind of come along with life, heal but there's always a little bit of scar left over. And when we start to get to that point in life where we're we consider ourselves aging, and that seems to be a moving target nowadays for me, I'm trying to push it back as far as I can. Those aches and pains come with you and our posture indicates it will impact those comorbidities, too. So, the more awkward or, or forward, or leaning posture as we age, we tend to drop down a bit the more you will impact the joints, ligaments and tendons in your body because they weren't originally built for that posture. So now something has to take up those forces and that's when you begin to get chronic pain and discomfort and strain muscles sooner and easier and tear muscles and tendons and ligaments. So, we're a little bit more exposed. So, when you're taking care of the body and trying to maintain that body in an upright position. Again, it's like that crane, you've got a preventive maintenance. It allows you to do more. But still at the end, gravity wins. It's undefeated. So, you're gonna go. So, you're trying to compress your comorbidities as much as you can in the manual material handling world.
Pete Koch: So, let's look at those risk factors again. So, exertion, repetitive motion or movements and then awkward postures. So, when you're in the workplace, give me some examples of where you see these either three combined into something that could be very challenging for somebody or just where you might see these in the workplace.
Al Brown: Well, you know, it can be a low work area, you know, where you have a tall worker that comes in and they might be doing auto parts, where they're reaching and then they have a box to the side of them that they're stacking these parts and the box might be a little too high. So, or it's just in an awkward position. So, they have to kind of reach up and over the box and place it. And then when the box is filled, they close it up, they pick it up, they turn around and then they put it on a pallet which is on the ground. So, we've got we've got, you know, awkward posture. Static standing, reaching for the parts, to rotating, to put it in a box, up and over with a shoulder being exposed to kind of an up awkward overreach. And then you finished with this I pick it up, it's a heavy lift and I place it on the pallet. So, I'm very exposed. Now, let me tell you something. Just a little physiology about disks. Disks are, we hear about slip disks. That's actually a bad term. Disks don't slip. They are well attached to the vertebrae above and below. The vertebrae are the bony structures, and through those bony structures go your nerves. And there's lots of tendons and ligaments that hold this all together. And the discs are well attached. However, they are the weak link. And so, they're a little bit like a jelly doughnut is always used as an example. So, with bending forward slightly, you will create sort of a forward compressive force on the front side of the disc and a forcing that gel inside the disc sort of posterior backwards. And behind that disc are your nerves that kind of go to different parts of your body. So, you can create sort of a bulging to that disc. A natural bulging. And that's why you, me and everybody else, when we've been sitting or even leaning, we have this, some of us will have this natural instinct to stand up and do sort of a backward bend. And all we're trying to do is reset that gel back where it belongs. And with industry, we try to encourage workers to do that. We do that with drivers that are delivery drivers or truck drivers because they're sitting. They change that disc and it takes about anywhere from three to 10 minutes to get that disc to reshape, because you're at great exposure to a to a back injury if you just go and muckle on and pick something up. So that person I was talking about earlier that is doing the auto parts, they're bent forward, they're loading the disc, they're placing in the box. And then the next thing they do, they turn around and they pick the box up and put it on a pallet and they go, "Oh, my gosh, it was the heavy lift." And it wasn't so much a heavy lift, but it was that awkward leaning forward posture that prepared the disc for injury.
Pete Koch: Yup. The movement of the inside of the disc or that gel inside the disc, as I sit forward it's not a quick change all the time, So the longer I stay in one position the longer it takes for that to then reset.
Al Brown: Physiologically you have do have a limit. I mean it's like I said three, maybe five minutes. We usually encourage folks to go longer because what happens is sitting flattens your there's an inward curve in your low back. So, it actually flattens that curve and that changes the physics of the compression on that disc. And again, it depends on all the comorbidities you bring along for that disk and how weak the back wall is. But let's call it a healthy disk, when you stand up, that curve doesn't just spring back to its normal shape. It will as you stand and walk around just because it's resetting, it's the gel is re-shifting. And it's not a like a water filled water balloon in there that just squirts around, it takes a moment for it to change. So, it's a slow process, but it resets. But you can assist that by doing a little bit of a back extension. A lot of times we, we encourage that with like I said, drivers or folks that are in manufacturing, where they're doing a lot of stuff in front of them, that during that stretch break they sort of reset their back.
Pete Koch: And I think the key right there is it's a stretch break. So, it's a break from doing what's in front of you. Again, the repetition to help change the effects of the awkward posture. So if I'm gonna be in that forward position for a while, if I can't change what's in front of me, then before I go to lift the heavy part, I need to take a not just a moment, but I need to actually take maybe a minute or two and reset before I go to lift that.
Al Brown: Yup and in that case, you know, here's an example of working with a company to realize that they're going to say, I can't wait three or five minutes for them to move that box. So that's where you look at can I automate. Is there a spur? Can we roller conveyor once it's filled? Can we just kind of push it off? So, we eliminate that risk factor because you can't you know, you don't want to interrupt production. You don't, you know there's a fallacy that ergonomics actually creates a slowdown in the world of production, but in fact, it sort of enhances it and minimizes the risk. But in that particular case, you have to find that kind of a solution. For example, the roller conveyor or, you know, a vacuum lift or whatever to kind of move the box up and out.
Pete Koch: Well, you know, talking about that part like ergonomics slows it down so that story I told at the beginning of the podcast about clearing ice from towers one winter. So, the task we had a group of people we were clearing ice from towers, we were up anywhere between 30 and 60 feet in the air working in the wintertime. The environment was very slippery. So, we're in a full body harness and we have fall protection. And so, in my kit, I have work positioning that allows me to connect into something, lean back into it and sit into a good spot and then work hands free with it and not having to muckle onto something, where my co-workers didn't. They either leaned into their fall protection equipment, which you don't want to do. Or they had to hold on with one arm and do all the work with the other arm. So, what happened throughout the day is that I got more done because I had less fatigue throughout the day. So, production can come from many different ways. Either it's a solution that allows the worker to exert less throughout the day, therefore getting more done throughout the day. Or it eliminates or reduces one of those risk factors and allows the production to move more quickly. Like a roller conveyor instead of a pick and a lift. Anytime you can put something on a piece of machinery and move it from point A to point B, it's gonna be a lot more efficient than it is if you're going to give it to somebody to move it someplace else.
Al Brown: And think of it, you're just more efficient, you're working more efficiently. So, your fatigue factor is a lot less compared to that person that's struggling and lifting and kind of reaching around. They're going to use much more force or much greater percentage of their force that they can generate. We always do a grip dynamometer; it measures your grip strength. So, we'll have someone in their power zone grip and for ease of math and for everybody listening. Say the person can generate 100 pounds of force and then we'll have them do a reach across the table, maybe an awkward position of the wrist and we have them squeeze that grip dynamometer again. And often, more often than not, that person will generate only half the force that they can in their power zone. And it's not because they gave us less effort, that was their maximum grip because of that awkward position. So, they lose half of their force. So, if they're doing a task that requires 50 pounds of force when they're in their power zone, that's half of their ability to generate force. So, they're much more efficient. They have to reach because they're in an awkward position and reaching across the bed to make the bed. They're reaching around to remove the ice, that's a maximum grip every time. So, they're exerting everything they've got every time. So, their fatigue factor sets in much quicker. Get clumsy. They start to trip and fall. They make mistakes. Boom: injury occurs. So that efficiency factor and the ability, it's all about positioning the person, whether they're on a tower or in front of a manufacturing plant, how can we get that product again, fitting the work to the worker into their power zone? And again, another quick example. I worked in an industry that was a wood manufacturer and they would bring in these 50-pound bins, back to that 50-pound number again, and we watched raw product to finished product. And in that process, those 50-pound bins got picked up and set on the floor 14 times. So those are 14 opportunities to create back injury. Plus, if you just did a time study on "I Pick It Up and I Set it Down". The amount time they spent doing that, lifting up, setting down, they were spending a lot of wasted time, non-productive time that was high risk time. So, we actually got to the point where we created a roller conveyor where this product would just stay at the same working level and those 14 lifts went away.
Pete Koch: Yeah. Not to mention the fact that you start doing the math and, you know, 14 times 50, you start thinking about, all right, I'm going to I'm going to go work out today. I'm going to go lift that 50-pound dumbbell or whatever, 14 times like that's a lot of weight -- at work. Laundry, picking up a 50-pound bag of laundry from the floor 10 or 15 times because I'm not putting it in a place where I don't have to lift it from the floor. Or raw product or completed product, the more times you handle it, like you said, the less efficient it is overall for lean manufacturing. But also, it takes away from the person's capacity throughout the day.
Al Brown: Yeah, fatigue. I mean, it's just it's energy. Housekeeping. You know, the butthead maneuver, if you go back to the butthead maneuver and typically, if you're looking at an average individual and they're bending down and it's an extended reach, they can generate up to a thousand pounds of force inside that disc. Now, in the NIOSH lifting equation, sort of references 770-inch pounds as kind of a safe force that's tolerable by the back, so you’re reaching a thousand pounds of force. So, if I'm a housekeeper and I know we've worked together with a housekeeping company, and they're in condos and they put things on the floor. Every time they needed something; they'd bend over to pick up that thing. And if that was 30 times in the day, that's 30,000 extra inch pounds of force on the back, that if I had just taken that same object and placed it on a table, I've eliminated 30,000 extra inch pounds of force on the back that day.
Pete Koch: And that's, you talked about doing a time study. That same thing, doing a lifting study or a moment study when you're looking at the workplace throughout. Where are those times where you're putting something that's below your power zone or above your power zone? Because if I asked you, "Al, thanks for coming in today, I want you to lift a thousand pounds 30 times for me." You'd look at me and go, "There's no way I'm doing that. I'm going to find a different job"
Al Brown: Maybe if I warmed up
Pete Koch: Oh, possibly. But we're asking or inadvertently causing that same piece to happen with some of our workers. And no wonder that we get to the end of a long week or a long day or increased productivity or I've lost somebody on the shift for whatever reason, I have more work to do that you get a fatigue-related or repetitive motion style injury or cause to one of the workers. Where if we understood more about the effect of the work on the worker, we might be able to manage some of those risk factors.
Al Brown: Yeah, I mean, it's like I said, when we go into industry, that's one of the big things is we help industry sort of identify those. We actually have a little 10 tips for good manufacturing or manual material handling environment. So, you begin to look at those 10 parameters, you know, and you can begin to identify where the where the issue might be. And then that's where you might find your root cause and you back up and go, "OK, what can we do to make a change there?" I mean, that's always what we're trying to do. And we, sawzall and duct tape, we try to, you know, provide a solution that is low tech. Because obviously, people can't just throw hundreds of thousand dollars at a solution. But in the long term, you know, you may suggest robotics, you may suggest automation, you know, vacuum lifts. And those things can be worked in the capital budget over time. But prior to that, you know, we've got to find the low hanging fruit, or we've got to find the thing that we can do now to reduce that exposure. And let me just as a caveat here, or as an outlier, you know people go, "Can you teach them proper lifting?" And proper lifting is not going to solve bad ergonomics. It is not going to solve bad ergonomics. And sometimes I have to sit down and go, OK, we have to have a conversation because that's just not going to solve it. That's an administrative thing that you can teach. A proper lifting is a skill. Not everybody has it. Soon as you walk away, they're going to go lift it the way they're going to go lift. And you're better off to engineer out the problem. So, so proper lifting, you know, it looks great on paper. It sounds good when you do the presentation, but in reality, you're better off to address the ergonomics of it.
Pete Koch: So, it's one component that addresses the outlier that couldn't be managed by the engineering solution.
Al Brown: Yes. Yes.
Pete Koch: Hey, so let's take a quick break and we'll be back in just a moment with the Safety Experts podcast.
Pete Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. And today, we're talking with Alan Brown, Director of Ergonomics at MEMIC. And today, we're talking about industrial ergonomics and putting the worker center in the workplace. And so, let's jump back in with more questions. So, prior to the break, we've been talking about how ergonomic risk factors affect the worker. And we talked about repetitive motion and awkward posture, excessive reach and excessive force. So, talk to our listeners about how they might be able to evaluate their work area. So, if they're at a workspace right now, they're listening to this podcast through headphones and they're hanging out at their workspace or they're thinking about their workspace. It could be an assembly station. They could be order picking. They can be in a laundry space. They could be in a kitchen space. What would they look for? And then what might they be able to do to make some adjustments?
Al Brown: Sure. Pete, thanks. The very first thing is if you go back to that NIOSH lifting equation and you have folks handling weight beyond 50 pounds, that's a red flag. That's a good place to start and ask yourself, why are they handling 50 pounds? And is that a two-person lift? And if it's not that you need to reassess, why are we handling, what can we do to change the 50 pounds? Do we bring in smaller bags? You know, we think of like the beer brewing industry, where there are bags of hops that come in that are 50 pounds. Or flour, that has to be lifted into a vat. And in that particular case, if it's not going to be a two-person job, they actually are using, actually, this was a real-life assessment it was, where actually went to a vacuum lift. So the very first thing is if you're handling things greater than 50 pounds, you have to look at how can I bring that back to more of a 35 pound force or do I have to automate or find a mechanical way to handle that? There are all kinds of mechanical material handling devices out there. I think of barrels, barrel tippers, you know, those kinds of things.
Al Brown: The second thing is to add anything you're putting on the ground, stop putting it on the ground if you don't have to put it there. Go back to that wood manufacturing plant I talked about where they would put the 50-pound bin on the ground 14 times. So, don't put anything on the ground that doesn't have to go there. Use the knee as sort of a guideline that anything below the knee, ask yourself, "Why are we doing that and how can we get it above the knee?" And again, early on it can be stacking pallets to bring the load up. It can be something fancy like a pallet lift or you know, that will actually with a rotating top so you can load the pallet and you don't to reach across the pallet and spin it around. And then nothing above shoulder level. So, you go to that and we throw numbers at it, and again, looking at the average individual, think of 15 inches at the knees, nothing above 60 inches at the shoulder and 35 pounds in between.
Al Brown: So, when you start to find outliers in your industry that go beyond those critical demands, you have to ask yourself, is that an essential function of that job? And if it is, how can I change it? And if I can't change that weight, then mechanically I have to figure out how to move that. In the health care industry, in nursing homes and extended care facilities. Human beings are really starting to get much larger. We have bariatric units. We have folks that are 400, 500 pounds. And poor handles, no handles. So, we actually are very focused on using mechanical lifts. Now, now part of the issue there too, is you have to apply the belts and things and that can be those little things that causes back pains. They have to be more aware of those. So, in an industry, you have to look at where you're outside those critical demands. Housekeeping is another challenge. You know, getting folks educated about reaching across the bed because that when you reach across the bed -- here's one of these funny little awkward things -- when you bend forward at the waist and you reach out with your arm to pull the sheet up. Is that above your shoulder or below your shoulder?
Pete Koch: As I'm looking at you right now it's above your shoulder.
Al Brown: It's above your shoulder, right? And most folks don't realize that when they're bending over and they're reaching way out, that's actually above shoulder work. And it's actually provides greater force than if I was to stand straight up and reach above my head because I've at least got the game of Jenga lined up. And, you know, the forces are compressing me down through my axial skeleton. And when I reach across the bed, I'm that long extended crane and that's above my shoulders. So very inefficient. So, in that case, we can't change a bed configuration. So, you have to do some education and that becomes a two-person task. So, you'll look at situations like that. So, it depends on the kind of industry you're or you're in. Just moving product around. Take a look at the flow of your product and going from raw product to finished product. Is it a linear process moving through your industry or is it zigzagging all over the place? And if it's zigzagging all over the place, you're taking a lot of time to move stuff around that you probably don't have to and you're probably moving at multiple times. So how can we actually line up the process to minimize all that extra movement and risk of injury? And certainly, look at, you know, automation and the mechanical lifts that are out there because they've gotten very sophisticated. You might think that a bag of flour can't be vacuum lift. But it can. You know, it's amazing the stuff that you can do. Big awkward things might not be 50 pounds. I'm thinking of like a window, you know, but it's a big awkward thing that also is gonna create awkward postures to kind of pick it up and put your shoulders or your back in an awkward position or an inefficient position. So you might use a vacuum left to move that around. So, it depends on the thing you're doing. So those are some of the when you're walking through your industry or when you're first taking a glance at it. Think about that, 50 pounds. Am I exceeding that? I like 35. So, if you see things above 35 pounds, that's also a red flag for me.
Pete Koch: Well I think that's a that's a key point to bring up and even though 51 pounds, is that NIOSH Lifting limit, as we talked about before, there are so many factors that cut into that 50 pounds that don't make it 50 anymore. So, 35 is a much place.
Al Brown: 35's a much more realistic number.
Pete Koch: Because I have never seen anybody in a in a non-laboratory, you know, testing standpoint be able to pick up 50 pounds and keep it no more than 10 inches away from them and no more move at no more than 10 inches up and down and not twist with it. You always have to do something else like that. So, yeah, 50 pounds. Great place to start. But let's start at 35 because that's more realistic throughout anything.
Al Brown: And if you look at a lot of the research that's been done the past, I've always asked this question of the researchers, "What age were these workers?" Because oftentimes they're young college students that they, you know, volunteered to do this or get a little extra money for the research project. And I'm thinking that is not our workforce nowadays, particularly Maine. You know, we are the oldest workforce in the nation with an average working age of about 47.8 years old. So, you know, 35 pounds is much more realistic. And again, as we get older, we lift less and are less tolerant of those kinds of forces.
Pete Koch: And I think in a lot of the manual jobs and a lot of the jobs that that require someone to do lifting or reaching or those physical tasks, you're gonna find an older workforce regardless of what state you're in. The workforce as aging overall, not just in Maine, but overall. And we're finding that to be more of a challenge. So, yeah, I think just from an efficiency standpoint, it makes sense to think to think about it in that perspective. So again, kind of recapping so the, anything above 35 pounds we're really paying attention to and then location of where that product is. So where is it? And you referenced your knee and your shoulder as being those two pieces. What were the measurement that you had in there?
Al Brown: Well, I said 15 to 60, but that's the average worker, when you look at shoulder height, knee height. But to include all workers always think knee and shoulder, because if I have someone that's five foot one in that job, their knees are gonna be a little bit lower than someone that's 6’2”. And again, that 5'1" to 6'2", you know, that's going to be 90 percent of your workforce is going to fall between those two heights. If you have someone that's not 5'1" and they're less than you have someone greater than 6'2", you may have to make some accommodations simply because they are at the extremes. But you want to try to find, you know knee to shoulder is kind of what you're looking at. And you had mentioned it earlier on, Pete, in the podcast and that is adjustability. So, knee and shoulder, if your workspace has adjustability, I know at one of these large retail distribution center in the Freeport area, a lot of their work benches do height adjust.
Pete Koch: And I was thinking in that same example.
Al Brown: They walk in and the first thing they do is they adjust it to their stature.
Pete Koch: I’ve seen it happen actually; it was actually at one of the checkout stations that they had. There was a little guy who came in. He probably was, I don't know, maybe 5’4”. So pretty small in stature. And then the next person that came in was close to 6'4". So almost a two-foot difference. And when they came in, the first thing that the person did was not go right to work, but they adjusted the workstation to bring it up to. So, each person was working at the same level, but they adjusted the workstation. So great training on that, the company's part to instill it into the heads of their workers that this is where we expect you to work and we're providing you some tools in order to accomplish that and work to accomplish that.
Al Brown: And that's a that's a high level. I mean, when you get to adjustability, I mean, that's a company that's really forward thinking. And they've been, oh, 40 years kind of through this process, you know, as long as I've been involved and to current day. So that's been an evolution. So, you might have you know, you don't need to be that fancy, but that's where you would like to get where you could actually have a workspace that is adjustable that fits multiple statured individuals.
Pete Koch: And I think if that's your plan, as you begin to look at your workplace like that would be the ultimate thing to be able to adjust the work place or the workstation or the work area to the myriad of different workers that I have. If that's the goal, then you can always make incremental steps towards that goal. But if you don't start with that goal, then chances of you ever getting there, it might take you 40 or 50 years and that's not really functional. And as quickly as we move these days, you need to be more thoughtful as you're working towards those ergonomic solutions towards adjustability. So even though it is advanced, I think if you set that as the goal, then that would be you're more likely to achieve it than if you don't set it from it from the beginning.
Al Brown: And I'm going to tell you, one of the greatest resources you have is the worker. When I go into an industry, I go talk to the person doing the job task and ask them where the low hanging fruit is. What do you see as a solution or what would make this job easier? And they can often give me one through three bullet points that are like this would make this job a lot easier if I could do this. And enlisting that worker is invaluable. In instituting a change, because if I came in and just dictated a change, I might get some folded arms and that closed body posture looking at me going, I don't think so.
Pete Koch: That's not going to happen, you don't know my job.
Al Brown: If I collaborate and work with the worker, the change comes much easier. And also there's process improvement because they're going to try something, then they're gonna go back and go, you know, if we tweak this and that has been repeated time and time again through industry throughout the US that we've been working with. You go to that valuable resource at the front line.
Pete Koch: That's a really great point. That change is difficult for everyone. And when you change something at work that's been constant for a long time, it becomes very challenging regardless of how awkward or uncomfortable it is. So enlisting the person that will have to manage the change, to develop the change and to tweak the change. It helps with that productivity helps them become more comfortable as there is a great way to eliminate some of those change challenges that you're gonna have in the workplace. Fantastic. So, I think we've hit just about all the points that we wanted to make today. There's certainly a myriad of other concepts and discussions that we can have around industrial ergonomics, but I think we'll leave those for a different episode. So, I really do appreciate all those suggestions today about how to make changes in the workplace and industrial ergonomics. And we're going to wrap up today's episode with maybe some final comments from you about industrial ergonomics and how employers might help manage some of their challenges in the workplace.
Al Brown: Sure. You know in the news, if you listen to the news nowadays, everything is going to go to robotics. And as often as I've been out in industry, I haven't seen robots take over all the jobs. And the human factor is still there. And as long as the human factor is there and I think it will be there for a very long time, there is always going to be risk and exposure. And we have to know the limits of a human being. Know the limits of human physiology. And if you understand those and you work within those limits, you find that you actually will have a very efficient work environment that can be very productive and that workers can come in happy and go home happy without aches and pains. And a lot of times the pearls of wisdom that you share or enlist in your workplace, they can overlay those in the non-work environment, too. So, it's kind of a win, win, win. And robotics won't take every job. So, we're here to help out that that that human equipment.
Pete Koch: I think that's great. So, know the limitations, understand them and how they will affect your workforce is a great piece. And that ties right into the definition of ergonomics and how it fits in within industry. So, thanks Al for joining us today and to all of our listeners out there who have spent the hour with us. If you have any questions for Al or would like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast, email podcast at MEMIC.com. The podcast is presented by MEMIC, we are a leader in workers compensation insurance and a company committed to the health and safety of all workers. And to learn more about how MEMIC can help your business visit MEMIC.com. Don't forget about any of our upcoming workshops and webinars, and if you do, you can always go to MEMIC.com for a listing of topics and dates. And when you want to hear more from the safety experts, you can find us on iTunes or right here at MEMIC.com. And if you have a smart speaker, you can tell it to play the safety experts podcast and you can pick today's episode or a previous episode if you'd like. You can also enable the safety experts podcast skill on Alexa to receive safety tips and advice from any of our episodes. We really appreciate you listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know where they can find it and they can go right to their favorite podcast player and search for safety experts. Thanks again for tuning into the Safety Experts podcast. And remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast.
Resources/People/Article Mentioned in Podcast
- MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/
- Peter Koch -https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch
- Allan Brown - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/allan-brown
- US Department of Defense - https://www.defense.gov/
- NIOSH - https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/index.htm
- NIOSH Lifting Equation - https://ergo-plus.com/niosh-lifting-equation-single-task/
- University of Michigan - https://umich.edu/
- Alf Nachemson - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2200702/
- Tom Waters - https://www.cdcfoundation.org/blog-entry/thomas-r-waters-receives-niosh-lifetime-achievement-award
- Vern Putz Anderson - http://behavioral.cybernetics.cc/index.php/2-uncategorised/19-vern-putz-anderson
- Tom Armstrong - http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tja/ta.html
- Don Chaffin - https://bme.umich.edu/people/don-chaffin/
The Alzheimer's Association estimates that 16 million Americans provide unpaid care to people with dementia-related diseases. Special guest Dr. Heather McKay helps us recognize the common symptoms and behaviors that are caused by dementia, understand how the progression of dementia affects the someone's skills and abilities, and learn how to take specific actions to improve safety for both caregivers and those living with dementia. Heather has been named the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America’s “Dementia Care Professional of the Year” and collaborated with the National Association of State Veterans Homes, Armed Forces Veterans’ Homes Foundation, AMVETS Service Foundation the Air Force Sergeants’ Association to produce the award-winning caregiver training video series Dementia Care for America’s Heroes. Pete Koch: Hello, listeners, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. Today's topic will touch us all in some form and another, according to the W.H.O. more than 50 million people worldwide have dementia and there are nearly 10 million new cases every year. In the United States alone, 5.8 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's, which is a form of dementia. And by the year 2050, that number is expected to almost triple to 14 million. The Alzheimer's Association estimates that 16 million Americans provide unpaid care to people with dementia related disease. And I expect that many of you listening out there know someone have a loved one or are caring for someone with dementia. My grandmother passed just days shy of her 100th birthday from complications related to Alzheimer's disease, going from the matriarch of our family to not recognizing her daughter's grandsons, great granddaughters and finally becoming unresponsive in a matter of three years. Those years were full of challenges for my parents, who were the primary caregivers for my grandmother when they are no longer able to care for her medically. They placed her in a nursing facility. My mom would visit her every day and I recall when my family would come to visit, the person my grandmother would remember most easily would be my mom. Many times, my grandmother would look at us with a friendly, but really quizzical expression and turn to my mom and ask, Who have you asked to come visit me today? Very surprised. And there were other times when she would react even more surprised and sometimes frightened, when she would turn from my mom to see me standing on the opposite side of the bed where I'd been there for the last couple of hours, or turn to my mom and ask when they would be bringing her home. Even though we had to sell her home more than a year prior, because this disease is so pervasive and the onset can be pretty slow, stripping away the memory capacity and finally function. Many of us see it as a tragic natural part of the aging process. However, it's a disease and not a natural part of aging. And while many diseases extract a heavy price on the patient. Dementia is one that takes its toll on the patient caregivers and especially the family. It's a disease that keeps escalating as well. Between 2000 and 2017, deaths from heart related disease decreased by 9 percent, but the deaths from Alzheimer's alone have increased one hundred and forty five percent. And unfortunately, regardless of medical advances so far, there's no cure. So, while that may have been a pretty bleak picture, there's still hope there's new information and strategies to help us care for and understand this disease and its effects. And so, for that hope today to help us make some sense of dementia, its effects and offer some insight into the care strategies. Is Dr. Heather McKay. Dr. Mackay is an occupational therapist, dementia care specialist and international trainer and speaker. She provides caregiver, education and consultation on topics related to dementia and Alzheimer's care. In her research, Heather designed and tested a new educational program for dementia care teams, which facilitates teams resolving Real-World challenges and will be useful in developing a more effective dementia care workforce. She is a manager with partnerships for Health in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and has collaborated with the National Association for State Veterans Homes, Armed Forces, Veterans Homes Foundation and the Service Foundation for Air Force Sergeants Association to produce the caregiver training video series Dementia Care for America's Heroes, featuring family caregivers in the Long Island state Veterans Home. The veteran series received the 2015 National Caregiver Friendly Award in 2016, the Alzheimer's Foundation of America named Heather. Dementia Care Professional of the Year for her dedication and devotion to serving individuals living with dementia, their families, professionals and her community. In that same year, Heather collaborated with MEMIC to produce a webinar series titled The ABCs of Dementia: A Caregiver's Guide and our policyholders’ response to that training has been truly overwhelming. So, Heather, welcome back to MEMIC. And thanks for coming on to the podcast today.
Heather McKay: Peter, it's a treat to be with you and all your listeners. I'm hoping that they're both professionals and family caregivers listening today. And I will certainly be thinking about the countless folks that I've worked with in my consultation. But also, like you, I'm going to be thinking about my grandmother today. She lives for the better part of 15 years with the second most common type of dementia, vascular dementia. And like you, I kind of learned in that front row seat as a family. Caregiver and that always informs my storytelling. Thank you for such a nice introduction.
Pete Koch: Oh, you're welcome. And we're super excited to have you here. Really. And as we found in preparation for this podcast, they've been talking to a number of different people and it's truly amazing. I mean, the stats talk for themselves, or speak for themselves in the millions of people that are both caregivers and the millions of people affected with this disease. But personally, there's so many people around me that have a loved one or have parents who are caring for grandparents or children who are caring for grandparents or parents just around in this area that I had no idea until we started talking about this. And the video series that you did for MEMIC The ABCs of Dementia: A Caregiver's Guide that's actually received not just an overwhelming response, but people do talk about it. So, if they've seen it within their work, they may have taken some of that information home because they're caring for someone at home with it, too. So it really is a it's a broad topic with a lot of different types of diseases lumped underneath dementia. But it also has a wide net of effect on everyone.
Heather McKay: It does. And all of these caregivers that I've spoken with, be they professionals or family caregivers, have backed up the research and said, Heather, you know, the more we know about the disease, the more we understand why the person with dementia does what he does. Then the more ready or confident that we feel to tailor our support to actually match the person's changing skills and abilities. I'll give you an example. Caregivers have said to me in more than one way, this thing won't sit still for me. And what they mean, I know what they mean. When a husband came in and said that he was talking about his wife who has dementia and her communication, that seemed to fluctuate. Or he said sometimes it feels like it clicks, or I know I'm communicating with my wife because she understands, and she responds just like she always would. But he said sometimes it doesn't click. Sometimes it feels like she's not firing on all cylinders. And caregivers that are listening today are probably thinking of someone they know with dementia who seems on again, off again, or with good days and bad days. And it's a perfect example of something that when caregivers understand why that fluctuation happens, they can feel a little bit more prepared to support more or less at different times based on what they notice. For the gentleman sitting in the consultation visit that morning, I slid a piece of paper across the table, had two pictures of brains, one healthy brain, one with dementia, and he noticed that in the brain with dementia, it was sort of darker. And I was pointing to that darker color. To explain the fluctuations he'd noticed, I said simply just brain cells are sick before they're dead and a sick cell is unreliable, it'll fire for you one minute and quit you the next. He said That's exactly what I've noticed with my wife. And once he understood that those darker, unreliable cells were firing at different rates, sort of in different in different capacity between good days and bad days, he said. Now, I understand she has a billion fewer cells on a day that she's not feeling well vs. a day, you know, when she when everything is in line, you know, she's well-rested. She's had a good meal. Her medications are all at the right level. A billion sick cells are working for her then. It just makes me think about all of these caregivers that you've mentioned taken home bits of information from that MEMIC series to share with family members across the kitchen table because they're noticing good days and bad days. They've heard of this term called sundowning. Sundowning is when a billion sick cells closed shop when she's tired.
Pete Koch: Yeah
Heather McKay: And understanding that different times of the day can actually lead more or less support from those caregivers is just one example of folks learning about this disease to be better prepared to support the people they work for or their loved ones at home.
Pete Koch: Yeah. I remember vividly the pictures cause that picture that you reference sliding across the table to that gentleman there at the consultation of that same image is part of the video series. And that was a striking image to see the image of a healthy brain versus a brain with dementia and the size difference and the color difference between live healthy living tissue and sick cells on the other side. And it just makes a whole lot more sense when you can put it visually. That way, you can kind of get a look inside the person to see that that they don't have as much as we have to manage the normal ups and downs of life. We all have those ups and downs of life. You get up in the morning, you're not your best until you have your cup of coffee. Well. he person with dementia, the coffee is not going to help them much because they don't have the same capacity for change or management because of those sick cells.
Heather McKay: You got it. Yep. they're missing a whole lot of cells that as they die and sluff off of that brain with dementia. But those caregivers will still notice that after breakfast when her blood sugar kind of comes back up she seems to be better. And then that makes us think about how our brains work. You know, we know what it feels like to be on low blood sugar. You know, those are just little symptoms that your central nervous system is giving you when it's hard for you to concentrate, when you get that little empty feeling in your stomach or the headache starts to set in. Those are signs that you're running on empty and your central nervous system needs that blood sugar as a fuel to just live and work. Well, people with dementia are same they just have a billion, sick cells that are good for nothing on an empty tank. So, caregivers might notice those fluctuations between times of the day when blood sugar is spiking or dipping being much more dramatic. They'll also notice that in themselves, when stress goes up, brain function goes down. The same is true for a person with dementia. They just have a billion sick cells that will just close shop in a stressful situation. A lot of family members have told me as long as this daily routine runs on the predictable rhythm and we do things that are familiar to my loved one. Then I notice her stress level is lower. And she's a lot better able to do things. She's at her best. And when we see pictures like that produced in that MEMIC series, it's a strategy for me to show family members, people who don't have the same kind of medical training that I do to use pictures is a great strategy. So, I encourage folks to tap into that series if for nothing. But the pictures to help him talk about with their family members, help him talk about what they notice. That's a great strategy for a caregiver of any stripe.
Pete Koch: Fantastic. So, Heather, let's back up a little bit. And I'd like to ask you a little bit about how you came to specialize in dementia care, because there's just if you think about how many people are affected by this, there aren't as many people that have such a clear path as you about dementia. So how did you get into specializing in dementia care and becoming such an expert in it?
Heather McKay: Well, this story might sound familiar to a lot of health care workers. I am an occupational therapist by training. I started out as an occupational therapy assistant. I was working in the hospital enjoying my time with a team on an acute care in neurology unit, learning a whole lot about all kinds of neurological conditions and how that affected both patients, but also family members that I was needing in the hospital. At the same time, my grandmother living in western North Carolina in the Appalachian Mountains where I'm from, you can probably hear it in the accent. She was diagnosed with vascular dementia and those two lines of my life, professional and personal, merged at that time, I was understanding dementia from a granddaughter's perspective. I was watching my dad and his sister, my aunt, the primary caregivers for my grandmother, and having to go through some of the toughest decisions that our family has faced. At the same time, hearing a lot of stories at the bedside in the hospital from family members sort of travelling parallel paths. So, I think it's a blessing. It's a lucky strike for me when both my personal values and interests align with my professional career. I took off in the direction of dementia care at that time, worked my graduate school time, focused on Alzheimer's disease and working with the Alzheimer's Association, building out programs for professionals, but also consultation with family members because it seemed like to me the same information that I had in my professional training. Family caregivers needed as well. And we needed to be able to just talk about this disease and the challenges that these families were facing to help kind of put some science and solutions into those family members toolbox.
Pete Koch: That's a great story, and it is. Yeah, I talked to a lot of caregivers. My daughter is in nursing school and she started her actually her clinical rotation right now to get her associates, which is pretty awesome. But, you know, talking with her and my mother in law is a nurse and I have a sister in law who is a surgical tech. So, they all have something in their background that caused them to go further into nursing. It's not just the job. And I guess I hear that with you as well. Like this is not just a job. It has a lot of personal impact to you. Sounds like you found as well the things that you were learning through your schooling is so applicable to those people that you sit like that, don't have that education that have to care for someone in their you're able to bring that information to make it real to those lay caregivers who are out there caring for family members.
Heather McKay: It's been a goal of mine. I mean, to be able to sort of translate what's happening in the research and the literature around dementia care for the countless family members who are providing the majority of care in the home. I don't know if every listener realizes, but the majority of care is provided unpaid by family and friends in the home. We might all automatically think about, you know, doctors' offices, medical practices, hospitals, long term care facilities as all members of that blended dementia care team. And it's true. But the majority of the load falls on the shoulders of unpaid caregivers without a whole lot of medical training or background knowledge about this disease. So, sure, it's been sort of a mission of mine. And I considered a privilege to talk to family members about what's happening and in their loved one. I've also noticed in the research is starting to back us up on this family Caregivers who know their loved one well can actually be better detectives than even a doctor or a most sensitive assessment tools, because a family member will notice when their loved one is somehow different because they know their regular routine. They see patterns of change in a person in early stages of dementia can come into our office and ace an assessment with a little bit of adrenaline pumping through that central nervous system. And for a short period of time, ace, those tests making early detection even harder. So, prepping these family members to really tell us what they've noticed to help in the conversations with professionals that report from an informant. What that means is the story from a caregiver who knows the person well is still one of the most important pieces of a comprehensive assessment.
Pete Koch: Yeah, that's a fantastic point. And it's usually a relatively slow onset. And when there's memory changes, we all have memory issues like, I don't know, when was the last time you forgot your keys somewhere and couldn't find them? This morning was mine. Right? So, I don't know. Is that early stages of dementia? Ask my wife. Maybe she thinks so. But when we when we think about it, all those little memory changes for us as we get older. Sometimes you just take them for granted as no. Yeah. This is just the natural part of aging getting older. But when you understand more of the key points to look for and then are able to communicate those to a professional, you can have that early diagnosis and then treatment. Not so much. Well, maybe there is a treatment out there or will be soon that could be provided, but care can be changed. How you manage.
Heather McKay: Exactly.
Pete Koch: Conversations with those people because it's not just forgetting something, it's truly a progression of the disease.
Heather McKay: It sure is. And I want to hold on to this idea. I want to give you a nice example of maybe the difference between just regular forgetfulness and a little red flag.
Pete Koch: That would be fantastic
Heather McKay: Maybe for a family member could actually pick up on. And then don't let me forget, because it sparked a couple of good ideas, I want to share about what's different types of memory loss that can actually be detected early on. But one of the things that we could all do is just tell our neighbor to spread this public awareness about the difference between regular forgetfulness and some problem that not normal aging. I like to tell it in a little scenario if I'm sitting in the living room and I'm watching TV. Commercial about coffee comes on and the way my little brain thinks. I start thinking coffee sounds good. You know, it's just it's just a suggestion. But I'll pop up out of the chair, headed to the kitchen with a particular memory file alive in my brain called working memory. Working memory holds five to eight things. OK, so you're following me. I've got five to eight things about coffee on the brain as I'm headed to the coffee pot. If the telephone rings and you're Peter are on the other line and I pick up to talk to you about recording our podcast and the time we want to start. And you know that the equipment issues and by the time I trade five to eight pieces of information with you, coffee gets picked out and working memory, that's how it works. You only get a small amount of information to hold at the front of your mind. Now, what happens in this transfer? We don't lose the coffee altogether. It comes out of working memory to be stored in short term memory so we can get our hands on it again. But you know where I'm going with this. I hang up the telephone. I'm standing in the kitchen thinking what.
Pete Koch: What was I thinking about before.
Heather McKay: Why did I come in here exactly. What is that thinking about? And so that retrieval to get coffee out of short-term memory and back up to the front of my mind is something that we all know is getting longer. The older we get. And just to put everybody at ease, we're probably all in the same boat here today because the retrieval to get the idea back from short term memory was the fastest when we were 25 years old. So, after twenty five, you're just noticing yourself standing in the kitchen like a knot on a log. But you'll go back to the living room and at some point, you'll get a reminder. Now, this is an important piece of normal brain functioning. It may be that you sit back down and see the commercial again. But when you get the reminder, you know what it feels like when it falls out of the sky, just hit you in the head and you think, oh, yeah, I got halfway to the coffee pot, that's all. Normal brain function. We forget things because they get kicked out of working memory stored in short term memory and we get reminders and that. Oh, yeah. When you just say, oh yeah, I forgot. It's been. Is the sign that your brain is working normally. So now let me just compare that in early stages of this disease, probably before the person is even diagnosed. He'll see the commercial about coffee. He thinks like I do. Coffee sounds good. You'll pop up from the chair, head to the kitchen. He's got five to eight pieces of information in his working memory, just like I did. He'll take the telephone call and early on, he'll sound as good as I did over the telephone. And when he hangs up coffee, he's been kicked out. So far, we're the same. But early on, there are some of the first darker cells. Remember the darker color, unreliable sick cells in short term memory. So, the coffee doesn't get filed. It's poof. It's like it's gone forever. He's standing in the kitchen. Can't remember why he came. So, he'll go back to the living room. And here's where you'd have to be looking. You'll see the commercial about coffee again and say, coffee sounds good. I think I'll go make a pot. He's headed to the kitchen like it's the first time and a key piece there. This could happen a hundred times with somebody that you loved. If you weren't paying attention to that, you could miss it 100 times. But the missing piece is that, oh yeah, because it wasn't filed in short term memory. He doesn't have that same like falling out of the sky and hitting him in the head experience that we've all fell missing. Oh yeah. Is a little red flag. Now people will say, Heather, why would you even want to speak to the doctor about this? If there's no known cure yet. The reason is there are 40 eleven things that look like dementia that aren't. And if you see it, if you see an early problem like this lack in short term memory, it's worth getting checked out because there are so many other things that could cause that that have relatively easy treatments. And so still, diagnosing dementia today is a matter of ruling other things out. There are vitamin deficiencies. There are you know changes in your hormone levels as you age. There are changes in neurotransmitters in your brain that can just be boosted again with relatively easy treatments to give that person full function and capability back. And that's the reason to check out early signs.
Pete Koch: That's a great point. It's a really good point. And many times most of us wouldn't be able to associate that. That almost brand-new memory for that person. Like.
Heather McKay: Exactly.
Pete Koch: That. They're on repeat, but they don't remember. It's Groundhog Day for them, as you know, Bill Murray movie. Right.
Heather McKay: And early on, that's pretty tricky to spot because there again, there's darker cells. They're unreliable, but they're not dead yet. You can't count them out. So, he might not make that mistake consistently. And that's where the gentleman in my consultation visit said this thing won't sit still for me. So many family members have said, Heather, I noticed a problem with mom. She made a mistake. And I had read that this sort of mistake was not normal for aging. It wasn't just regular forgetfulness. She said, I paid attention to mom for a while and I wasn't going to bring it up if it wasn't a real problem because I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill, people say. But to me, she made this mistake once and then got it right 10 times. So, I kind of felt relieved because I figured it just wasn't really a problem. Must have been a one off. The doctor's visit came and went. I didn't bring it up because I hadn't noticed a pattern. And as soon as we left, that doctor's office had gone, too. She made that mistake again. So, we've mentioned several times this morning I read just about how understanding how the fluctuations happen even early on and continue through the progression of this disease. But fluctuations can make this tricky to spot early detection. We keep talking in this country about early detection, better outcomes, more effective treatments for the people with the disease and family caregivers. It's true. But I think early detection is still a challenge and it's not for lack of trying it on a lot of caregivers’ part. So. We're just get digging and a little bit deeper today about what we can notice and what's different from normal aging. I wanted to say a couple of things about memory that you might spot as this disease keeps going. Some family members are familiar with short term memory, but they're learning about something even faster than short term memory. It's called immediate recall. Not everybody's heard about this one. It's literally what just happened boom. What I just said boom that quick. But what they do notice is their loved one can ask them the same question. Back to back to back to back. That's like on constant repeat. As soon as she's answered for the hundredth time, he's fixing his mouth to ask it again. And caregivers will say, Heather, what is the deal with this? It's like if it's like you didn't hear me, but if I raise my voice, he'll say don't shout at me, you know, he doesn't have a hearing problem. But he will ask me on repeat. That's immediate recall. And it might be one of the first things that family caregivers notice if they missed that early subtle sign that was the missing. Oh, yeah, it's kind of hard to ignore the same question back to back to back to back. So immediate recall. Yes.
Pete Koch: Is the immediate recall a later sign? So, the short-term memory. Not be able to recall a lot of short-term memory with a reminder. That would be a very early sign. And then the immediate recall challenge being later sign, but still early stages.
Heather McKay: Exactly. That's the best way to put it. It may be just still in the early stage, but the first thing a family member or friend or neighbor noticed, because that other thing was so subtle, most people won't notice that he popped up from the living room, headed to the kitchen again for the first time. But it's hard to ignore the fact that he turned around and asked you the same question. Right on the heels of your answer,
Pete Koch: Because they could they just could not remember that said that you had just asked that, or they had responded to it either.
Heather McKay: Exactly. Exactly. Now something that'll happen, and family members will back me up on this after they've answered for a hundred times. You're getting a little tired. This is the normal. This is frustrating. And so, what they have seen is that as soon as they get a little bit tired and they've answered the same question he asks, when will my daughter be here? His wife is saying she'll be here at 3. She comes at same time every day. He said, what time will she be here? After a while, she'll be here at 3. He said, I'll be get ready if I knew when she'd be here. She said, Honey, she's coming at 3, and as soon as she switches to that 3 o'clock, he will fool around and say, I don't need that kind of attitude to you. And she's looking at me like Heather. How can I be in trouble for answering when I've answered him 100 hundred times already today? How is he upset at me now? You tell me this. I like to point again to a picture. We can see these pictures in our MEMIC series. But right on the outside of the memory center, there's a memory that spared while immediate recall and short-term memory maybe go in through the hole in the hippocampus, the memory center, a memory called emotional memory sticks.
Pete Koch: Ahhh
Heather McKay: And so. Oh, you see, I always like to ask caregivers, what's the difference between three o'clock and three o'clock? And they hear the feeling of the emotion and recognize that it lives on the tone and my body language and the pressure in my voice. All of these little sort of nonverbal or para verbal cues, not the information, not the 3 o'clock pace, but that tone of 3 o'clock. That's what hits on the emotional memory file. And you're busted on your tone when he still can remember the answer and just know and how that works. Allows caregivers to say, oh, I see when I'm most effective is when my tone is friendly and respectful right down the middle. Cool, calm and collected. And I'm getting in trouble when my tone slips to something that either feels pushy or condescending or in some other way tired or frustrated. I like to ask people, you know, check in with your emotional memory file. It feels like a little radar in my brain, but I'll say, can you tell when somebody is in a rush and they'll always say, yeah, I can tell. It's not about what they do, it's how someone does it. Can you tell when somebody is talking to you like they think you're stupid? Everybody can tell. And it's not by what folks say, it's how they say it. And that's a big shift for caregivers of all stripes, professionals and families when they can realize that communication starting very early in this disease is going to be less about the facts and more about a feeling. Based on the strengths and abilities of the bright, the areas of the brain that are spared this disease is not just about losses. We can tailor our care and our support if we understand the person's strengths.
Pete Koch: Because what you're really trying to do as the caregiver, then you're really teaching you're trying to get the person to remember what you said in a way. And what I tied this to is there's adult learning theory that talks about that emotional learning. When you are able to tie an emotion to a new task or a new learning. You are much more effective at learning that task than if it's just wrote and there is nothing there. So, if there's some there's a crisis to it or there's a love to it or there's a deep emotion, emotional connection to it, you're more apt to remember what you did than.
Heather McKay: Yes.
Pete Koch: Than before. And that's what the caregivers trying to do, is to get them to learn what they said and the reaction of the patient. Being frustrated, they just they just heard that emotion really for the first time because they don't remember what was said before.
Heather McKay: It's a big aha. Yeah, it's a big aha for a lot of caregivers when they're when they're seeing how their loved one or their client or their patient is actually receiving the communication. So, when we get down to this understanding what's going on and why the person with dementia is responding the way they do. Now, I like to add a little bit of give you a recommendation from the research.
Pete Koch: Please.
Heather McKay: So, something to hang your hat on. In addition to paying attention to that tone, which I've always said is probably 95 percent of the battle because it's not as much about information is about as it is about the feeling. There's one other strategy that caregivers will pick up. And start to use and that is this keeping the answer consistent to use the example of the of the gentleman's wife answering him again and again that his daughter would be here at 3:00. You might have noticed that every time she answered, she changed her words just slightly. The first time she'd say she'll be here at 3:00. The next time she'd say her usual time is 3:00 or I expect her. But after lunch around 3:00. So, every time she gives me information, she has pitched it in in a slightly different way, giving her new information with some for someone who has trouble with immediate recall. She's just like changed the pitch on it. Every single time I think about it, like learning to learning to hit the baseball. If I change the pitch, if I move it around, it makes it harder for my young batter to get a piece of it. But if I can catch it in exactly the same, make it consistent, show it to him in the same spot with the same words in her answer, he has a little better shot of getting a piece of it.
Pete Koch: That's a fantastic piece of information. And another part of the toolbox that we're building here. Tone and then consistency of how you deliver the message or the words that.
Heather McKay: Exactly. Exactly.
Pete Koch: Let's do this. Let's take a quick break. We'll go to a quick commercial here and then we'll come back in just a couple of minutes and we'll dig a little bit deeper into the dementia care challenges and some strategies for understanding and helping those loved ones that we're going to be dealing with.
Pete Koch: Welcome back. And today, we're talking with Dr. Heather McKay, Occupational Therapist and Dementia Care Specialist with the Partnerships for Health in Hillsboro, North Carolina. Again, Heather, thank you so much for joining us today in the podcast. Prior to the break, we talked a lot about how this disease affects the patients, the caregivers, their relationships. We actually framed a couple of tools that people could use to listen for how their tone is to help the patient learn what has been said and the consistency, in your words, as you try to frame answers to their questions. What I like to do now, though, Heather, is talk some more about what changes happen in the patient as the disease progresses and what happens and what we might be able to do to prepare or to help that particular patient.
Heather McKay: I think it's another great strategy, Peter, to outline sort of a timeline of dementia, because what I've noticed is as the person's skills and abilities change, so too must our support as caregivers change and adapt to keep up with them. And one caregiver told me this was a CSA. I was talking to a nursing assistant. She said it so brilliantly. Just she said, when it comes to dementia care, what worked for you yesterday is not guaranteed to work for you today.
Pete Koch: Oh, that is so true.
Heather McKay: And it's so true. And what she was putting her finger on is that the person with dementia changes. And it's our challenge to let go of something that used to be effective when we noticed that it's not working anymore. In order to pick up on some new strategies. So the changes that we talked about in our first period, there were changes that could have been happening before the diagnosis was even made, changes that family members might have just adapted to, not knowing that it was anything, you know, to be concerned about. Sometimes family members adjust their routine and literally kind of coast through the earliest stage of dementia. It's not until some other changes happen that disrupt the person's everyday life and those routine activities that that really sort of raises the raises the bar on the challenge. One of those changes and it's something that not everybody's heard about but is a change in the memory center in an area for situational memory. And let me explain situational memory first. It's how we understand our situation because our brain put information together in order. So, for instance, I know why I'm speaking to you today, because it started with a you know, whenever we lined up our appointment and made a date to get together on the podcast. But however, it started A led to B and C led to D, and that's why I'm here. I understand and feel good about my situation knowing what to do, because all of that information hangs together in order as this disease progresses. Situational memory is a problem for the person with dementia. Lots of times it's one of the signs that that spurs a diagnosis. This might be when a person is just diagnosed with dementia, but a family member has noticed that daddy doesn't understand the situation. He's asking questions like, what are we doing here? What is the name of this place? What am I supposed to do now, right now? Is any of this here for me? Like, how am I going to get back home? Those are questions about the situation because he can't put it together in order, she also noticed that when she tries to line it up for her dad, she'd say, daddy, well, it started with A she'll tell him this A led to B led to C led to D that's how we got here. That's how we got here. She's an expert, noticer there, because she can bet, he's looking at her like she's got three heads. It doesn't hang together in order for him. So, a person with dementia in this moderate stage will literally say, you've got me mixed up with somebody else. That never happened or I wasn't a part of that. Or you made all those choices and decisions behind my back after she knows they've talked about it. She knows they've worked through forty eleven other options before they were faced with this tough decision. And yet still he will say, you just do all of this without me. That kind of change disrupts a person's whole daily routine, even a simple task like getting dressed, freshened up, ready for the day has an order to it. We take this for granted, but you got to the studio looking as good as day to day because you woke up and did A. And then you to B. And then you did C. And D all in the same order to get out the door, ready for your day. And what caregivers are noticing in this later stage, which may be the beginning of the diagnosis, but not the beginning of the disease, is mom's not doing her normal daily routine. So, she dropped out of things that she used to enjoy doing or she's not getting up, getting herself dressed, washed up, ready for the day the way she always did. They'll ask Mom. Do you want to help you take a bath? And she'll say, no. Why would I need any help for that? See on the emotional memory file, together with long ago memory, she may think she's. Always done that. And she did it just this morning the way she always did, but a daughter. A good detective said it's been two weeks since moms washed up, and every time I come over, she seems to be in the same clothes and I can tell their dirty. She's not able to get her medicines in the right order or take her or have her meals in the same routine that she once did. And now problems are starting to compound. And if she's not sitting down at the kitchen table eating three times a day the way she always would, just like clockwork. The daughter said, I'm afraid the medicines aren't going down the hatch because it was part of her routine to sit at that kitchen table and take the medicines every time she ate. She would literally drink out of the same cup. So, caregivers are noticing that the steps of the routine are not falling together in the order. They've just never heard of situational memory. It's just a really big road sign that happens in the moderate stage of this disease that causes a whole lot of problems. At the same time, Peter, it's not just in the memory center as this disease marches on, other parts of the brain are changing, including language in the temporal lobe or the side of your head just above your ear. And running along the side is the area where you understand language. So, let me dig into this for just a second. You understand language in different files, just like we keep memories organized in different files. And an area of that temporal lobe that goes first is an area for understanding formal language. That's the information words. It's inconvenient because formal language are all the instructions, the directions that she gives her mom, the explanations that she gives her mom with all the information to help keep her mom on track. Well, between the combination of situational memory loss and her mom's trouble, understanding formal language or all those instructions makes it really hard for the person in moderate stage dementia to just do what we tell them to do. Now, I ask folks all the time, and when they see that picture of the temporal lobe, and the area of the formal language that's hit hard. I said imagine if you needed to get your point across to somebody who spoke English as a second language. In other words, words are not going to be your best tool. In that kind of interaction, what else could you use to get your point across, and caregivers will say visual cues. And now we're starting to really build a caregiver's tool box when they're paying attention, not just to the tone and what they say and how they say it, but they're starting to add visual cues, but just simple things like give a gesture if you want her to stand up, wave your arm, if you want her to get started doing something. Bring the first step and put it in front of her. I mean, it's different than asking, mom, what do you want to eat? A visual cue is to bring her a couple of options that, you know, she likes and ask her to choose. She can see the choices in front of her rather than listing off all the things in the refrigerator that we have to drink instead, bring her a drink, something that you know she likes and show it to her. She's more likely to take that cue than the open-ended question. That was all informal language. So, we're starting to kind of stack some tools in the tool box for a better communication, understanding that it's not just about memory. This is a language disorder.
Pete Koch: Wow. That's really that's very insightful. And I was thinking about this as you're talking about those visual cues. It even works for folks without dementia, as you think about. Well, given a choice at a restaurant, say, and if the menu was only text versus the waitress bringing you two dessert options in front of you, choose A or B, you're going to have an easier time choosing A or B than a list of 30 different options unless there's one on there that you know you like and then you might go to that.
Heather McKay: Isn't that true? Oh, I can just imagine myself in a restaurant with my grandmother. OK. Now, she had she had started to progress. She'd already had the diagnosis. She needed a helper with her throughout the day and other family members. And I got to be pretty good helpers because we were intuiting something as she had trouble doing things, the steps of a task in order. We were kind of intuiting that, you know, like a good caddy helps a golfer through the course I being the caddy could set her up with things which she needed in the right order at the right time with a little bit of rhythm. Put something in front of her right when she needed it and take care of a lot of that situational memory challenge. She didn't have to put the steps together in order because I was a good caddy. Just one step ahead of her well in the restaurant that she loved to go to. I noticed that she found it easier to order for herself because the menu had pictures and it tickled me to death because she would often order the same thing. I mean, she was a creature of habit, just like I am. But she could make that communication with the waitress because she could hold the menu up point to her selection. And it and it really relieved a lot of the language challenge in that little interaction. Now, it wasn't just in hushes understanding language because you produce language in another area of the brain and that language production is going at the same time. So not only did she have trouble understanding a question or instructions, she had trouble spitting out her own information, but pointing to the picture on the menu, especially when I was cueing her up for every step of that task, helped her to be her best in that and actually order for herself in that new in that different sort of way.
Pete Koch: Well, as the patient from the patient side of things is all of these effects are happening to them and they're trying to interact with the world as they know it now, but it's not what they knew before. I would imagine that it's very frustrating for them as well and that I can't help with the processing and the other challenges that are happening. I know when I get anxious about something or I get frustrated with something, I am not at my best for mental processing. So that's just going to probably take it down even further.
Heather McKay: Let's all appreciate for a minute what happens in our frontal lobe or the area of your brain right behind your eyes. This is the front part of your brain that is responsible for your impulse control. So even when you're taxed, even when you're at the end of your rope or challenged to the max you're still working with a full frontal lobe to pull back on the reins, even on a frustrated or tough day, to pull back on the reins and say, Whoa! Don't lose it. Hold it together. Don't go off. Now, don't say that here. Don't do that. It would just make the situation worse. And those reins on the horse are like our saving grace. Even when stress is high, brain function goes down and we start pulling back on those reins. Well, this this disease, especially in the middle stage, is starting to really affect that frontal lobe where if you saw a picture of the darker brain with dementia, that front part would be receding back like a hairline. And so, what we've got is a perfect storm. So, let's stack up a situation here. The person is not understanding all of the information in their environment. They don't understand everything that they hear and can't hold on to the information that we're trying to give them. And they're not sure how to put the steps of the task together in order to do for themselves. At the same time, the reins on the horse are getting cut. It's a potentially dangerous situation that makes dementia caregiving different from other types of caregiving. When, despite our best effort, these interactions can be frustrating for both the person with dementia and their caregivers. And this disease spares a protective reflex called fight, flight, fright. Fight, flight, fright is that little startle button in our central nervous system that we all have and all it takes is a little startle. Just like that. Without all of the understanding of the situation and that impulse control, a person with dementia is quick to startle and quick to either one. I mean, they can fall in a startle situation. A person with dementia will fall like a box of rocks is so fast. You cannot even catch him standing right next to him. And that's because the reflex is fast just by the nature of a reflex. It's built into our central nervous system to protect us. They don't have the coordination to catch themselves after a little startle. So, falls are frequent and a high risk for people with dementia. But so is that fight reflex. The fight is when somebody will strike out to protect themselves when they're startled. And it's an easy mistake to make. If we're not constantly aware of sort of how this person is responding in the environment, you can come up beside somebody out of their peripheral vision before you even knew it and hit that little startle button. I don't want to ever have caregivers, myself included, on the receiving end of that fight, flight, fright reflex. Just to add a round out those three. Sometimes the person, when they're startled will actually kind of shut down. Maybe the environment is overwhelming. It's a little bit too much for them to process. And I'm asking caregivers to walk through busy spaces like the dining room of a full assisted living facility and notice how many people with dementia actually have their eyes closed. That's one way of sort of fleeing that situation in that flight reflex. Sometimes people go to sleep. Sometimes they'll just close their eyes and shut down and sort of check out. But all of those behavioral responses, caregivers can notice and connect with that fight flight fright reflex. So, I want to add something else to our toolbox. A strategy for a strategy for driving around that startle button. In other words, to get her interaction started on the right foot, to have any chance of our communication strategies, working to help someone with dementia, do something with us or have a have an easy social visit or to deal with their distress if they're upset. My best chance is to start my interaction on the right foot. Driving around that startle reflex is the beginning of everything else that follows. So, we call it steps of a positive physical approach, and it just means that I want to come from the front. I want a person with dementia to be able to see me before I'm in their personal space. It just makes sense. I sort of measure personal space informally, but it's whatever is within their arm's reach. Now, we might say, like in our culture, that's like your personal space bubble. But I'm also thinking from a safety perspective, because that's also the range that I the caregiver could be injured. So I want to check myself outside of the person's arm's reach and give myself a chance to get in front of them. Let them see me. I'm going to give them a visual cue to let them know that I'm coming in. And this is not rocket science. It's like, give them away, throw at your little hand and show them a handshake, visual cue. It actually triggers a motor memory, something that we haven't spoken about yet. But that's just the way you move your body on automatic pilot. And it's communicating a handshake that a person with dementia may understand as a motor memory, even if they don't understand an explanation for why you're there. So now shown a visual cue that literally just opens like a key in a door, opens up the space to their into their personal space. I can come closer and get connected with that visual cue more easily than a whole lot of words to round out that steps of a positive physical approach. I Want to get down on a person's level If a person seated I want to just get down, whether I'd take a knee or pull up a chair, any way that I can get on that person's level to make a connection with a little back and forth social chit chat, it spared longer than formal language and has an emotional feeling to it. You know what it's like when somebody gets connected before they get on to the business? In our culture, we just do that little back and forth social chit chat as a way to set the emotional tone before we ask a question or given instruction.
Pete Koch: You're breaking the ice, right? That's what you're talking about. Yeah.
Heather McKay: That's it. So now I'm into the person's personal space. Made a physical connection, given lots of visual cues on their level and connected on an emotional tone before I actually deliver my message. Putting that together and making it a habit. Building it in to the way you communicate means your interactions get started on the right foot. And not running into that automatic startle reflex that gets our interaction started on the wrong foot could be potentially dangerous for the person with dementia and the caregiver.
Pete Koch: Sure, I can. I can certainly see that. I saw that with my interactions with my grandmother and my mother and the nurse who had come in, my grandmother, my mother would be interacting in some way. And then the nurse would come in. My grandmother would see her. The nurse would move to the other side of the bed behind her and then reach to fluff the pillow. And I hear that there was the startle. My grandmother would her arm would go out. And whether who doesn't matter who is there It was the fight reflex.
Heather McKay: Yeah. Yeah. And so when you see and make these connections like you're doing between what's happening in the brain of the person with dementia, there observable behavioral responses, things that we can notice and then connecting or closing the loop with other strategies that are more effective, then we're starting to really put together that that evidence based dementia care for caregivers of all stripes. You mentioned the everyday interaction at the bedside in a hospital or a residential care facility. And I ask caregivers in those settings, look around the space, look around our environment here, where are the places that you interact most with people who have dementia? Caregivers will say, well, certainly in the bedrooms, you know, at the bedside, we help a lot of people get up and start their day. We help people in the bathroom. We help people in other common areas like our dining room or activity spaces. I said, OK, we've got the blueprint of these most of these areas that are rich with activities. Now let's look at our blueprint and see if the space is working for us or against us in in our use of the positive physical approach. Is there anything that we could do in that environment? Take my grandmother's bedside at her assisted living facility. If I want caregivers, visitors, staff, family to all use the steps of a positive physical approach, then I want to have places for them to land maybe on both sides of the bed. It just meant that we could change the furniture arrangement a little bit to make that that beginning part of every interaction a little bit easier for caregivers. I mean, I know I'm comfortable going down to one knee or squatting, but not for long. And I always tease folks that they don't go down if you can't get back up. But look around and look for the furniture arrangement. That's going to make it easier for you to come in with a positive is a physical approach and get on that person's level before you start to do something.
Pete Koch: Yeah, that's a fantastic point, because we many times take for granted that the space that either is in our home, if we're caring for a loved one in our home, which we've lived in forever, is appropriate because it's always been good this way or what has been provided to us by the hospital or by the long term care facility. As a nurse coming in, that's the best way to do it either for a new dementia patient, maybe it's not. Maybe there's ways that we can make the positive physical approach more habit forming by taking some of the questions out of it. Like it's like you said, this is where you land. This is where you stand. This is where you go. That's how you can get to their level. These are fantastic points. Heather, fantastic.
Heather McKay: It reminds me of a caregiver that I met. She's caring for her husband and in their own home, you know, place that they've lived for 50 years and the arrangement of the living room was just such that she would come in from the kitchen always to the back of his recliner because the recliners facing a television that's at the other end of the room. And this was just the flow of traffic always coming in from behind. Her husband, who has dementia, and she just recognized a pattern that her husband could tell her no to any idea she had. Honey, do you want to come up and, you know, have breakfast? Honey, do you want to come back here with me to the bedroom and make the bed, honey? Do you want. Are you ready to go out? We've got an appointment. Every single thing she could come up with. He could say no to any idea she had. Well, she looked at the arrangement of the living room with me, and we just pulled a little stool around to kind of the front kitty-corner of his of his recliner. And it is serve two purposes. It was a cue for her to circle wide outside of his personal space and actually come around from the front now. And because she had her little stool, her little ottoman, I mean, it was just a comfortable little pad for her to land on. And she started making that the habit to connect with him with a little social chit chat before asking him to do something. And by golly, she started charting her successes. And I mean, the curve just skyrocketed. She could get him to engage in doing something with her more often when she used the steps of a positive physical approach.
Pete Koch: Wow, that's great. And I'm as you're again saying that I'm thinking about my own parents who are getting on in age and I can see my dad's recliner and the way my mom approaches him because of the configuration of the house is directly from the side. She would come in from the dining room to the living room area where it is, and it's from the side and it's right into it. You have to cross right into his personal space in order to step in in front of him. Whereas if you change it around a little bit and had you approach from the front, from the other side of the room, it would set up a totally different tone and a different way to approach fascinating. I would never have thought of that.
Heather McKay: Caregivers are getting so flexible and proficient at a positive physical approach. When I see that they can modify their action based on how the situation is laid out. So for instance, it's not exactly like CPR where you have to do it the same way every time. I just use CPR as an example because it's a protocol kind of thing that you that you demonstrate CPR the same way every single time. This is different. We want to be able to help a caregiver like a family member or a professional caregiver modify their approach to fit a house, different situations without losing that original intent, which was I just want to drive around his startle reflex. I want to get this interaction started by scaring the pants off of them. So one of one of my role models for positive physical approach was a nurse who was charged with the med pass. And a lot of caregivers out there will understand what I mean. But she would carry a cart around with all of her residence medicines and she would one by one greet and give each resident's medicine. This is an activity that took, you know, a good little bit of her time every morning. She noticed that many residents with dementia would refuse the offer. And no matter how she pitched it and she just had she had the friendliest way about her. But she was running into that automatic. No. Again and again, we took a look at her space and her routine for the med pass and said, what if we overlaid a positive physical approach on your med pass? It would mean that you're generally thinking about folks personal space outside of arm's reach. You're generally giving them more visual cues to let them see you before you're in their personal space and you're offering more visual cues with less formal and straight formal language and instructions for what to do. She was actually able to fit a positive physical approach in forty eleven different situations because now she would do this three times a day with cart and we actually tracked the number of refusals that residents would decline their medicines and those refusals were going down. In other words, people were participating in that. Really important part of their self-care and personal care, which was taking their medicines every day with just some different communication strategies, namely a positive physical approach.
Pete Koch: It's fantastic. That's fantastic. We talked about a lot of different things today. We've covered a lot of ground with dementia. I'm wondering if you could just spend a minute or two here towards the end and summarize for us some of those key points that you'd like our listeners to take back with them, whether they're a caregiver professionally or whether they're personally caring for a caregiver or at home.
Heather McKay: Well, I think some of the most important take-home messages are caregivers of all stripes. Professionals and families need the same information. We need to be working with the same knowledge. And so strategies for just talking about this in layman's terms and what I call plain English can be helpful for both pros and husbands and wives, sons and daughters, grandkids like you and me. In addition to that, some strategies to help us talk about it and share our knowledge between all of these communities that we cross. Pictures can be helpful stories that exemplify changes that happen in the brain. Starting early on in areas of the memory center, understanding language, but also producing it and impulse control can help us sort of get a better handle on why people with dementia do what they do so we can tailor our support and then thinking more about the timeline as people change. Today we talked mostly about early stages into moderate stage, but also just sharing resources for connecting families with information about late stages of this disease or the end so that we can prepare letting go of things that used to work when we noticed that what worked for us yesterday is not working today, picking up on some new strategies that that tend to keep up with our loved ones as they change. The steps of a positive physical approach is something that beginning early on in this disease can help our interactions with people whose communication is changing and it can really help us drive around potentially dangerous situations in which people with dementia could get hurt and their caregivers are at risk.
Pete Koch: Those are great points again, and you'd mentioned that we only tied or touched on the early to middle stages of dementia and we haven't really looked at the end stages of dementia, which I think I'm going to ask you to come back to talk about some more, because that's just as important as recognizing the beginning stages and managing your loved ones or the people you care for in the middle stages, because it's going to come to an end that is the inevitable end to this disease. We have to have some knowledge about that, too.
Heather McKay: I appreciate that invitation as a good hospice worker. I love to share information about end of life support. What to expect at the end stage of this disease. It makes sense for us to really focus today in the early and moderate stages because most people living with dementia will encounter some of the problems that we talked about today. Not everybody will live to the very end of this disease. Like my granddaddy would say, something else will take them on to their reward. You know, I mean, dementia. Dementia is a condition of older age and people with other health conditions can pass away from other things. But people like your grandmother and mine went the whole race. And so I would really welcome an opportunity to talk more specifically, given the time and the stories that it deserves in the area of end of life care.
Pete Koch: Well, great. Then we'll touch base after this and we'll try to set up a day for you to come back with us. It's been fantastic to talk to you today. Geez. Excellent. There's a lot of stuff. We covered a lot of ground, lot of good tools out there. You can find out more information about dementia at Dr. McKay's Web site, www.PFHNC.com. And are there other resources out there, Heather? We have we talked about the MEMIC the MEMIC webinar series that we can find at the MEMIC Web site. And then your Web site, which I just reference, other resources that our listeners might be able to find more information about dementia.
Heather McKay: Thank you. I'd love to give a plug for the video series that the State Veterans Homes helped to produce Dementia Care for America's Heroes. If the stories and the information and the pictures that folks learn about in our MEMIC series just really wet the appetite, there are more resources and demonstrations as well as more detailed explanations of the timeline of dementia in the Dementia Care for America's Heroes series. Folks can find that on my Website. One of the most common requested topics for staff training and in facilities is around the issues of communication and dealing with distress or managing challenging behaviors. Both the MEMIC series and the Veteran series are terrific tools for that kind of on the job education as well as a particular film in the Veteran series all about the timeline of dementia. So we've got tools that make it easy for facilities to train staff on all shifts, whether it's watching a film at 3 o'clock in the morning when you've got a break on third shift or share in those same films with family members when they come through your doors. I appreciate those facilities being community education centers as well. So I just thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you, Peter.
Pete Koch: Oh, that's fantastic. Thanks. Thanks for those two. And you're available as a resource as well to come and do some onsite training is through the company that you work for there, is that correct?
Heather McKay: That's true. It's one of my favorite parts of my job is to meet blended teams of caregivers in their workplace to sort of unpack the challenges that they're facing in my research. It's been fun for me to discover all of the positive outcomes that happen when we get a blended team together around what I call a learning circle and analyze one of your most challenging cases together. I'll put my head together with yours and we'll come up with a plan together and means of tracking progress to help teams master some of the most challenging situations in dementia care. I love to do that at your place with your team.
Pete Koch: That's for. That's really cool. So how do they get a hold of you to book that if they're interested in doing that?
Heather McKay: Reaching me through the Web site is probably the easiest way. My email address is Heather@PFHNC.com but you can always find me at PFHNC.com Web site. If all else fails and it's hard to remember those Things you can Google Heather and dementia and it'll get you there.
Pete Koch: Perfect. Thank you very much for that. So, with this with the podcast. You can check out the show notes for the podcast, which will have the references and the links that we discussed today. Our listeners can find that at MEMIC.com/podcast. And they'll be a bunch of other resources that you can check out when we're finished. Well, thank you again, Heather. I appreciate your time today. And that brings us to wrapping up another edition of MEMIC's. Safety Experts podcast. Check out our Web site www.MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find our podcast archive. And while you're there, you should sign up for our Safety Net Blog so you never miss another article on safety news or safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate if you took a couple of minutes and reviewed us on Stitcher, i-Tunes, or whichever podcast service that you'll find us on. And if you've already done that, thanks a lot because it really helps us out. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or a family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but acting on what you heard is even better.
Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast
- World Health Organization (WHO) - https://www.who.int/
- Partnerships for Health - https://www.pfhnc.com/
- National Association of State Veterans Homes - https://www.nasvh.org/index.cfm
- Armed Forces Veterans Home Foundation - https://www.veteransaidbenefit.org/state_veterans_nursing_homes.htm
- AMVETS Service Foundation - https://amvetsnsf.org/
- The Air Force Sergeants’ Foundation - https://www.hqafsa.org/
- Dementia Care for America’s Heroes - https://www.pfhnc.com/dementia-care-dvds/
- Long Island State Veterans Home - https://veteranshome.stonybrookmedicine.edu/
- National Caregiver Friendly Award - https://caregiver.com/2019-award-winners/
- Alzheimer’s Foundation of America - https://alzfdn.org/
- The ABCs of Dementia: A Caregiver’s Guide - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-net-blog/2016/march/the-abcs-of-dementia--a-caregivers-guide
- Alzheimer’s Association - https://www.alz.org/
- Groundhog Day movie - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/
- Heather McKay’s email - heather@PFHNC.com
- MEMIC’s Safety Net Blog - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-net-blog
Ever wonder how the best companies gear up for their busy season? Concerned about how to keep your staff safe when production demands rise? Can your hiring practices keep pace with the demand for employees? Deb Roy, President of SafeTech Consultants and recently retired Corporate Director of Health, Safety & Wellness at L.L.Bean, offers solutions to seasonal workforce challenges so the increased demands don’t upset the balance of safety, quality and productivity. Pete Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. Ever wonder how companies gear up for their busy season? Concerned about how to keep your staff safe when production demands rise? Can your hiring practices keep pace with the demand for employees? Well, today we're going to dig deeper into seasonal workforce challenges. So, the Safety Experts podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leading worker's compensation provider based here on the East Coast. A new episode of the podcast drops every two weeks featuring interviews with leaders in the field, top executives, MEMIC staff, and other industry experts discussing how safety applies to every aspect of our lives. I'm your host, Peter Koch. And for the past 17 years, I've been working for MEMIC as a safety expert within the hospitality and construction industries. What I realized is safety impacts every part of each position that we have or tasks that we do, no matter what the season demands of you. And for today's episode, Seasonal Workforce Challenges and Solutions. I'm going to speak with Deborah Roy, president of SafeTech Consultants Inc. and recently retired Corporate Director of Health, Safety and Wellness for L.L. Bean Inc. we're hopefully better understand some of those challenges and how gearing up for the increased demands affect the employee performance management process at your company. Deborah is currently the president of SafeTech Consultants, and for the past 12 years, she was the Corporate Director of Health and Safety and wellness for L.L. Bean. She received her Master of Public Health Degree in Occupational Health and safety from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Mr. Always been an active member of the American Society for Safety Professionals since 1993 and is a frequent speaker at ASSP conferences and webinars. She was inducted as an ASSP fellow in 2018 and is currently the president elect of ASSP. Deborah, welcome to the podcast.
Deborah Roy: Thank you.
Pete Koch: Fantastic. So, we're gonna jump right into it and we're coming right into the season where businesses are starting to pick up, especially as we get into the are closer to Thanksgiving. We've got retail businesses picking up hopefully, and we have hospitality businesses picking up. Our vacation season for the wintertime here on the East Coast is picking up. People are leaving winter and going for summer places. So, businesses need to hire more people in our seasonal workforce will end up growing. So, we are thinking about how we bring our people in to our businesses, our onboarding tactics could change during those peak season demands. So, let's talk a little bit about your experience at L.L. Bean. And there's some large fluctuations that occur over the seasons there at L.L. Bean, especially during the holidays or leading up to the holidays. How does the onboarding process accommodate the influx of the new or returning workers and still balance that safety, quality and productivity triangle?
Deborah Roy: That's a great question. This is one of our biggest challenges is to actually hire enough people for what we call our peak season.
Pete Koch: Sure.
Deborah Roy: Which is really leading up to Christmas time. And we have a process in place for all of our higher risk jobs. That is year-round and so we apply that same process to this seasonal population. We can hire several thousand people at this time of the year. Each one of them actually is evaluated from a health status standpoint. And the way we do that is we prioritize the jobs based on risk. So, for example, if you're going to work in the call center for our peak season and all of those workstations are ergonomically designed, and from the standpoint of the seasonal employees, their risk is relatively low. We can just do a health history; which we do as an online form that they complete. And one of our nurses can actually review that form and evaluate is there any risk based on the specifics of that job? If so, they'll contact that individual, get further information and then do a follow up in person if needed.
Pete Koch: Oh, sure.
Deborah Roy: So, for the low risk jobs, that's pretty easy for the higher risk ones like working in the warehouse. It takes a little bit more. So those individuals will fill out the same form, but they'll also have an assessment by a registered nurse who understands the jobs and can assess those individuals based on the job. From there. If that individual is then a good fit for the job, they've already been given a conditional offer of employment and then they can be hired for that season. If the job is even more strenuous, like a material handler, we have different categories or levels that we use for those jobs. And it's all based on the job physical demands. So, each one of these jobs has a Job Physical Demands document based on those demands. We have dynamic strength tests that can be done for those jobs. So, once they pass the post offer exam, if they're in one of those higher risk jobs like a material handler, they would then do a dynamic strength test that's match specifically to the tasks on the job. That dynamic strength test is done by a certified athletic trainer or physical therapist onsite, and they would then be sure that that person can do the tasks. So, for those higher risk jobs, it doesn't matter if those individuals are a seasonal employee or a year-round employee, they would still go through that same process. And depending on whether somebody is a rehire or if they come back every year, we may have enough history on that individual to know that they've safely worked in that job. And we use different criteria depending on how long they've done that job and whether or not they've been injured. So, we also on rehire hires, go back and look at our history and say, were they injured in this job in a previous year? So, we have enough data to be able to match up people to make sure they're safe in those jobs, even if they're seasonal.
Pete Koch: Yeah, there's a lot of systems that are in place there year-round.
Deborah Roy: Yes.
Pete Koch: That you're able to expand or contract based on the demand of the number of employees. But the basic systems stay the same all the time.
Deborah Roy: Right.
Pete Koch: It's not always the same case in many places. Many places will ramp up their process or put some different things in place or maybe even try to have the same systems that aren't robust enough to manage those peak demands for hiring.
Deborah Roy: Right.
Pete Koch: So, in order to start the process, like what's the essential tool in order to have any of that process work, what's the essential tool that a company needs to have in place to make those systems work?
Deborah Roy: And I think that's a great question. And this is probably the hardest part is actually having someone who's qualified assess the jobs upfront. So really doing the job, physical demands. Some companies actually do that, but they attach it to the actual job description. So, it's part of the job description. In our case, it's always been a separate process just because of our systems. But that job physical demands document is critical as the basis of what we can show the employee or applicant is the job and what the job demands. But also, if you're going to develop a dynamic strength test or have nurses who are going to do assessments, you really need to know what the demands of the job are. So, for example, you need to know how much lifting someone has to do. How many times an hour? What weight? What positions the individuals are in. Do they have to do a lot of bending or reaching? And hopefully the jobs have already been evaluated so that they're safe jobs to begin with from an ergonomic standpoint. And then this is just the documentation of that. So, once you have that basis, everything else just flows from that document. And it's no different than when you bring somebody back to work after they've been out for surgery or some other health issue. Having a job physical demands document means that whoever was treating that individual, that physician, can actually look at that document and say yes or no to does this person come back to work.
Pete Koch: And have it really detailed instead of going on what they think is the job demand.
Deborah Roy: Right.
Pete Koch: Which we find often.
Deborah Roy: That's probably the biggest challenge is I think the medical community in general makes assumptions as to what a job is based on the title or what the employee might tell them. The fact is that having something that is sort of not subjective and very specific to the tasks of the job is helpful all around.
Pete Koch: Yeah. Very, very helpful. Very helpful for the supervisor. Help for the employee. Helpful for post-accident analysis. One of the things that you said in there, which I thought needs to be expressed a little more, is the essential belief that the job specific physical requirements that you have are based on a job that you've already evaluated and that you've made some corrections or adjustments to make it safe in the first place. Right. So, I think that's where some companies get a little lost in that assessment process where they might not have already done an assessment, looked at the job. What are the risks? How do we manage it? How do we make that job safe for the individual to take the job? And they might do a great physical evaluation, but the physical demands might be way above what your average person might be able to manage.
Deborah Roy: Right. And that's a huge issue in most of the country right now. But particularly in Maine, we have an older workforce and in the company. We have an older workforce because we're in Maine. And so consequently, that can be an issue with some of the really high demand jobs. If you have a job there that requires either, you know, lifting more than 30 pounds or lifting frequently or reaching beyond a natural reach, all of those things have injury potential.
Pete Koch: Sure. So those are all critical pieces. And then from that evaluation, moving to the assessment of the documentation of what those demands are. So those are separate in L.L. Bean place from the job description.
Deborah Roy: Right.
Pete Koch: So, you touched on that a little bit. What is the benefit of having them separated?
Deborah Roy: In our case, it was purely the way our systems were set up
Pete Koch: OK
Deborah Roy: But we do have a set process that we use for that documentation. I don't think it matters one way or the other where that lives. It's an issue of having more than a one line that says, you know, this job requires, you know, bending, reaching and lifting, which I have seen on job descriptions before. So, I think it's really just having the specificity and the factual information about the job. And as I said and you mentioned as well, the idea is the jobs have been evaluated upfront and you've already done the risk assessment on the job and you've corrected what you can correct. Then you're producing this document and that's what the individual is then measured to.
Pete Koch: So, you're trying to evaluate the person to their ability to do the job and then making accommodations as you can. I'm sure.
Deborah Roy: Exactly. So, with the Americans with Disabilities Act, you still are going to need to accommodate people along the way, either regular employees throughout the year or seasonal employees. And so, the idea is if you have that documentation, you then know what you can accommodate or not. Some jobs really allow for a lot more accommodation than people realize. And it's just having somebody who is qualified to look at that task and say, yes, that's reasonable to be able to do that. And every company has to decide what's reasonable for them given their circumstances it's really going to vary.
Pete Koch: The person who would look at the physical demands of the job and evaluate those physical demands, someone from outside the company, what kind of qualifications might they need to have to actually do that physical assessment or would it be someone from inside the company that might do that?
Deborah Roy: It can be either or. And it really depends on the type of jobs and how complex they are.
Pete Koch: True.
Deborah Roy: Oftentimes, you know, a certified safety professional can look at those jobs. We also have used a certified athletic trainer, physical therapists, occupational health nurses who are board certified people that actually work in this industry and understand job processes really are perfectly appropriate to do that. And I don't think it makes any difference whether they're inside or outside. It just is an issue of do they know the jobs, and have they observed the jobs. And depending on the size of the company, you may or may not have that expertise in-house.
Pete Koch: That makes a lot of sense. But the basic qualifications, regardless of certification as they need to understand the job and the physical effects of the job on the person.
Deborah Roy: That's right.
Pete Koch: Whether it be cycle time or lifting or any of that.
Deborah Roy: Right.
Pete Koch: Fantastic. So essentially from an onboarding process foundation. Systems are critical, whether you're hiring consistently across the year or whether you're ramping up for peak demands.
Deborah Roy: Yes.
Pete Koch: So, having those robust systems that you can expand to meet the demand of more workers are pretty, pretty crucial.
Deborah Roy: And the way we do that is we actually use seasonal staff. So, from an employment standpoint, we actually bring in seasonal interviewers from other parts of our business. It's a temporary role that they do for the season. We do exactly the same thing for the nurses. So, I have two nurses that are occupational health nurses who are retired from being who come back as what we call alumni. And they actually are job sharing the lead for this. The post offer exams they then manage are our RNs that we hire, many of which come back year after year after year, so they're trained. We have a training session every year on the new jobs and any changes that we have in the process. But oftentimes they're pretty experienced because they've been with us for a long time. So, when you have a large business like this, when you've got to hire thousands of people, you've got to ramp up your staffing even to do that. And you can do that on a seasonal basis.
Pete Koch: Yeah, that's an interesting take on that, because you always think, well, I have to do it with my human resources or you shift that from human resources to the department manager that takes away from their opportunity to manage the people that they already have there or to plan for the increase in productivity that they're going to have. So bringing on additional interviewers, like you said, whether it's the pre hire process or the post offer process is a fantastic idea. But making sure they're trained.
Deborah Roy: Yes.
Pete Koch: That's a key part.
Deborah Roy: Exactly.
Pete Koch: All right. So, let's bring those employees into the workforce now. So, we've got them hired. We've got a whole bunch of people now that are either new to the business or might be their second season or third season or in some cases, they might be back for five, 10 or 15 seasons. How important is it to monitor performance for those seasonal employees that are only going to be there for a few months, maybe a few weeks, even depending on how the peak demand goes? How important is it to monitor and manage performance and give them feedback?
Deborah Roy: It's really important. And, you know, one of the biggest challenges is oftentimes for businesses that ramp up for a peak like this. Trying to have a leader manage a lot more people is very challenging. And so even knowing who those employees are and being able to monitor all those employees is an issue. What we do to supplement that is we have an onsite health clinic with certified athletic trainers and physical therapists. And part of their role in not just treating employees who are injured after the fact, but proactively we look at as we have new employees come in that are seasonal, as they go through their class to learn the job and to do all of the traditional onboarding that's necessary. And then we have lists of those individuals and our PTs and ATCs actually then go out on the floor to evaluate those individuals. And so, we have a regular schedule that they go out in and observe people doing the work because we have trainers on the floor that teach people how to do the jobs. Obviously, the advantage with a seasonal workforce is that if you can simplify the jobs, it's easier for them to learn. And there's less opportunity for risk. But it's really important to give people feedback. And if the leaders are stretched in terms of the number of people, they have reporting to them, you really have to have supplemental assistance to be able to do this. Some companies use just trainers on the floor who actually monitor what's going on in this case. We do some of that, but we also have these qualified individuals who are looking at body mechanics and ergonomics. And we found we piloted this last year for peak and it worked phenomenally well. And so, we're doing it again this year. We started that process already for peak. And it's going great. And what that means is that, that reduces the number of people that get injured on the other end because they now have. That one on one assistance. We did something similar during our peaks in manufacturing, which is a different time of year, previously when we were hiring a lot of people and actually doing regular check ins with those individuals and observing them. And that's where we got the idea to try this during peak.
Pete Koch: That's a fantastic idea. So, you actually split the maybe not split is the right word, but you took the biomechanical the ergonomic evaluation. Not so much off the supervisor’s plate, but you allowed them to then look at more of the productivity and the quality side of it.
Deborah Roy: Right.
Pete Koch: Put an expert in place to look to see if the people were actually following the instructions that they were given. That's pretty interesting because there are those resources. They might not be a PT or an AT at a particular company or you might not have the resources to hire, but you may have a lead. So, you might have a manager and then a lead supervisor or a foreman, which then you can split up some of those evaluation points to provide feedback across the broader scope of your employees.
Deborah Roy: The other thing you could do in a smaller company is you could train some frontline employees and or trainers who are experienced in the job with a little bit more ergonomic background so that they can be that person on the floor to evaluate people and give people corrective advice. And then, you know, if you find that somebody’s got some discomfort, they can go back and check on them later on and see if that improved. And that's what we found with our pilot last year, is when the ATs or the or the PTs went back to check on people, they were really appreciative. Number one, if the one on one and they also were able to acknowledge whether or not it helped and then if something else needed to be tweaked, it could be tweaked then. So, we just found that they really appreciate it. They got a lot out of it. But also, we didn't see the injuries at the other end.
Pete Koch: Yeah. That's fantastic. And always when you get to make that personal connection with the person on the work floor, there is always a benefit rather than doing it remotely or even just in a video training like you're supposed to do this, fill out this form and let me know if anything happens.
Deborah Roy: Right and that's the trouble with onboarding training from a safety perspective. You still need to do that, but people need to have the reinforcement after that. And they're just they're completely overwhelmed at the beginning when they go through all of the training. And they they're still trying to figure out, you know, where the bathroom is and how to get into the building. It's just too much for people to really absorb all of that. So, having some kind of reinforcement that's more personal later on seems to work well.
Pete Koch: Yeah, that's a fantastic point. Many times if I'm going to do a presentation to a company and we're working with a bunch of new hires, one of the questions that I'll ask them is, so when did you have your orientation oh last week or this week or a couple weeks ago. Then I'll ask them. So, what do you remember? And it's fascinating what they remember. So, they'll remember when they get paid. They'll remember where the bathrooms are, they'll remember benefit stuff if there are any, like discount programs, food and stuff like that. Remember where they're working. But from a safety standpoint, it's kind of vague. It's more or less, well, they want me to be safe, but they don't really know how. That separation. So, I think one of the challenges with our seasonal workforce, the manager feels overwhelmed. They may go from a core group that they're used to; they have relationship with. They know the problems, the issues, the successes that the person has had, what they can do, their capacity. And then all of a sudden we have a new group of people that are coming in to manage not only a demand and productivity, but it changes how the supervisor feels about keeping their arms around their workforce and having an additional, well transferring some of that responsibility to a different person, other within the department or the company or from outside the company even to help with some of that seems to be pretty critical.
Deborah Roy: And the supervisors do really appreciate it.
Pete Koch: Yeah.
Deborah Roy: Because it does take that focus from them. And they're pretty good about interacting with the other staff and then knowing what to check on. But it's just it is a relief to them to have that aspect sort of the focus of somebody else.
Pete Koch: So, when we're doing those physical evaluations or biomechanical or ergonomic evaluations, do the evaluators have a checklist or are they going right back to those physical demands or how are they looking at the job? What are they use for cues?
Deborah Roy: They do use the physical demands, but we've developed a format that they do on a on an iPad. And so, they're able to do their notes in the field and then be able to go back to those and then we can put them in our system so that if that person gets seen later on for an injury, the clinician can review that information.
Pete Koch: You can tie that right back into oh, this was observed over here. And that helps add some clarity to that unclear a report of injury. I don't know when it started going backwards or my shoulder hurts, I'm not really sure how that started. Well, we can go and connect it back to that. Know that we made some changes, let's figure out if those changes worked or were, they not using those changes.
Deborah Roy: Correct.
Pete Koch: Excellent. So that's another part, too. So that evaluation process, the form on the iPad stemming from the job descriptions and the physical demands, and then looking at the job itself and figure out what points they need to evaluate, putting them in a list. And then that's what the person would bring out to the field.
Deborah Roy: Which is why you could do something similar even with frontline employees who you've done a little bit of training on in ergonomics. We've also tested doing that. We have something called safety and ergonomic resources, who are individuals that are frontline employees who've had an additional maybe four hours of ergonomic training. We use them in various parts of our business in general. And we did also test last year having a couple of these frontline employees do something similar. And so for a smaller company, that might be an in-house resource with a little bit of training, that would be a low cost way to do something similar.
Pete Koch: Yeah, that's a great idea. And I'm just thinking of some of the resources that are that are available out there. I mean, there's a ton of like office ergonomic checklists that you can look at. I know MEMIC has one specifically like the top 10 tips for office ergonomics or your desk setup or your chair that the layperson could take with them with some training of what to look for. Where do you start? How do you do that? How do you approach the person? Fill out the evaluation and then maybe make a couple of recommendations based on what they see, but then send it back to either the manager or the safety person to make some field evaluation or follow up later on to make more changes.
Deborah Roy: And a company could actually just have a professional put that documentation together based on the job physical demands and then have a lay person actually do the evaluations. As we said, with just some lower level training.
Pete Koch: That's a fantastic idea. So, the idea to work with your outside resources to help you put that together and then do some training with your internal resources to help expand the amount of touch you have on those seasonal workers.
Deborah Roy: Correct.
Pete Koch: Because that's super challenging. If you think if someone's going to work for you for a couple of months and even if they're working full time as the manager, you might only interact with that person for a few, maybe eight to nine hours over the time that they're working for you. And that's not a lot of time overall. So, the more you can split it out, the better. That's fantastic. We have other resources or people within L.L. Bean looking at the biomechanical side. What about other performance related feedback that could affect safety, whether it's in the production side of things or even the quality side of things?
Deborah Roy: Typically, the frontline leaders are the ones that are actually going to give that feedback. So, if they found that the units per hour that that person was producing were extremely low, they might have a conversation with that individual. I will say what I've observed during peak is most of the employees, whether they're regular or seasonal, really understand the mission is to get that product out to the customer before Christmas. So, I think everybody really does really work together to fulfill that mission and people feel a sense of responsibility to do it. So, I don't see a huge issue, at least in our case, with people really not, you know, performing to the best of their ability. I think there's a lot of energy around that time of year and it is infectious. So, I think part of it, it's really more of an issue of focusing on quality and correcting items. If a seasonal employee doesn't quite get a particular issue and I know from doing it myself, as we call it, extra miling. And so, as a salaried employee who doesn't work in operations, we get asked to help out. And that's very traditional in the company that's been done for a lot of years. And so, I know from packing those boxes myself, I may make mistakes along the way. So, the leaders can, you know, then address those items with a seasonal employee, just like they would with us. Because when you have a quick training of here's how you do it. It may be a fairly simple task, but if there are any curveballs thrown in, I'm likely as a, you know, a salaried employee, I'm not gonna get it all.
Pete Koch: Sure.
Deborah Roy: And I think the same is true for the season, most particularly when they first start.
Pete Koch: Oh, absolutely. Because you're bringing a filter with you and you're being taught that piece. And depending on how you see it done or feel it done or watch it done, you just might not get the whole concept.
Deborah Roy: There's a there's a reason I went to college and found that and got a couple of degrees.
Pete Koch: Absolutely.
Deborah Roy: I would not have survived doing manual labor a long term.
Pete Koch: I hear you I totally hear you. Do you mind if we talk about that? The employees understanding the mission because. Wow, that's a I think it's a critical part to helping your seasonal workforce be engaged in what they're doing. And it sounded like the infectious part of that, that it kind of grows out of the current workforce and the managers part of how that works. But how does L.L. Bean sort of build that into the seasonal workforce? Them understanding the mission and getting behind it.
Deborah Roy: It's a good question. It's interesting. I think the culture is there to begin with. So that culture, I think does pull in. Those seasonal is obviously it's still different. The seasonals aren't in that environment year-round. But I do think they understand this, at least in this particular case. Really why it's necessary to get those packages out. And I think this is a pretty simple situation if you understand yourself that you're waiting for something to give as a gift. I think it's pretty easy to understand somebody else is waiting at the other end. And if you aren't able to process that order correctly, that there's going to be a customer that's going to be disappointed at the other end. So, it's a fairly straightforward concept.
Pete Koch: For sure I get that. Do you find with their understanding of the mission and they're getting behind the mission that that push on productivity might push people to overdo or try to do more than they're capable of in in the job that they're asked to do?
Deborah Roy: Interesting you asked that because a number of years ago when I was doing consulting with L.L. Bean. That was one of the things that we brought up as a potential con of this culture is people would go above and beyond in order to get packages out to the customer on time. And I think that has sort of people are still really focused on that mission today. But there's a much better awareness of how to do that safely today than there may have been 20 years ago. And so, although I think that's really important, the safety culture is ingrained and someone is more likely now, I think, to speak up if they need assistance than they would have in the past. And it does make a difference. So, you have to keep reinforcing the safety aspect of it. It's not an issue of safety first or quality first or productivity first. It's all of those things are part of the culture and the whole thing has to be accomplished in a safe way.
Pete Koch: Yeah. That's a really good point. So, connecting everything together and really the evolution of looking at the job. Understanding how that job is managed. Understanding how to fix the worker, making changes along the way and putting that into practice helps to helps to manage the human desire to want to please to want to want to get this out to help the customer feel that they're getting something quality from whatever company they're working for.
Deborah Roy: And you really do have to minimize the risk in in the operation so that when you are in a situation where you've got to get higher volume out the door and you have more people in the building, that there aren't risk created by that. And I think for a lot of companies, their approach in the non-peak season is, well, we only have to do small numbers of these. So, it's OK if the layout is not perfect. The fact is that if that's the case during peak and you're trying, you either have more people doing the task or you're doing more, that poor layout is going to have much more of an impact. And I think that's why it's important to have jobs evaluated appropriately by a professional, whether it's seasonal or not, because that will increase the injury potential.
Pete Koch: We see it all the time where you have a company that manages really well through their shoulder seasons and they have to ramp up for their peak season and they have machines and systems in place to manage the demand. But they haven't looked at how the increased demand affects the worker. And then we have that it happens. And it could be fatigue. It could be repetition. It could be just lifting. Or however, they're going to put themselves at risk or a decision that they make is magnified by the demand. If we haven't managed that and we're not going to be a great outcome. So, let's take a quick break and we'll be back to the podcast in just a couple of seconds.
Pete Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Deborah Roy, president of SafeTech Consultants Inc. So, let's jump back in with more questions. Before the break, we were talking about monitoring performance and providing feedback to the seasonal workforce and in particular, some of the challenges that companies have with employees going above and beyond, sometimes doing too much in order to fulfill the mission because of the really positive culture that they have. They're really behind it. And it's awesome. But sometimes it results in injury or unsafe practices. So how did L.L. Bean manage some of that?
Deborah Roy: One of the big things that we have to manage during peak is fatigue. And even for our regular year-round work force, but also for the seasonals we have to manage the hours. And what can happen is people get really excited. They get really behind this concept. They also see it as an opportunity to make some more money and to have overtime and. So, one of the things we've realized along the way is when you have a workforce that's close to an average age of 50 years old. Most of us can't do as much as we used to do or thought we could do when we were 25. And if you ramp up hours for a long time, you're going to get fatigue and you're going to get injured. So particularly if the jobs are fairly strenuous. So, there are a whole variety of things we do from a safety perspective in terms of job rotation and so forth. But one of our critical issues during peak is to use the 6, 6, 60 rules. And this is based on some research that was done on fatigue at work over the years. And so, we try to consider how many weeks people are going to be working more hours. So, for example, with the 6, 6, 60 rule for six weeks, the you know, an otherwise healthy person can probably work six days a week and up to 60 hours. So, 10-hour days, six days a week. And so that might be a reasonable expectation for that period of time. Beyond that, though, we find that people get fatigued to the point where their bodies start breaking down, and particularly if they already had some joint or a muscle that was already impacted previously. And as we get older, this just much more likely. And so, we ask and it's a guideline. It's not necessarily a black and white. We ask employees not to exceed that 60 hours a week. And the way we manage it internally is our systems actually allow our leaders to know they get a report every week and they know how many hours people and their teams have worked. And they'll go and talk to individuals if they're starting to exceed that time frame. So, and ask them how they're doing. And we also ask our leaders to give feedback to people. So, if they're looking tired, if they're looking like it's too much out on the floor, they go talk to people and they'll give them a day off. They'll give them some extra time. And so, we find that that actually works very well. It's just, again, a more one on one sort of approach. And it's not, you can, or you have to do one way or the other. But we find that people really appreciate that and it's much more supportive in that situation. But it's just reality that we're going to see injuries. If the average worker exceeds that. That's even more of an issue in a market where the unemployment rates low because often employees that are going to be working as seasonal employees are doing another job. So that's even more important to give feedback if an individual is looking fatigued because they may not be able to handle a second job even if this is part time.
Pete Koch: Yeah. That's a great guideline, because if you don't you don't start with the job demand. You start to look at the human side of it. So, what can the human tolerate? And there are showing that there are some studies out there that can help us figure that out depending on the type of job that they're doing. And again, calling it a guideline. But then that place to start can help you determine numbers of employees now that you need to fill the need instead of saying that, well, I have this many positions and I can have this much time that the people can work. If you're working from 9 to 5 job or if you only have two shifts and you're closed for a portion of the time for maintenance or cleaning, which is where a lot of a lot of companies will start instead of starting, what's the demand on the employee? What can they handle? How many people do I need to manage that? And then how do I fill in the gaps? And then the feedback thing that you discuss going back to that, that personal connection, helping that person understand that, yes, someone's there. They care about you. We've seen you. You look pretty tired. You're here in your work cycle. What's happening? What can we do to help you make it through or? You know, I really think that we could probably cut your hours for the last part of this week and have you be healthy for next week instead of injured for the rest of your time here.
Deborah Roy: Exactly. And I think that one on one connection is really important just from a leader standpoint in general, but particularly when you get into a peak situation. I think it's pretty critical. And we do a lot of things to try to help morale and so forth and assist the employees during that that period of time to support them. But this is, I think, one of the critical pieces.
Pete Koch: The one on one. Do you do you do any training with the managers about how to provide that feedback?
Deborah Roy: Yes, we do. We do a lot of leader training.
Pete Koch: That's great, because I think that's a pretty critical part. And in my experience, doesn't matter whether it's retail, hospitality, construction, health care, the leaders, the on the floor leaders have really never had any management training. They get to be where they are because they're really good at the job are they've been doing it for the people that they're managing, but they really don't have any idea how to give constructive criticism or to look at somebody and say, jeez, you look pretty tired today. Not that you do, but you know. And how do you address that concern with you that you know, that that person is here in a second job so they can make ends meet someplace else? And it's a fine line to be able to manage that correctly and still keep morale up. So you do a lot of training on that side.
Deborah Roy: We do.
Pete Koch: That's fantastic. So, what other. What other things you do to help manage that? The challenge of finding enough employees to fill in those gaps. When you find people that have started to exceed that 6, 6, 60 guideline.
Deborah Roy: As I mentioned earlier, part of the culture at L.L. Bean has always been that the non-operational employees that are salaried will help out. And so, when there are times where we need to get product out, the door we'll all help. And I think that also helps morale wise that everybody sort of there to back them up. If the warehouse employees are needing assistance and we generally set up either a separate packing line or a section of the packing line, that is all extra milers so that, you know, one of the leaders can manage us. Because obviously, we're not the most experience in these tasks, but we feel good about helping out. And in past years, I've actually set up a couple of evenings that I've said to my health, safety, and wellness staff. Oh, OK. I'll buy you a quick dinner and we're going to go pack from 6 to 10. And that's an example of. So, we would do that a couple of different weeks. And what the company has done is actually setup those sort of four hour shifts for extra miling in the past this year. What we're trying is some Sundays where people are going to sign up. And we did what's called early decision. So in August, people needed to make a decision if they could cover a couple of sundaes during the critical peak times and the same thing in the call center. We call that Code Green and so on. The busiest days and the call centers, which is generally Cyber Monday and Tuesday and the following Monday and Tuesday, we have people that are extra miling and doing what we call code green.
Pete Koch: Answering the phones.
Deborah Roy: Answering the phones and helping. And I've done that as well. And that's a little scary after you've done three, three and a half hours of training and then you're live on the phones. But we have a lot of employees that do that as well. So that's an example of how in our case, all of us sort of pitch in and help. We do also have other pilot programs that we've tried. For example, we have frontline employees in other non-operational areas that might do a second job in the warehouse or the call center. And so, they add some hours and work again within that 60 hours that we talked about, but they'll add some hours and do a second job. So that's one option. Another option. This year, we have a pilot that's called friends and Family. And so, employees can actually vouch for their friends and family who are able to do these particular tasks. We do the same thing we do for all the other seasonals is they still have to fill out the online health questionnaire and the nurse will talk to them if they have something that would preclude them from doing the job. We actually signed those individuals up in this pilot in August this year, and so we'll see how that goes. But this is a way to try to bring in some people that just want to work a little bit? And again, they might work with their friend or family member who's an employee on one of those Sundays, for example. And those jobs then can be sort of simple, simplified jobs that we're bringing in people. They wouldn't need a lot of training and they can help out during that time. That leaves the other jobs for the more experienced employees to do the other six days.
Pete Koch: That's a fantastic idea to try to expand the workforce, which we've talked about is challenging to find for your seasonal staff. In a couple of key items in there that I heard was the jobs that you're bringing those folks in for. Ah, I won't say simple, but they're less complex. They have less risk involved but customer facing and reward facing. So, there's less mistakes possibly to be made to affect the customer and less potential for them to get injured. So maybe not so much less training, but less complex training that they would have to go through.
Deborah Roy: The other thing we've done for both that group and for extra miling is we try to keep people to four hour or six-hour shifts. And that wasn't the case when I first went to the company. And that was something we've moved towards and we've worked with our operational leadership to move towards. That's really important. So, for my team, for example, of professionals who are salaried, they've already worked their eight-hour day. So, what I described of my team went out and we all went to pack, they we had all worked our daytime job and then went to pack in the evening. It's reasonable to for some of us that are desk jockeys to actually go and do four hours standing and packing. I can tell you, even for me, trying to do eight hours of that is just is physically very difficult. And to do that all at once, particularly if I've already worked all day.
Pete Koch: Sure. And, you know, the law of diminishing returns, as you have someone who does more and more and more, they get less and less productive at it within that time frame.
Deborah Roy: And they'll make more mistakes too.
Pete Koch: Make a lot more mistakes.
Deborah Roy: So, we found that that was just a much more productive to have employees from non-operational areas work at these shorter shifts. And I'm hoping that this the Sunday trial that we're gonna do this year will work out well. And again, those are gonna be six-hour shifts, but that'll be, you know, on a day that people aren't working otherwise.
Pete Koch: Sure. It's interesting how we keep coming back to the decisions that we're making to manage productivity, have an effect on safety and the decisions that we make for safety have an effect on productivity. And when they're made for the right reasons, they all seem to be positive and move towards a better goal where we're gonna have a successful business in there with the seasonal workforce coming back to what we started with at the beginning. The systems that you have in place to manage the systems that you have in place to manage the workforce that is there with you all the time, you need to start with those and then look at how your seasonal workforce might fit in. Don't circumvent those programs that you have a build on those programs to help make your seasonal workforce successful.
Deborah Roy: And I think that's true. And I think a lot of companies look at their seasonal process as not necessarily the same as their year-round. And but those individuals still need the same components. It just may be done in a more streamlined way.
Pete Koch: Yeah, it's that thought of crisis management. Like most companies are pretty good at managing a crisis that comes up. Everyone pitches in together. They all focus on that. They don't always do the same production process or the same safe. They don't take the seams. Make the same safety-based decisions in a crisis. And they get to the end and they're successful, but they haven't followed the plan. What we should be doing is not looking at that. Our seasonal process as crisis management, even when demand sometimes overpowers our production. But look at it as how can we expand? Our systems right now to meet that demand. And yeah.
Deborah Roy: I would say, too I have to compliment our operational leadership does a phenomenal job of planning for peak. So that's the other piece of this is they start way ahead of time. They know what's happened other years. They plan for upside and downside so that they have contingency in place to address those issues. And I you know, the idea here is we've talked about these other pilots that we're trying. Those are contingencies depending on how things flow. And I think it's really critical for companies to really do the planning upfront and don't just try to wing it. And that's where the injuries occur, is when you just try to wing it. And you haven't really even thought through what sort of the upside and the downside are. That's when things start to go awry.
Pete Koch: Sure. For sure. That's fantastic. I think we're coming right towards the end of the podcast here. We've covered a lot of topics and covered a lot of ground today. Got in deep in some things and had some really great suggestions all the way from making sure we have our job descriptions in place and physical demands really detailed, making sure that we have a system to assess our employees and how they fit within the job. How to separate some of that responsibility. Not taking it away from the manager, but help providing helpers so that the manager can focus on productivity and quality and using some either outside resources or are well-trained inside resources to help with that. And then finally, looking at those contingency plans for providing feedback to the employees and I guess if there's one was there's one thing that is most important, the great takeaway for our listeners for managing a seasonal workforce. What do you think that might be if they could if we could take what we talked about today and bring it into one good working point for them, what might that be? I'll put you on the spot.
Deborah Roy: All right. I think an integrated approach to planning is really critical. So having safety expertise at the table, working with operations leadership, working with human resources and everybody that's involved with hiring a seasonal workforce and then having executing a peak, it's really important to have everybody at the table and understand all the elements and then focus on the plan. And once that plan is in place, you can tweak it depending on what happens that season. But without that plan, it's just going to be a reaction. And we know from a safety perspective that typically reactions don't work. You really need to be proactive.
Pete Koch: Yeah, very true. And that's a really great piece of advice because that integrating all aspects into the plan is something that any size company can do. You don't need to be an L.L. Bean in order to do that. You could be a mom and pop group and have a conversation across the table with your production manager and the two owners and still have that contingency plan. What are we going to do when we get a 12-foot snowstorm or what are we going to do when we have a hurricane or what are we going to do when we increase in our operations? So, having those contingency plans are fantastic. Thanks, Deb. I really appreciate that for your time here and given us your expertise. I really appreciate you coming on Safety Experts today.
Deborah Roy: You're welcome. I enjoyed it.
Pete Koch: Thanks again, Deb, for joining us today and to all of our listeners out there. Today we've been speaking with Deborah Roy, president of SafeTech Consultants Inc. And the recently retired corporate director of Health, Safety and wellness for L.L. Bean. We've been talking about seasonal workforce challenges and solutions. If you have any questions for our guests or would like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast email podcast at MEMIC.com. This podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leader in workers compensation insurance and a company committed to the health and safety of workers. To learn more about how MEMIC can help your business, visit MEMIC.com. Don't forget about our upcoming workshops and webinars and for classes and dates and what's out there. Go back to MEMIC.com. A lot of information out there. And when you want to hear more from the safety experts, you can find us on iTunes or right here at MEMIC.com. And if you have a smart speaker, you can tell it to play the safety experts podcast and you can pick today's episode or previous episodes. You can also enable the safety experts podcast skill on Alexa and receive safety tips and advice from any of our episodes. We appreciate you listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know they can find it on their favorite podcast player by searching for the safety experts. And thanks again for tuning into the Safety Experts podcast. Remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast.
You might be thinking about how you can improve the safety culture at your workplace, but from the start MEMIC had to change the workplace culture of an entire state. MEMIC President and CEO Michael Bourque says that MEMIC was born out of crisis. In the late 80s and early 90s Maine had a terrible safety culture and increasing levels of legal conflict making it the most expensive place in the country to do business. The economy suffered and insurance companies were fleeing the state. Finally, workers’ compensation reforms were made in 1992 and Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Company (MEMIC) was created. Now with 8 offices across the Eastern Seaboard, MEMIC shares its workers’ compensation and safety expertise with policyholders across the country. Pete Koch: Hello, listeners. And welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch. Join me and my guests every two weeks to discover new nuggets and insights while we discuss safety as it relates to us humans. Ever wonder what drives a company or even a state to change its workplace safety culture? Sometimes it takes a serious event or a series of events for leaders to recognize that change is necessary. And even then, real sustainable change is sometimes only born out of crisis. And it was in the crucible of the Maine workers' compensation crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. That MEMIC was formed. In today's episode, I'll be speaking with Michael Bourque, president and CEO of MEMIC, to get a better understanding of how a small Maine based workers' compensation insurance provider has changed the safety culture in Maine. Mike has a great big-picture perspective on workplace culture behavior and what it takes to make safety an essential part of the success of any business. Michael, welcome to the podcast. And before we dig in, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came to your position as president and CEO of MEMIC?
Mike Bourque: Sure, I'd be happy to. And thank you much for having me. I'm excited about the podcast and where we're gonna go with it. I think it's a great. It'll be a great resource for all kinds of people. And I'll look forward to listening to it, but not to this one, because I think I'll probably understand what happened here. So, I have worked at MEMIC for, I'm in my 25th year I came in 1995 to the company. I've been the president and CEO since September of 2017, but I originally arrived back in 1995 as a Communications Specialist. I had had experience as a newspaper reporter. Degree in journalism worked in daily newspapers in Maine and Alaska and then left Maine to go to Washington, D.C. and work for a trade association there as a PR communications person. When I was coming back to Maine. Moving back to Portland, I was looking for a job, really. I didn't know any, I didn't really even know what worker's compensation was. Certainly, didn't know what a worker’s compensation insurance company did. I didn't think a lot about safety and workplace safety at all in those in those years. And I arrived here and got a job as a communications specialist and worked in the communications area for years as a manager and a director and then took on the government relations side. So I would find myself often describing and presenting the company to people. And I think that provided me sort of a broad range, broad understanding of what happens throughout the organization, because my job was sort of to be a translator to translate for people outside of the company what the heck we do inside of a workers’ compensation company. And then actually on the other, the other way to translate for people inside what people outside make of what we do and how we do it. So, you know, workplace safety was part and parcel to the DNA of this organization. And so, I had an early chance to really learn that as somebody might who was just coming into the industry and learning about it. So I worked the last 17 years of his career for our founding CEO, and I always say that the way I learned was by keeping my reporter card to ask all the dumb questions, so I keep that to this day, actually it's very handy in this job. And it's great. You learn every day. And so that's been my career here so far.
Pete Koch: That's pretty neat. So, starting as a communications guy with no background in safety whatsoever to the president and CEO. And I imagine that you that your understanding of safety. I know for me personally, like when I came to MEMIC, I had some experience in safety and workplace safety. But when I started my career in hospitality, I had no concept of workplace safety. And now I know that's evolved for me substantially over the years. How did it evolve for you? Your understanding of what workplace safety was almost being here from the beginning and seeing that that concept of safety being implemented over the years and helping MEMIC and other companies be successful over the years?
Mike Bourque: Yeah, it for me, it was it was entirely a learning experience. I mean, we all know sort of the basic of what does it mean to safety and safety mean and what is workplace safety mean. And the idea that if you prevented injuries, you'd maybe reduce the cost. That seemed like that was a sensible thing. But I sort of learned the levels of safety sort of as we advance as an organization. I think we started really focusing on what are known as controls and engineering controls. How do you change either something about the work or something about how you do the work to reduce the risk and whether that's adding machine guards or getting a better machine or performing sort of early ergonomic review to make sure that how you work with something that makes sense to lifting all sorts of simple things like that to something that was much deeper, sort of cultural and behavioral things that change culture and behavior. And we were very into pretty early on at MEMIC that we were going to be changing the culture of Maine and toward a safer one in the workplaces. And Maine needed it.
Pete Koch: Yeah. It seemed that it did. If as I go back and look at the history of MEMIC and the history of workers comp and MEMIC, we needed not just an insurance company, but we needed someone to come in and help really rebuild our work comp industry and then help the business groups here actually be safer because we were it, was a pretty scary place in the early, late 80s, early 90s, not just from a cost perspective, but we had a lot of challenging jobs, a lot of dangerous jobs. And that showed up in the workers comp statistics.
Mike Bourque: Yeah.
Pete Koch: Can you talk a little bit about some of the early problems that MEMIC saw, and why MEMIC was created overall?
Mike Bourque: Sure. Yeah. Maine had among the highest injury rates in the country. It was the most expensive in the country for workers compensation. Those things tend to go together. We had a lot of old-line manufacturing we had an aging workforce. There wasn't enough investment in some of our industries. And so, you had, you know, really some old machines that were working in many of these places. And so, it got to a point in Maine that insurers refused to do business here because it was so expensive, and they couldn't accurately predict what their losses would be. And so, they began to pull out of the state. It's a mandatory line of insurance. And so, you really had what was a crisis in Maine, a handful of insurers who would insure only a few of the very best companies. And everybody else was in a pool that was known as a residual market pool. And there was sort of no incentive to be safe within that other than to take care of your people, which you'd think would be enough. But it wasn't there wasn't a financial incentive for employers. And so, you know, the state really was in a bad place. And ultimately, the governor in the early 90s, a guy named John McKernan, told the state legislature that, look, this worker's comp issue is too big of a problem. He had business owners coming to him from around the state, sitting in his office and explaining how high the costs were and how they couldn't seem to make a dent in them no matter what they did. And so, he told the legislature, I'm not going to sign this year's budget this year state two-year budget until you bring me workers compensation reform that we can agree on. And ultimately, they didn't they sort of called his bluff and he did refuse to sign the budget became nationwide news. It was on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Maine's government shut down for a total of 17 days. There were dueling protests at the statehouse in Augusta state workers who were demanding that the budget be signed that, they weren't getting paid. They were on furlough during that period of time. And then businesspeople saying we really need to fix this worker's comp problem. And so, they finally came up with a compromise. They established like any good legislation; they established a commission to go to do the real work for them. But they agreed that they would vote on the entire package of the issue and work on it. And they appointed some really smart people who had experience and went out, looked at some other states and looked at experiences they had. And they came back with three major suggestions. The first was they made the benefits in the state for workers compensation the national average. They didn't want to be the highest. They didn't want to be the lowest. They wanted to be at the average. And Maine was sort of an up and down in various parts of its benefits structure at the time. They created a dispute resolution system within the state, which didn't rely on expensive lawyers, which the old system had and which tried to get people to mediate a dispute before they went into a sort of a court proceeding. And they establish that administratively, which was important. But thirdly, and most importantly, certainly from my perspective and I think your perspective, but I think really the state's perspective, they created caused the creation. I don't say they created because they caused it. They said it would happen. The employers had to then make it happen later. But they caused the creation of a company to be known a mutual insurance company, to be the guaranteed market in Maine, to be known as Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Company or MEMIC. And that company was established on November 13, 1992 was the date of our incorporation. And the governor at the time appointed 12 businesspeople to be members of the board of directors, the board of incorporators. And their job was to start an insurance company within the next 45 days, which they did. And you might guess that something like that that is as complex as a worker's compensation insurance company that started 45 days might not be the best organization, but because they started from a place, I think, of wanting to solve a big, big problem. And they had experience with what those problems were. They kept a focus on that. And so that was how they how they set out.
Pete Koch: So, in the creation of MEMIC what was the mission? I mean, what every business has to have a mission in order for them to be that people look at their decisions and know that they're moving in the right direction. So, what was it founded on?
Mike Bourque: The most important thing to the board of directors of MEMIC and remains so to this day was workplace safety, which is interesting because, you know, it isn't necessarily usually the first step of an insurer. But they set out in the mission statement of the company that workplace safety training services are mentioned long before it ever mentioned insurance. And so, they made it very clear from the very beginning that they thought that prevention of injury was going to be the way that we were going to be able to resolve the problems that Maine had in workers comp. And so, to that end. In addition to the mission, they also established an independent department, our Loss Control and Safety Department, and hired professionals within it to offer workplace safety training services alongside the insurance. And there'd be many companies that might have a loss control department or a section that might report to underwriting or any claims or even the policyholder services side. But to have it be an independent department and to say workplace safety is important regardless of cost. So cost is important. And that's what we do. We try to help employees drive down the costs. But there's a cost that's more than financial. When you talk about workplace safety and owning that sort of moral ground and feeling that importance was really that is our mission. And that's something that I think excites the people who work here, whether they work in safety or not every day and they have a part in it, no matter what. But those are things that really were established from the beginning. And give us a sense of this mission that was an important moral right.
Pete Koch: I think it really takes the perspective of safety from safety is expensive to safety is essential. As part of that mission, going out and looking at new business or looking at existing businesses and trying to help them, it's not just these are your risks. This is what it's going to cost you. You've got a claims department back there to back you up, which are all critical parts to making the insurance piece work. But without establishing a way to get ahead of the injury curve to make the business better on the other end, you know, it's not a successful puzzle to put together. There's gonna be a missing piece there.
Mike Bourque: That's right. I think we you know, we discovered we knew that. I think people knew that who came to work here early on. But it was a matter of sort of changing the cultural norm in the state around what it meant to do workplace safety and so starting from those engineering controls and you know, one of the early things that we did and it was sort of I think an indicator of that we were going to be maybe successful at this effort was to establish a public service campaign that was called the Partnership for Workplace Safety.
Pete Koch: That's right.
Mike Bourque: And we spent a fair amount of money. And there were some people there's some people who were a little concerned about that. But getting messages out into the public, to workers and employers alike, saying workplace safety is everybody's business, it's everybody's job. And the only way we're going to really tackle our problems in this state related to the cost, related to the carnage would be if everybody took some ownership of that. And so, we created this, we basically said employers and employees working together said that line over and over again and I think helped to see that. So that sort of resonate with people and understand that this was about more than more just than the dollars. There was a cultural change that needed to happen. And having mom or dad come home the way they left in the morning was very, very important thing.
Pete Koch: I see that when I go to businesses, those businesses that are most successful, there is a true partnership between the management team and the employees to get the job done, not just from a qualitative standpoint or within my budget and timeframe, but safely. And those companies that have that open communication, that true partnership between the people who are doing the work and the people who are getting the work for the people to do, that there is dialogue back and forth. There is support for initiatives that employees are trying to take in order to make that job not only maybe easier, but safer to do. And that partnership is truly essential, has to be part of the culture. And I think it would be hard for an insurance company to hire a bunch of safety people in order to make that connection happen at a workplace, to go to a workplace that might not have that partnership. More of that traditional management employee relationship or not a relationship and have your traditional safety person go in and try to try to culture that there. How did MEMIC get around that? Who did they hire to help make that safety process work, make safety essential, that partnership essential?
Mike Bourque: It was an important aspect in the development of the company and development of that safety and Loss Control department to hire, not insurance people with clipboards, but to hire people who actually worked in the industries where they were going to be going into the field and working with employees. We always say they come from the industries they now serve. And the idea was you had people that one knew the work. But the other side of it was they had credibility with the employees and the business owners or the supervisors in a place. If you showed up, you know, in your in your tie in some cases with a clipboard, you look like an insurance guy. And we hired people from the construction industry who knew construction from manufacturing floors, who knew manufacturing and manufacturing safety. And they could also communicate, by the way, which was a hugely important aspect, health care, same thing. And so, we found some really top flight people and they had challenging jobs. But early on, they really helped set the tone for the kind of work that we were going to do. And that's made a huge difference. It's made us. It set us apart from certainly other insurers and helped driven the success of the organization.
Pete Koch: I can speak to that specifically. I'll go back to a story prior to my coming to MEMIC the business that I worked at, we were insured by a mimic. So, we had a project. I was the risk manager there. We were doing some condo development and we were going to fly some trusses a couple of weeks. So, we had asked MEMIC if they had someone to come in and do some crane safety with us. So great. Yeah. We got this guy, Rod Stanley. He'll come in. He'll help do the training for you. He'll take your crew all the way through. We'll go through all the aspects of crane safety for you and your crew. Awesome. I'm excited. Risk manager got it going. And I'm trying to sell this to the departments, and we have construction guys. We've got concrete guys. You got a crane guy and they're like, who is this insurance guy that's going to tell us how I am going to run the crane? And then Rod comes in that day and it doesn't look like an insurance guy is right at their level, is able to communicate with them. He's able to relate to the stories that they tell and before the end of the class, so at the beginning of the class, it was the stoic arms crossed both feet on the floor, leaning back of the chair. Going you need to prove to me that you have credibility. By the end of the class, there was a lot of leaning in. There was leaning forward. There were questions. People came up to him afterwards and asked him a bunch of questions about, so what about this situation and how should this work and this guy's operating it this way? And what happens if we have to do that? And he had answers, which was pretty amazing for your insurance company to have that type of resource that totally sold me on having MEMIC as that partner, because there's not only a partnership between the employee and the employer, but in order to make this thing work, there should be a three way partnership between your insurance company. If there is an injury helping on the claims side to work on your rates, on the underwriting side and then from a prevention side from the safety side.
Mike Bourque: Yeah, it's a three-legged stool. We often talk about that. You need claims, you need underwriting, but you need loss control. You need safety to be part of that. And that's part of the service that is being provided with the policy. And, you know, I can't imagine selling insurance and not doing that. That's what I've grown up in here in MEMIC. And that's how we do it. It doesn't make sense to me that you wouldn't add that aspect because, you know, we've been able to do it as well as well as we have. I think, you know, we've seen these sort of really interesting-personality people come to join that department and it's always fun to go see what's going on in the Lost Control and Safety Department. Usually we've hired people who are very good communicators and know their field well. And most of the time they're not in an office. They are. Their job is to be out in the field and in peoples at work sites and visiting with people. And I always love to make contact with them to find out what they've what they've come across most recently. And I think they are they tend to be people with great curiosity and also great knowledge. And I think it's a great I think, you know, probably there was a time when having a visit from your safety loss control person from your insurance company would be something that would be dreaded. I think often while sometimes we have some tough messages delivered, delivered to people, I think often it's something that they really look forward to, that there's a resource that they have that they're going to be able to glean from and establish something that that'll help them get better, maybe more productive and safer at the same time.
Pete Koch: Yeah, for sure. That piece of having safety as a resource, seeing it as a resource instead of an extra thing that I have to do, ends up making it part of your culture, starts to make it part of your culture. When I'm not thinking about did, I check off the safety box today that I where my this today. It just becomes habit, which is a neat part about the people that work for MEMIC on the safety side there. You talked about all the personalities that work within that particular group. You know, you think about Andy Wood early on with the logging group and continuing on with the logging group and having significant impact over the years with not only the cost of workers comp, but the overall injury trend for workers comp on that side. He's been able to make a great impact just because of his knowledge in the field, his credibility in the field and the support that MEMIC has given him to do all those things.
Mike Bourque: Yeah, I think it's important. That's a that's a really important example of one of the ways that we started to see success tangibly occurring in the field within the logging industry. So that's obviously a traditional industry in Maine. You look at the state flag, there's a logger on one of the one of the two or a lover and a farmer. And so, you see that. And so it's a traditional industry. And people worked in it for years. And it seemed to be sort of just a given that, well, some people are gonna get seriously hurt because it's tough work.
Mike Bourque: And that was something that became unacceptable to us and lots of people in the industry. And so, one of the things early on we did in addition to hiring Andy and a team of people who really work. They'd go out into Maine's Northwoods and work directly with loggers and teach them things that they thought they probably already knew. We had one who spoke French at the time because they are French Canadian logging crews that were there. And I think Andy can speak some French actually himself when necessary. But we established a standard called the Certified Logging Professional and something called the Game of Logging, which really established safe methods for felling trees and dealing with the hazards in the woods. And required certification. And we were in a place where we could do that because there were deaths and paralysis cases occurring in the woods of Maine every single year. Terrible, terrible injuries in addition to being obviously very expensive. They were hugely either life ending or life changing, certainly to the people who experienced them. And so within a few short years after establishing that, there were no deaths and no paralysis cases for many years after that. Within the state, it changed the industry in some way. Sometimes mechanization had a little to do with that. But certainly the credibility of those guys who were out in the woods, who talked to old loggers who had been felling trees forever and said, there's nothing you can teach me, and then they'd watch Andy or one of the guys fell a tree on a dime, somewhere uphill, downhill, side hill, side lean, dealing with widow maker trees that are around. They saw that there was a different way to do the work and began to understand that they were putting themselves at risk and they really could be better. And so that was an example. You know, from the very beginning, we saw attention to something that had been thought to be just inherent. That's just an inherent risk. That's how it is. We didn't accept that. And the people we worked with didn't. And that's made all the difference.
Pete Koch: The logging examples a fascinating example, because the training and the certification that was done really originated from production. So, the principles that are taught for the certified professional logger are all about getting the wood in the pile and being productive. But the underlying principles for that are not only allow you to be faster, but it also allows you to be more accurate and it allows you to be safer. So, allows you more control over a standing piece of kinetic energy, basically, which is a tree. So, you've got to get it to go where you want it to go. And once I understand how it works. So, we're using principles for production that actually have a lot of underlying safety practices. And without those underlying controls to make production faster, you won't be as fast. And historically have showed that you've killed people and paralyzed people and injured people substantially. So that's a really interesting.
Mike Bourque: Yeah. It's a very good point. I mean, that safety can't be seen as something that it gets in the way of production. And that was the old way of thinking, I think within Maine within lots of industries. And that's been a principle, the principle that increasing improving safety leads to increasing and improving productivity is something that wasn't obvious to people right away. But over time in industry, after industry has come to be true and they've seen it seen it happen. And so, I think those of you who talked to people who have been in their industry for a long time and they will say, I didn't know it could be done, but it can. And we're doing it.
Pete Koch: Yeah. And moving that the thought from safety is expensive. And so many times when I go to an account that we've never had before, it could be in Maine, could be in a different state, could be a brand-new company. The discussion is always around safety is expensive. We've got to do these things. I have to put machine guards on. I have to hire new people. We have to do safety training. And once you get beyond that to show that there is truly a connection and that three-legged stool that you talked about before, that in order to balance your business for the long term, anybody can be successful. In the short term, I can have a super successful set of years, but I won't be able to replicate it if I don't know how I got there. And so, I might know how I did it financially. We might know how I did it from a qualitative standpoint. But if I don't get how I kept all my people saved through the program, through the production, through the years that we were successful, we won't be. So, moving from safety is expensive to safety is essential and is an essential part of any business out there. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back with Michael in a couple of minutes. Thanks.
Pete Koch: Welcome back. And today, we're talking with Michael Bourque, President and CEO at MEMIC. So, Mike, I wanted to jump back in with some more questions. And in the previous segment, we were talking a lot about how MEMIC brought safety to the forefront. And it was the mission that they used to help to fix the worker's comp situation in Maine. Safety being an essential part of any business plan in order to be successful over the long term. So, we know now that we were successful because we can look back. Hindsight's always 20:20. But what were some indicators that MEMIC was on the right track? Like how did the leadership at MEMIC in those early days know that they were going in the right direction with putting an emphasis on safety and quality team or quality claims and quality underwriting?
Mike Bourque: At the beginning, it really happened pretty quickly, amazingly enough. We started and I started to see rates fall by a couple of years into the company. And so, Maine had the highest rates in the country in terms of workers compensation costs and those started to come down fairly precipitously. And another indicator was all of a sudden, the insurers who had refused to do business in Maine, had all turned in their licenses, by 1997 there were about 200 of them who were back willing to do business in the state again. So, it was very clear that they were seeing something in numbers that was indicative of a better environment. So, we saw that. But the number that that set it right away were the number of lost time injuries that were down. So, in 1992, the year before MEMIC came into existence in Maine, there were 19,200 lost-time injuries in the state. By again that time 97, 98, it was down around 13,000. And those are just a raw number of claims that wasn't on a per worker basis. And that was at a time in the economy where we were coming out of the late 80s, early 90s, where there had been a low in the economy to a place where there were lots of jobs being added. So, you had fewer injuries on a larger job base. So, the rate of injury had fallen precipitously. We could we could certainly see that. And then the numbers in terms of costs were as well. We also saw that that message that we started to get out around the public service announcements that we did really was resonating, that people were paying attention and listening. And you'd see it on work sites. You'd see it my old boss would say whenever he went out someplace, somebody would see him and remember him from the ads, but then say, "Hey, look at this I'm working safely” whatever it might be. So that was that was an indication.
Pete Koch: That's cool. There is a connection, though, in order for those claims to go down. Or the injuries to go down, to realize that and have the other insurers look at say, oh, there's something good happening here in Maine. And pretty quickly. It couldn't just happen because we were underwriting the right businesses or we were managing the claims because, yeah, you can manage claims costs, but you can only do so much. So really had to be the safety aspect of it that caused a majority of the success that was out there. So, there is a partnership. We talked about that partnership, the ad campaign, the getting business owners and employees to partner together for workplace safety, having a third partner of MEMIC as the resource of the insurance company. But what part did the safety consultants play in making sure that companies were working safely in the field?
Mike Bourque: Well, they were you know, there were assigned customers. They had a regular set of customers, and they do to this to this day. And they were out meeting with them regularly. Their job was not to be in an office anywhere, but to be out in the field in those places and seeing things change and happen and follow up. And so are using all kinds of best practices around managing projects and all of that. And to bring new information. And so, I think they became looked upon as a real resource for those employers. And they knew we were we were serious about it. This wasn't just a one-year thing. We weren't just going to show up, you know, at the beginning first six months and say, "Okay, we'll see how this goes and then we'll send you a bill after that." We were going to come back over and over again. And they did start to realize that. I think some who didn't get it early on said you were gonna see that guy Rod Stanley again, I guess. And so they started to really understand that this was a movement that really was something that was going to be lasting.
Pete Koch: That follow up, I think is key. Talk about, Rod Stanley go back to that training session. The last thing that he did before he left was say, Okay, so here's the action that we are expecting that needs to be taken in the field. Let's follow up in a week or during the project or after the project to see how you did. So, there is always that follow up, at least on my perspective. From my perspective, when I was working in the industry, that MEMIC would come back to that. And on the logging side of it, too, in order to maintain your certification, you had to have an evaluation in the field to assure that you were actually doing the or following the practices for the game, a logging in the certified logging professional. So, there is accountability built into the safety program because that key part of any partnership, in order to have a partnership, each partner has to own part of it. There has to be some accountability on that.
Mike Bourque: You know, it's I think it's interesting. One of the things that followed on a few years later from the Certified Logging Professional was something we know here is the CCP, the contractor certification. And it was a program that we put in place after some really serious falls had occurred around small homebuilders. So, these are one and two-story structures being built. And there were about 2000 of those organizations around the state of Maine, and they're notoriously independent. I mean, they were in charge of their site. They knew how to do it best. And they were tough nuts to crack, there's no question. They didn't need their insurance company interfering with what how they did and what they were doing. But we put in place some pretty strict standards and then followed up. We had to add the staff to do that and invested in it. And, you know, it's very interesting. Just this past year, I was at a St. Patrick's Day party actually on an island in Maine and a guy I knew to be an ornery old contractor. He actually was an ex professional football player, ambled up to me and he said, so you're the MEMIC guy. And I said, yeah, and he stuck out his hand. I want to thank you. We're a lot safer than we used to be. And you know what we thought we were doing, but we didn't. And to hear from this guy in particular, that to me is an example of the kind of thing that happened over and over again. And, you know, at the absolute, you know, sort of grass level, I mean, it was this was right down in the weeds. And we needed to do that. And it did. And there were some people who would have were a little nervous about sort of, you know, plucking that string. I think that we thought we would, and we did meet with some people who weren't going to join us in that effort. But by and large, we've had pretty good success in helping to make that happen.
Pete Koch: Yeah. That's a great story about the guy coming and saying "We're a lot safer than we used to be. We thought we knew, but we really didn't know", which is a lot about safety because how do you learn about safety? Chainsaws, right? So, logging everybody in Maine has used a chainsaw. We do logging, training or chainsaw training with occasional users now. So, since a lot of the logging in Maine now is mechanical. Most of the training that Andy is doing is for those occasional users. So, your property managers, your maintenance guys, your golf course people. So, we'll do some chainsaw safety training. So, the first question that you always ask is, so who has operated chainsaw before? Everybody raises their hand. So, who's had training before? Nobody raises their hand. Or somebody does and then you ask him. So, who trained him? And it's your grandfather or your father or... And great training, really, to be out in the woods with your dad, your grandfather in that tradition. But where is the safety coming from?
Pete Koch: How are you learning that? So, to be able to give a resource and at an expert level for the industries that we're going to insure is really key. I think that's important on every level. So a company that is doing a particular type of work, whether it be hospitality or construction or nursing or logging or whatever that is, there should be people that are not just experts in what they do, but experts in how what they do can affect them. So, I have an interesting story kind of along those same lines and that that interaction with that person. So, one of the first years that I was working for MEMIC, I was doing a confined space workshop for an account. And we were in the field and we were at one of the spaces and we were learning how to use the gas meter. So, you put the meter in the hole, you take a reading of the levels of oxygen were and any flammable gases. And then it would tell you if it was safe to go in or not. And so, I got the meter down there. And I'm looking at the reading and I'm looking at it and I'm talking to the guy who does work in the hole. So, it's a relatively deep hole. It's about 15 feet and it's only about three and a half feet wide. And there's some valuing and steel parts at the bottom of the hole that he has to go in and adjust. And there's a flow meter that he has to read whenever there's water flowing through that space. So, he goes down there once a week or so does the reading. And I asked him, so how do you how do you feel when you go down there? Well, you know, when I go down there, sometimes when I come out, I got a really bad headache, or I feel nauseous and it takes me a while. But, you know, I get out and I breathe again for a while and I do good. And then I'm fine and I go on. And I look at the meter reading and we were well below the livable oxygen level down there. So, if he had spent long enough down in that space, it might have been a different story. He might not have come back out. So, from that particular interaction and then being able to show him exactly what he was breathing down there, they changed what they did. So, they moved the flow meter from 15 feet in the hole to right at the surface. So, they engineered the problem out. But that was business as usual for them, which I think is a is an essential part of what MEMIC's safety people do as they make that connection in the workplace.
Mike Bourque: Yeah, it gives people a place to verbalize some of the challenges they may have. I mean, I think, you know, until you ask somebody, how do you feel about that? There may not be any reason. Well, it doesn't really matter, because I have to do it, doesn't it? Well, maybe it does matter. Maybe there is a way to fix it, to make it better. And I think we part of what we've tried to do is create the sort of safe spaces for employer employee communication around that, because we know that's vital. And, you know, I think there's more and more space for that to happen now than before. Maybe the safety consultant stepped in, maybe as sort of the ambassador between the two to kind of hear both sides and just say, OK, let me connect you, because there's something here for both of you. And that's the win win.
Pete Koch: That's interesting. You bring that up. That's very much like you are talking about your communications job before interpreting what people on the inside we’re hearing from people on the outside and then vice versa. So that being able to be that that go between to say, "Okay, so I understand what management's saying. I understand what employees are doing." Let's bring those two together and make sure that we can do the job safely and productively and at a quality level that we can maintain over time.
Mike Bourque: And I think you obviously know this as well as anybody. But the truth is, there is a place there where those things overlap. That Venn diagram comes together and it's better for both. And ultimately helping them to realize that is the win for both sides.
Pete Koch: Yeah. We talk about this in our leadership, our safety leadership training. Where you talk about safety being first, safety being for safety being first as part of that three-legged stool or part of that triangle. So, safety, quality and productivity are all on that triangle. But when you think about each of those three things, productivity will flex. It will go up, it'll will go down. You'll have lean times. You'll have you'll have fat times. It'll be good. It looks bad. You'll have people, you won't have people. You'll have a lot of stuff to do. You won't have a lot of stuff to do. On those times when productivity gets pushed pretty hard, like that small contractor who now all of a sudden has to make all of his money in the summertime. And in Maine, the summer might only be a few weeks sometimes. Or like right now, it's beautiful and it can extend for quite a while. However, they only have a short period time to do all the work. So, they're trying to get as much work as they possibly can, stuff it all into a short period time. So, productivity for them is pushed pretty hard. If you have safety that's robust, that's part of your culture, that it's incorporated into everything that you do. When I have to push productivity pretty hard and safety is what that upside down triangle now rests on, if you think about safety as the base of the triangle single point, but at the base and then productivity and quality on the other two points but are in the air. If that's robust enough, you can push productivity pretty hard and that triangle won't fall over. But if it's just that little point and you've got to check a couple of boxes in order to make sure you're safe, as soon as you push productivity pretty hard, it's going to fall over and people get hurt and then all of a sudden you can't be productive anymore.
Mike Bourque: I think one of the things it does to the people are don't really fully understand or appreciate it, but it creates a it creates a structure around ability to do those other things and to do them well. And sort of whether it's a process and whether it's just it creates sort of the comparison you can make to go from, you know, sort of focus on productivity versus a focus on safety. But if you have sort of this built in culture and it's set for you, it's much easier to be able to do that, as you say. And it sort of stands up. But I think it also is just an easier, easier leap for people.
Pete Koch: So, let's talk a little bit more about those MEMIC safety experts and what role they played in the continued success of MEMIC. So MEMIC has grown, we haven't just stayed as a regional or Maine-based insurance company. We're now ensuring all across the nation, really mostly on the East Coast and regionally, but all across the nation. So how has MEMIC's safety experts played into the success of that?
Mike Bourque: Yeah, happy to talk about that because it's really at the forefront. You know, by the late 1990s, we were hearing from people in other states who had sort of heard about the success that had occurred. Maine worst in the nation status to this huge improvement. It was being made more insurers wanting to come do business here and started to hear, "Gee, can you come do that for us?" And we actually developed a consulting firm for a time called MEMIC Safety Services. And we would go out and do safety work really across the country. And it didn't take much marketing to get attention in health care and manufacturing and ergonomics and all sorts of places, and logging to be able to find some of that work. Ultimately, we decided we really were an insurance company, too, and we wanted to be able to insure in those other places. And so, again, the lead for us was we were known as the safety company. And so that's how we sold ourselves as we've moved down the East Coast. And, you know, we don't do business just in any state, in part because we want to have a safety person within driving distance of the organization so that they can be on the worksite and be, you know, on the shop floor and help the way they help here. We're not the guaranteed market in those other places. So, we write larger entities that have probably have some interest in safety that they've already established and expressed. And so, they understand that their relationship with their safety and loss control person from MEMIC. It's going to be a big part of the arrangement. And that's what they want. They're looking for that and they don't seem to find it other places. So really, it is the calling card for the company as we've left Maine. And luckily, we found many more of those great people who come out of those industries who are really interested in safety and who are really good at it and develop those same those same relationships that we are able to develop here in Maine.
Pete Koch: So it sounds like part of the MEMIC success is having a safety expert, boots on the ground in the field, working with partnering with those different businesses that we're going to insure. And that's really the essential part to be successful as a business. If you take that model that MEMIC has, of you know, having your financial people and your claims people and then your safety people. That safety person can't be in the office, they have to be boots on the ground. They have to be knowledgeable; they have to be a good communicator. They have to be able to understand the business and then to be able to think outside the box because it's not always compliance. Just because this is the rule doesn't mean that this the way it's written is the way that it's going to be applied or if it has to be applied that way, you might need to think outside the box for how you do your job and your task. So if you had a -- and I don't want to put you on the spot Michael so -- putting your creative hat on for a moment here, if you had to give some advice to a business owner that was looking to fortify their safety program or change their safety culture, what would be some advice that you could give them based on your experience here at MEMIC and some of the success that we had that they could use in any business?
Mike Bourque: Yeah. Well, the first thing I'd say is make sure MEMIC's your workers compensation insurer - that would be the - because we have experience and we know what we're doing. But I think it would be "Engaged in that relationship with your safety professional." They are your consultant. They are your expert. They are at your disposal and they have a lot they can bring to your organization from their various experiences. They see and they are learning all the time. It's not that they only come with whatever they learn last year. They visit a different place a few times a week. And so that continues to sort of add to their knowledge. Plus, there's people who are out doing education there. They're staying on top of what's happening in their field. So, I think those are really, really important aspects. And I think the other part that we talk about, we've talked about this a little bit earlier, just opening up and listening to your employees because they have something to tell you. And, you know, it may not be that you agree, but it's you have to hear, because more often than not, I found in this job, which is not always about safety, it's about all sorts of other things. But you learn that way. And so, I think it doesn't matter what kind of management job it is, you're going to learn from the people who are sort of on the front lines of your organization.
Pete Koch: I think those are great points. And that commun - or the listening the communication part of the partnership goes both ways. Like I have to if I'm a business owner, I have to listen to the people that are doing the work because just because I was really good at doing that job before I owned the business doesn't mean that that person doesn't have a different idea of how to do it better or how to do it safer, or how to actually make it so that we can tie those two things together like we did in logging and make the safe way to do it that much more productive. That's pretty key. And then utilizing your resources and then MEMIC bringing that expertise to the workplace. That's fantastic. Great advice. What does the future hold for the safety experts at MEMIC? Like what's the, where are we going forward from here?
Mike Bourque: Well, I mean, you know, we've established ourselves as an organization by selling safety and continuing to grow in that realm. And, you know, while we've been through a time where the frequency of workplace injury is down around the country, there's been more attention to that. It's down by a larger percentage here in Maine where we really got our start and got that ball rolling. So, we're not going to go away from that anytime soon. That's really is who we are, in fact. And I know you know this. But the you know, part of the deal for us, as we have developed in the place where we're not the guaranteed market, which is the rest of the country outside of Maine. Until send out a safety person to do a review of a of a workplace and look at what they're doing for safety and come back with that plan, you know, sort of an action plan for what are we going to work with you on? What will we work together on? Until somebody high up in the organization, preferably the president or the owner of the company, signs that to say, yes, we'll work with you, we won't offer the quote. That tells you how serious we are about it. We don't want to necessarily underwrite your business if you don't want to spend time and work at it with us, because that's where we think we can add the value. That's what makes us different than we think other insurers. So, you know, the continuing development along that spectrum of workplace safety and those people, I think we are going to always rely on the human side of this. I mean, I think there are all sorts of resources that are available electronically. I think those are just tools that go alongside the safety professional who humanizes it and also can look with their eyes and see what's happening, you know, in a place. So, I think we'll continue to have more capacity as a result of those tools. But it really is about the people who know what they're talking about and can help relate to the people, because in the field, that's how we'll continue to grow.
Pete Koch: That's great. So that essential safety is about relationship. It's about the people both doing the work, seeing the work, committing to improving what's happening. And then at the end of the day, that commitment to making sure all your people go home in that same condition as they came in, maybe a little bit more tired than they did when they came in. But all their fingers and toes, safe, happy home so that they can work another day for you. And that's the bottom line.
Mike Bourque: And I think, you know, most every employer wants that. And I think that's the truth of the matter. So, we start at good place, I think. I think human nature is that we want to have people, you know, be whole and be productive outside of their work time. And that makes those relationships better. And at this day and age, especially in the northeast and down the east coast, where you have really low unemployment numbers. You've got to take good care of those people that you have invested in that you've brought in and you spent money to hire them, to put them in place, perhaps to train them, to provide them with equipment. The last thing you want is to see one of them go out with an injury. And because it's not only an injury to them, obviously it could be life lasting, but it's an expense to your organization. And you may not find that same person out there somewhere, a free agent who you can bring in and hire. You need those people.
Pete Koch: Yeah, you definitely need those people and they're hard to find. People are hard to find. They're that essential human resource. But they're becoming scarce these days, which, you know, that's not a bad thing to have sometimes when your economy's going that fast that you need that many people. But it also becomes more difficult to keep those people around. So, safety, again, be another essential part of those three things. Right. Safety, quality and productivity all the time.
Mike Bourque: Absolutely.
Pete Koch: Fantastic, Mike. I think that about wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast. And I wanted to thank you very much, Mike, for spending time with us today and sharing your story and your experiences and just being here for us and supporting the continued mission of MEMIC overall.
Mike Bourque: Well, it's my favorite topic, of course. And MEMIC and our work in safety. So, it was fun to do. And I think this is going to be a successful endeavor. I look forward, like I said, to listening to future podcasts because I think you going to have a big audience.
Pete Koch: Thank you very much for that. Any last words or tips that you have for our listening audience out there?
Mike Bourque: No, I think I think we've touched on all of it. I think we did.
Pete Koch: Yeah, that's fantastic. So, thanks again, Michael, for joining us today. And this is Peter Koch for the Safety Experts podcast. If you have any questions for our guests or would like to hear more about a certain topic or from a certain person on our podcast. Send us an email at podcast@MEMIC.com. This podcast was presented by MEMIC, a leader in the competitive insurance market and a company committed to safety. We are that safety company that sells insurance that we were talking about before. And to learn more about how MEMIC can help your business, visit MEMIC.com. Don't forget about our upcoming workshops and webinars. And for those dates, you can also find those on MEMIC.com. We appreciate your listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know that they can find it on their favorite podcast player by searching for Safety Experts. And last. Thanks for tuning in to the Safety Experts podcast. And remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast.
Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast
- MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/
- Peter Koch -https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch
- Michael Bourque - https://www.memic.com/about-memic/leadership-team/michael-bourque
- John McKernan - https://www.uschamber.com/john-r-mckernan-jr
- Wall Street Journal Article – https://www.wsj.com/
- MEMIC’s Overview & History - https://www.memic.com/about-memic/company-overview
- MEMIC’s Mission - https://www.memic.com/about-memic/the-mission
- Rod Stanley - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/rod-stanley
- Andy Wood - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/andy-wood
- Maine State Flag - https://statesymbolsusa.org/symbol-official-item/maine/state-flag/flag-maine
- Certified Logging Professional - http://www.clploggers.com/clp2.html
- Game of Logging - http://www.gameoflogging.com/
What does it take to be a leader and motivate a group of people to accomplish a common goal? How do you build credibility and develop trust with your team? Are you able to communicate with humility so it’s not about you but about the overall mission? MEMIC Loss Control Director Randy Klatt shares leadership tips from more than 40 years’ experience working in industries where safety is critical to success—in emergency medicine, as an active duty Navy pilot, a commercial airline pilot and an aviation safety instructor at the university level. Peter Koch: Hello listeners, and welcome to the first ever episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch. Join me and my guests every two weeks to discover new nuggets and insights into work, life, physiology, psychology, common trends and inspired solutions while we discuss safety as it relates to us humans. Check us out at MEMIC.com/podcast or find us on your favorite podcast player by searching M E M I C Safety Experts. New episodes drop every two weeks, so jump on over to MEMIC Safety Experts podcast and subscribe. In this our inaugural episode, we're going to talk about leadership and its role in driving safety in any industry as a safety consultant working for MEMIC for the past 17 years and across a variety of different industries. What I've realized is that safety impacts every part of each position that you have and every task that you do. And being an effective leader can create a great culture of safety and increase safety performance. So, let's get started with a quote from James Buchanan, “The test of leadership is not to put greatness in humanity, but to elicit it for the greatness is already there.” He was an American president from 1857 to 1861 and realized that even then people had the inherent ability to succeed. And good leaders will provide motivation and opportunity for that success to manifest. For today's episode about safety leadership, I'm speaking with Randy Klatt, CSP and director of Region 2 Loss Control at MEMIC to better understand how leadership affects safety, culture and employee performance. Randy has over 40 years of experience working in industries where safety is critical to success. His career spans emergency medicine, active duty Navy pilot, commercial airline pilot and aviation safety instructor at the university level. Randy has worked with MEMIC since 2003 and he's been leading a team of consultants serving the southern and central Maine areas. Randy, welcome to the podcast today. And thanks for being here for our first episode.
Randy Klatt: Hello, Peter. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Peter Koch: I really appreciate coming down and talking about leadership with us today. So, let's jump right into it. So, in your opinion and from your experience working within the field and within the aviation industry and then working here for MEMIC for as long as you have, what does it take to be a leader?
Randy Klatt: What does it take to be a leader? You could take all day to answer that question, Peter. Of course, there's all kinds of things involved in that. But if I had to pinpoint just a few things, if we consider what the definition of leadership is to start with, to motivate a group of people to accomplish a common goal. What do you need to motivate people? And there are all kinds of skills and attributes that we could talk about. But to me, there are two things that stand out right away. One is if you're going to talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk. So there has to be that credibility piece. There has to be that trust from your, from your people. If they understand that you actually do what you say they need to do. They'll be willing to follow you. And the second attribute that I really like is humility. If you look at history, some of the greatest leaders in history were actually very humble people. They didn't really like to talk about themselves. It wasn't about them. It's about the team. It's about the accomplishment of the goal, the overall mission. So those are the things that come to my mind from the very top.
Peter Koch: I think that's fantastic. And those two things seem to be able to translate pretty well right into leadership in the safety field and the safety world to motivate people to be safer. Though we don't always see that happen. I mean, that's really why we have our jobs as safety experts here, because workplace safety doesn't always occur. And we do have injuries in the workplace, and it does happen. So how would those two attributes really work in towards workplace safety and becoming a successful leader in workplace safety?
Randy Klatt: Well, again, if the people that work for you or report to you or work in your organization, if they trust their leaders, they'll listen to their leaders. And if the message from leadership is, we're going to operate a safe operation. We're going to follow the rules; we're going to do what the right thing to do is, and then people are much more likely to do that. So, a leader is such an important foundation of any safety program. Most workers know what the right thing to do is from a standpoint of safety. But if that isn't reinforced by leadership, by supervisors, if that isn't encouraged, if that isn't something that people are held accountable to, then what happens? Then, then we're probably depending upon production and we're looking to production, we want to get the job done. Of course, everybody wants to get the job done but if the leaders are saying, yes, the job is important, but let's balance that with safety, we're going to do it. But we're going to do it safely. People are much more likely to do that. If leadership just says get the job done, turns around and walks away. Well, you know what the results will be. People will focus on the job. They will get the job done. But they're going to risk their own safety or the safety of others in order to do that. So, leadership does start at the top. We could talk all day again about different levels of leadership and what's most important, but having a solid mission in mind and holding people accountable to that and treating them with respect and trust at the same time, making sure they're doing what they're supposed to do. Supporting them with their needs. That's what's going to get things done. And that's what's going to provide a safe and healthful workplace. When I see a claim, when I see an injury, typically my first thought is, where was the supervisor? Where were the leaders? Why was that set of circumstances allowed to exist in the first place? That should not have happened. And yes, everyone is responsible for their own safety and health. So, we can look to individuals, but there is probably a culture that developed there that set up that scenario. And with proper leadership, it wouldn't have happened.
Peter Koch: Sure. Boy, those are really fascinating. And when you think about it, and when I look at the different people that I've worked with in the past, there hasn't been any business owner, supervisor, manager, vice president, whoever that would be that I'm communicating with, none of them want their employees to get hurt. Not a one. And if you come right out and ask them, did you, were you expecting that person to get injured? Did you want that person to get? No, they definitely don't want that. So how does that desire for someone to go home in one piece then get convoluted or changed? And I think the leadership equation is there because most of them have stood in front of their employees and said, I want you to work safely. You have permission to say no if the job seems too challenging for you or unsafe and come to me or come to your manager or come to your supervisor. But yet, we still see that employees will make different choices. And I do believe it comes from the trust of that individual or maybe interpretation. So, if I stand in front of you as the supervisor and say, I want you to work safely, and like you said, then wander away to do something else. Maybe it's working on productivity or scheduling or some of the other tasks, or maybe to go take over a job that I had done in the past and someone didn't show up today, so I'm going to step into their shoes so we can keep productivity going. There's a mixed message there that comes from that supervisor or manager.
Randy Klatt: There is absolutely a mixed message there. And what I often see is, and what we always see, especially in manufacturing, a large facility, you walk onto the floor and there's a big banner that says safety is number one. Safety is my number one priority. Safety is job one. We see those things a lot. And I was just at a location not too long ago and I saw that banner. And we're right next to it was a railing on this, on a set of stairways that was missing the mid rail and would in no way be compliant with the OSHA standards. And I could frame it in the same photograph. Something is wrong there. The message is a good message and it should be promoted as a priority for the organization. But when you have a clear hazard right next to it, that hasn't been addressed by anyone, we know that that is not a message that's permeated through all of leadership, that has been started at the top and has made its way all the way down. So, something is missing. So, the message is, yes, be safe, but just get the job done. That's the subliminal message. And that's when people get hurt. People don't, you're absolutely right, people don't want to get hurt. They don't try to get hurt. And there are no business owners I've ever met who want to see people injured. Certainly, we don't. But if you're not actively engaged in preventing it. Actively engaged in fostering a culture that says workplace injuries are not inevitable and they are not acceptable. And we have to do everything we can to prevent them. If you have that kind of culture, you probably will prevent at least a very good portion of those injuries. And it's not just lip service. It's actual actions that are required.
Peter Koch: And there is the difference between having a mission that states that that injuries are not acceptable and they're not inevitable and they are preventable. And then holding people accountable for actions that will support or promote the mission, whatever those actions are. And there's multitude of things that we'll get into later on in the podcast of what, what supervisors can do to help lead in safety. So, what are some examples of how good leadership can have a positive effect on workplace safety? Maybe some specifics that you've seen out there, some behaviors or actions or practices that you've seen work really well in the workplace?
Randy Klatt: Well, I can give you an example. That again, happened not too long ago. One of the insureds that I work with, the safety manager, is very aggressive. He's well versed in safety. He's a good man. He wants to prevent injuries doing his job. And it's taken a while to turn the culture around at the organization, but he's done really well with it. They recently turned down a hundred thousand dollars in income in a job. They could have taken on this extra role and made a lot more money. But there were safety issues involved and in what they were about to do. And as the safety manager, he stood up as a leader and said, we should not do this. And the owner did back him up and said, all right, we won't. Long story short, eventually, that customer that they were working with agreed to change conditions and changed the environment that they were going to be working in, and they ended up getting the job anyway. But I thought that was really a great example of how a safety leader stood up to do his job and said, this is not acceptable, we should not take on this risk. In the past, that hundred thousand dollars of income probably would have been the driver. But the culture has become safety oriented enough to say, and accepting enough to understand that, ah right, if we get somebody hurt, we're gonna lose that hundred thousand dollars many times over, so let's not do that. So, I think it's very possible for businesses to do that when they have that focus, a broad, focus on safety, culture, productivity, quality. We've talked about those things many times in the safety world about balancing those three. And you can do that. But you have to have leaders who are willing to do it. Because if I told the frontline employee to go do that job, he would have done it. He would have risked his own safety, probably because he was told to do the job and a good employee will do what they're tasked to do because they feel obligated to complete the mission.
Peter Koch: Complete the mission. Trust their, trust that their employer has their best interests in mind or on the negative side, not trust, but do the job because they don't want to lose their job.
Randy Klatt: Sure.
Peter Koch: There's parts there, too.
Randy Klatt: Employees have to, they're paid to do the job. And they will say that to me. That's my job. Well, it is your job, but it's not your job, your risk, your safety. And if you have someone that is in leadership who is supporting that, in the end, it'll work out so much better. So, in this particular case, not only did they prevent injury, they corrected a site that was not safe, and they still got the job in the end, anyway.
Peter Koch: That’s a fantastic outcome.
Randy Klatt: Really a great outcome for everyone. So, I think that's the best example I have in my recent history of where leadership really took over and did the right thing to prevent injury.
Peter Koch: And really, when you look at what they put first. And so you talk about the balance of the three things that get measured most within business, which is the quality or service of the products you're putting out there, the productivity, how well you are managing the finances, what is coming in versus what's going out. And then safety being that last part. If you put either productivity or service at the basis of all your decisions, there is a darn good chance that that particular decision that happened at the company that you were referencing before, would never have happened because it would have been about the money. Or it had been about the quality of the product that they had to put out first, instead of understanding that they didn't have the, they weren't able to manage the risks or the exposures that they had for their employees. So, having safety at the base of their stool or the base of their triangle.
Randy Klatt: In the end, it is all about leadership. You know, when we go back again to that definition, motivating people to accomplish a common goal. Well, the common goal is business, it's productivity, it's making money, but it's also doing it safely because obviously safety impacts the bottom line as well. So, you can't do one without the other two the quality product, productivity and safety. It all has to work together. And a leader has to understand that all the way down to the front-line supervisors.
Peter Koch: Do you have enough experience with that one particular company to talk about how they got to that point to have safety be such an important part of what they do?
Randy Klatt: It has been a many year process and it's a company that's growing. So, when you're growing, the financial end of the business is so important because there's so much risk and you're inheriting other territories, other employee groups. So, the safety manager has grown considerably, not only in his experience and his ability to focus on the right things, but also to stand up and say, no, we can't do that. To hold people accountable and to convince their owners, the board of directors, you know, other people involved, that yeah, this is the right thing to do. It's it may cost us up front. We could have lost that contract. We could have lost that business. Fortunately for him, in the end, they didn't. And that was just the icing on the cake. But it does take quite a process for a lot of organizations if they haven't been focused on it before to turn that all around. It's like turning around a ship. It takes a long time to get that baby going the other direction. And once it goes the other way, it has to be maintained as well. So continual education, continual training, continual focus on the right things.
Peter Koch: So, what did they have experiences in their past where a similar decision was made, and they found success with it? Or did they have maybe a negative experience in their past where safety wasn't focused on and there was an employee injury or something else that affected the productivity and safety that allowed them to sort of leapfrog into this place? Because you the company that's growing certainly has a lot of challenges. And the finances are truly important as the margins are pretty tight right at first as you're starting to expand and there's a lot of risk. But conversely, even if you're not growing and you're in a challenging place in the marketplace, doesn't matter where you are, those same pressures could be there. So, there are many times there needs to be something to move that company towards that leadership, the safety leadership place. Was there a place in that history there do you know?
Randy Klatt: I think there was. I know they had a couple of bad years. They had some serious injuries. And I, I don't know that that company-wide, they recognized that as much as they should have. And I give all credit to their safety director because he made it clear, he's the one that stood up and stamped his feet and did what he had to do to get everyone's attention. And he takes it very personally as well. He cares about the people that work there, and he knows it's his job to protect them. And he also knows that he's not out there in the field with them at all times, so he has to depend on those managers and supervisors that are out there in the field. But I think they saw the light after a year or two of fairly unsuccessful safety performance. And said all right, we have to do something. And maybe he's right. Maybe we need do need to focus on some other things. And that's what they've done. And it's turned them around quite well. When their rates are way down, their experience rating's way down. Losses are down. Lost work time is almost gone. Restricted duty and return to work program is robust. All those things. But those are standard things we always recommend, and any company can adopt them, but it takes a village to make that all happen. It takes everyone to understand the benefits of that.
Peter Koch: Certainly. And that's what you're speaking about there is not so we're talking a lot about the leadership of working safely. But there's also some leadership that has to take place in order to manage an injury that has happened on the factory floor or at your business. Because if you don't have good leadership to recognize the dignity, dignity of the human person and that they have value to come back to the business and also the effect that ignoring that would have on your business. That can put you in a precarious position as well and can have a lot of negative effects in a circular fashion, that the negative effects from not managing that injury can also have negative effects on the pre-loss side of your business, on the safety side. Your ability to get workers to work safely, to trust you that you have their best interests in mind.
Randy Klatt: Absolutely right. And in today's business environment, when we're talking 3 percent unemployment and how the economy is, is booming. What do companies need more than anything? They need people. They need reliable workers. They need people there doing their job. And if they're being hurt on the job, that that's not going to help anybody. So, the economic side of it is so important. But beyond that, of course, we would more and more focus on what is your most valuable asset, that person. And that's the person we want to go home every day with all their fingers and toes, and we have to make sure that that happens. If you treat your employees like you treat your family, I think that's a fundamental leadership position to take. You're probably going to have fewer injuries in the workplace. So, I am reminded of a quote from Abraham Lincoln. You must remember that some things that legally are right but are not morally right. So, what's the right thing to do for those people that work for you? It's to make sure their home, home safe every night. That's a that's a leadership role you have to take, a position you have to take. And if it means turning down some business, so be it. Just the right thing to do.
Peter Koch: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Randy Klatt: Correct.
Peter Koch: That's a great quote from Mr. Lincoln down there. And this kind of moves us to a question around why people need to be led for safety anyway. And it comes into that, quote just because we can doesn't mean we should. So, there's a lot of cans that employees can make choices on within the workplace. And sometimes those cans are the right, sometimes they're not the right decision because they shouldn't have taken it. But you know, the universal question. Why? Why do people do the things that they do? There's many motivations for that. And it comes down to that question, why do people need to be led to safe work practices or into a safety culture? Why do people have to be led? Why do you have to be a leader to do that?
Randy Klatt: That's a great question. And again, we can take all day to talk about that. But if you think about the fundamentals of safety, it's doing the right thing, which may not be the most easy thing to do. It might it might not be the quickest thing to do. We could talk about triggers, behaviors and consequences. You know, humans do things. We behave in a way that will result in a favorable consequence, in a positive result. So, if I have to set up a job and I need a six-foot ladder, but all I have is a four-foot ladder. Well, the positive consequence for me is going to, could be, that I will use that four-foot ladder and stop, stand on the top of it. Yes, I'm risking safety, but I get that job done pretty quickly. And if, if it's done and I'm not hurt and I can move on to my next job, that's a positive consequence. So, I'm likely to do that. Now, I know that there is a possibility of a negative consequence there. I could fall and be hurt. Likelihood is it's not going to happen. It's not the most immediate thing in my brain. So, I'm going to go for the soon, certain, positive consequence. I'm going to go do that with less than ideal tool or equipment. And that's where we have to lead people to say and to make sure that we follow through in the workplace. But to say that that's not acceptable. I don't want you taking those risks. I want you to go take the extra five minutes. Go find the correct ladder. Go find the taller one so that you can use it safely and properly. And, yes, it's gonna take you a few extra minutes. But now I know that we have reduced the likelihood of an injury significantly. And that's what's important to me. You're still get the job done and that person has to understand that. And again, once you build the culture and once leadership says that that's the way we're gonna do things around here, then they're much more likely to do exactly that. You would think. And of course, I hear this all the time it's common sense, right? Safety's common-sense Peter. What are we, we don't need to worry about that safety stuff? What's OSHA? Ahhh, it's called common sense?! Well, no, it isn't, because we know that common sense isn't all that common anyway, right? And we know it's based on each individual's experiences and those are all different. So, we cannot rely on that. We have to demonstrate. We have to train. We have to provide the right environment that people will understand. Okay this is the acceptable way to do this. And there is an unacceptable way. And that may be the way we used to do business. Think about how many injuries we see from body parts caught in machinery, moving parts, pinch points, drawn into augers, whatever. Amputations. Oh, my goodness. Those are all absolutely preventable. When I see it and hear about it, I think alright so where was there lockout tag program? Yes, they have one. Oh, where was the machine guard? It was there, but the worker took it off. Why would he do that? You know we think about those -- what was he thinking? -- moments. But if we really examine it closer, we'll figure out what he was thinking. What he was thinking was he's done that twenty-seven times already. The supervisor knows that they are doing it and he's turned his back to it because it's quick and easy and they get that line operating again or unjam the machine or whatever it is. And that's paying off in the long run with productivity. And that's the mindset. But really, what's happening is we're bypassing safety guards, we're violating rules, we're violating our training. And we know that's true. But I'm gonna get immediate consequence that's positive because I get this thing done quick. Well that's what bites us, because eventually it catches up to everybody.
Peter Koch: Sure does. Why, so the solution sounds easy. The solution is providing an environment where employees feel like they have a, have a job they can do well, and they can do safely. Provide them training, provide them feedback. Why is it so difficult for supervisors, managers, leaders within the workplace to have those conversations with those staff? Because you hit it right on the head. You talk about that example of the person getting their fingers caught in something because they remove the guard. And there is knowledge by the supervisor that this has happened before and they've let it go, even though that they know it's not the right process. Trigger, behaviors, consequences. Why does the supervisor not have the conversation when they see it happen or when they see the near-miss that occur, where they walk by the guards off the machines running properly? The employee is back at the workstation. Nothing's happening. But he knows because the guards off that hands were near or close to the moving parts. Why don't they have that conversation?
Randy Klatt: I think that's human nature, to for the most part, avoid conflict. It's easier not to do it. It's easier to walk past without saying anything because I've got ten thousand other things on my to do list today. And that one is I'm just going to let that one go because the odds of an injury are pretty remote. And we've done it that way many times. We could talk about the seven step steps to stagnation. One of those seven steps is we've always done it that way. Of course, that doesn't mean it's the right way to do it. So, if I can avoid the conflict, maybe that worker is a friend of mine. Maybe we've worked together for 20 years. Well, it's hard for me to go as a supervisor to approach him and say, you cannot do this, but that's what you have to do when you're stepping up as a supervisor for safety. It's just not the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do is to ignore it or to allow it to occur, because eventually that will bite everybody. Now, do you think it sounds difficult, but if you have the culture that supports it, it becomes a lot easier if you have if you approach it in the right way. A strong leader doesn't talk about himself. He doesn't make it about him. He makes it about the workers, the team. He has to be harder on himself than he is on others. So, if he is actually violating the rules himself and then telling others it's OK, that's or holding trying to hold others accountable when he is in fact violating rules himself and that that's not going to work either. And this goes back goes back thousands of years. Talk about Confucius, for crying out loud. What'd he say? A great man is hard on himself. A small man is hard on others. So being a leader doesn't mean you're a straight out...
Peter Koch: Authoritarian.
Randy Klatt: That's the word, thank you very much. That's not what it's about. It is about holding people accountable. But if I just say, hey, come here, let me talk to you for a minute. Why is this this way? Why is the guard off the machine? Tell me why. And they explain why. Maybe there is something deeper there. Maybe it's the guards always does make the machine jam up or it breaks a lot, or it does slow down productivity considerably when it really shouldn't. Maybe there is that there's something there that you can dig into and correct. So, they are more likely to do it. That's as simple as maybe safety glasses that people will wear. Why don't you wear them? Because they fog up all the time. Well, let's buy some that have an anti-fog coating, and we'll correct that issue. So, there are solutions, but again, you have to dig into them to find them, and only a strong leader will do that. And will take on the conflict that's inevitable. But do it in a way that makes you make sure that those people understand because you care about them. You're leading from the heart when you do that. And that's a big topic. But if you again, if you treat people like your family, I think that's analogous to leading from your heart. It's what is the right thing to do for these people. And if we do that, we're probably going to do the right thing for the company as well.
Peter Koch: I think that's a great place to take a quick break, because we're really coming to a head here talking about how leading from the heart and humility comes into being an effective leader and how challenging it can be for a supervisor to, to address some of those safety concerns if the culture is not there to support it. So, let's take a quick break and we'll come right back with more discussion about safety leadership.
Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Randy Klatt, Director of Region II Loss Control at MEMIC. Let's jump right back in with some more questions.
Peter Koch: So, before the break, we were talking about how supervisors can be successful leaders in workplace safety, and some of the challenges that they've had, or they can have, or barriers to them becoming effective leaders. And you had some good points that there has to be leadership from the heart there, that they have to lead with that personal interaction. And then the challenge is, as humans, we don't typically like the conflict. So the positive interaction, or the positive result of me not engaging in the conflict, when I see something that's not being done safely, and going to do something that I know I'm really good at, is I get that task done and I feel a sense of completion, even though on the other end I've got some other challenges. That seems to be a natural place for a supervisor to be, especially a new supervisor, because like how does a supervisor typically get their job?
Randy Klatt: That's the crux of the problem, isn't it? So, you are an outstanding plumber. You do your job very well and you're rewarded by now becoming the supervisor of a team of four plumbers. Or you're now the job super or in a production facility you're now a production manager. What do I know about managing people? I did the job really well. So, there's always that tendency for new supervisors in particular to do the job themselves, to say to someone, oh, just let me do that. I'll take care of that, because I know I can do it quicker. So, I can focus on production. That's what I've always done. But now, suddenly, as a supervisor, I've gone to a lot of other things I need to do. I need to understand people. I need to know what motivates them. Again, my job, motivate people to accomplish the common goal. How do I do that? What are they thinking? How do I manage? How do I do progressive coaching? How do I schedule? How do I interact with them on the discipline program? How do I know how to get them to do what needs to be done? And that's the hard part about being a supervisor. That's leadership, though. And yes, some people have that innate ability to do that. Others not as much. But it can be learned. It can be learned, and it can be practiced. And that's the important thing. You can read a book on leadership. There are about 10 million of them in publication. So, if you read the book and then you put the book down and you don't ever do any of it, you think ahh, that was kind of cool? Well, clearly, it's not going to help you any. So, practicing it in workplace is the way that you're going to get better at it. And that's something that we probably don't support or do enough of in this world. If you look at the numbers, employee engagement in their employers', employee satisfaction numbers, those are going down continually. They have for the last 30 or 40 years, people aren't really happy in their jobs. If you look at overall numbers, why is that? Because my theory is anyway, and I have some support in this that people aren't feeling like they're appreciated. They don't feel like people care about them as people. They feel like I'm a number. When I worked for the airlines, I was a commercial pilot. I had a number 2 5 8 2 9 4, was me. That's all my, that’s all my chief pilot knew. There's not a whole lot of satisfaction in that. Let's treat people like people. Let's lead from the heart. And they are much more likely to follow. And I'm not trying to create followers. Actually, what I'm trying to do is create new leaders. That's a leader's job is to train their replacement. That's the way things happen with productivity increases, that the teamwork increases, the mission vision becomes clearer for everyone and they will do it and do it happily. When someone puts in that extra effort, they work a little overtime, or they complete that project over a weekend. When you didn't really specifically say they had to, but boy, you really appreciate that they did. Then you know that there's some leadership involved there. There's some, they do it because they want to do it, not because they're forced to do it. I would never tell anybody to work all weekend to do something. But if they did, I know they did it because they thought it was the right thing to do. That's a powerful environment to work in.
Peter Koch: Sure. And I imagine that you've had the same conversation or a similar conversation with someone who has worked for the weekend or gone the extra mile or did a lot more. And you know that they on their personal side sacrificed some of their own time, their own life, their time with their family, that time with their friends, the time that things that they like to do outside of work and had the conversation with them about it. Super appreciate what you've done. It's an amazing outcome. How do we not do this next time? Because if you keep doing this, you're just going to get burned out.
Randy Klatt: Absolutely right. And that would be my that would be the exact conversation I would have and have had many times. I appreciate your effort. I really do. And you do great work. But I also know that work life balance is so important and I need you happy for the long run, as my senior V.P. would say, two philosophies: Surround yourself with people that are smarter than you are and make sure that they are there working for your company at your retirement party. And I think that's pretty basic, but that sounds good to me. I want all these people on my team to be around for the long run. I don't want any turnover. I don't want to lose the valuable people we have. I don't want them hurt. I don't want anything negative to occur. So, I have to treat them like I love them all. And that right comes right from the heart. And if I do that, they are much more likely to perform just to extraordinary levels. And they do it because they want to. And I try to tone them back. If you have a group of, a team that's performing beyond expectations and you have to spend most your time telling them to slow down and not spend so many hours at work and all that, well, you know, you're a pretty good leader and they will appreciate hearing that message. So, I think that's so important. And people don't work for the dollar. The dollar is not the motivator. Yeah, we all have to be paid. We all want to be paid. That's what we have a job for in the end, I suppose. But that's not why we stay there. That's not why we continue to do that. And that's not why I'm going to go over the top for my manager. I'm not going to do it because I'm getting paid. I’m going to do it because I think I will be appreciated for it. I think it's the right thing to do and it will help the team. And that's what a leader will do.
Peter Koch: Yeah. Get the individual to realize what's in it for them, how their success can help the company and how it will be appreciated. How what you did, whether it is going above and beyond to deal with extra productivity or like in the earlier example of the company, the safety director standing up and saying this is not the right project for us. I have to imagine that that in itself, regardless of the environment that you're in, when it represents a pretty sizable chunk of money coming into a company whose expanding to get up and say this is not the right direction for us to go, that is a difficult thing for that individual to do. And then I'm I imagine because of the culture that that company has, there was discussions about it with him and the owner or the general manager about. Yeah, you're right. And I appreciate you bringing that up. Going the extra mile in that case.
Randy Klatt: Yeah, correct. So, again, a success story for everyone, but a difficult thing to do. And again, we're not often trained how to be a supervisor or how to be a leader, how to be a manager. And that's what has to be it has to be done. And you can learn techniques and skills. You can practice them. You'll be better at it when you do that, and you will see results. Sometimes we will invest time in training and in the overall outlook is we've wasted time. Gee, that's another class that we have to go to, or now half my team is in a class for a day and that just takes away from my productivity. But in the end, the design is to save time. Is to make that person and those people better leaders, to help them to understand what techniques really do work and to become more productive because they're going to have a more loyal team following them.
Peter Koch: That's an interesting point that you bring up about the practice. And I know you see it and I've seen it before we go to do a workshop or a training at a company. And it's a Hands-On skill, it's a technical skill that they're asking for, and we're coming in to do some training with their staff. They want it. They spend a lot of time, and from that, a lot of payroll dollars putting people in the class. It could be an hour class. It could be a four-hour class. It could be a couple of day class. The goal is for the employees to take that information and apply it into the workplace. Then maybe you come back in six months and nothing that was gone over in the training has been implemented. And you have a conversation with the supervisors and the managers, and they start talking to you about how it's how it is just a waste of time, we don't want to do this again. Going on the premise that the information was valuable, because if we're if we're not presenting valuable information, then it's not something that we should present. But the information is valuable. That should be taken into consideration and practiced in the workplace. I think that same principle goes to the softer skills, the human skills, the interaction skills of how to help someone who's been an excellent employee, really good at what they do and helping them along to work on those interpersonal skills to have those difficult conversations with those employees. And it could be even a difficult conversation on the positive, you can be just as you can have a negative effect with a positive interaction depending on how you come off. 'At a boy! Great job! Super job! And if I've heard that for the millionth time as an employee, I'm starting to think that I'm not really getting the honest answer. And I start to doubt whether or not you know what I'm doing or if I know what I'm doing.
Randy Klatt: Very good. Yeah, that's the verbal version of the poster that says safety is one, number one, when we have hazards all over the place. So, I often get that question, do I have to thank people for doing their job? Or there will be supervisors who say, I don't have to thank people for doing their job, that's what they're getting paid for. And I can't disagree any stronger. We do have to thank people for what they're doing because recognition, acknowledgement of their successes is so important to us as human beings. Again, that's why I'm working there. If I can make 50 cents an hour somewhere else and I don't feel like I'm valued, I'm going to go somewhere else. But if I feel like, wow, my leader really does care about me as a person, when I walk in every morning, he or she asks me, how's your, how was your evening? How's the family? How are those kids doing? What'd you do over the weekend? He takes a minute to actually engage as a human. That's pretty cool. And when we ask people in in our leadership courses about what did you most admire in a leader in your past? Could be an employer, could've been a coach or a teacher, whoever. But just think of someone in your past and who really had an influence on your life. And what did you most admire about them? And we write down all those attributes. They are all human skills. I admire them because he was a good listener, because he was patient, understanding had integrity and honesty. You know, those things. And that goes on and on and on. And those are all human skills that have nothing to do with the specific job or the production of the company or dollars or anything else. It's about being a good human being.
Randy Klatt: So, if you want to be a good supervisor, so son of a gun, you have to be a good human being. That's really what it's all about. And that's what people expect and are so often disappointed in. People join organizations and they leave managers. I think if you keep that in your mind, that'll sound pretty true over time. It'll ring true. And we can prevent that loss of those people if we treat them well. And this is coming from someone who spent 21 years in the military where you're given an order, you say "Aye, Aye" and you go do it. That's mission accomplishment's number one. But still, at that level, you have to lead from the heart. You have to understand what these people are doing. And there's no, I don't know, there's no more demanding situation than a military combat situation. Now, personally, I was never involved in that on that level. But if you ask those guys that were what made you do that, what makes you give up your, be willing to give up your life for someone else? What makes you go back to those situations? It's all about the people that they served with and the people they served for. And they're willing to follow that leader to do what he's he or she says we have to do because they feel that love and that connection and human interaction and the common bond, the band of brothers kind of thing. So, you can look to some fabulous leaders like Dick Winters from Band of Brothers. And we've probably all seen that miniseries or read the book. But that man led from the heart all the way. He was all about the people that served for him and not about himself. That's really what you have to do in the workplace. So you can take all those stories from Abraham Lincoln and Confucius and go all the way down to your production floor and use some of that knowledge to treat your people differently, to interact with them differently, to show the way that you want it done and live that life and people will walk on water for you. If you lead them.
Peter Koch: And it seems complicated or it could seem simple, I just have to lead. I have to lead from the heart. I have to, I have to be able to engage with that person as a human being. Many times, in the workplace there are demands that get in the way, but it really starts with honest recognition. And you hit that right on the head. If you if you talk to any of the leaders that are out there, leaders, in industry now, leaders in industry in the past, leaders in government, leaders in the military, it is about recognizing those efforts that the individual and then the team put forth. And you talked about it earlier, that we are conditioned for that. As humans, we look for recognition. And I think a really interesting example, we can pull right out of the leadership place, but go into modern technology and look at Facebook and Instagram and all of those pieces. And when those platforms were originally released, it was a place to communicate, and then you went back to see what someone said about your communication. Now, it's so easy to look at your likes. How many likes do I have? How many, how many times did someone recognize me for what I did? And that same innate desire for someone to recognize what we do well is in all of us. Sometimes it's a little more in the forefront. Sometimes someone is a, it's way in the background. But everyone has that desire to do a good job and to be recognized for that job. So, from a leadership standpoint, that simple first step is to understand what your employees are doing and recognize them for doing something well.
Randy Klatt: Absolutely right. And it isn't all pie in the sky. It's not all roses and stuff like that either. It's when you hold people accountable to their duties, they will appreciate that in the long run. They do want to do a good job. There aren't very many and I'm sure there are a few, but there aren't really very many people that want to fail. They don't. They from the lowest level entry person who has never worked anywhere and doesn't know anything. What he or she does know is I want to do well. I want to do something. I want to feel like I've accomplished some something, and that someone recognizes that. But if I am messing up, if I'm making mistakes, like I want to know that, too. I don't really want to be yelled at. I don't want to be belittled. And I want to be publicly shamed. But I do want to know. So, there's, there's definitely a place for accountability and discipline and progressive coaching and those things as well. So, it's not always going to work with a big happy smile and saying great team, we're all really good. Maybe they are and they should know that. But there may be sometimes when you have to take the little, that conflict again. Take that on and say, well, that wasn't quite what I was looking for. Tell me what you were thinking and let's work out a better way to go about this the next time, those kinds of things.
Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a great a great example. And coming back to that example that you talked about earlier, again, about the machine guard being missing and taking that step where the production line might be going great. You've got good product coming out of the other end. The quality is high. We're meeting or exceeding our productivity demands. But we see that one safety issue that's there and taking that moment to find out why it's not there. And helping the person understand why it should be there and that in no way should that ever be removed unless we're following the practices and procedures that allow us to do that.
Randy Klatt: Yes, very true. And as we look at people in the workplace that aren't really trained to be supervisors, but they want to succeed, they're not generally held accountable on performance evaluation, for example, for safety performance. And a lot of organizations there is a box that says safety and it'll probably have a checkmark in it. They're acceptable or you'll get a three out of five or whatever, because it's there. But if I'm a production supervisor, I'm held accountable for production. So that's what I'm going to do. And if people get hurt, it may or may not even rise to the level of being noticed. And that's a shame. That's not the way that should work. We should hold people accountable, not just for production, but for safety as well. And as we train those new supervisors who don't really know how to manage people, we need to manage those expectations of "You are going to operate safely." I want you to be productive because that's what I'm measured on. And it's not about me, though. It's about you. It's about you working here. I appreciate it. I want you to be successful. I'll recognize that success. But I'm going to make sure that you're doing it safely, too. Because I want you to go home every night. Nice and safe.
Peter Koch: That's fantastic. I think that just about wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast. And I want to thank you very much, Randy, for sharing your expertise with us. Do you have any final comments or tips that you'd like to leave our listeners with today around safety leadership?
Randy Klatt: Oh, I think, again, when we consider what safety is all about, it really is leading from the heart. It's done unto others as you would like them to do to you, right? It's I'm in this with you. We're in this together. I want you to go home every night safely. But I have to make sure that you're doing what you are supposed to do to make that happen. And if I have to tell you to get down from that ladder right now, because that's unacceptable, that's what I'm gonna have to do. Because you weren't doing it right. And I don't want you to fall off. But then we'll talk about it and we'll figure out a better way to do the job. And if you see something out there in the workplace that isn't right, and you come to me and tell me that we're going to act on it. That integrity piece is so important. So as a good leader, I'm going to lead from the heart. But I'm gonna be as humble as I can because it's not about me, it's about you guys. And I'm training my replacement. So, who's gonna be the next person to take my job? And we're gonna do this all together and do it safely, so we all are happy. And that's I guess if I was going to wrap that all up, that's what I would say.
Peter Koch: And with that, we're at the end of another episode of MEMIC's Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking with Randy Klatt, Director of Region 2 Loss Control at MEMIC about safety leadership. If you had any questions for Randy or like to hear more about our particular topic from our podcast. Email us at podcast@MEMIC.com. Check out our web site at www.MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find our podcast archive. And while you're there, you should sign up for our safety net blog, so you never miss another article or safety news update. And if you haven't already, take a couple of minutes and review us on Stitcher, i-Tunes or whichever podcast service that you find us on, it'll help us get the word out. And if you've already written that review, thanks. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. This podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leader in workers' compensation insurance and a company committed to the health and safety of all workers. To learn more about how MEMIC can help your business, visit MEMIC.com. And as always, thank you for your continued support. And so, until next time, this is your host, Peter Kotch, reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but acting on what you heard is even better.
Resources, Ideas and People Mentioned in Podcast
- MEMIC – https://www.memic.com/
- Peter Koch – https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch
- Randy Klatt – https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/randy-klatt
- James Buchanan – https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/james-buchanan
- Abraham Lincoln – https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/abraham-lincoln
- Seven Steps to Stagnation – https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-net-blog/2012/october/the-seven-steps-to-stagnation
- Talk About Confucius – https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/confucius